Creation As Hospitality

I’ve always found the two creation narratives an endless source of inspiration and trouble. They were placed at the start of the text for a reason, as if they are the key to all that follows, but in themselves they are an abyss for speculative minds.

So what is the key to understanding these texts, so that the rest can be understood?

I want to unlock the first narrative by linking it up with a subsequent story where Abraham is visited by the three strangers. Abraham is initially at rest in the shade, but as soon as he notices the men he runs to meet them. “Let me bring you water and bread; sit in the shade as I have a lamb prepared” he says to them as he works to provide for their needs.

The story is reminiscent of the beginning, where God says “Let there be this and that”, so the idea is to link God to Abraham in this scene, and in the process bring the cosmological abstraction of Genesis 1 into relatable terms. Doing so puts God in the role of hospitable host, who has jumped to prepare for a guest in need. God works until everything is good, until the guest is provided for, and then God rests and enjoys the company.

This interpretation has significant consequences for common sense theology which takes the events of Genesis 1 to be the point of transition from nothing to something or the instigation of history. This take says otherwise, for God exists with God’s property already in tact just as the guests exist with theirs. God is not so much creating like an artist creates in this scene but rather God is serving those in need, even complete strangers.

To refer to another post, the beginning wasn’t the beginning of being or history, but rather of goodness and life. It is the beginning of hospitality, and caring for our neighbours, by which I include complete strangers and even enemies.

Thoughts? Other senses of the events described in Genesis 1?

I’m curious, if you wouldn’t mind sharing, are you apart of a particular religious sect? If not, how do you come to your conclusions as to what the scriptures impart to you? Which version of the Christian Bible do you use to base your thoughts on. Knowing these things would help me have a better understanding about where you stand in your faith and how you come to your conclusions…thanks.

I was raised Catholic but drifted away during my adolescence. I don’t belong to any sort of faith other than through historical ties. I still go to church maybe twice a year, but more for my mother than myself! Although I do enjoy a good sermon…

My Bible is the NSRV (did I get that right? New Revised Standard Version?). I come to my conclusions, probably with the help of the continental philosophical tradition, namely thinkers like Levinas, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, but mostly just from thinking about the text…

Is my thinking here irrational? I’m guessing it’s unconventional, but I figured this would be an ideal place to see whether it makes any sense!

I by no means judge your thoughts or conclusions. My thinking here is viewed as irrational by some as well as unconventional. Thank you for sharing your religious base. It helps me understand the basis of your beliefs. I myself am nondenominational and believe in the Gospels of the Bible from the King James Version (KJV). I can appreciate you wanting to get a better understanding of God. Your means of doing so is not necessarily the way I would go about it. With my Christian background I am highly biased about how my path goes. The fact you search for answers concerning God is encouraging.
My Christian heritage endows me to accept Jesus as My Saviour and believe in Him. Is this your idea of what being a Christian is?
I will address your original topic with my next post.

Liteninbolt:

Is accepting Jesus as Saviour being Christian?

To me being Christian is saving others, just as Jesus did. Jesus was a saviour, but he is not necessarily my saviour. Jesus, to me, is just a character in a story who probably represents a real life man. Neither of these are my personal saviour, but rather they present me (and others) with a way of life that saves, a way of life that if adopted would bring salvation to others. Being Christian is accepting this way of life; it is following Christ and delivering others from evil.

If this is what you mean by your Christianity, by accepting Jesus as Saviour, then I am with you.

alyoshka, I apologize for getting off of your original topic and promise to address it when we have finished our clarifications.

I would suggest ‘being’ Christian is to follow Jesus’ tenets. Accepting Jesus as our Saviour is to ‘become’ Christian. Partially semantics and language. We can bring Jesus’s Word to people so they can make up their minds to accept Him or not, but we ourselves can not save them. In my opinion being children of God, we are testaments to His wonders and instruments to be used so others may know Him. This what I believe.

Jesus was given to humanity as The New Covenant from God. He was the ultimate sacrifice to make it possible for all of man’s sins to be forgiven. Where devout Jewish believers follow the Old Testament to be with God as their Heavenly reward, they must follow to the letter those teachings and be vigilant in that regard. Jesus is the Salvation for the gentiles. Christians are charged with spreading the Word of God while trying to examples of that faith. This is also what I believe.

alyoshka,

Though the translation is still valid for your personal use, it is actually deceptive to use in the way that you do so.

Christian, in the western world, refers to a religious adherence to Christianity, which is a religious family of theology that hold Jesus as the Son of God and a Savior of man through a sacrifice of crucifiction.

The reason that you are not Christian is because you do not believe in Jesus as an Annointed One for the Hebrew, Masiah (in english, Messiah) which was the purpose of the title, Christ being applied to him in Greek.

Prior, he was Yehoshua, meaning: “YHWH rescues”, and has many titles addressed to him by other, of which he accepts each time.

So if you are to take on the teachings of Yehoshua and not as the Christ, then you are looking for a way to categorically identify this by stating that you follow his teachings as a teacher.

In the Hebrew this was done by calling a person Moreh (teacher; male).

This means that you are either a Yehoshuan, or Yeshuan (your choice).

Meaning, the follower of the man, Joshua and his teachings.

Liteninbolt:

If you could address my initial idea that’d be great, but I’m happy to discuss anything.

You say being Christian is to follow Jesus’ tenets. That’s wonderful and I couldn’t agree more. To me Jesus’ only tenet is to love everyone (which means to save those you find in need).

You say we are to bring Jesus’ Word to people who can then make up their own minds on the matter. This is wonderful too, but to me “bringing Jesus’ Word” means following Jesus’ tenet, i.e., it means loving/saving humanity. We aren’t to “spread the word” in the classic sense of simply telling people what Scripture means, but rather we are to spread the word by living like Christ. Just as an abusive father teaches their son to abuse through their actions, so God teaches Christians to love through God’s actions and Christians are to teach people to love through their actions…

So when you say “we cannot save them” I respectfully disagree. I think we can save them, and that this is precisely what our duty as Christians is…

I don’t think Jesus himself was the covenant, but rather Jesus showed us the new and everlasting covenant. This covenant is love. Love is what binds us together and it means unconditional service to all creation.

And I really don’t think Jesus’ sacrifice made it possible for all sins to be forgiven. Again, I think Jesus shows us to forgive all sins, but Jesus is neither 1) the payment of humanity’s debts nor 2) capable of forgiving all sins. Only the offended can forgive the offender. If someone slaps my face only I can release them from their sin. Jesus does not have the right to forgive in my stead nor did Jesus’ death somehow pre-pay the debt…

I guess where you see Jesus having a more functional role, I see his role as mostly symbolic. Jesus is the symbol of a way of life, a character in an ancient story that invites us to a way of life. Jesus is not the cog that keeps this machine called the universe running smooth…Rather the universe runs smooth when those in the universe adopt Jesus’ way of life.

Stumps:

Really, what does it mean to be the “annointed one”? The only thing you qualify this with, although not directly, is that Christ is also the one who saves through sacrifice… Is this what it means to be annointed? To save others through sacrifice?

If so, then I am in perfect agreement. To me a Christian is precisely the one who saves through sacrifice… Just like Christ did. (Although unlike you, as I’ve said before, it wasn’t Jesus’ death that saved others but Jesus’ life. Jesus’ death was just a terrible injustice.)

So anyways, I’ll be the first to say that Jesus saved through sacrifice and that if this means he’s the annointed one, then he’s the annointed one.

However I will not say that Jesus saved us all through his sacrifices… If this is what you believe, then please explain how this mass-saving takes place… In being crucified, how does Jesus save us all? Since I can’t understand it, I cannot accept it…

No, it’s the Greek of the Hebrew Messiah, as I said above.
Messiah was a specific title for a savior of the Israelites, and was assumed to be a King of the Jews (which was outlawed as a placement during the Roman control of the Jews).

Annointed One just meant that this was the one that was special to the Jews, the one’s that the Jews seperated from all the rest and called Messiah; more directly, “Mashiach”, which did mean “the annointed one”, but in Jewish culture this was only applicable to Prophets, Priests, or Kings. The specifics of which were to state that a person was worthy enough to serve God in a position of responsibility in honor.

The Hebrews expected Jesus to be a liberator of their captivity, as in the past; instead he came as a liberator of their spirits.
For this reason he was first called Mashiach, and then later mocked as Mashiach.

Jesus will work through us if we allow it. Sometimes it’s more immediate, where others it’s subtle. His spirit can affect the mind, the heart (if you will) or some external source. When He does, it’s not what we ususally expect. To experience something like that will be rarely forgotten. Most likely you would want to share that experience. That is when we are Testaments for God. Church is a very good vehicle experiencing the Spirit. Shared fellowship is conducive for that. It provides a larger conduit wherein the Holy Spirit is more greatly felt. If you can move past Jesus just being “a character in a story” and accept Him as a real aspect in your life, then you will feel greater fulfillment.

Stumps:

Okay, I don’t see why I can’t be Christian then. Jesus is special to me too, just as he was to the Jews. He just didn’t save me.

This philosophy that he somehow did just makes no sense. How does his death pay for our sins? How does this arithmetic work, where the execution of an innocent man saves all? Is it just another item of faith?

Jesus shows us salvation by showing us the life that saves. Jesus didn’t free the world of suffering. Nor did his death pay for the trespasses we make today.

Liteninbolt:

I accept Jesus as a way of life. If only I had the faith to adopt such a way of life. If only we all did…

Yes, and it principally why you are not Christian.

There’s nothing wrong with not being Christian based on your philosophies, but you can’t stake them as Christian and expect people to understand where you are coming from.

It would be like me sticking only to Christian without stating LDS; it’s not accurate because if I say, “I’m a Christian” and start then talking about Joseph Smith, that will get right confusing for everyone involved…hence, why you don’t see me doing that.
Indeed, I am a Christian in the belief’s, but I am not only what people conjure as Christian.

You are not either.

But more to the point, you are more specifically not christian as you are not a follower of the Christ part of Joshua.
You are a follower of the philosophical teachings of life asserted by Joshua.

These are not the same thing.

So you can’t possibly be a Christian in that you deny the Christ, but accept the Joshua.
Christian’s do not deny the Christ.

I’ve explained this before regarding Hebrew custom of blood sacrifice.
Jesus saw himself as such as he cited himself as fulfilling prophecies, of which referred to a sacrifice of The Lamb, and indeed the Jews closest to him saw him as this; The Lamb of Sacrifice, not “a” lamb of sacrifice.

This means nothing in your take, and this is what makes Joshua, Jesus Christ.
Without this, Joshua is simply Joshua of Nazareth, from Galilee.

The best I can compare this to, is to say that it would be like saying that you are a liberal that doesn’t believe in equal rights, and held that the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. were good to live by, but that you don’t actually see a need to believe that African-American’s can be seen as equal to Caucasian American’s; but insist that you are Liberal.

The problem is dogmatic.

The strangers to which you refer were angels sent by God. Abraham sensed this and wanted to show hospitality. I suppose what you are driving at is the reverance we show to God, should we do less to others? Where this is a lesson in a much larger picture concerning Abraham and Sarah, I believe this is what you are trying to imbue.

I don’t think Abraham sensed at all that they were angels or God. The idea is to be hospitable to anyone, not just to those you think are important…

What I’m really trying to do here is expose the nature of God, and I think Abraham provides the perfect example in this scene by setting God up to be a hospitable host.

God is greatest of all because God serves even the least. But God does not serve like a servant serves, but like a host serves their guest. This is what I want to get across… I want to portray Genesis 1, creation, as hospitality. I want to treat God in this story as a hospitable host who takes care of the needs of all guests.

The idea is to break from common conceptions of God derived from this story, namely an omnipotent super being that creates from nothing.

You’ve definitely done that, and that is part of the LDS perspective btw, just and FYI of theologies that share that same concept of Earth as a hosted event.

But LDS would also say that God is the omnipotent creator of all that is, no?

No, they hold that God is a creator of everything relating to Earth.

They don’t hold God of Earth as the creator of the universe or reality.

So then my next questions would be, what is Earth? And what does it mean to create it?