Three Excerpts

Here are three excerpts I've been chewing on this week. The excerpts come from: Genesis, Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions and Randy Harris's (new book) God Work.


Kara and I are reading through Genesis together right now. We stumbled upon this about a week ago. In Genesis 2:18-20, the text reads, "Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.' ¹⁹So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. ²⁰The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner."

There are too many things that jump off the page in these few verses to unpack. But, the part that grabbed me, for the first time, was the last line in verse 20: "there was not found a helper as his partner." I tried to read the text closely. So, the question surrounds the search for the suitable partner. Did God host a try-out ala American Idol. "Right. Cheetah, you bring a lot to the table. However, we are looking for some more stability. . . . Hippo, you would be a formidable opponent to Adam. But, we don't know how Adam will feel if he's the physically inferior member of the house."

Apparently, God looked for a helpmate (some translations use this word) but could not find one appropriate. Perhaps, none of them had strengths that would match Adam's weaknesses. Perhaps none of them had weaknesses that would fit with Adam's strengths.

More on this text later.

---

Anne Lamott records a conversation she's sharing with a lesbian atheist friend (her description, not mine). After mocking her friend ("What do you pagan homos do at your midnight celebrations--put a of dogs in wicker baskets and push them off cliffs . . .?" )--she remembered the story she had now committed to living. "And she [Lamott's friend] looked over at my big Italian crucifix on the kitchen wall, at the thorns, at the bloody wound, the nails through his palms, and then she turned to me with a look of such amused condescension that all I could do was laugh. As soon as she left, though, I went and stared at the crucifix for a long time and breathed it in. I believe in it, and it's so nuts. . . . But I have a photograph on my wall of this ancient crucifix at a church over in Corte Madera, tall splintering wooden Christ with his arms blown off in some war, under which someone long ago, wrote, 'Jesus has no arms but ours to do his work and to show his love," and every time I read that, I always end up thinking that these are the only operating instructions I'll ever need," (161).

---

According to Randy, there are two kinds of Christians you should not trust: " . . . the ones who think God is doing nothing and the ones who think they know exactly what God is doing," (91).