1 Thessalonians part four

We are at chapter four verse 13. Paul is telling the Thessalonians about people who have "fallen asleep" which a euphemism for died. He doesn't want the Thessalonians to grieve about those people who have died "like the rest of men who have no hope." (Is false hope a good thing?) Paul believes "that Jesus died and rose again" and that one day he will bring the dead back with him. Well, not all the dead. Just the ones who "fell asleep in him." In other words, only Jesus believers. So, should the Thessalonians grieve for those who died and didn't believe?

By the way, grieving is normal and very human. It also occurs in the animal kingdom. Pretending that people don't actually die, but live on, prevents people from learning valuable coping skills. Tragedies happen. Death happens every day. We will all die. Everyone we love will die, some before us. We need to talk about how to deal with it in non harmful ways.

Next Paul tells the Thessalonians that the dead in christ will rise before the living, at the command of the archangel and the trumpet call of god. When he says rise, he literally means rise up into the air. After the dead begin to rise, the living believers..."we who are alive and left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the lord in the air. And we will be with the lord forever." Very dramatic. What happens to the rest of the people, the dead and the living? Anyway, it never happened, did it?

Paul can not tell the Thessalonian when this will happen because god wants it to be a surprise. He wants to catch people off guard, when they think they are safe. Then boom! Destruction. No escape. Nice god. No worries, the Thessalonians won't be caught off guard, like those who sleep peacefully at night and don't expect intruders. No, the Thessalonians are like fully awake people in the day time, alert and self controlled.

The Thessalonians will be ready for Jesus's coming by "putting on faith and love as a breastplate and the hope of salvation as a helmet." There's a war coming. They need armor. God did not "appoint them to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through Jesus." He died for the believers, the dead and the living ones. They will all get to live together with him. Good for them. I'll pass.

Next Paul tells them how to police each other. They were to respect the hard workers who are over them in the lord. These are not everyday hard workers but ones who have been given authority over the church in Thessaloniki. This passage is talking about church work, not everyday living work. The respect has not necessarily been earned. They are also to "warn the idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, and be patient with everyone." This is in the context of the church. It is god's will that they are always joyful, thankful, and prayerful, no matter what.

Finally the Thessalonians are told not to put out the spirit's fire, not to treat prophecies with contempt, test everything, and avoid every kind of evil. The letter ends with a kind of blessing. May god grant the Thessalonians sanctification and blamelessness of spirit, soul, and body, and he can do it. (What is the difference between a spirit and a soul?) Paul asks the Thessalonians to pray for his entourage and to greet all the bothers with a holy kiss. The letter is to be read aloud.

Next the wrap up.

A Grieving Atheist Book Review: Zen without Zen Masters

Hello, I have briefly mentioned that there has been a terrible tragedy and I have lost someone very near and dear to me about two months ago. My heart is not just broken, it is shattered. I have been trying to navigate daily life through my intense grief, just managing to hold on to my sanity. I apologize for not giving details, but I don't think that is necessary, nor will it serve any purpose to examine the circumstances of the death. It wouldn't change anything. They are still dead. No reiteration of the past can change that.

 I am still having crying jags and emotional meltdowns. I've seen a grief counselor twice. She was not very helpful, but I don't blame her, what can she do. What is done can't be undone, what is shattered cannot be fixed, the dead cannot be brought back to life. I was a little frustrated at the counselor though. Both sessions, she asked me about my loved one and if I could feel their presence, what I thought had happened to their essence, and if I was receiving messages from them. I thought this was inappropriate. She was under the impression that I was a "spiritual" person. I had to tell her I was not religious and she said that would make it harder for me to recover. She also attempted to question why I was not a believer.

Does it make it harder to grieve as an atheist, or just different? Is it even different at all? Does the severity of grief depend on the closeness of the relationship more than religious beliefs? What about the personalities, strengths, weaknesses, and life experiences of the griever? What about the circumstances surrounding the death? Does religion help when the death was sudden, unnecessary, and not understandable?

One thing the counselor  got right is that I have had a traumatic shock. Apparently I have also entered a stage of what is known as "complicated grief." That seems so obvious as to almost be insulting. Duh.

I'm reluctant to go back to that counselor, or any counselor for that matter. I have tried multiple methods of distraction, action, and reaction. They might help for a time but they quickly become useless as a means to ease the pain. I don't drink, smoke, or do drugs of any kind. I have very few responsibilities to occupy my time.  I did get a part time job, but it consists of 4-10 hours a week. For now I have decided to do what comes naturally to me and turn to books. Over at the Roll To Disbelieve blog, I asked for book suggestions to deal with grief as an atheist. I received two. The first was Zen without Zen Masters.

I ordered the book and set about reading it by just opening it to a random page. You can do that with this book because each page is self contained. There is an illustration or mini lesson on each page. I had been pre-warned that it was a bit irreverent. I didn't find it insulting, but it was more flippant than what I needed. Also, there was more about sex than I expected, which was not relevant for me. The most helpful part was near the end, describing various meditations and exercises other than the ones popularly thought of when we hear the words. I would like to examine these more. 1. Breathing meditation 2. Moving meditation. 3. Walking meditation 4. Transcendental meditation. 5. Daily exercise (live in the day) 6. Being exercise (become part of a particular cultural experience) 7. Candle exercise 8.Decisive exercise (using CAN achronism to help decide what to do)  Etc.

The book's main message seems to be: Do not take yourself too seriously. Very hard for me right now under the circumstances. However, I do want to explore a buddhist approach to death and grieving. I found help in some Buddhist philosophy as I was deconverting from Christianity. Maybe it will be of some use again. I checked out a book from my library, called The Five Invitations: What Death Can Teach us about Living. I didn't realize at the time that it was also written by a Zen Buddhist. It has already given me much to think about which I will probably discuss later.

Hell part 2

We are going to look at the Old Testament passages where Sheol is translated into "hell" in the King James version. We are doing that because Strong's concordance was created based on the King James. We will compare that to how the NIV scholars translated those passages. My NIV study bible has no references for hell in the Old Testament in its concordance. The words "death" or "grave" in the NIV  replace the word hell from the KJV. The Hebrew is sheol for each of these.

1- Deut. 32:22, sheol is translated to "realm of death below" in the NIV. There is a fire from god's wrath.
2- 2 Sam. 22:6 talks of the cords of the grave.
3- Job 11:8 says the mysteries of god are deeper than the depths of the grave
4- Job 26:6 "death is naked before god"
5- Psalm 9:17 "the wicked return to the grave"
6- Psalm 16:10 "you will not abandon me to the grave"
7- Psalm 18:5 "the cords of the grave entangled me" This is very similar to the verse in 2 Samuel.
8- Psalm 55:15 "let them go down alive to the grave"
9- Psalm 86:13 "you have delivered me from the depths of the grave"
10- Psalm 116:3 "anguish of the grave came upon me"
11-Psalm139:8 "if I make my bed in the depths (sheol) you are there" this is talking about god.
12- Prov. 5:5 "her feet go down to death" talking about the "adulterous woman."
13- Prov. 7:27 "her house is a highway to the grave"
14- Prov 9:18 "her guests are in the depths of the grave"
15- Prov. 15:11 "death and destruction lie open before the lord"
16- Prov. 15:24 "The path of life leads upward.....to keep him from going down to the grave."
17- Prov. 23:14 "punish him with the rod and save his soul from death"
18- Prov. 27:20 "death and destruction are never satisfied."
19- Is. 14:15 "you are brought down to the realm of the dead to the depths of the pit"
20- Is. 28:15 "with the realm of the dead we have made an agreement"
21- Is. 28:18 "your agreement with the realm of the dead will not stand"
22- Is. 57:9 "you descended to the very realm of the dead"
23- Eze. 31:16 "I brought it down to the realm of the dead"
24- Eze. 31:17 "they too had gone down to the realm of the dead"
25- Eze. 32:21 "from within the realm of the dead, the mighty leaders will say"
26- Eze. 32:27 "who went down to the realm of the dead"
27- Amos 9:2 "though they dig down to the depths below"
28-Jonah 2:2 "from deep in the realm of the dead"
29- Hab. 2:5 "he is as greedy as the grave"

Again, these are all the NIV versions of the passages where sheol is translated into "hell" in the KJV Old Testament. We see from these that NIV scholars determined they should be translated as death, the grave, the depths, and the realm of the dead.
I also looked up "death" in the Strong's concordance and found no instances where the KJV translators used death for sheol.The Hebrew word translated as death was an entirely different word. However, when I looked up "grave" in the Strong's concordance, I found 30 instances where sheol had been translated as "the grave" instead of hell. So, even the KJV scholars were not consistly translating sheol into hell. I also found 3 instances where sheol had been translated into "the pit" in the KJV. As far as I could tell grave, hell, and pit are the only English words that the KJV uses for sheol.

I searched the text of the NIV for the word hell here: (link). As far as I can see, there is no hell in the Old Testament of the NIV, at all. Very interesting. In fact, the Old Testament scriptures  of these translations also do not contain the word hell: ASV, RSV, ISV, NET, WEB, YLT, ISV, EST, NASB, The Easy To Read Version, and the Good News Bible. The ones that do contain hell in the Old Testament are the various versions of the KJV, and surprisingly enough, The Living Bible and The Message. That last one shocked me, considering it is often used by non-fundamentalist, progressive christians. I wonder if the word hell occurring in the KJV is one of the reasons that version is preferred by fundamentalists.

Job chapter 18 and 19

After reading chapter 18:

*Bildad is talking. He berates Job for his speech making and for insinuating his friends are stupid. Is Job a special snowflake? Then in verses he goes on to poetically describe horrible things that happen to a wicked person. He gets what he  deserves. Presumably, he is referring to Job as well.

After reading chapter 19

*Job replies. He says he is being tormented and attacked by words. Then he notes that if he has gone astray, that's his business, not anyone else's. Before they keep thinking they are so high and mighty, he wants to say that God has mistreated him. Even though he cries out to God that he has been wronged, he gets no answer. He feels god's anger through the things that are happening to him, but he is powerless to do anything about it.

*Next Job talks about how he has been deserted and detested by the people closest to him, his relatives, guests, servants, wife and friends. He asks for nothing but pity. Why should they pursue him the way God currently is?

*Verses 23-27 have a different feel than the surrounding passages. I'm no expert but they seem to be inserted into the text. I say this because verse 28 naturally appears to continue where 22 left off, with the the idea of Job's friend pursuing him. (In some translations it is  persecute not pursue.) then Job ends with a warning that they may get divine payback themselves.

*I can tell you it is a relief to know that no invisible person has any responsibility for any of the bad things that happen in my life. It's either consequences of living in nature, my own actions, or the actions of others acting in nature. Sometimes stuff just happens and there is nothing anyone can do about it. It is human to want to assign blame somewhere. We rarely look at catastrophic and life changing events as morally neutral, but very often they are. Natural disasters and disease don't care how good a person is.

*Now let us look at those odd verses that appear to be added to the text. They say, "Oh that my words were recorded." Looky there, Job's wish came true! We are supposedly reading his recorded words right now. Next, Job says, "I know that my redeemer lives." This is a statement that has been coopted by christians and used to refer to Jesus. A redeemer would be someone who  might pay another's debt to release that person from bondage, usually a relative. However, this passage sounds suspiciously like the concept of a spiritual redeemer, which we have not encountered before in the Old Testament writings. Then Job supposedly goes on to talk hopefully of being restored to his body and seeing God with his own eyes! This is definitely not a concept that has occurred in our previous readings. In fact Job has been quite pessimistic about his own death and eternal sleep in the grave.

Job chapter 14

After reading chapter 14:

*Job is still talking. The first few verses are well known."Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble." Job is saying people have short little lives, why does a god need to focus his attention on them. Just leave them alone, so they can put in their time. Trees that are cut down can sprout again from the roots, but when people die, that's it for them. "So man lies down and does not rise; till the heavens are no more, men will not awake or be roused from their sleep." So... No resurrection, reincarnation, or afterlife.

*In verse 13, Job seems to wish that some kind of resurrection would take place in a time when the God would not keep track of his sins. However, he says this God destroys man's hope in verse 19. Man is overpowered and sent away for good. He never gets a chance to know how his children's lives turn out.

*My study bible says this passage doesn't really mean Job is actually pessimistic about resurrection, he's just focusing on his present predicament. I don't see it. It seems quite clear that the author has no idea of any  possibility of an afterlife.

Job chapter 3

Afer reading chapter 3:

*Now the text shifts from prose to poetry for the next 40 chapters, with occasional lines interjected to tell us when there is a change in speakers. We start with Job talking. He is cursing the day of his birth. The NIV text says "and the night it was said, 'A boy is born.'" On further examination, the literal translation says "A boy is concieved." Job is cursing the night his parents got together to produce him.  Job cursing his birth is in contrast to his children who had frequently celebrated their birthdays with feasting. The curse includes a desire for the day of his birth to perish, to turn to darkness, and to be Overwhelmed by a cloud of blackness. Job wants the night of his conception to be excluded from the calendar, and to be lonely and barren. The day of his birth is to be cursed by other people, and to not see the light of day, because it did not keep him from being born and from seeing trouble.

*Then Job wails, asking why didn't he die at birth. In that case, he would be asleep and at rest with others who had died, including kings and counsellors, who also were once rich.  Here we see a glimpse of the cultural attitude toward death. In death is peace and equality, no one is toiling, no one is poor or rich. They all have the same fate. Verse sixteen has Job asking why he hadn't been stillborn, which seems repetitious. Upon looking at the interlinear text, a better word would have been miscarried, or born before it was time. Again, he would now be at rest: with the weary, the  wicked, the prisoners, and the slaves. Again there is an emphasis of freedom and equality in death. No eternal torment for anyone.

*Lastly, Job wonders why those who are miserable and long for death  are instead given light and life. They search for death like someone hunting for buried treasure and are elated when they finally get to the grave. Job says he has sighs instead of food and his groans pour out like water. He has been afraid something like this would happen; his fears have been realized. He hasn't had peace and quiet, just turmoil.

*In verse 8, we are introduced to the word Leviathan for the first time. All we are told so far is that it is something (a creature?) that is roused by those who curse days. Also, I get the idea the the metaphorical language in the Hebrew is much more interesting and expressive than the English version in the NIV. In fact, it seems that the King James Version is a much better English translation of Job, in a sense. It captures more of the meaning and poetry. I think I may read the KJV and the NIV simultaneously for the book of Job.