Nearing the end with Forbes

It has been a while that I have been formatting and correcting this book from 1888. I hope I can did find out who to contact at how to reupload to archive.org to let them know because it does seem it will be readable. But it is filled with this sort of error - a venom that infects us more surely than any virus. We all initially hear this sort of thing and we can get very zealous about it: 

All mankind [sic] are [sic] divided into two great classes, the “Righteous” and the “Wicked.”

I am simply reporting what Forbes writes and I suppose from the tone of his writing, that’s what he 'believes'. This is also the surface of what people read and hear about humanity. But the truth is something else. We are all in both camps.

In recent posts, a modern professor (very popular, quite good I am sure) has been reporting that the ancient prophets 'believed' that God punished Israel and Judah for their sins. You know what I think about that. It is equal nonsense. 

Who can see into the mind of the ancient prophet? 

It may be what even the majority of people generally 'believe' that is what they thought about God - a bearded Old Geyser in the sky who rains down lightning bolts on hapless humans. In short, a violent God. A father like this we would consider either deranged or abusive. But that is not what the prophets believed. (Though there are people described in the Bible who believed this - like Job's comforters.)

Somehow we need to get below the surface of both these false statements about what leaders ancient and modern teach about what is in the Bible - and who assume that they have it right: the one that enforces a Messiah on everyone, and the one that assumes - whether one believes it or not - a violent God. And I don't think it is just a matter of social order. I.e. - that (we need a) God (who) is there to keep us in line. It is a matter of awakening to our common situation. Is there any place for this thinking about god / gods / divine / etc with or without the practice of capitalizing or emphasizing or exclamation points? (Forbes uses a lot of these.)

So what do I believe? For I do believe. I haven't tried to set down just what it is though. I have sources for my faith - the physical world, the Bible, a bit of logic, tradition(!), and the rest of the souls on the earth - of all types from creepy-crawlies to great sea creatures, and of course the billions of humans, all of them multiplying like crazy. These are my sources. There are others of course.

What I believe that has some hope of explanation:

• The physical world - we can test it - not perfectly, but with reasonable predictability.
• so yes to vaccination.
• yes to telescopes that look back in time.
• yes to the fragility yet immense abundance of life on earth.
• yes to what our senses can know - as full of variety as the prodigality of life.
• The Bible 
• a library,
• and a recent history of a portion of humanity, limited, 
• yet a whetstone on which to sharpen understanding.
• "The Bible is like an echo to nature and this secret I have tried to convey." [Chagall]
• A bit of logic
• provably incomplete,
• subject to slippage, 
• but a partially useful tool for reasoning.
• Tradition(!) 
• I am an Anglican musician 
• and a software engineer. 
• There's plenty of ambiguity in the first and a thorough scope for error (and correction) in the second.
• The rest of the souls on earth
• from the silverfish and spiders to the rulers of nations,
• a marvel of inventive design and software. 
• And of course my families, parents, siblings, spouse, and children, and children's children,
• my nation and communities who form who I am and have become.
• (How wonderfully dependent we all are on the "supply chain".)

What I believe that has little hope of explanation:

• I am not free in the sense that freedom is used as a siren call to avoid responsibility to others. 
• I am a slave - of God - whose 'service is perfect freedom'. 
• I am not a willing slave but a rebellious one. Yet I think the use of the word 'freedom' to call attention to my needs is idolatry. I have accepted now with some joy the hope to which I have been called.
• I note that there is Trouble: flood, fire, war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, despair, law, chance, and so on.
• I also note that there is music and beauty of design in so many things.

I do not believe in an 'almighty' God. That is another religious word I have not found or had to use in my translation. It is not the God I find described in the Bible. That God is 'sufficient' and not describable in abstract terms as if I have control of it. (El Shaddai I rendered as the Sufficient. It is Job's word used by the characters on both sides of the argument.)

But when it comes to the real world, like vaccines, or anticipation of trouble, and the tension between safety (salvation!) and risk, and so on - who dares to define the rubrics? When it comes to taking the right action in all our complex situations, I do have to have something I can rely on. This is hard to point to. We have some shared conventions and rules in each community. We also appeal to international laws but nations respect them with resistance and all sides fail to ratify them totally.

We therefore get what we deserve, not punishment by some invisible divine, but real-time consequences which we must live with and negotiate. Sometimes we die as a result of our abilities or disabilities. I have found that we also live. For these - death and life - I am thankful. I could not have one without the other. The point of the resurrection to me is present hope, permission to find the right risks and take real responsibility for myself and others.

Present is an operative word - it is all we have. Soon by virtue of the limited speed of light, we will be able to look back in time with greater precision (and awe) than ever before. The limitation of time should stop us from thinking that forward and backward are absolutes. Whatever 'for ever' means, it is not an infinite linearity in both imagined directions. Light is not instantaneous. When it comes to 'translating' the Bible into modern speech, I think it is important to get the 'forever, for ever, everlasting, and eternal' to recognize their limits. Everywhere that we read a verb, or a noun related to tense and time, we have to rethink our simplistic division of experience into past, present, and future. 

To say the least, Forbes does not do this. Some of his logic betrays a translated sense of precision of tense which will not stand scrutiny. (Hence his simplistic use of the present tense in the sentence I quoted above.) If I had to rephrase this I would say that "All humanity is a complex mix of righteous and wicked." and "Each human is likewise". I could add that this mix has consequences into which we will mature, or by which we will be destroyed. Yet 40 days ... as Jonah would say.

English can seem too precise with respect to the temporal aspect of verbs. We need to read with the knowledge that what is perfect in the Hebrew is accomplished, and what is imperfect is present and still to unfold. How this Hebrew is expressed in English (or modern Hebrew - which has taken over the forms but not the substance of its ancient roots) is moot - especially in poetry.

My correction of the OCR version of Forbes' book is now complete in my first full run-through. You can access it here or you can search for it at archive.org and hope I figured out how to do the update. Let me know if you find things I have missed. I may be adding further editor's notes and I also hope to find a way to add or internal references to original page numbers - but for now the generated table of contents will have to do for navigation. I may blog about it further especially if I figure out how to summarize Forbes' findings - after I check them out.