The Neverending Story

by Ben

I finished out 1 Kings by reading chapters 17-22.

Elijah is a central influencing character in this section. Later, the prophet Micaiah takes this role. Both of these men do their best to let the reigning kings know what is going to happen and yet, the kings go against God's will.

This section is stylistically a mix of historical account and creative storytelling. I read it and felt as though I was reading about King Arthur and the Knights of Camelot. The writing had the same feel to me (possibly because of the similarity in plot between the death of King Arthur and 1 Kings 18:42-44). I think it is great to be able to read the Bible so many different ways.

I've been thinking about this recently after attending the most recent College of Wooster Lay Academy of Religion lecture. They had a professor in to speak about a feminist criticism perspective of Genesis. For clarification (because so many people get it wrong): feminism is not the pursuit of women overpowering men; it is the pursuit of women being considered equal to men. By that definition, I'm a feminist.

Continuing on, the professor didn't do what many thought she would do, which was try to look at Eve, maybe Sarah (Lilith already having been covered in a previous lecture) and a few other perspectives. Some thought she might even take a modern look at the fall. She did neither of these, which I actually appreciated. She took a very specific look at one story in Genesis that most of us glaze over: Genesis 34. I didn't remember this story of rape and revenge, even though I've read Genesis several times. (It's interesting what we choose not to see)

We broke it down and almost did a deconstructive criticism of the way that the story is written. I recommend you take a moment to read this chapter and pay attention to the verbs and who is doing them. Imagine that you are Dinah or any of the female characters. It's fascinating.

This all connects in my head. We have the Word of God in our hands and we have so many different ways to read it, each time getting more information from it. We could choose to read the Bible as we've done so far on the dlog. A study of a few chapters at a time. We could read it as a verse by verse study, focusing on every word (I recommend a translation that is as close to the original as you can get for this). We could read it as a story or a collection of parables. Maybe we seek guidance from the Scriptures or are using it in connecting with God. We could pay attention to characters or sayings that have significance or those that seem to merely be part of the background. We could notice only God's words, or only the responses of the people, or God's actions. We could choose to look at it from the perspective of men, women, Jews, Israelites, Gentiles, Christians, prophets, kings, commoners, God, Jesus, and any other number of individuals or groups. When we read, of course, we bring our own agendas and biases to the Scripture, often finding what we want to find. This process of reading and re-reading not only transforms our lives, but it transforms the way we understand God's letter to us. This collection of writings from God cannot be fully known as God cannot be fully known, but it continues to give us the opportunity to learn more about Him and His will for our lives. Sure, I know the creation story, but do I know it fully? Sure, I read 1 Kings 17-22, but have I completely exhausted the knowledge contained therein? No. No matter how many times I read the Scriptures, I will never have gotten everything out of it. That's exciting to me. A book that changes everytime I read it. Cool. Where's Falkor?