The Bible has some pretty edgy stories. There are Lot's incestuous daughters who, afraid they'll never find husbands (in the desert), get their father drunk enough to get them pregnant. There is the prophet who was taunted by some young lads, so he cursed them and they were mauled by bears (2 Kings 2:23-24). There's the story of Jael who urged the enemy general Sisera to hide and rest in her tent and then, when he was asleep, drove a tent peg through his head (Judges 4:13-21). Many gruesome stories. But these are about people and we can deal with them. The ones that really upset us are the ones about God. You know what I mean. He killed everyone on the planet except Noah and his family. Kind of extreme, wasn't it? He opened the earth and swallowed enemies of Moses and burned 250 people of their family members who rebelled (Num 16:31-35). He ordered Israel to annihilate an entire community -- men, women, and children, "and your little dog, too" (1 Sam 15:1-3). He burned Nadab and Abihu to death for "strange fire" (Lev 10:1-3) and struck down Uzzah for steadying the Ark when it nearly fell (2 Sam 6:5-7). What's up with that? Those human failings we understand, but this stuff about God isn't so easy to grasp. So we have one basic response; we assign blame.
At one end of the spectrum we have the atheists. I would say they assign the blame to God, except, of course, they hold that they don't believe in such a Being. "What's the question?" they will argue. "There is no more reason to believe those stories about a capricious deity smiting people than to believe the stories about incestuous daughters. It's all fiction, made up, pointless." Maybe it's not God they blame. But their answer to the dilemma of "What about those horrible things the Bible says about God???" is "No problem; no God."
A little further down that spectrum are the Left-leaning folk who blame the writers. "Hey, you people who take this stuff too literally, ease up a little. This isn't a problem. It's those crazy writers of the Bible." Did God actually create the heavens and the earth and all that? "No, of course not. Metaphor. Myth." Was there really a Flood? "Don't be ridiculous; no one with any sense or credibility believes that." Did God command Israel to kill the Amalekites? "Not at all. That's crazy. Look, we're rational beings. We know science and we know morality and none of that makes any sense. It's fiction, mostly. Teaching life lessons perhaps. Written by early, superstitious primitives. If there is any truth to the stories, they're tainted by blind religious beliefs. Uzzah, for instance, was just so scared by the pressures of the moment that he died of a probable heart attack and the author of the story attributed it to God. Nadab and Abihu had an unfortunate accident with fire and burned to death and the crazy author attributed it to God. Most of that stuff isn't literally true. It's just story, myth, metaphor. Sometimes misguided. Not to be taken as written."
This part of the spectrum, as it turns out, extends a long way. At the far "Left" end it goes as I described, but in its arc toward the right, there are still a lot of people -- believers, Christians -- who chalk it up to bad writing and, more likely, foolish Christians. There are many on the right that argue that "Much of the Bible is true, but, hey, we know that some of it isn't. After all, God doesn't 'smite' people. That's not the God we know from Jesus." So they know a bit better than others that the Bible is ... tricky. You cannot take that as written. "You have to be more sophisticated, more savvy, more cautious. Maybe you should leave it up to the scholars who have more carefully figured out just what is ... and is not." The Jesus Seminar, for instance, was a group of thirty scholars on the quest for the historical Jesus. "These guys knew what they were doing. They voted down some of Jesus's words and deeds in the Bible and voted others up. They understood. You Christians should, too." The difference, then, between the "Left" of this group and the "Right" is primarily degree. The Left takes less and the Right more as valid, but neither takes all.
This brings us to the last group. Admittedly, it's a small group. They believe what the Bible says. They take the Bible as it is written. Who do these blame? They blame themselves. "Well, I never would have guessed that God would actually burn two priests to death for offering 'strange fire', but it's what the Word says, so I'm going to have to go with it. I never would have imagined that God would order the deaths of a specific group of men, women, and children along with their livestock, but if it's in the Bible, it's true. Apparently my ideas of God need to be revised. Apparently I don't fully grasp God. I seem to be limited by my finiteness, deceived by my own heart (Jer 17:9), and in desperate and ongoing need to renew my mind (Rom 12:2). I know that God is good and I know that His Word is true, so I'll have to fix my faulty thinking."
What the Bible says about God (and other things) can be difficult to understand or accept. Maybe you'll blame God. Maybe you'll blame the writers for that (I've often heard about how rotten Paul was, being a misogynist and all that.), or those who believe the Bible for being too narrow-minded. Or maybe you'll recognize that you might be the problem and take God at His Word. If the latter, expect to be in a minority. Of course, that's what Jesus said (Matt 7:13-14).
3 comments:
I've always been too embarrassed to ask how metaphorical people take the "drink their own urine and eat their own excrement" passage in Isaiah chapter 36.
Not sure how that one is a problem since even as a narrative it sounds like a hyperbolic taunt, not necessarily a description of what they were actually doing. It's like saying "your mother is a hamster and your father smelt of elderberry." And, as most of the stories go, the moral is to trust in God even in the face of defeat. Obey Him and your enemies won't prevail.
Anonymous, I'm not sure how you mean that. Just to clarify, when I read my Bible, I try to take it as it is written, not necessarily literally. I don't assume that when Jesus said, "I am the door," He meant He had hinges and a doorknob. When I read, "The whole city came out to see Him," I wouldn't find it contradictory to find out two bed-ridden old men and three dogs weren't among them. When I read the Proverbs, I understand them to be proverbs, general truths, rather than statements of absolutes. That sort of thing. I take a narrative as a narrative, poetry as poetry, doctrine as doctrine. You get the idea. There is metaphor and hyperbole and all sorts of other types of writing in there, so I don't get too upset about seeing the Isaiah passage as metaphorical rather than descriptive of an historical event.
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