The pastor of the Baptist church on the corner of 24th Street was a short, stubby man with a well-rounded face, a light complexion, and a warm, friendly demeanor. His wife, though not an especially tall woman herself, even for a Latin American, was considerably taller than he. She had darker skin and was likewise of a warm, kindly disposition. In fact, they seemed quite appropriate together.
They were both from Nicaragua, where they had married and lived prior to moving to the States when he entered the San Francisco Theological Seminary. Although he’d finished his schooling quite some time ago, the two of them would go to the Seminary to work for a little extra income. They would pick up trash and do basic cleanup in the dorm areas after the departure of visitors.
Once, I accompanied them to the Seminary, which lay to the north of San Francisco on the other side of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, in beautiful, wooded Marin County. I found the environs to be delightful to my spirit, thirsty for some touch with nature after having been in the big city for so long. What’s more, I especially enjoyed their company that day as I joined with them in their work. They were humble, light-hearted and simply pleasant to be around.
The Hispanic church he now pastored on 24th Street was located in the Mission District of San Francisco—an area that is home to a very large percentage of ethnicities from many parts of the globe, including and especially, many immigrants from Latin American countries. The Mission area is famed for its many murals, several of which display mobs of dark-skinned Latin American revolutionaries from the early 1900’s, bearing raised machetes and storming in mass, depicted in conjunction with prominent revolutionary heroes and leaders opposing the elite establishment of their day.
••••••••••
The stuccoed, two-story church had steps leading up to its main entrance which faced a cross street lined with sizable shade-giving trees. The trees were an unusual luxury for a street in the Mission area, the majority of which were characterized by buildings and residences, both modern and colonial, built immediately adjacent to each other with no space between and directly lining the street-front sidewalk, which was usually barren except for pedestrians and the occasional street sign.
I’d had opportunity to visit the church on a number of separate occasions beginning in the fall of 1994 when I first discovered the church while staying for several weeks in the Mission District in a cheap residential hotel room; then later, when I lived in Oakland across the bay to the east with Hispanic families who shared their living space with me; and finally, again, when I moved back once more to the Mission District in 1997.
I always enjoyed the pastor’s talks. Apart from his regular suit and tie, his manner was informal, putting on no airs. Yet his way of expressing himself couldn’t help but betray he was an erudite man. He taught rather than preached, which seemed a rare thing for a pastor, especially when compared to some of the fiery Hispanic preacher-pastors I’d been around before. In his gentle, animated discourses he went into careful detail about whatever passage of scripture he was expounding on. He had a particular relish for bringing up the nuances of words from the original Greek used in the New Testament passages he read from. And I can still see him bobbing his head and shoulders when he laughed—as he would sometimes do when irony presented itself in the midst of his discourse—cackling in a way that made him look like he was sneezing or hiccuping.
Usually, after the service was over, I would linger. I enjoyed visiting with the members of the church representing various Latin American countries—Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Cuba, Argentina. The actual number of persons present was usually small, but they came from diverse backgrounds. I’d gotten to know several of them with whom I felt something of an affinity. I also enjoyed visiting with the pastor and his wife at the doorstep where they’d greet attendees who were making their way outside.There was something entirely refreshing about the whole affair, especially the joyful aura I felt from this humble, unassuming Nicaraguan couple.
Other times, after a bible study, I might stay after everyone else had left and ask questions of the pastor about the topic of the lesson and the particular meaning of Greek words he’d brought up in the course of his exposition, which I found quite interesting.
At still other times, I found myself alone with the couple or accompanied by just two or three of the members. On more than one occasion like this, in the course of lively conversation amongst the small inner group of us who lingered, the pastor had turned to the subject of the socialist movement in Nicaragua, which he appeared to have been involved in. A fire would light up in his eyes, and his speech would become more pressed, enthusiastic and contagious. He appeared to have the desire to return to Nicaragua, if only for this. But when I asked whether the couple had thoughts of returning, his wife seemed rather to prefer to remain in California.
••••••••••
On one of the very last occasions I had of visiting the church before leaving the San Francisco Bay Area, once more I found myself lingering and visiting with the pastor after everyone else had gone.
On this occasion, dismissing himself momentarily, he disappeared into one of the side rooms—his office perhaps—and re-emerged with two small books in his hands. As he showed them to me, he explained...
The first and larger of the two was a Greek grammar book. It looked like it had been sitting in the basement of a library for decades. He handed it to me to look at. The hard cover was a plain, faded, dull green, and the pages inside were tinged with age. It looked like it was from the 1960s or 70s perhaps. He explained that the book dealt with the grammar of Classical Greek in which the New Testament was written, also known as Koine (koee-nay). In the back of the book, a glossary of vocabulary words commonly used in the New Testament was included.
While I held it in my hands and fumbled through the pages, he turned his attention to the second book: a small leather-bound volume, around three and a half inches wide by five inches tall and only slightly more than half an inch thick. It, too, was old, even older than the first. The thin leather cover had a rough, knobby sort of texture pressed into it. It was a Greek New Testament with “critical apparatus,” he explained, opening it and showing me the Greek script on the smooth, ultra-thin, almost translucent pages of the little book from the 1930s or 40s.
“Critical what?” I asked, almost to myself. I’d never studied Greek, though previously, on rare occasions, I’d looked up words from the Bible in a Strong’s Concordance. I’d noted with interest the Greek or Hebrew roots given there, but had gone no further.
The pastor explained that the critical apparatus is a tool that helps the student to examine the differences between various source manuscripts in the Greek language. Since none of the manu-scripts—i.e. documents copied by hand, “manu”ally—are old enough to be considered originals, and since the gospels and letters comprising the New Testament were transcribed repeatedly during the course of early Christianity, there appear no small number of discrepancies between one manuscript and another among the few older surviving scripts known to us today. The critical apparatus, which appeared in footnotes at the bottom of each page of Greek text, rendered these discrepancies found in the New Testament passages systematically, giving the alternate form of the text being referred to (omissions, additions, or differences in wording) and used a code to indicate the manuscript or manuscripts in which the discrepancies were found. In the introduction was a brief description of the different manuscripts referred to in the codes.
“Discrepancies? Different manuscripts?” I thought to myself. This was news to me.
Having grown up in an independent, fringe Pentecostal church in a rural community in the backwaters of Montana, i’d heard it touted over and over—and over and over and over again—that the Bible was “God’s inerrant word,” perfect in its entirety and that “not one jot nor one tittle” of God’s holy word would pass away; that, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but God’s word shall endure forever.” (Incidentally, our church also just happened to be, at least as I understood it as an adolescent, the very best little church on God’s holy earth, and other churches and denominations were either dead formalists on the one hand or practically heretics on the other.) Later, when I was in my early twenties, I visited and participated in a number of churches of varying denominations and found them to be not all that different from the one I grew up with. And still, there was never the slightest mention of “discrepancies” or of “different” manuscripts. The Bible, as was repeated and reinforced and avowed to on every opportune occasion, was God’s holy word handed down to us through the prophets and apostles and miraculously preserved for us in these latter days... inerrant and unchangeable in its entirety. Anyone “adding to or taking away from these words” was most assuredly accursed!
“Hmmm...” I thought to myself as I stood there with the pastor in the Baptist Church on 24th Street. Surely there was something just a little bit fishy going on here.
The gentle pastor continued...
Some of the differences noted below each page were minor and relatively insignificant, he explained. Other differences had broader implications. He thumbed through the thin pages until he came to the end of the Gospel According to Saint Mark. (The title and text of the gospel was in Greek, of course, which I was still unfamiliar with, though the footnotes were partly in English.) Here, one of the most major differences was to be found. Apparently, the last eleven verses of the last chapter (Mark 16:9-20) were a later addition, not found in some of the earliest texts. Many additions such as this appear to be later interpolations or explanations made by scribes or clergy. (Eventually, I was to discover that other passages with important implications, passages which appear to have been altered or to include later additions, happen to be key verses referring to the trinity or to the exclusive mediation of Jesus between God and man.)
“But shhhhh... don’t tell any of the members,” he interjected in a hushed, emphatic, almost comical tone. “They’d have some trouble with the idea...”
Well, in fact, I realized later that the footnotes in some popular English versions of the Bible record some these same discrepancies (for example, the Revised Standard Version, which omits Mark 16:9-20 except as a footnoted addition). Still, what took me aback was the fact that I’d never heard anyone point this out, much less from the pulpit. Where was the “miraculous preservation” of the “perfect, inerrant Word?”
After explaining these things to me, the pastor handed me the New Testament and made it known that he meant the two books as a gift for my personal use and study. In awe and gratitude, I accepted the gift, holding them in my hands like a newborn baby. They soon took their place among my most prized possessions.
I studied the grammar book every day and tried to read as much as I could in the Greek testament. Later, having left the Bay Area and my Central American friends behind, I continued to study Greek enthusiastically for many months that followed, increasing my vocabulary and comprehension. When I found myself hiking for weeks through the mountains of Chihuahua in northern Mexico, carrying close to nothing and not even an English or Spanish New Testament, still the Greek New Testament was my mainstay, along with the grammar book that accompanied it.
••••••••••
Eventually, the day came that I discovered that a version of the New Testament in Aramaic—the common language spoken by Jews of Jesus’ day, and a sister language to Hebrew—remained extant and was still in use by the Syriac Church (in modern day Syria) and that, moreover, the Aramaic words and passages conveyed nuances of meaning lost in translation to Greek and, later, Latin. After that realization, having my interest piqued in Aramaic, I slowly lost the enthusiasm and momentum I’d had in studying Greek.
However, still later realizations caused me more and more to question and become suspicious of the things that were written in the Bible—whether in the New Testament or Old. One of those realizations that dawned upon me with increasing awareness was that the writings that became part of the Bible, particularly of the Christian New Testament, were only finally decided upon after review by an ecclesiastical council 300 years after the time of Jesus. Many other writings were reviewed and either marginalized or rejected entirely. Rejected writings later became the motive for book burnings and the persecution of heretics. Finally, it became clear that the only reason to believe the Bible was “the Word of God” was that that council had “authorized” the writings chosen to form part of it—that is, to accept on faith that the determinations of one rather dubiously motivated council were, in fact, destined, manipulated and approved by “God himself.” But taking a serious look at the motivations and auspices of that council as an extension of a newly converted (and at best, nominally) Christian empire, one shudders to think that nearly all of Christianity—even to this day—has blindly accepted the determinations they asserted.
Finally, at the same time, I was also more and more turned off by the many contradictions I began to see in the Bible itself. One of these contradictions in particular eventually made reading the Bible unpleasant and intolerable to me. It was the contradiction between a supposed God of love and mercy, of grace and kindness, and the “Judge of Mankind”—the same “Lord” who near the beginning of the Bible in Genesis was said to have obliterated the entire cities of Sodom and Gomorrah from the face of the earth. The one who is called a “jealous God” and “destroyer of enemies.” The one who approved and encouraged wars, genocides, and racial prejudice. And, ultimately, the one who is said to have created the “lake of fire” for the devil and the fallen angels but who didn’t mind throwing the vast majority of humankind in along with them by default. The God whose justice system seemed no kinder or more tolerant than that of the ancient Romans who crucified enemies of the state on crosses, or than that of the Assyrians who flayed their captives alive. The God who, in many respects, looked too much like those ancient dictators and their psychotic gods, greedy for exclusivity, devotion and fidelity.
How ironic to find such noble ideas as non-judgement and the preciousness of the individual soul—like that of a single small child, or even the birds of the air, or a lily of the field—beautifully attested to by Jesus... yet in practically the next breath to find curses and damnation promised to those who do not believe or who otherwise fail to live up to the stringent requirements espoused in many passages of the New Testament. To find such beauty as displayed in I Corinthians 13 extolling the virtues of (universal) love couched in a system of beliefs that requires God to be first a condemner of every descendent of Adam, only then to “mercifully” proffer rescue to those who believe on the name of one Joshua son of Joseph (Yeshua Ben Yosef, or Jesus, if you prefer).
All of this simply became too much... because in my heart of hearts, I knew of a God who was merciful, kind, and loving beyond any imagination or description. I knew it by personal intimate experience, and I didn’t need to continue believing that I, along with all of humanity, was beholden to the liability of “sin” and a “sinful nature” to feel that kindness. It wasn’t the forgiving of a debt (a debt carefully kept on record) that showed God to be kind. Rather, it was the intimate assurance that as a child of the infinite, I was intrinsically and inestimably precious, cared for and understood. Within such love and understanding as this, faults and blunderings were generously overlooked because I was His. God didn’t hold grudges, and needed no sacrifice of an animal, of a human, or of a divinity to appease Him or to satisfy some arbitrary system of justice invented by emperors, priests, and theologians. The true “sacrifices of God” are a pure heart and a humble spirit.
It was a phrase from the same Psalm alluded to in the last sentence (Psalm 51) which early on became a guiding star in my search for and opening to truth. In this Psalm the repentant king, David, says, “You desire truth in the inmost place.” Through the light of inner probing, the outer traditions and beliefs I’d held began to fall away one by one—like the shedding of too much hair on a dog in the summer heat—until my outlook had been entirely transformed. Even the verses giving context to the psalm—just as much of the rest of the Bible—no longer seemed relevant, and were eventually discarded discreetly like the unsavory peel of a sweet, nourishing fruit. I began to prefer my memory of certain Bible passages I felt to be more “pure” and to read books that talked about God or spirituality, rather than to read the Bible itself. In those other sources, and in private revelations, I found consolation and a continuation of the faith I’d had since childhood—though that faith was no longer tied to the unchallengeable beliefs and assumptions I’d been steeped in through the doctrine of the church.
Where did all of this leave me? It left me with an even greater appreciation for the values of love, kindness, forgiveness, tolerance, brotherhood, trust, faith and oneness with the Eternal—values I’d been exposed to through certain passages of scripture and taken to heart as a child. And there was a cherished memory, appreciation and deep impression of certain key passages of scripture that remained, for me, jewels of an ancient tradition.
On the other hand, I was left with an ambivalent view of Christianity itself, rather preferring to avoid getting into details with persons who retain fundamentalist beliefs.
••••••••••
Like romantic paintings of a former existence, I still hold close to my heart the fond memory of two cheerful and humble Nicaraguans who took their place among other unsuspecting protagonists in the saga of a quiet, underground revolution that unfolded inside me in the years following the privilege I had of their acquaintance. I cannot deny the spiritual and moral value of the influence which scripture, as impressed upon the heart of a believer by the spirit, has had upon many like them—myself not excluded. I pray for redemption of the world through understanding. That we may go beyond the prejudices and tunnel vision of religious dogma to the heart of truth that unites all humankind with our creator, with each other, and with all that is.
