“The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion.”
I’m not seeing it.
The image of God portrayed throughout Numbers (which will require more than one entry in this blog) is one of detailed and incessant demands, constant testing, vengeance and mixed messages. And He's getting pretty fed up with His "chosen" people.
After all the Lord has done for Moses and after all Moses has done for his people, we’ve got trouble…right here in River City, as the song goes. Dissension brews among the Israelites as they are growing weary of long vistas of nothingness in the desert with no water, food, etc. Moses freed his people, but for what? God gets REAL testy here. He is very tired of the Israelites’ “grumbling” and there is a very cool scene where He opens up the earth and swallows several men when they oppose Moses. Great drama. He leads tribes into battle over land and even out of vengeance for Himself. Moses struggles to both control and defend his people.
I find myself curious about all these other tribes and communities mentioned. Did they have recorded histories? What would theirs tell? There are occasional references to their worshipping other or false gods. Are there other gods out there? And why does God with a capital G only seem to be a deity over the Israelites? I would imagine others' recounting of events would read very differently. So, does the truth lie with whoever gets to write it down? If we have limited viewpoints upon which to base our accounting of an event, that skews our perspective, no? Think of a time when two people had drastically divergent points of view on the same situation. Both are convinced of their perspective. We are getting one here. I wonder if there any parallel companions to this testament.
Just as varying translations of a language can lead to extremely diverse meanings, so too do varying points of view. How would these other tribes have written their accounts of the Israelites’ invasion of their communities? How would they have viewed the plunder and enslavement of their citizens? Oh, but the Israelites were following God’s orders. O.K.
Confession #37: I struggle deeply with the “chosen people” concept because it seems to me all humans are God’s creation and deserve the same shot at a relationship with Him.
Confession #38: The old adage, “The pen is mightier than the sword” takes on new meaning for me as I consider that whoever tells the story has the real power to construct the Truth.
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Thursday, November 13, 2008
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5 comments:
How history is recorded is very important. I think of governments, including our own, which control the press, creating pool reporting strategies and suspending access to reporters based on what they report, for example.
Ok, so about the chosen people thing . . .
When you get to the New Testament, Jesus will come along and do just that--he'll give everyone the same shot. Since God looks at things from the long view, taking an eternal perspective can help answer these questions.
Walker Percy, that guy I did my dissertation on, wrote that the very existence of the Jews, in the face of virulent hatred and oppression which spanned generations, proved that they truly were chosen. In fact, he called them the "unsubsumable sign" of God's existence.
Yes, I often find myself anxious to get to the New Testament, of which I know much more.
But I am unclear as to what you mean by giving "everyone the same shot," as it seems the Israelites clearly had it over everyone else.
The Israelites were the people through whom God manifested himself, it's true. And it was a Jewish girl chosen to be the mother of Christ. So God entered both time and place with the Jews as a sort of conduit for that. But once Christ shows up, the Old Testament is fulfilled. Months from now when you get to the New Testament, you'll see that the Gospels widen the reach of Christ and of the God of the Jews, first to the Gentiles and then to the east. That's why Paul spent all that time in Greece. Of course, maybe you already know this.
Perhaps you're wondering, what about all of those who never hear of Christ--who live and die in remote Tibetan mountains with no access to the "good news." And what about those who lived and died before Christ was born and/or far from the influence fo the Jews. Then what? What of those vituous pagans that Dante sticks in a pleasant anteroom of hell because he can't figure out what to do with them?
The Catholic Church puts much more credence in the Harrowing of Hell than many of the Protestant sects do. However, it is in this moment that, for me, the answer is found. 1 Peter 3:19-22 reads:
19 By which also he [Jesus] went and preached unto the spirits in prison;
20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.
21 The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ:
22 Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.
So, those who have no opportunity to choose to believe in this life get a shot in the next life. Based on this passage in 1 Peter, I might even argue that those who didn't choose to believe in this life get another shot to make that choice in the next life. So those who were annihilated in the flood waters are not eternally condemned until they refuse Christ having full knowledge of the afterlife. This is why I do temple work for the dead. They choose whether to accept the work that has been done.
So, that's what I meant.
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