My
personal Lenten journey this year leads through a wilderness I’ve known but
avoided for many years. Oh, I’ve taken brief day-hikes along its fringes; but
never have ventured into the heart of it, and certainly not with the intention
of spending forty days there!
I
have a nephew who this month embarked on an ambitious effort to spend one year
trying to experience what it means truly to follow Jesus. Almost three weeks
into that pilgrimage he still is struggling to identify his approach. To some
extent he toys with the idea of “doing” what Jesus did. For example, he plans
to gather resources to feed 5,000 people.
At
another level he faces the task, not so much of doing what Jesus did, but
rather of being who Jesus was (is). He has chosen a mentor for each month
during the year, all of whom represent a broad diversity of theological and
faith perspectives. He plans to leave no stone unturned in his quest to know
what it means truly to follow Jesus.
Following
Jesus is also a foundation of my Lenten Journey, although mine is limited to
forty days, and has a much tighter focus. The wilderness I contemplate is the
diverse, apparently contradictory images of God presented in the Christian
canon of Scripture (specifically the Christian Protestant canon).
Specifically,
I want to address the apparent contradiction between the New Testament image of
God as “Father” (actually, Jesus called God “Abba”, which is the familiar
sense, like “Daddy,” or “Papa”—a loving, nurturing being), with the Old
Testament image of a vengeful, spiteful, jealous warrior God (“Lord of Hosts”)
who orders genocide on many occasions.
My
primary resource for the journey is Derek Flood’s book, Disarming the Bible (Metanoia Books, 2014). Flood describes three common historic
approaches to resolving the apparent contradictions in Scripture.
1.
The Conservative/Fundamentalist
approach,
which places a premium upon defending the integrity of Scripture, sometimes at
the expense of discerning its truth. Too often the defense of Scripture, while
a noble intention, ends up being a defense of one’s own understanding of a
specific text, which one assumes is the correct, indeed the only true
understanding. In this approach it sometimes become necessary to advocate
things we know are profoundly wrong in the attempt to defend the Bible.
2.
The Atheist approach, which maintains the
conservative/fundamentalist approach to Scripture, but then abandons any semblance
of faith altogether in an attempt to maintain some sense of moral integrity.
3.
The Liberal approach of denying the problem and
simply whitewashing over the evidence. In this approach attention is directed
away from the genocidal violence in Scripture, focusing instead on the mercy
and social justice found in the teachings and examples of Jesus. Flood calls
this approach “Cherry-Picking”, and defines it as picking out the sweet
portions of Scripture and ignoring the difficult passages that seem utterly
contradictory to the Gospel.
It
is my expectation and my hope that Flood will further develop and critique each
of the three approaches as he makes his case.
He
calls for integrity in our approach, saying, “If we as progressives are going
to reject violence and instead focus on mercy and social justice, then we need
to have a developed interpretive[1]
rationale for our reading which can stand its ground against a conservative
reading that seeks to legitimize violence in God’s name. …Rather than
justifying or whitewashing over the problem of violence in Scripture, we
instead need to confront it, and do so from the inside, as an expression of a
healthy faith.” (Kindle edition, Location 348)
Flood’s
proposed approach is to discover (or hopefully rediscover) the “radical and
surprising way Jesus read (Scripture).” Of course, there was no collected and
canonized “Bible” at that time. There were, however, Scriptures—Holy Writ: The
Torah, which is the first five “books” of what we call the Old Testament, was
available in some form (whether that form had become standardized is open to
question), as were some of the prophetic and wisdom writings.
We
are warned at the outset that reading the Scriptures as Jesus did will not be a
self-evident effort. Indeed, the way Jesus read Scripture “scandalized the religious
authorities of Jesus’ time and is likely to be seen as equally subversive and ‘blasphemous’
by the religious gatekeepers today.” (Kindle edition, Location 362)
The
wilderness is always intimidating; but that’s where The Adversary[2]
is. The Adversary has been having its way with God’s people, dividing them over
understandings of the very writings that should be uniting us. Jesus confronted
The Adversary and prevailed. Will I? Will we? Will you go with me and hold my
hand?
That’s
the way I see it through the flawed glass that is my world view.
Together
in the Walk,
Jim
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