Jim's Primeval Journey: Roots

My name is Jim Paulson. I am half Swedish and half Norwegian, which is boring. I grew up in Minnesota which is a very pretty state, but other than Iowa is probably the most boring state, being half Swedish and half Norwegian. I grew up in the Evangelical Covenant Church which is a pietistic off-shoot of the Swedish Lutheran church. So we were boring but saved. The two most famous Scandinavian foods are lefse (tortillas but more boring) and lutefisk (fish cooked in lye – google it if you don’t believe me). OK, being potentially lethal, lutefisk may not be boring but lye is the dumbest cooking ingredient ever, and only extremely old Scandinavians eat it. Then they die. The famous symbol of Scandinavia is the “dala horse” which looks like the kind of horses I drew in kindergarten (google it if you don’t believe me). Talk about dumb. And boring.

When I was a young boy, what mattered was being an American. Being the world’s big, strong good guys felt pretty good to a white American boy in the 60’s. (Confusion would come later in Jr High when the hippies were protesting the Vietnam War). But I was figuring out that America was a nation of the grandchildren of foreigners. My grandma and her disconcerting Norwegian accent was a constant reminder that she wasn’t born in my country. Grandma seemed like a foreigner and it sort of creeped me out. So while my citizenship as an American was the coolest thing, my nationality as Norwegian and Swedish was…see above.

This is the last installment of my reflections on how the Primeval Narrative of Genesis 1-11 bumps into, speaks into, and interprets my own primeval (earliest days) baggage. I realize that there are several possible implications (complications?) spinning off of the Tower of Babel story (Genesis 11). Was the confusion of languages simply punishment? Was it God “forcing” his Genesis 9:1 blessing “be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth”? Was God threatened by the human accomplishment of the tower? Was the tower all about paganism? Was it all about human hubris?

I just want to focus on one implication: God made sure that “people groups” happened. When humankind tried to stay together in one big homogeneous group, God scattered them. He even jump-started cultural distinctions by creating lots of languages.

It must have been like the methods of forcing you into a little group when you are at a retreat. “Look at your nametag, Notice that it is a certain color. Find everyone with the same color nametag. That will be your group for the weekend!” And you end up in the dumb or boring group. Or the group full of jerks. (I’m trying to be edgy like David Foster Wallace or Douglas Coupland or Donald Miller. That’s why I said “jerks”).

The result of Babel for me Jim Paulson: I ended up stuck between the Norwegians and the Swedes. Like the two dorkiest kids in the school fighting for the crown of “only the second dorkiest kid.”

But I’m changing my attitude. Anne and I went to the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis last summer. And the Hjemkomst Center in Moorhead. And Scandinavian Heritage Park in Minot. My sister and niece visited Norway a year ago and have fallen in love with our Norwegian relatives. I have actual kinfolk in Norway! And #1 son Steve is enthralled with Scandinavian folklore, mythology, legends, Viking pillaging, etc. For one year now, I’ve been on a mission to overcome yet another chunk of primeval baggage: disrespecting my roots. I’m finally trying to embrace my heritage and my nationality. My people.

Jim's Primeval Journey: Feelings

I’m pretty much a feelings-focused guy. When I think about a topic, whether big or little, my feelings dominate. Let me say it another way: the topics I think about are those that I feel the strongest about. These days I’m stuck on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. I’m sick over it. But it goes for personal things too, like my job. I got behind during a particularly crazy March and April, and until I’m caught up, all my job-thoughts revolve like satellites around my job-feelings. It feels lousy to be behind.

But the best way for you to get a glimpse of how feelings-driven I am, is to look at these Primeval Journey reflections. I am processing my baggage, and my baggage is heavy with feelings: curiosity, romance, guilt, hate, the freak-out.

God has feelings. “And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” (Gen 6: 6-7). His feelings are mentioned 3 times: “was sorry…grieved him to his heart…I am sorry I have made them.”

This is God. This is weird for me. Other aspects of God’s character are easier to grasp—OK, to believe. I get it that he is all-knowing and everywhere and all-powerful and perfectly holy. I don’t get it that he feels.

I think I know why I don’t get it. Because having felt things so strongly all my life, I don’t think I’ve ever had an untainted feeling. On my most God-loving, God-following, God-worshipping days, my feelings are tainted with self-centeredness and pride. Even when I’m thinking right (as right as I can), my feelings get twisted. Twisted around me. I can be thinking quite biblically about God’s goodness, but he only “feels” good to me when I’m feeling good about me (feeling cozy, comfortable, content). If I’m feeling bad about me, it’s like: “God, I know you are good, but could you please work your goodness a little more in my favor?”

I think one of the surprises waiting for us in the New Heaven and New Earth will be the sensation of pure feelings; righteous feelings; truly God-centered feelings instead of our always-a-little-bit-self-centered feelings.

But when God feels, he feels purely. Our struggle to accept the wrath of the flood (Gen 6-8) should make it obvious that there is a gap between his purity and our self-centeredness. We feel God was a little bit bad to react with a universal flood. But the flood was not God being bad; it was God being good. For me this is simply an article of faith. But I admit that my feelings haven’t caught up to my faith. That’s my point.

I feel things; God feels things. My feelings don’t line up with his feelings. For years I’ve prayed, “Lord let me see things as you see them.” Now I want to add: “Lord, let me feel things as you feel them.”

Jim's Primeval Journey: Time

I enjoy mental rest stops: naps, sitting on the back steps at dusk, mellow jazz, the minutes between going to bed and falling asleep. I also enjoy mental adventures: day-dreaming, getting engrossed in a novel, planning a real adventure, when the minutes before falling asleep stretch on a while because my mind is working.

The category of mental adventure that I find the most pleasing is “the freak-out.” Some of my freak-outs are: finding something I forgot I owned, remembering an experience long forgotten and immediately re-living the feelings, having an important insight fall into place during one of those before-falling-asleep times. And suddenly I’m freaking out (def: brain explosion precipitated by extreme profundity and/or coolness and/or scariness).

Some of my favorite freak-outs are related to “time.” The following is a list of some of my time-related freak-outs. (1) We all get it at the same rate – a minute at a time, a year at a time. (2) The rich don’t get more time than the poor. (3) This minute right now is being spent by me here and now, while everyone else is spending this same minute doing their own thing in their own place. (4) Nobody gets to save up and hoard time – you use it or waste it as soon as it is doled out. (5) Nobody gets to scoot ahead of the rest of us for a preview of the future.

I usually have a time related freak-out when something big is coming up. I’m waiting, waiting, waiting…then BOOM – it’s happening RIGHT NOW – then…wow, it happened…back then. Anticipating, experiencing, and remembering. Courtesy of the inexorable passing of time.

Here is the Primeval Narrative on the topic of time: “Then the LORD said: ‘My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years’” (Gen 6:3). God says he will cap our lifespan at 120 years, which is pretty much the extreme upper limit of human life until you read Genesis 5 in which Methuselah wins the longevity award at 969 years. We ask “why would the author make up such crazy long ages?” but the ancients asked “why do we get gypped with a lousy 120 years?”

I’m with the ancients on this, especially when I remember my own primeval (“earliest years”) mindset on the human lifespan. When I was a kid, it felt like it would take 900 years to grow up. Time moved so slowly. Vacation was luxuriously long and the school year agonizingly long. It was an eternity between Christmases when I had only experienced about 8 of them. And I specifically remember calculating how old I would be in the year 2000. I’d be 42. I was sure it would take about 969 years to ever get that old.

Time flew. Wow, did it ever. And now in all likelihood I’m over half way to the grave, and I’m shouting with the ancients: “how about another couple centuries, Lord!”

I know eternity awaits. But the few years on this side of eternity are supposed to make a difference—both now and in eternity.

Time…eternity…I’m freaking out over here.

Jim's Primeval Journey: Murder

I hated Rhonda. She is the only person I’ve ever hated, but my hatred for her was simple, uncomplicated, and intense. Pure. For every day of grade seven, Rhonda was an intruder in my life, and despite occasional attempts to pray for her, the bubble always returned dead center to hatred.

Cain hated his brother Abel, and acted on it. God had regard for Abel’s offering, but did not have regard for Cain’s. We are told that Cain was very angry and “his face fell.” The narrator did not see fit to explain the problem with Cain’s offering, so I guess that’s not the point. Here’s the point: when Cain and Abel were compared, Cain came out the loser. A comparison, a loser, a fallen face, and a responsibility: do well, because sin “desires you.”

At the start of grade seven Rhonda had…bloomed; I had not. I was a good target. Every day while walking the halls, I would be loudly accosted by Rhonda. “Oh Jim, you’re such a man! I want you so much…” I was the perfect victim. Too shy to play along or to fight back, I was mortified and it showed. I assume that’s why it was so funny for everyone.

One day as “the Rhonda and Jim show” was parading toward geography class, I gave her my best hate stare, and she said “Jim, do you hate me?” I told her the truth. Another day in exasperation I blindly reached out and shoved her away with both hands. Both my hands caught her in the chest, and Rhonda shrieked! Twenty kids must have seen me do it. Simultaneous thoughts raced through my head: “So that’s what they feel like” and “come on floor, swallow me now.” Later in class, the guy sitting next to me said “Man, you turned green!”

How the Rhonda and Jim show never got old for her, I’ll never know. But the daily humiliation changed everything for me that year. A comparison, a loser, a fallen face. And…a responsibility? What—report that I’m being bullied by a girl? Not in 1970! I assume I should have done some combination of confrontation and forgiveness. But sin—hate—desired me, and it ruled.

I think person-to-person sins are just “variations on a theme by Cain.” All sins against neighbor, brother or sister bleed out of the archetype: killing. Hate is murder in the heart. I also performed kind of a killing on myself by internalizing my role: the class wuss.

Thankfully, the Rhonda and Jim show did not do a second season in grade eight. I guess she finally grew bored with me. My hatred slowly evaporated; I sort of forgave her. I like how I was shaped by my year of torment. I feel deeply for people and I try to give esteem.

In grade twelve, Rhonda and I found ourselves taking a class in which we often had to work together. We acted like grade seven never happened. That was dumb – I wish I would have told her how miserable she had made me. I wish I would have apologized for my expression of hatred. I wish I would have said “remember that time I gave you that two-handed shove?”

But I didn’t.

Jim's Primeval Journey: Hiding

I’m going to tell you about my early experience of trying to hide from God. Tricky—dumb—given realities like omnipresence and omniscience. Our first parents tried hiding after their sin, when they suddenly realized they were naked (Genesis 3). They had been naked without shame until that first sin. Sin brings shame and shame brings fear, and fear brings stupid things like trying to hide from God.

There was a day in grade 10 that the Lord really laid a heavy on me. A bunch of us were attending the biggest Christian show in America – the Bill Gothard seminar had come to town. Evening #2 of the week-long event was on the topic “gaining a clear conscience.” Bill talked about a bunch of ways that a conscience can become wracked with guilt, and then he shared what the Bible teaches about asking others for forgiveness.

Here is the Holy Spirit’s message of conviction that came to me that night: “You have sinned against your brother and your mom, and I want you to ask them for forgiveness.”

It was indeed a “heavy” for me. I was remembering typical kid stuff, but sinful nonetheless. When we were little, I used my big brother status to tease Bob mercilessly. Now suddenly the tormentor was tormented with guilt over it. And toward Mom, I just realized how often I had been an irritation by being lazy…irresponsible…that kind of stuff.

Pride and fear are inseparable. My pride made me afraid to say the words of humility that Bill Gothard taught us (“I was wrong when I did __________. Will you forgive me?”) Wow.

In the years since that battle with pride, fear, and guilt, I have analyzed it from every angle. I’m aware that I have a sensitive conscience. I’m a people-pleaser, so when I hurt someone, I’m tortured over it. I also think that the spiritual battle started with healthy, constructive conviction of the Holy Spirit, but when I resisted, it became morbid, pathological guilt from Satan. But above all, I was responding to this conviction/guilt mix by using the (literally) oldest trick in the world: like Adam and Eve, I was trying to hide from God. God was asking, and I was refusing.

I refused for 4 years.

The day came when I dealt with it. Two days, actually. One day I just started saying to Bob what I needed to say. Only a couple sentences were needed to bring up the issue, acknowledge my guilt, and ask for forgiveness. He said a gracious—stunned—“yeah I forgive you.” And a week or so later, before heading off for my job at Sears, I did the same with Mom. She said “Of course I forgive you.” (She said some more, too.)

After talking to Mom, I was free. I really felt free. It was a sweet bus ride to work. That evening at Sears, I learned that Elvis had died that day. So now every August 16, when the world remembers Elvis’ death, I remember the day my pride died, and I stopped hiding from God.

Jim's Primeval Journey: Girls

Good…good…good…good…good…good…very good…not good.

Because I trust God’s first seven assessments of his creation, I have no reason to doubt his eighth assessment. But this is not about me theologizing about what “It is not good for the man to be alone” means for humanity. This is about me reflecting upon how my own primeval (earliest days) baggage bumps into and finds meaning in light of God’s words and actions in his Primeval narrative (Genesis 1-11).

I want to blame my teenage yearnings for a girlfriend on the music of the 70’s. I have no idea if today’s music has a theme, but the 70’s had a constant flow of heart-wrenchingly romantic music for those of us put off by hard rock. My buddies and I were really into pop music. We had AM radio, and listened faithfully every week to American Top 40. We also had the Midnight Special every Friday night. So my particular subculture had a steady diet of love songs: Precious and Few, More than a Woman, How Deep is Your Love (OK, everything by the Bee Gees except Jive Talkin'), She’s Gone, You Make me Feel Brand New, Don’t Pull Your Love out on Me, Walk Away Renee, Daisy Jane, Sarah Smile, Alone Again Naturally, Ain’t no Mountain High Enough, All by Myself, After the Love has Gone, Midnight Blue, I Like Dreamin', Don’t go Breakin' my Heart, I’d Really Love to See You Tonight.

In high school I actually never had what you would call a long term relationship with a girl. Truth be told, I never had what you’d call an actually serious relationship with a girl. OK, I never had anything resembling a relationship with a girl. Well, while I’m at it I may as well confess that I never had a date. There. I said it.

What I did have were crushes. For most of jr and sr high school I think I averaged about one crush a week. Of course no girl ever got to enjoy the amusement of realizing they were the object of my brief (but intense) interest. I was too afraid to talk to a girl, and not quite sick enough to be a stalker. But I was one lonely boy. Thankfully, my buddies were afraid to talk to girls too, so we just got together and talked about girls. But we were all quite sure that getting together to talk about girls was different from (likely inferior to) actually having a girlfriend.

Going away to Briercrest Bible Institute, I gravitated to a gang of guys equally afraid of (but highly interested in) girls. We’d get together and talk about girls. And laugh our heads off at the thought that if we ever walked up to a girl to ask her out, we’d just throw up on her. Now 30 years later, as a member of the faculty at Briercrest, I can’t imagine that there are any Briercrest guys as dorky as we were.

To make a long story short, I asked Anne out. The main reason I didn’t throw up on her was that her friend told me that if I asked Anne to serve with me at the senior banquet (we were juniors) that I could be assured Anne would say yes.

And to bring things right up to today, when I try to describe what being married to Anne means to me, I’m always afraid I’ll stray into idolatrous talk. My anchor, my rock, my life, my light, my joy, my love. It’s scary how important she is to me. I try to be very constant in thanking the Lord for her, in part as an exercise in keeping God #1.

As I said, I won’t theologize beyond what it means to me personally that “it is not good that the man should be alone.” What it means to me is simply this: here is part of the Bible that is near and dear to me. I totally identify with it, and I feel like I’m living it. It reads like such an understatement, but wow, what a blessing that it is my real-life testimony: God has given me a “suitable companion.”

Jim's Primeval Journey: Curiosity

I am enchanted with Genesis 1-11. I get goosebumps. God’s word on how it all started. I think a lot about the stuff in those few chapters. It has such a cool nickname: The Primeval Narrative. “Belonging to the first or earliest ages.” More goosebumps.

Another thing I think a lot about is my baggage. I live with debris from my own “earliest ages.” I had wonderful Christian parents and a great brother and sister, all the essentials and a bunch of happy adventures. Nothing falling into the categories normally thought to require therapy or steps or healing. But I’ve still got stuff. And stuff is stuff. I live with it because it shaped me.

In a creepy, cool way, my pondering of the Primeval Narrative and my processing of childhood occasionally meet up. The revelations about our primeval history speak into the musings about my own “primeval history.” No surprise here: approaching the Bible, I bring all my baggage. As I try to interpret the Bible, it interprets me. Helpfully.

I was curious. I was filled with curiosity about bugs, woods, animals, clouds, stars, rocks. I assume you were too; it’s just the stuff of being a kid. Kid’s stuff – but real and wondrous. Here’s how it was for me. Being a boy in the 60’s, scientific discovery was the air we breathed. The space race was the biggest and most obvious. I was 10 when we made it to the moon. But there were other strong voices. My teachers in grades 4, 5 and 6 were three men who had not lost their sense of wonder. All three: Mr. Haakenson, Mr. Hitzeman, and Mr. Bylund were just big kids when it came to science. They had the bug, and it was contagious. I think all us boys aspired to be scientists because of those men.

I heard other voices too: National Geographic specials on PBS, Jacques Cousteau’s adventures, the specials about the Craighead family and their adventures in the American west, books from Scholastic Book Services, especially the Danny Dunn science adventure books, and “The Adventures of the Mad Scientist’s Club.” I had the science and nature bug so bad that I used my allowance money to collect at least a dozen Golden Nature Guides on rocks, fossils, zoology, pond life, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, trees…

And our family adventures fed my curiosity about nature. Fishing for sunfish and crappies with Dad and Bob fed the dreams for future adventures in nature. Archery became a major summer hobby for Bob and me, and fed a longing for adventure and exploration. But when I got into rocks, that was the quantum leap for me: hunting for agates in northern Minnesota, using paper route money to buy specimens at rock shops, reading books about rock collecting and geology, fossil hunting along the bluffs of the Mississippi River.

I won’t try to sort out all the pieces that led me to choose ministry over minerals (theology over geology – sorry). But the kid still lives. And this time of year, the bug takes hold – I get infected all over again.

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it…So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.” (Genesis 2:15, 19, 20). Adam was a gardener and a zoologist—with occasional goosebumps, I bet.

This aspect of my boyhood—a consuming, thrilling curiosity about the wonders of creation—really is a God thing. I know we rightly end up in Romans 1 and the theological assertion that God’s existence is evident in his creation. I know that, and I always end up there. But today, I’m doing what I did countless times as a boy: I’m lingering, enjoying the wonders, and rubbing down goosebumps.