Post number 1. Who is Qoheleth? < קֹהֶלֶת >

This was originally my Bio on the header of this site. I have decided to shorten the Bio. Thus, I have made this post about myself (and why I chose the name Qoheleth < קֹהֶלֶת > .

If you meet me today and we introduce ourselves, I will tell you I am a retired school teacher. I usually completely leave out a portion of my history: the fact that I was once a pastor. I loved seminary, but the pastorate was very difficult for me. I was too young, too confident, and too inexperienced. I know now that my people skills are lacking (my people skills are now better, though I still struggle with relating & communicating; but in my youth, I was self-unaware). Frankly, I led my second church into a very serious series of conflicts. It wasn't all just me, but I was the pastor, and I should have led very differently. Some congregations are simply quite difficult. So imagine, if you will, a group of already difficult people with a young and inexperienced, and also quite naive, pastor. The church conflicts might have been avoided or mitigated if I were a better leader. But in the middle of the conflict, it was nothing short of miserable. I felt useless. I felt helpless. I felt miserable. Maybe more than anything else, I was desperately lonely. Although I talked and prayed much with many different fellow pastors, I felt like a failure. I saw some of the conflicts as they were coming, but it seemed there was no way to steer the ship to miss the iceberg. I completely understand the metaphor of watching a coming, slow-motion train wreck and not knowing how to put on the brakes or stop the tragedy (yes, I just mixed a train and ship metaphor). I walked away from my dream job. I did find a modicum of success in public school that eluded me in the pastorate.

Today, however, church is difficult for me. It's kind of like revisiting your life's worst failure. Every. Single. Week. For this reason, I am not involved in my local congregation beyond attending weekly Sunday morning services. I'm fairly certain the leadership of this church probably thinks I am a "carnal Christian" (yet no one has ever reached out to me). I'm also an introvert. I don't make friends well, and I never have. Nevertheless, I wish to think through what I could generally label Biblical studies (but with concepts at a deeper level than I rarely see or hear in church). If I say what I'm thinking in a small group Bible study or Sunday School class, I can make many who want nothing more than to do a feel-good Bible study very uncomfortable very quickly.

Thus, this space is where I think "out loud" about scriptural issues, and writing makes my thoughts more coherent. This is because I desire to teach, but have issues....

Here are some example issues. One, I really like to study the scriptures academically (from that study, I draw very "evangelical" conclusions [1]. Nobody in church wants to talk about the synoptic problem and how thinking it through at the level of specific instances might provide insight into what, say, Matthew was emphasizing in the story as opposed to what Mark had to say when he told of the same incident in the life of Christ. Or how Matthew used Mark as one source when he wrote, enabling him to think about how to emphasize things very differently than Mark did. Here is another of my issues. Nobody wants to discuss whether hypothesizing about two different writing prophets named Isaiah who wrote at different time periods might help explain much and enable the reader to understand this ancient book of prophecy to God's people [2]. Could it be that the two different prophets named Isaiah are combined into one book (and that is what God intended all along)? In my circles, asking this question or posing this thought experiment is just unthinkable; it's scandalous. If you say many scholars have put forth this question, and it really helps put chapters 40ff into a context, it just doesn't matter. No one would hear you after you put forth the thought experiment. The above are examples of biblical studies I would like to philosophize about, and since I have no one or nowhere to study scriptures who would not be scandalized by my approach, this blog helps (or is intended to). In addition to these interpretive issues, I still struggle relating to people. I don't really want to get "close to" church people the way a teacher needs to get close to his or her students. I confess that caring about others is difficult, and it is why I probably don't get close to people. A teacher should care, but I don't want to get close to people. Thus, this space is a kind of "fix" for "the Jonesing" I sort of have -- wanting to teach; definitely not wanting the leadership and relational things that would accompany teaching, and having no outlet anyway ….

So, to anyone who has stumbled upon my semi-private thought space, I welcome you. Here I am. I have issues.

Footnotes:

[1] "Evangelical." I use quotes around this word because that term has changed meaning. C.S. Lewis also did not like the term, and when it was explained to him, he said, "why not just call it classic Christianity?" Most "evangelicals" are people I do not like or like to be around (that did not used to be true). Generally, the more that they embrace the term and what it means today, the more uncomfortable I am -- though I believe all of my Biblical conclusions are classic evangelical. Today's evangelicals, I prefer to call Funda-gelicals (morphing Fundamentalist with Evangelical). An older explanation for Fundamentalists was that they believe the same thing as Evangelicals, but they were angry about it. I would update that description to say that Funda-gelicals take Evangelical interpretations of scripture and seek to make them into a constant culture war (and in my opinion, they thereby water down the Gospel).

[2] Perhaps I may expand this in a later post. Most Christians misunderstand prophecy as future-related (even future-telling). While this future telling is a small portion of the the prophetic genre, most prophecy had to do with the life and times of the prophet. If or when there is a future message, it can only be understood by knowing and understanding what the prophet had to say to the people in his or her time. Divorce the message from the life and times of the prophet, and you divorce it from meaning. I think it is likely that I will make a full post out of the nature of prophetic scripture at some future date.