Speaker 1: Welcome to the CommonsCast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 2: As we get going today, I wanna do a quick summary here. In week one, we began with an examination of our ideas of who and what God might be. We affirmed that to talk about God as love, this is ground zero for unpacking some of the ways that scripture has been misread and misrepresented. In week two, we shifted or we sifted through some of the terms that we refer to when we are talking about scripture. So words like inerrancy or inspired or God breathed.
And what we zeroed in on was this idea that scripture is ultimately telling a great story. Now what we need to do is we need to work hard in our handling of this library of text to ensure that we don't reduce it to a kind of handbook or a survival checklist or a science manual. Instead, our goal should always be to adopt this expansive posture to the ways that scripture's narrative and poetry and instruction, the ways that they're good for us. All the ways that it shapes us for the better. And then, of course, those of you who are here last week, you know that Jeremy kept it super light with a conversation about atonement, which of course is this huge idea in Christian thought.
One of the things that I always find valuable in sermons like the one we heard last week is this opportunity to consider where my theology comes from. Right? Because Jeremy explored different theories of how Christ's death and life and resurrection, they make us at one with God, how these theories emerge though from particular places and particular times in history. And what I love is how this glimpse of theological development, how it gives me language for where I am today, for where we are, how we wrestle with big questions, how we face significant challenges, and how we carry doubts that can't just be swept onto the proverbial rug of our minds. See, it might not be super important to you to know which theory of atonement is right, but I think it's important for you to consider what theories and metaphors have shaped your view of God and your view of yourself, your view of your neighbor.
Because sometimes the only way to disarm the Bible is to wake up to the ways that we've always assumed it speaks. And today, we have one big conversation left to work through, what exactly we're supposed to do with images of a violent God. And before we jump into that, let's pause and pray together. Join me now. God that draws near to us in Jesus, you fill each breath we take, spirit of the living God.
And in each breath, we release. You make us new moment by moment. And so we pray, would you come and bring your peace today to places of our fear and conflict, to places of our shame and our loneliness, to every place in us that wants things to be different? Would you come and in these moments that we share, let us sense the ways that you invite and you restore and you persist with love and care for all. We ask these things in the name of Christ, our hope.
Amen. Okay. Well, got some big ideas to cover today. But first, I wanna start with a story. And for this one, we need to go back a few years to when my wife and I, we were living in Ontario, and our kids were much smaller than they are now.
And one night, I was cleaning up after dinner. My wife was upstairs just getting kids ready for bed, I think, and I heard her call my name. And if you have spent any time with small children, you know that there's actually a part of the day when everything goes sideways. We called it hell hour at our house, and it's usually between four and 7PM when everybody is hungry and tired and in need of a bath all at the same time. And so when I heard my name with a tone that implied that backup was needed, This just seemed completely ordinary to me.
But then my wife said, I need help. Your son has a theological question. Now and this was a wrinkle that I had not encountered before, but since my wife handles all medical questions given her career in health care, and I am the resident religion scholar, I was contractually obligated to go upstairs and help, so I went upstairs, and I found my son holding his action bible. And if you aren't familiar, this is a bible for children. It's designed as a graphic novel, comic book style bible.
I actually grew up with a version of it. All of our kids have had one. And like all versions, there are some issues that it has. But one of the things that I've always appreciated about it is that it has the whole story. It has all the wrinkles of the biblical narrative.
It has all the unsightly bits, all the questionable stuff, all of the violence. And I had appreciated this until that moment when my son quite thoughtfully said, dad, I don't I don't get. Why would God tell the Israelite people, thou shall not kill? And here he's holding the story of the 10 commandments that we find in Exodus 20. He's got it there with his little finger.
And then he flips to the story that we find in first Samuel 15, and he continued. I don't get why God would say that and then told this Israelite king Saul to go and kill an entire tribe of people over here, like all of them, men, women, and children. And you know what? I secretly, I was so proud of his little mind in that moment and simultaneously terrified Because there isn't a seven year old answer for that deep theological query. All I could tell him was that he was asking the right question, that he was right to be confused.
And the truth is that you, that any careful reader is right to be. Because these kinds of images are a significant challenge to our understanding of the scriptures as a cohesive whole. They they challenge our understanding of them as a choir of harmonizing voices or as texts that are good for everyone. And if we're honest, they don't seem like that kind of text all the time. Like how we see in Psalm one thirty six.
This is a song in the in the Jewish, prayer book. And in it, the author says that God is good, that God's love endures forever. And then in the very next song, we hear how happy the person must be who gets to take the children of Israel's enemies and dash them on rocks. And then, of course, it's important to note that there are more examples of God commanding violence beyond the one that my son had stumbled across. We find one in Deuteronomy chapter 20 where we find these instructions that were given to the Israelite people for when they started to take possession of the land that God had promised to them.
We read that God tells them to give each city that they would encounter an offer of peace. It's a great way to start. It then instructs them to enslave the occupants if they didn't open the gates quickly enough, which isn't so great. K? And then it continues.
It tells us that God's people were instructed that when the inevitable battles would ensue in these kinds of conflicts, that they were to kill all the men and take the women, the children, and the livestock as their plunder. So what we're looking at is we're looking at divinely sanctioned murder and divinely ordained and endorsed slavery, which is pretty brutal. But that's not even the worst of it. Because the very next verses tell us that these awful guidelines that I've just read to you, they were given for the cities neighboring the promised land. And that in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, don't leave anything alive that breathes.
Completely destroy them. The Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, as the Lord God has commanded you. And it doesn't matter how you spin it, this is most certainly an abhorrent divine dictate to commit genocide. And we're gonna come back to this specific reference in a second, but first, I wanna explore some of the reactions we often have to these kinds of passages because there are some who have used such violent depictions of God as justification for their own terrorizing practices. More on that in a second.
Because I actually think that most readers are bothered by these images if and when we actually think about them. And there's a dissonance that informs our reactions. Some readers respond by just ignoring these stories. This actually could be some of us here in the room who might have known or heard about such images of God, but we just don't read or think about it. Like, why would you pick that up on a Wednesday and read it?
Out of sight, out of mind. Right? And for some of us, this kind of response is a big part of why you're hearing this violence talked about in church for the first time. Because the people who taught you about the Bible left out the genocidal part. They talked about Israel and promised land and kingdom building without talking about how that actually works in the world.
Now for some of us, these passages inspire a deep suspicion of scripture, a rejection of its theology, all of it, a dismissal of how it tries to refer to divine love. And this kind of response is mirrored in Christopher Hitchens' scathing lines. Quote, the bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride price, and for indiscriminate massacre. But we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals, end quote. And to be honest, I can see what Hitchens is getting at.
Then, of course, we have what I like to call the postproduction responses. This is where scripture is selectively edited or interpreted to just avoid dealing with the tricky parts. There's actually lots of examples of this, but the most famous one actually isn't all that recent. It comes from a guy named Marcion, who's a Christian theologian and writer from the second century. Marcion claimed that the God of the Christian scriptures was in fact a completely different God than the one we see in the Hebrew Bible.
He felt that the Hebrew God was malicious and completely incompatible with images of God that we see appearing in the gospels. Now what's interesting is that Marcion was ultimately labeled a heretic largely because of his contention that Jesus wasn't divine, that Jesus wasn't messiah. He wasn't labeled a heretic because he recognized the morally deplorable nature of these violent depictions, which is just to say that in acknowledging the dissonance we feel with scripture sometimes, we actually step into a kind of community, one in which it's okay to be unsure of what to do with these images, One in which we discover that we aren't alone if these depictions of God trouble us. If they raise significant issues for us about how to best read or if to even read at all these texts in a twenty first century life. But also, it's a community in which we realize that we don't have to devalue or dismiss the bible in order to disarm it.
Because thoughtful minds and hearts have always grappled with the question of violence from Marcion to my seven year old son. And this shows us that asking questions is an ancient practice of the church. It's not some exclusively modern progressive fascination. And with that said, we do still need though to consider how to interpret these kinds of violent depictions of the divine, and there's a few ways to do this. We can go to the archaeological record and try to verify the claims that I read to you earlier, that Israel destroyed all remnants of the existing cultures in the lands that they were conquering.
What's interesting is archaeologists have a tendency to banter and argue about what they find in their sandboxes. Right? But what is apparent to us in this data that they've come up with is that of the 16 cities that are said to have been raised and destroyed in the books of Numbers and Joshua and Judges in the Hebrew Bible, Of those 16, only two to four show signs of destruction dating to the period in which Israel's conquest may have actually happened. And when you combine this kind of concrete evidence with the fact that the Hebrew Bible itself speaks repeatedly to the ongoing presence of those same tribes and peoples for multiple generations. We, with as much certainty as is prudent when we're talking about the ancient world, we can conclude that these inflammatory statements and descriptions of genocide, they're likely exaggerated.
They might even be made up. Interestingly, archaeologists have discovered a tablet from one of Israel's ancient enemies, the nation of Moab. It was just to the east of ancient Israel. And in it, the Moabite king Mesha describes repeated conflict with the people of Israel, which is super interesting, and he brags about his violent exploits against them. So, for example, in one section, he records that Chemosh, which is the Moabite deity, said to me, go take Nebo, which is this city in ancient Palestine.
So the king goes, and in the night, I fought against it, And from the bake from the break of day until noon, and I took this city. And I killed in all 7,000 men, women, and maidens for I devoted them to Ashtar Chemosh. And I took from the city of Nabo the vessels of Jehovah, the Hebrew God, and I offered them before my own. And for the record, this kind of boasting was super common in the ancient world. Right?
As a form of propaganda, it helped intimidate the enemies that you were gonna go up against next. It helped consolidate your army support. It helped strengthen your claims to divinely sanctioned rule. And we have to keep this in mind when we consider portions of the Hebrew Bible, Like this section from the prophet Jeremiah who records concerning Moab. This is what the Lord Almighty, the Lord God of Israel says, woe to Nabo, the same city from that other document, for it will be ruined.
Moab will be broken. Her little ones will cry out. The destroyer will come against every town, and not a town will escape. The valley's going to be ruined and the plateau destroyed because God has spoken. On the roofs of Moab and in public squares, there will be nothing but mourning for I have broken Moab like a jar no one wants.
So we have the Moabites boasting about how their god aided their annihilation of the Israelites, and we have Israelites recording that their god was going to be a destroyer of Moabite families' homes and cities. And this is the kind of opportunity when it can be helpful for us to combine our understanding of archaeology and ancient societies with a more literary approach to the text, where we realize, first of all, that the Hebrew Bible's depiction of a violent God is not unique. But then, two, we recognize that as a particular form of literature and myth making, these kinds of stories were more likely a form of community identity building than factual historical record. See, the Hebrew Bible, as it emerged and came together, it helped this small insignificant tribe hold together. It gave them a central narrative against larger, more powerful civilizations and kingdoms, and it pitched them and their tiny god in righteous opposition to their enemies.
And what happens when we read text like this as part of an ancient tribal system? Well, this cast the question of if God put all those Canaanites and Perizzites to death in a different light. It raises the question of if God told God's people to do such horrible things. What we can say is that for their time and place, this is how they experienced God. This is how they conceptualize God.
This is how they heard God. And that can seem so far from us. And given that social and historical distance, perhaps we are willing and able to unentangle ourselves from these violent images. But then the challenge becomes, how do we still receive these texts as scripture, as God breathed, as good for us or anyone? And this is where a literary approach is so helpful.
Because what if the point isn't that the God of scripture did and commanded these violent things? What if the point is that the Israelites could imagine a God who would? That the Israelites needed, that we need a God who would to justify our violence. See, for the record, those questions hit a little closer to home. Scholars like Richard Twist and many others have shown how the earliest Christian missionaries and settlers in the American colonies, they actually used the Hebrew Bible narratives of exodus and conquest as justification for their violent treatment and genocidal actions against indigenous peoples.
We know that segments of the Christian church employed these same scriptures in the systematic attempt to eradicate indigenous culture and language on this very soil. More recently, we see the ways in which the Russian patriarch of the Orthodox Christian church has used violent imagery to tell and or to tell stories and fuel practices of modern war. In 2015, his office claimed that Russian action during the Syrian conflict of the time was, quote, a holy battle. And today, our country is perhaps the most active force in the world fighting it, end quote. These things were said while some Orthodox priests were well documented blessing missiles and armaments that would fly into places like Aleppo.
Last year, Russian forces began to operate in Ukraine, and this same patriarch preached passionately about the need for divine justice, but maybe not in the way that you'd think. He said that he implied that violence and atrocities committed by his nation's army were the form of, quote, the just judgment of God. And when we consider these along with the fact that every American president in recent memory, regardless of persuasion or color, has had a group of religious leaders, most of them Christian, who pray for wisdom and offer their support for the imperial use of violent force, It's not so hard to see how ancient scripture and its depiction of divine violence can be used to support theological claims. And more specifically, the claim that violent means are necessary for God's righteous ends. Now the problem for us, the problem for anyone who might be a Christian reader of these texts is that they just don't mesh with the picture of God that we see in Christ.
See, in Jesus, we find an image of the divine that resists tribal tension by welcoming the foreigner and the enemy. We see this in stories like Jesus speaking with Syrophoenicians and Samaritans, how he restored a Roman centurion servant and household. In Jesus, we see a divine image that undermines the common idea that God has to violently give everyone what they deserve because Jesus befriends the people who were exploiting others. Jesus forgives the friends who betray him. He prays for those who committed crimes against him.
In Jesus, we see an image of a God completely prepared to put an end to violence. And here, I'm thinking specifically of this intriguing scene that happens in Luke chapter 24. During Jesus' final meal with his disciples. Jesus seems to have known that his opponents were closing in around him, and he he's trying to prep his friends for the adversity they're gonna face. He knows that they're gonna have to hit the road, so he says to them, now if you have a purse, take it, and also take a bag.
And, oh, also, if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak, get one of those. Just super curious. Like, is Jesus telling them to, like, arm themselves? Well, not not exactly. Because Jesus continues by quoting from the Hebrew Bible to explain what he just said.
He says to them, it is written, he was numbered, speaking of himself, with the transgressors. And I tell you that this thing must be fulfilled in me. Yes. What was written about me is reaching its fulfillment. And what scholars think is happening here is that Jesus senses that he's going to be arrested like a criminal, and he wants to look the part specifically because he intends to refuse the role.
He wants to look like an armed revolutionary so he can overturn our imagination of what a righteous cause looks like. And what's funny is that the disciples hear Jesus, it's obvious that they aren't listening because they say, gotcha. You said pick up a sword, we've got two. And Jesus replies, that's enough. Which for the record is not Jesus said, great.
We have enough swords now. That's not what he's saying. It's more of a heart rending sigh. Enough. Can't you see?
Haven't you been listening? And of course, we know they weren't listening because Jesus' friends Peter or his friend Peter will take one of those swords in just a few verses and wound one of the men who unlawfully tries to arrest Jesus, only to have Jesus grab his arm, intervene. And the text says that Jesus says, no more of this. Enough. And with these words, Jesus not only disarms his friend, he disarms anyone who claims to follow his humble way.
He disarms our images of a God who would do violence to anyone to accomplish divine aims and gives us a picture of God as love, full stop. With his enough, Jesus disarms our images of scripture as an inerrant divine dictate that can be turned into force and weapon when decided. He disarms our use of scripture to claim that we are right even though we do so much wrong. And Jesus gives us a picture of divine word that is God breathed because it is good for every outsider. With his enough, Jesus disarms the ways that we scapegoat each other as a way to escape the shame and the guilt that we feel.
And he disarms the way that we demand brutality and sacrifices how justice must be done. And in this, he gives us a picture of a God who would rather be counted with us as a victim than ever use violence in an attempt to make anything new. And listen, something happens to us when we start to read scripture like this with Jesus firmly at the center of how we see the God of scripture. It's not that all the difficulty and all of the prickly parts and all the history of misuse goes away. No.
To be a thoughtful reader of scripture is to be honest or to try to be honest about those things and to always confront and advocate when scripture is used as ammunition by the powerful and by the misguided. What happens when we try to be honest and when we attend to the bible's literary composition and when we consider how Jesus helps us see the divine more clearly is we begin to understand that we don't need a God who does our violence for us. We begin to comprehend that scripture isn't never aimed at us to do violence to our bodies or to our minds or to our hearts. And we begin to grasp, maybe for the first time, that to disarm the bible is not to disregard it, but to let it be what it was always meant to be. A light for the broken path we're on.
It's meant to be a mirror for all the nuance and the grit of your experience. It was always intended as a lens through which you could encounter God and encounter your world and encounter yourself in startling ways that just might renew and save you. Let's pray together now. God, who we see in all of scripture, in history, in narrative, in poetry, and in lament, in justice seeking, in gospel. Today, we bring our questions about these texts, knowing that our dissonance and our doubt, they don't threaten you.
We trust that in many ways our questions are actually the mortar of our fragile faith. They're the way that your spirit helps us to grow and to become more thoughtful and more compassionate, more expansive in the ways that we hold this story. And we consider how this beautiful collection of texts emerged in cultures and times so far from us and how human hearts and minds like ours used words to explain and explore the world and how we are not so different. We're prone to need our gods to be violent. We're prone to turn divine violence against our enemies and against our broken selves.
And so we ask for grace to see you as you are in Jesus, to trust your peaceable way, your compassionate way. This way that takes all of our harshness and all of our hatred and all of our shame and says, enough. We ask this in the name of Christ, our hope for peace. Amen.