Foto's from my life - Amsterdam summer 2008

As I've realized that I have been long overdue in posting pictures of my life in Amsterdam, i finally took some photos. The following are a few of the photos:

a football (soccer) game while the Netherlands was still winning :)

my street - the swans in the middle of a busy canal in the Red Light District still surprise me, even though i've seen that this is normal here.


bikes along the Amstel river - my bike is the same as the green one - except in classic black.


. A couple of friends and I at Rembrandt's 402nd birthday party/breakfast :)

The rest can be accessed via Facebook :)

sex and violence in the Bible

after teaching a class on the Old Testament narrative books, one of the things that sticks out (again) is how much sex and violence is in the Bible.

I've touched briefly on the question of exactly what happened when Ruth came to Boaz on the threshing floor and lay at his feet in a previous post, back during the time when I wrote a paper on how the book of Ruth shows how Torah is lived out. The Bible is not clear about what happened there nor does one have to assume that Ruth did anything inappropriate, although the fact that Ruth left early before anyone could see her should make the reader aware that her presence on the threshing floor would have been suspicious and questionable. But although acknowledging that some people think that Ruth did a lot more than politely discuss marriage with Boaz on the threshing floor might be quite a topic of discussion in a Seminary class, it's hardly the most difficult topic to look at when discussing the Old testament.

There are so many passages in the Old Testament narrative books that include violence and things difficult to understand. One of problematic part (to many) is Israel's total annihilation of so many other peoples. Some people get around the problem by saying that Israel didn't actually destroy the people in Canaan (or along the way) but just absorbed them into Israel - in this way, it seems a lot more gracious and loving. Judges 1-2 seems to indicate that Israel actually didn't totally destroy the people living in the land, like the book of Joshua seems to indicate. Yet, if you look a bit closer, you'll read that the other people being still in the land (whose survival and presence is an appropriate sign of grace and mercy) is actually a problem - a sign of Israel's disobedience and a source of much problems in the future. So, even if practically Israel didn't destroy the people there, the fact remains that there's not really a way to read the text where you come up with anything other than that the ideal that God had for the Israelites was to destroy completely all those living in the land. And that makes most people uncomfortable.

There are explanations for this destruction. Some would say that the people were destroyed in order to help Israel - so that they would not be tempted to worship false gods. Or would not be tempted to have revenge against Israel. Others might say that anything other than a total destruction would have shown God to be weak in a culture where power and strength spoke the loudest and our culture has changed so we don't understand the cultural norms today. Yet, these explanations seem to argue that God needed to accomodate Himself to the culture of the day and they don't seem to leave much room for a gracious and compassionate God, which the OT does indicate that God is (Ex 34.5-6). So there is a tension, and there is something about the command towards annihilation that should make most of us uncomfortable. Even if we can give somewhat reasonable explanations for why this might have been, they don't completely deny the tension and uncomfortable questions that the text ought to raise. There is no perfect explanation nor do I believe there can be, although an honest look at the text and discovering the tension in it is good to do. The tension reminds us that God doesn't quite fit the picture we have of Him, He does not always work in ways that we understand, and we do not always have adequate explanations for why things are or were. And thus, some of these obscure and confusing events speak to us today, in the midst of things we do not understand and in the midst of violence and despair and messiness that even if God does not condone, He does not do (as much as) what we often would like to work in and against what is not the way it should be.

cleaning up - posting new "older" posts

there have been some posts that have been sitting in my draft file for awhile: things i've thought about but just didn't quite edit it to a state that was publishable. some of those thoughts are still worth publishing, so as i clean up those posts, there'll probably be a few more extra entries here - and you'll be reading some new "older" posts (fortunately, as blogger can post-date publishing, there should be some delay between the postings).

starting work

i've just begun working part-time at the Vrije Universiteit. i'm taking over a grant position that should last for a little more than a year. i'm hoping that if things go well (they seem to be now) that there will be the possibility of finding further funding for me to continue - a good possibility since my supervisor is quite good at finding grant money. what i do officially is work on a database that is looking closely at the Old Testament. my task is to work on the book of Ezekiel, identifying the grammatical function of different parts of the sentence, analyzing clauses and creating structural outlines. if you've been to Calvin Seminary and/or taken Hebrew classes, then what i've just said should sound at least vaguely familiar. and if you own the Bible software, Libronix (formerly Logos), then you might have noticed that there's a little footnote sometimes indicating that the morphology information comes from Vrije Universiteit's Werkgroep Informatica, and that's who i've just joined. and if you didn't study Hebrew or go to Seminary, my description of what i do makes limited sense. so i can describe it as my looking at the Hebrew grammar and how the words are put together to understand better how the words go into sentences and paragraphs. it's not that i'm translating the Bible, what i'm doing is understanding the grammar better (which is needed since the grammar in the whole Bible is not all from the same time period nor all for the same kind of literature - and we still don't know much about the grammar in the (latter) prophetic books) - and that should help people understand the text better, so that pastors and translators can (eventually) access the work that i'm doing and make the obscure-ness of the book of Ezekiel be a bit more understandable. hopefully i'll share insights and questions from the book of Ezekiel as i go along.

but what's it been like? odd. and that's not because i could describe the practical aspect of my work as sitting in front of a computer screen most of the time, looking at letters that make absolutely no sense (some strange transliteration of hebrew), pressing yes a lot and punching in a couple of letters and numbers and making pretty diagrams. i've managed to confuse the computer so often that "fatal error" messages are normal. and thus, i've learned to back up my work in several different ways (and to do so frequently). i think the computer has something against me - this was seen already on the first day, as it refused to accept my change of password - after quite a bit of work, i can now log in but am still using the random password that i received the first day. on the bright side, at least my computer keyboard is clean - my supervisor cleaned it for me the first day :) (the previous user used to smoke a lot).

as far as working at the University, that in itself has had its own glitches. i was asked if i was interested in the grant position already in February. ideally i would have started in March - but i was going to America for 3.5 months so we'd start when i got back. yet, the position, for which i was the only candidate put forward, was not even confirmed until sometime in May! and then when i came in June, it turns out that all of the communication for the transferral of the grant to me was not yet finished. and i had to fill out some paperwork. so i couldn't start until 1 July. and i still got a phone call on my first day of work saying that i didn't actually start work that day! (although i'd been there for a couple of hours already). i ignored the phone call since my supervisor leaves for vacation soon and i would prefer a few weeks having him around while i started instead of being left on my own for 4 weeks almost immediately! there's a bit of flexibility in my hours and how i get paid, so it will work out. at least i have now officially been appointed, as of thursday. maybe i should finally check to see about any kind of dress code - i've been wearing jeans this whole past week :)

and the last odd part is that most of the communication i have in the job is in Dutch. it works pretty well, as i catch most of what's going on most of the time. and my supervisor joked that the percent i do miss can't be all that important, anyways. but i did miss a lot of what was happening in the meeting last Friday - although i understood enough of the dutch to realize that the dutch wasn't so much a problem as that i had no idea what they were referring to - they had these lovely matrixes and codes and i was completely lost. i assume it will get better.

and i assume the adventure of the job will also keep getting better :) after two weeks, it's starting to feel a bit better - at least i'm getting better at fixing my own computer errors..

an evening of classical music?

on thursday evenings in the summer, the Vondelpark Openluchttheater has various classical artists. Last night i went with a couple of friends - and we heard a harpist followed by a string quarter. but it was hardly what i would call your typical classical music. after all, the harpist played jazz and the string quartet played a number of pop songs, including the Police's "Roxanne" and the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations." the harpist explained to us the history of a harp (although also acknowledged that we weren't there just to have a chat with her) and showed us the pedals. and then played a song a second time, so we could watch her play the pedals (impressive - although she had to do it in flats instead of her heeled boots). and the string quartet, with its very non-traditional string quartet music and its informal introductions was very down to earth. they even managed to convince the announcer to join them for one last song after he took the microphone over (they had already played two "last" songs already). but the announcer without much convincing, had no problem joining them and sang along to the song, Amsterdam (by Jacques Brel, I believe).

the whole experience felt typical for my life here (although i'm not sure if it's typical Dutch or typical Amsterdam). or just typical of my life :)

the "disaster" from which i currently need rescuing

common sense is not my strong point. i thank my family (both their love and periodic mocking of me) for most of the common sense that i do now possess. so when i saw that my bike lock key was breaking (torn), common sense said i should throw it out immediately (since it had been bending for awhile) and find my spare key. i figured it would be fine for just one more day...

and so on friday beside the grocery store, as i was attempting to unlock my bike, my key broke in the lock. so i walked home. and then walked back again with a screwdriver, paperclips, superglue, the replacement key, and WD-40 (it exists here) with the hope that i could get the piece of lock out. no success. i moved it away from the grocery store (it was locked only to itself thankfully and not to the bike rack) to a more residential area with the assumption that it'd blend in more and no one would be tempted to steal it.

and thus began the search for something to cut the chain of my lock. no success thus far, although i did find a friend to help out. and he managed to pick it up and bring it back to the basement here, for which i am thankful although i'm not entirely sure how i feel about how easy it appears to be for him to have carried off my bike without any sort of key for it or any paperwork for it...(and no one asked anything about it!)

update: as of tuesday night, the lock was cut off and i could once again have my bike back, for which i am thankful.

further thoughts on love

The following fits with what i have said and quoted about love and affection before. The excerpt is taken from the July 4, 2008 (written by Rev. Peter Hoytema) reading of the Back to God Ministries International's Today booklet:

"Loving the lovable is easy. But how can we show real love to someone who mistreats us or is difficult to get along with?

Perhaps Samuel Johnson's insight on the difference between kindness and fondness can help. He once said, "kindness is within our power; fondness is not." That was his way of saying that we all have it in us to be kind to people, even if we are not fond of them. We don't have to wait until we like people before we can be kind to them.

When we discover the truth in that bit of wisdom, we are often surprised by another discovery: kindness can lead to fondness. ...As C. S. Lewis once pointed out, we shouldn't waste time worrying about whether we love our neighbors or not. We should simply act as if we did."

The original (longer version) can be seen at http://www.btgh.net/today.php. You need to click on 4 July on the calendar at the right side of the page.