Playing with Dragons: Living with Suffering and God

Playing with Dragons

Living with Suffering and God

Andy Angel

With a foreword by

N. T. Wright

Playing with dragons

Living with Suffering and God

Copyright © 2014 Andrew R. Angel. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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ISBN 13: 978-1-62032-647-3

EISBN 13: 978-1-63087-154-3

Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Angel, Andrew R.

Playing with dragons : living with suffering and God / Andrew R. Angel, with a foreword by N. T. Wright

xviii + 120 p. ; 23 cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN 13: 978-1-62032-647-3

1. Dragons in the Bible. 2. Suffering in the Bible. 3. Suffering—Biblical teaching.

4. Chaos (Jewish theology). I. Wright, N. T. (Nicholas Thomas). II. Title.

BS1199.S8 A532 2014

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

To Gerry and Evelyn

You have modelled living through suffering with God with honesty and faith, a gift for which I am eternally grateful,

and

To Fabi, Sebastian, and Jason

Who walk with me through everything in love and laughter

and

To Luis and Teofila Villalobos and the congregation of Pamplona Baja

Thank you for showing this naive gringo that it is possible to stop being theologically embarrassed about poverty and suffering, and for teaching him how to look for and find the love and faithfulness of God in it instead —¡gracias hermanos!

Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Preface

Abbreviations of Ancient Texts

Chapter 1: By Way of Background

Chapter 2: From Chaos to Creation and Back Again

Chapter 3: Out of the Depths

Chapter 4: Wrestling with an Absent Almighty

Chapter 5: Talking Back to Tradition

Chapter 6: Playing with Dragons

Appendix

Bibliography

Foreword

The monsters are back. There was a time when sophisticated Western audiences, whether reading books or watching movies, did not expect to meet the mythical beasts they had perhaps enjoyed when they were younger. But now, with The Lord of the Rings and many other examples leading the way, we are all confronting once more the fabulous creatures of our earlier fantasies. On a personal note, now that I have grandchildren to read stories to, I cannot escape dragons. And I hope the new generation will be wiser than my own, and recognize these and similar monsters as vivid and irreplaceable ways of saying things about our world—our real world—and enabling us to come to terms with it.

The Bible is a highly sophisticated book, but its kind of sophistication never involved hiding from the myths and symbols of ancient religion. Instead, the biblical writers, in a wide variety of ways, picked up these images and, like a wise counselor exploring a client’s dreams, turned them in fresh directions. Sea-monsters, was it? Israel’s God had already defeated them. Leviathan, the ancient dragon? God’s toy, a creature for the Almighty to play with. Marduk, the powerful divinity of Babylon? Sent packing into an ignominious captivity. And so on.

The New Testament’s picture of Jesus, too, evokes these ancient monsters. The Gospel writers seem to walk on the surface of ancient mythology as Jesus walked on the surface of the water, daring Peter—and all of us—to follow him, to conquer our fears, to discover his victory over the dark sea and the creatures, real and imaginary, that it may contain.

In this splendid little book, Andrew Angel offers a guided tour of some of the most important monsters, both in the ancient non-Israelite world, where they played such an important role, and in the biblical writings themselves. In doing so he not only offers us a set of fascinating studies in key texts like the Psalms and the book of Job, revealing depths of lively and energetic meaning where we might otherwise see only florid language. He also offers, discreetly but clearly, ways of addressing the monsters that still haunt us as individuals and as a society. The multi-layered world of ancient imagery is more relevant to our own than we might have supposed. What at first sight might appear the least promising type of biblical material turns out, in this book, to contain some of the richest promises of all. The God of whom the Bible speaks, the Jesus we find in the Gospels, has won the victory over all the monsters. They are important, but they frighten us no longer. This book is thus, at the same time, an in-depth Bible study and an in-depth counseling session. A rare treat.

N. T. Wright, DD

Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, University of St. Andrews

Formerly Bishop of Durham

Preface

Nobody believes in dragons. Or do they? I used to teach teenage boys religion in schools. One summer day when the examination period was over and the school was generally a bit more relaxed, I decided to explore the nature of mythology with my students. So I asked them the question: do you believe in dragons? The responses were amusing.

The students aged around ten or eleven years old found it quite hard to answer at first. Many of them used to believe in dragons when they were younger, as dragons were an exciting part of their fantasy world. Dragons were fun and they did not want to let go of them. Their education, however, was requiring them to distinguish sharply between reality and fantasy and they knew that dragons did not exist. Intellectually they did not believe in dragons but emotionally they really wanted to cling on to them.

The students aged around thirteen and fourteen were bemused at the ridiculous question. It was perfectly obvious to anyone of any intelligence in the modern world that dragons did not exist. Mythology was invented by people who did not have a proper modern education as a way of trying to explain the universe, but that did not make it true.

The students in their late teens were more cautious. In what sense did I mean believe? What kind of truth was I after? They recognized the desire from their childhood years to conquer dragons and be a hero. They were nostalgic for that stage of life in which they could move so easily from the world of reality to fantasy and back, knowing the difference but not caring so much about the difference. Puff the Magic Dragon came up and one of them wondered whether drugs might help them back into that world. I made a hasty (and probably fairly weak) attempt at moral education and they bore patiently with me. They did not believe in dragons but thought that the world would be a better place if we all still did.

I had to visit the administrative office at break time. Entertained by the fascinating and lengthy discussions I had just had, I asked some of the secretarial staff the same question. They looked at me as if I were daft. Slowly their faces changed and they began to look puzzled. Then they began to smile. They looked at each other and then they all looked in the direction of the office of a particular colleague. Yes, we believe in dragons, they replied.

Nobody I spoke to that day really believed in dragons. Nobody really thought that there were enormous, seven-headed, fire-breathing flying lizards that found particular pleasure in capturing helpless princesses and threatening to eat them. However, most of the people I spoke to did think the language of dragons helped them express something about themselves or the world around them. The language of dragons expressed fears and gave opportunity for excitement. The fantasy language of battling dragons gave expression to ambitions, desires, and emotions. The picture of the dragon as a fire-breathing enemy was the perfect ironic characterization

of someone people found difficult. The fact that dragon language belongs to the world of fantasy gave expression to broken hope and the yearning for innocence (and perhaps power). Dragons might not exist but they were meaningful.

I did not believe in dragons either and still do not. However, the way people have used this aspect of ancient mythology to express their spirituality intrigues me. For many people today, speaking of dragons can feel a little bit silly even if wonderful conversations sometimes result. I think that some ancients had a far richer language for exploring their spiritual lives partly because they were willing to use and explore this language.

I wish to explore their language in the following pages. Specifically, I am going to look at the mythology of dragons and their demonic counterparts in Jewish and Christian literature from around 1000 BC to AD 300. There are many Jewish and early Christian texts that refer to dragons and the battle God or his angels fight against them. The myth is easily ignored or sidelined on account of its strangeness—and partly on account of the way in which people who are interested in this mythology languish in its lurid images (which can be rather off-putting for the rest of us). However this language is present from the earliest biblical texts to the writing of the New Testament and it can be found in rabbinic writings. Not only is this language present but I suspect we may have something to learn from it.

One of the interesting things about the language of dragons in this Jewish and Christian literature is that it most often occurs in writings where the author is suffering. Somehow this language has helped different people over many years to find a way of expressing their thoughts and feelings about living with suffering and God. It is this that I want to explore in the following pages.

Quite often questions about suffering and God take the form of trying to justify God. We ask how a loving and all-powerful God could possibly allow such a tragedy to happen. We then try to work through the various possibilities. Maybe God is not capable of restraining all suffering. Maybe God does not love as we love. Maybe God has a higher purpose that we cannot see. Maybe God does not exist and this suffering proves it. Different people find different answers and the theological questions persist—not least because there are no easy answers to them.

This is not the way in which I wish to explore the subject. The texts we are going to study (more or less) accept the character of God: that God is good, faithful, trustworthy, just, merciful, and committed to the people who follow him. They also accept the pain and anxiety of suffering. There is no shying away from the realities. Nevertheless, they try to find a way through the experience. The texts give vent to various emotions. They explore what God might or might not be doing. They find creative ways of praying and hoping. Rather than trying to find out why what is happening to them is happening (which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do), they try to find ways of living through what is happening to them and living through it with God. They want to be authentic about reality and authentic about their faith in God. My hope is that as we explore their grappling and living with suffering and God we might find resources for doing the same.

I am aware that anyone writing on suffering runs the risk of being glib. I do not wish to fall into this trap and apologize to anyone who comes away from reading this book thinking I have done so. I have suffered in various ways in life, as has everybody. We all suffer in different ways and to different degrees. I recognize there are many people who have suffered more than I have. However, my own experience of suffering has made me ask the question of how we suffer as well as possible. My religious faith makes me ask that question in the context of God. I hope that by exploring what others have to say about suffering, we can learn more about how to suffer better—if that makes any sense—and I hope my experience and perspective does not detract from your working through the ancient material with your own experiences of pain and suffering and your own questions in mind.

Before proceeding any further I ought to offer a few quick words about how to read this book. I have made an assumption that readers will be familiar with the biblical writings found in the Christian Old and New Testaments. You do not necessarily need to be familiar with them to read the book and engage with it as you can read the texts I discuss as they appear. However, I do discuss a number of texts in depth and I suggest that if you do not know those texts well, you look them up in a Bible and read them through a couple of times as you read that section of this book. Also, keep the biblical text at hand as you read Playing with Dragons so you can check what I have written against the text. You will probably get more out of this book that way and you will certainly engage more deeply with the things I discuss.

On another note, you do not need to read the footnotes. Feedback on my last book included discussions with people who felt they were getting bogged down in the footnotes. Once told this was not necessary, they found it a much more engaging read. Others have suggested to me that they really appreciate being able to look things up for themselves and so like the fact the notes are there. This book has been designed to be read without the footnotes. You ought to be able to read the whole text and understand it without reading a single footnote. However, there is not an author on earth who does not make assumptions. Therefore, I have tried to give people access to other ways of reading the material I discuss or access to understanding why I take a different view by including comments on my readings and those of others in footnotes. If you are the sort of reader who likes engaging in the wider discussion and having better access to it, I hope my footnotes serve your purposes well.

My third note concerns other ancient writings. My guess is that not all readers will be familiar with all the texts I refer to in this book. Therefore I have included a very brief introduction to these writings in the Appendix. You will also find details of English translations of these texts here, should you want to read them for yourselves. I discuss and refer to these texts as they help us see that what may sometimes appear odd or marginal in the Bible was part of Jewish culture more widely. Examining the traditions about dragons in wider Jewish and Christian writings can help us to understand what these traditions are doing in the Bible. I hope that those readers who are not really interested in these texts will bear with me where I talk about them. Wherever possible, I put these references in footnotes, but patiently learning about them will help readers to understand the Bible better.

My final note is rather more important. This book does not simply try to reconstruct or discover the meanings of ancient texts. It tries to discover and engage with the spirituality of those texts. I make the assumption that in using the language of dragons to describe suffering, the ancient authors are playing with metaphor and myth in ways that try to give expression to the human experience of faith in God in the face of suffering. I hope I have traced some of the spirituality of these authors in the situations of suffering they faced. I think I have caught glimpses of the ways in which they worked creatively with this language to say what they