Natalie started her post about the nature of God and the tsunami. Several people jumped in with some comments and jvpastor and I got into a bit of a discussion. We disagree on the nature of god, perhaps, or maybe just the accuracy of the bible as historical record. Read the comments here. I am not dogging on jvpastor. I have no doubt that he is a decent guy. But I really don't understand this debate and hope that some of you can help me out here.
Here is my main point, and I will await some brighter people's opinion. I think anytime other humans are involved, the statement "God did...whatever" becomes suspect. Not saying God doesn't say or tell or do stuff. But when humans kill other humans, it is incredibly hard for me to accept that God was involved. If God reached down and told the Israelites (who, of course, thought they were god's chosen people) to go wipe out some badass neighbors, then what is to stop him from telling some Rwanda tribe to wipe out another, or some German guys to wipe out some other guys, or some Arab strong man to gas some Kurds. I say that has happened more times than we care to remember, and jvpastor suggests that the fact that others have misused the Bible does nothing to undermine the text. That is probably correct.
I still say that God as architect of genocide is hard to take. That isn't very good evidence, I understand, but it is the best I can do on a weary day.
Help me out here. Did/does God endorse ethnic cleansing?
7 comments:
Stick to your guns.And the award for ironic encouragment of the day goes to ... ;-)
I agree with Greg. Christians do take the Hebrew Bible to be Scripture, but that doesn't mean that it isn't also a collection of historical documents, which reveal the same relations of power and violence in human societies that all ancient historical documents do. It is a difficult task to sort out what these writings reveal about God from what they reveal about the human beings of the time. Like I said, a very difficult task: not one that can be simply winked at with "the Bible told me so."
One interesting thing about the OT narratives of holy war (I'm thinking particularly of Joshua) is that YHWH does not approve all of the wars that the people involved get themselves into. Sometimes they decide to go kick some Amorite butt without consulting God, and lo and behold, their own butts get kicked, verily. It's interesting that these stories of defeat survive in the Hebrew Bible, because if they were written by later royal propagandists trying to justify Israel's wars of conquest, wouldn't it make sense to airbrush out those inconvenient passages where God's chosen people lost? It's these kinds of kernels of strangeness we have to look for.
No, She doesn't. And Her Son told us this is no uncertain terms. Whenever He said, "You have heard it said, but I tell you..." you know he was overturning the old way of doing things. Radical and revolutionary.
Jvpastor, I will let some of my more learned Bible scholars weigh in here. Your argument sounds incredibly hollow to me: I think the bigger question of God's integrity is if he really endorses genocide or not, but I am sure you will flood me with more Bible verses to refute that. Again, as I said over at Natalie's blog, I see the Bible as a reflection of man's search for God, so I really don't feel the necessity to defend the NT's integrity in the way you ask.
I find your statement that it wasn't genocide because the NT writers didn't call it genocide absolutely ridiculous. If it walks like a duck, well, you know. If you wipe out an entire groups of people, that is genocide, period. To dodge it that way reminds me of what the critics said of Bill Clinton.
But, like I said, I will let some of my bible scholar friends weigh in here. I will point out what I think is the biggest inconsistency you have presented. Remember, this entire discussion started with your defense of God causing the tsunami or at least allowing it to happen. Yet, when I asked you about defending modern day genocide, you said that: "As far as modern genocide is concerned, God's people are represented now by Christ as the head of the church, and he is not leading anyone on physical conquests. The physical conquests central to the OT are over. This is very clear in the NT, the promise land which was key in the OT is being replaced by a people who will represent God everywhere. "
So, if I understand you, modern genocide isn't dictated by God, because of the precedent overturning policy of Christ. Yet, you are perfectly willing to reach back into the OT to use that kind of ethnic cleansing as justification for God now killing 150,000 people? If you are to continue this defense of the OT mass killing, then it seems to me that you cannot selectively decide that some modern day disaster/killing is God's work.
I'm not a biblical scholar, either, but that's never stopped me from popping off before.
Jvpastor's argument seems to be that whatever the NT writers did not explicitly correct about the OT must have been God's will. Presumably, then, because Stephen also did not reject polygamy, we can infer that polygamy was not a cultural practice of people in OT times, but rather the will of God? (And thus presumably also permissible today?)
I'm really just asking that, though, to see how consistently you are willing to stand by this rule. My own view is that the rule is more fundamentally flawed: you are presuming that the idea of holy war was only a distant, OT idea, which Jesus and the NT writers would have had to exhume from the past and repudiate, that they needed to line-item veto verses from the Hebrew Bible. In fact, however, the idea of violently killing pagans was not a dead idea in first-century Palestine, but a very live idea (no pun intended). It wasn't as though Jesus had to bring up Joshua in order to talk about whether God wanted his people to kill pagans. There were Zealots around who were saying that very thing. By teaching in opposition to that idea in first-century Judaism, in other words, why was he not correcting the same idea in its earlier manifestations?
And I'm sorry, but Jesus saying love your neighbor is enough. When the entire shape of Jesus's life suggests that God himself believes in the redemption of the world through the giving up of one's life, rather than through the taking of another's, to demand that he be more specific seems like ... well, it would be like asking a Mom to explicitly reject that she hates her child when everything about her life demonstrates that she loves him.
"asking a Mom to explicitly reject that she hates her child when everything about her life demonstrates that she loves him."
Damn! I couldn't say it any better.
This discussion is starting to get tiresome. As one of my buddies said offline, we are trying to convince a fellow christian that wholesale slaughter is wrong. What is wrong with that picture?
Jvpastor, I am sure you are a decent guy. But I don't understand your argument, and I think you have missed mine. I raised the tsunami question, because I thought you raised the tsunami question. That is where this all started--whether God allowed or was behind this horrible event, right? And, I am aware, (and don't really appreciate the condescension) that tsunamis and tornados and storms are natural events. That wasn't my argument, and you know that. I understood you to be the one defending the "God is in control, death is in his hands," argument which is different than the "things happen" argument. (and no, those quotes are not your words, so don't get legalistic on me).
You have really been condescending here and I am going to assume that it isn't you being a dick, but the fact that we really are speaking a different language here. Like Caleb and all my other cohorts said, the language of the NT to us necessarily cancels the idea of God endorsing wholesale slaughter. The fact that we can't come up with the requisite bible verse doesn't bother me. And again, you can condescend all you want. I am quite used to getting this treatment from pastors and Christians. It, (no offense) is why I don't go to church anymore.
But I don't need no stinking bible verse to tell me wholesale slaughter by one group of humans of another is wrong. Just as I don't need a verse to tell me my wife is equal, that my gay friends are good, that my friends of color are equal, that racism is wrong, or many of the things that I believe.
Obviously we are not going to agree. Even though I am annoyed right now, I appreciate your comments and think that this has produced a good discussion. So, thanks for that.
Peace
I'm sorry but all this sounds very stupid to me. I don't believe in god myself, but if he/she exist then it's no his'her fault for why some people misunder stood his/her meaning.
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