A Bone to Pick with Scripture

By her mere presence, sleeping at my feet as I write this, our dog Hobbes reminds me to lighten up after my last post’s earnest struggling with the Book of Revelation. For me, she truly is one of those “thin places” of Celtic spirituality through which I glimpse heaven on earth.

And I repeatedly witness that she does the same for others. When she rides in the car with me while out running errands, she often elicits a smile from those we pass. For a moment they transcend their stress and preoccupations and the traffic and enter a place of joy, good humor, and tenderness, like a child glad to be given a new stuffed animal. At first I think they are smiling at me, and then I realize it’s my passenger of the canine persuasion sitting attentively in the front seat.  I don’t mind basking in the overflow of goodwill she generates.

A neighbor along our route home after walking in Grant Park has two bumper stickers on his truck: “I BELIEVE IN DOG,” says one, and “DOG IS MY CO-PILOT” says the other. And it’s true, I do believe in Hobbes, and she is definitely my anamchara, or soul friend, also from Celtic Christianity. She’s a very good listener, puts up with my singing, and is always looking out for me.  In turn, I take pleasure in her snoring, her big round eyes (alternately wistful, pitiful, or ecstatic, working her wiles), her sloppy wet ear kisses, and her nosing the doorknob when it’s time to go out.

That’s why I was shocked, toward the end of  Revelation, to discover it said of the New Jerusalem come down from heaven, that “Others must stay outside: dogs, fortune tellers, and the sexually immoral, murderers, idolaters, and everyone of false speech and false life” (22:15). And there was no footnote explaining the reference to dogs in the New Jerusalem Bible I was reading!

I immediately thought of what I remember as an old Twilight Zone episode, a story that not long ago found new life on the internet, about a man who refuses to enter heaven’s gate without his dog, only to find the true heaven’s gate further down the road and that the gate he resisted entering was, in fact, “the other place.” The true heaven welcomed man and dog.

In her early life, when I was out of town, Hobbes’s favorite dog sitters were both transgender. One was a Muslim, and I had to be careful scheduling around the holy month of Ramadan, when he could not be around a dog during daylight hours. Religion sometimes considers dogs “unclean,” and I wondered if that were the origin of the taboo in Revelation.

So I checked the Oxford Annotated New Revised Standard Version. It, too, listed “dogs” as unwelcome in the New Jerusalem, but this time a footnote clarifies it meant, “impure, lascivious persons,” though it also references Philippians 3:2, where dogs referred to those who insisted on circumcision—in other words, those who were religious purists, the fundamentalists of their time.

Hobbes’s companion, Calvin, who passed on in San Francisco when I served a church there as an interim pastor, wrote “On Dogs in Scripture” in his book Unleashed: The Wit and Wisdom of Calvin the Dog. Calvin noted that dogs were “not positively portrayed in the scriptures of various religions,” but “associated with depravity, paganism, heresy, enemies, and the lowest of the low.” Then he pointed out, “Jesus said not to give us what’s holy, but agreed, at least, that we had a right to eat the crumbs that fall from our master’s table.” He continued:

This last reference must serve as the can-opener [Canine for hermeneutic, or method of interpretation] to reveal God’s intentions with regard to dogs. Canine prejudice abounded when most religious canons were written. Surely this admittedly fleeting reference to our right to whatever falls from our masters’ tables gives dogs new status in scriptural dogma. Only those who don’t like us would use the other scriptures against us. And, reading scriptures as a whole, it’s clear that God is usually on the side of the underdog, and there’s nothing more ‘under’ than us dogs! (60-61).

Calvin sat in the back seat of the car when Hobbes joined our family. But he took a back seat to no one when it came to biblical interpretation.

For more excerpts from Calvin’s book, click here.

Other posts about Hobbes or Calvin:

My Dog Ate My Scripture

Let God Rub Your Belly

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Photos and words Copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Suggested uses: personal reflection, contemporary readings in worship, conversation starters in classes.  

Miss the Rapture?

Copyright © 2011 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved.

I don’t know how long I have, as I am writing this on May 21st, which billboards in my city declare is the day of the rapture, when the saints of God will be caught up in heaven with Jesus and the world will begin its final tribulations.

Of course, writing this is pointless, as there will be no readers to see this post, scheduled for Wednesday, as the God I believe in will leave no one behind.

In honor of this day, last night we watched the film 2012 about the Mayan prophecy of the end of the world. Unfortunately, we were too tired to finish watching it, and now there’s probably not enough time.

Occasionally I have found myself in conversation with others who were taught about the rapture as children. Everyone has their own stories about how they handled this terrifying and traumatizing bit of Christian teaching, sharing them like veterans exchanging war stories. I, for one, feared being cast down into the pit of hell, but at the same time feared being caught up in the skies with Christ because of my fear of heights.

Someone from a small town once told me that, if he or any of his friends discovered their parents gone from the house unexpectedly, they might fear the worst—that their parents had been raptured and they themselves had been left behind. Together these friends came up with a plan in such an event: they would call, say, Mrs. Smith, the most saintly person they knew, and if she answered her phone, they knew the rapture had not occurred.

The “Left Behind” series exploits this fear of God’s eternal abandonment. I have heard that recent books in the series have become slow and plodding—stretching out the publishing viability of additional volumes. My attitude toward those who misconstrue Jesus and the Book of Revelation is “Leave already!”

Truth is, we are more likely to abandon God than the other way around.

Our dog Hobbes could write her own “left behind” series. We leave her behind when we go to work or the store. We leave her behind when we go out to dinner. We left her behind with a friend when we went to Chile for a visit. She is constantly being “left behind,” but she knows that when we return, things will be better. She’ll receive a pat on the head and a rub on the tummy. She’ll be fed and get to climb up on the bed. She’ll walk in the park with us and join me for morning prayers on the deck.

That’s the sort of thing we should be looking forward to. Simone Weil wrote, “Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.” In expectation of the good, I would add.

How Hobbes looks when "left behind."