Trudy J. Morgan-Cole's Blog, page 69

Writing Wednesday 19: A Perfect Day

I haven’t been having a lot of perfect days in my YouTube life lately, because I’m still unable to upload from home, which is a pain in the neck, and I haven’t yet had time to write the sternly worded letter to YouTube customer support that I feel the situation requires (seriously, we’ve tried everything, and been through several rounds of “support” with them). But then, when I do have the time to write anything?

That’s the subject of this week’s video (uploaded from work, which I may have to keep doing for the next little while, not that it’ll make any difference to you watching it). When do writers find time to write? Especially writers who are working day jobs AND caring for families? Sometimes it really does seem like an impossible juggling act. An unexpected free day last week allowed me to dabble in the “full time writer” lifestyle and reflect on what it would be like if writing were the ONLY thing I had to do.

Since this video grew out of an online discussion (on Facebook) I’m interested in continuing the discussion here. If you’re a writer, when do you find time to write? And how do you balance writing with the other commitments in your life?

No Video Today

I’m sure this won’t leave a gaping hole in anyone’s life, but there will be no Searching Sabbath video today until some technical glitches get ironed out. This week’s topic is God the Son, aka Jesus, and I had the video all filmed, but YouTube’s not letting me upload it. We’ve encountered this problem before and the usual work-arounds aren’t working, so this may take some time to get ironed out. Hopefully I’ll have it solved before Writing Wednesday, but we’ll see. 

Technology … so awesome, and so frustrating.

Month-End Book Reviews

As always, I’ve been reviewing books as I read them over at Compulsive Overreader, my book review blog. This year I’m also going to be doing a re-cap video at the end of each month to sum up the books I’ve read that month (the written reviews on the blog will always be longer and more detailed). If you like or comment on this video over at YouTube, or share it on Facebook or Twitter (and let me know that you’ve done so), I’ll enter your name in  a drawing to win one of the books I read in January!

Writing Wednesday 18: Power, Politics & Panda Earmuffs

In this week’s video I’m back outdoors during a January cold snap, showing off some very windblown hair and some strong opinions. This week’s vlog is only tangentially about writing; it’s really about why I wanted to include the story of Newfoundland’s early suffragists in my novel, and about how my political views and my writing connect. With the news this week that half of Canada’s provincial premiers are now women, I wanted to reflect on what this means for feminists like me. Have we “arrived”? Is the struggle over? Is it good news even if we disagree with the politics of women in positions of political power? And what would our foremothers, who worked so hard to win the right to vote, think of it all? Have their dreams of a kinder, gentler, woman-ruled world come true?

Next week I’ll be back to more specifically writing-related topics, but given the subject of the novel I felt like this was a digression worth taking.

I haven’t been doing very well at keeping up additional blog entries in between the Wednesday and Saturday vlog posts. I’ve started some, but this is a really busy time of year, with a new semester kicking off at work, and it may be awhile before life settles down. Tomorrow I’ll be posting another video — a month-end wrap-up of the books I’ve read and reviewed in January over on Compulsive Overreader. And there will be the opportunity to win a book!

Searching Sabbath 03: God the Father

Last week I talked a bit about what we Seventh-day Adventists believe about the Trinity, or the Godhead – that whole Father, Son, Holy Spirit thing. The next fundamental belief I’ll be looking at is our belief about “God the Father.”

The text of our official statement of beliefs says: “God the eternal Father is the Creator, Source, Sustainer, and Sovereign of all creation. He is just and holy, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. The qualities and powers exhibited in the Son and the Holy Spirit are also revelations of the Father.”

Right away, of course, as a feminist, the language is problematic for me. God as “Father” equates, in most people’s minds, to God as male, despite this being a God who is said to have created both male and female in His image (Genesis 1:27). It interests me to note that nowhere in the SDA statements of belief about God is the question of God’s gender addressed. I’ve always believed God to be beyond human gender, to be neither male nor female, and believed that the patriarchal language used of God in the Bible reflected the culture in which the Bible was written. I’m sure I’ve heard other Adventists, even minister, express this idea that God is neither masculine nor feminine but beyond gender, but there’s no reference at all to this concept in this book about Adventist belief, or even any acknowledgement of the fact that an all-male Father-God concept might be problematic for some people.

I’m comfortable (as comfortable as one can ever be in speaking of the Incomprehensible) with thinking of God as beyond gender and imagining both male and female images of God with the proviso that both are only images. While the language the Bible uses to talk about God is overwhelmingly masculine, there are feminine images of God in Scripture as well, though these are often ignored and downplayed. It makes sense to me that to people in a patriarchal culture God would have presented Godself as a Father, but I always expect God to be bigger than our human understanding, and a God who could be defined as “male” or “masculine” would seem dangerously anthropomophized to me.

The question of God’s gender (or lack thereof) isn’t addressed in Seventh-day Adventists Believe … but another thorny issue is addressed at length: that of God’s character. What kind of God is this “God the Father” that we follow? In this official statement of Adventist beliefs, God is described here as a God of mercy, a covenant God, a Redeemer, a God of refuge, a God of forgiveness and goodness. But there is also an attempt made to wrestle with some of the negative baggage God has acquired – the picture of God as a God of vengeance, wrath and wholesale destruction.

One thing I love about Adventist doctrine is that two of the biggest Christian slanders against God’s character are NOT present in Adventist belief. The Calvinist God who consigns the majority of His creation to damnation, who created them only to destroy them, is rejected by Adventism, which is basically Arminian in its emphasis on free will. And the God of much of mainstream Christianity who tortures sinners in an eternally burning hell also does not appear in Adventism. Adventists would argue that both these distortions of God’s character – both of which really, really trouble me to the point I find it hard to believe people worship this “God” – are based in unsound readings of the Bible (which we’ll get around to discussing more in later weeks as I look at the other Adventist beliefs).

However, because of the extremely high position in which Adventist place the Bible, we’re less able to deal with a third problem related to God’s character – that many of the negative, vengeful, destructive images that people have of God do come directly from the Bible and from things that God does and authorizes there. I’ve blogged extensively in the past about the difficulty I have with the violence that appears to be either initiated or at least approved by God in the Old Testament — the wholesale destruction of human life in the Flood; the death of every firstborn Egyptian; the conquest of Canaan; etc., etc., etc.

I know that for each and every example that troubles me, devout Christians can come up with “good” explanations as to why this particular slaughter was necessary, just, or not as bad as it looks. But taken together, it’s very easy to see why many non-believers respond by simply rejecting outright the God who allegedly committed all these acts. And to brush off these questions as unimportant seems to be to not be taking Scripture as seriously as we say we take it.

If you have a lower view of the Bible it’s easier to say, “Well, this was written by people in a violent and bloodthirsty culture and this was how they saw God,” but if you believe the Bible is God’s inspired and infallible word, you’ve got more to grapple with there. If God is good, why does He commit what seem by our standards to be evil acts? Or, if He didn’t actually commit them, why does He allow Himself to be portrayed in such a way in His Word?

Despite all the wrestling I’ve done with this, I always see this as fundamentally a problem I have with the Bible, not a problem I have with God. I’ve never seriously considered the idea that God might be vengeful, cruel or simply uncaring. I think this is entirely because I had and have an excellent father myself, and a loving mother as well, so when I think of God as a parent I’m pre-programmed to believe that I am loved and thus that universe is a good and loving place – which is an advantage I realize lots of people don’t have. Thanks, Dad and Mom.

In the end, Seventh-day Adventists Believe… comes down in the same place I do on the character of God – if we’re using the Bible to help us understand God’s character, we need to look at Jesus, who came to reveal what God is like. So next week I’ll be moving on to the next fundamental belief, “God the Son,” and talking about Jesus.