Jesus, Don't You Walk So Fast!

Two images are bouncing around in my mind, bumping into each other and stirring up dust. One is the 1935 book title, In His Steps, by Charles Sheldon. It journals a pastor leading his congregation in a one-year pilgrimage to become more like Jesus by asking at each event and circumstance, “What would Jesus Do?”

The other image is the Wayne Newton song from a number of years ago: “Daddy, Don’t You Walk So Fast.”

My Lenten journey this year is an effort to walk “In His Steps”, specifically in regard to how Jesus read Scripture; but the pace is fast, set by Derek Floods’ book, Disarming Scripture (Metanoia Books, 2014).

Flood confronts the difficult and mostly avoided question of how we reconcile the apparent biblical contradiction of a God who sometimes seems loving and nurturing, and at other times orders total genocide, dashing babies’ heads against rocks and disemboweling pregnant women (Hosea 13:16, et. al.).

The book urges the reader to “take a long and sobering look at the extent to which human violence is not merely described in the Bible, but actively promoted as God’s will. This is not simply a matter of a few troublesome passages. Violence and bloodshed committed in God’s name is a major theme of the Old Testament” (Kindle edition, Location 127)

Swiss theologian, Raymund Schwager, writes, “Approximately one thousand passages speak of Yahweh’s blazing anger, of his punishment by death and destruction, and how like a consuming fire he passes judgment, takes revenge, and threatens annihilation … No other topic is as often mentioned (in the Old Testament) as God’s bloody works.”[1]

Flood suggests that the questions we ask are even more pointed because of Christianity’s long history of violence, which he proceeds to document, noting the Crusades, slavery, Native Americans, the 800,000 Tutsis killed in the Rwandan genocide and other examples, all justified by the use of Scripture and committed in God’s name. “This is our legacy as Christians and we need to face it head-on, rather than trying to ignore or excuse it” (Kindle edition Location219).

So, what responses have been offered in view of God-ordered violence? Atheism generally has responded with anger and aggressive language. “New Atheist,” Richard Dawkins, writes: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”[2]  [Other than that, I wonder what he thinks of God.]

Conservative Christians, on the other hand, generally attempt to justify the violence, basically letting the horrible, even ungodly, morality issues be trumped by the importance of defending Scriptural integrity as they understand it.

In the conquest of Canaan as recorded in Hebrew Scriptures, the Israelites are ordered to kill “everything that breathes” (Deut 20:16). The slaughter is to be complete, including not only humans but, also herds and pets; and when one Israelite attempts to keep a goat or a cow for himself, God orders him put to death.

One commentary justifies the genocide at Jericho as necessary “so that Israel would not be ‘infected by the degenerate religion of the Canaanites,’ declaring that ‘pure faith and worship’ could only be maintained ‘by the complete elimination of the Canaanites themselves’.”[3]

A mega-church pastor compares the Canaanites to a cancer that must be eliminated for the health of God’s people. He calls the genocide "surgery". Another commentary suggests that these stories would be “more palatable” if we think in abstract terms (effectively dehumanizing the victims of genocide).

What seems to be lost in the conversation is the disturbing similarity between these arguments and those used by Hitler to justify the Holocaust!

Why would (presumably) good, loving people go to such lengths to justify genocide in God’s name? Their perspective is based on the sincerely held assumption that faithfulness to Scripture means accepting everything it says at face value. (I hope Flood will flesh out this point in later chapters. If he doesn't, I may make the attempt.)

But there’s a third (and equally ineffective) approach that Flood calls “Cherry-Picking”, and lays it at the feet of progressive or liberal Christians. Essentially, this is the practice of using blinders when we approach the Bible. We’ll just pick out the sweet, nurturing, likable texts, those that call for ministries of compassion and justice, and those that make us feel good, and ignore those more troubling parts.

The primary fault with this third approach is that it’s dishonest (my word, not Flood’s). The secondary fault is that, like the other two approaches, it does nothing to resolve the related biblical disparity between the violent images of God versus the nurturing images.

Flood’s proposal is to face the troubling passages honestly, openly, and as Jesus did.

But therein lies another conundrum. On the one hand, Jesus says, “I did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it” (Matt 5:17). But then he proceeds blatantly to contradict and overturn multiple passages of Scripture.

I love a good mystery; but, “Jesus, you walk so fast!”

That’s how I see it through the flawed glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

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[1] Raymund Schwager, Must there Be Scapegoats?: Violence and Redemption in the Bible (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987), page 55 (italics his). Quoted in Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture, (Kindle edition, location163.)

[2] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006), page 51. Quoted in Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture, (Kindle edition, location236.)

[3] Bible Knowledge Commentary: Old Testament (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 1984) page 342. Quoted in Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture, (Kindle edition, location245.)