Reading for April 19
Joshua 19:1-20:9
This section finishes up (thankfully) the allotment of land schtick. It concludes however, with revisiting the idea of the "refuge cities". These were planned for and mentioned many times by God in Leviticus and Deuteronomy when instructing Moses about the promised land - and again, these are in place for people who accidentally kill another person. They can flee to these cities so they are not killed by the "avenger of the victim" - and will have a chance to stand trial.
Apparently, people were accidentally killed a lot if God needed to set up a special provision for that...
Luke 19:28-48
The Triumphal Entry
So this is when Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem. He does so on a donkey and in a very "low budget" kind of way. This emphasizes his humility, but also the others' dissonance in their expectations and what they actually got - at least from the Pharisees. Many of Christ's followers were following him into the city and calling out praise for him. The Pharisees told Jesus to silence his people - here's how he responds:
40"I tell you," he replied, "if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out."A God who needs to be praised.
Then he went on to say this:
41As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it 42and said, "If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. 43The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. 44They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you."Clearly a God who once again loves his creation and laments over its demise - the same thing we saw way back in Genesis before he got all vengeful and angry.
Psalm 88:1-18
This psalm is pretty dark and un-hopeful. It's all about how the psalmist (not sure who it is this time) feels that God took away his friends and now he is all alone.
8 You have taken from me my closest friendsOn the other hand, isn't it possible that this guy just acted like a jerk and lost a bunch of friends and it has nothing to do with God? I don't think assigning God to every action/reaction in this world is a realistic way to live. Plus then you get into all sorts of big spiritual dilemmas asking why God had you step in poo on the way out the door this morning. Does that make sense?
and have made me repulsive to them.
I am confined and cannot escape;
Proverbs 13:12-14
12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.
This verse was used in the Easter sermon at my church, Outreach Red Bank.
Hope deferred makes the heart sick. That's a great one.
Hey Brandon,
ReplyDeleteThe following link is from a Christian blog I follow, "Between Two Worlds." It's his thoughts on genocide in the bible.
This blogger, Justin Taylor, was recommended to me by Andy Zakhari, and I love following it. From what I gather, this dude's a super Calvinist, tough-love kinda guy, and I don't agree with everything he says (especially when he starts talking politics, but that's another story).
But I also think it's good to have a kick-in-the-pants Christian to keep me in check. This blog entry on genocide in the Bible is definitely tough love, but has some good insights if you give it the chance. He addresses specifically that 1) it's NOT ethnic cleansing 2) the rules ARE different because Christ has risen, and we are not sanctioned anymore to go to war because God says so in the way Israel used to.
Let me know what you think.
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2009/09/25/how-could-god-command-genocide-in-the-old-testament/
HEre's the introduction to Joshua from the ESV. I think this paragraph is especially helpful to people like us, who are very sensitive to Biblical declarations of war in the context of feeling so disgusted by the atrocities of warfare.
ReplyDeleteYou don't need to know me too well to know that I hated the War in Iraq. And I don't think our assessment on OT wars means that wars today can be justified with those reasons.
Anyway, here's the quote, then the link:
"One must begin by acknowledging that the questions are legitimate. Christians rightly condemn this kind of behavior in other circumstances, and there is no warrant today for nations to destroy other nations in order to take their land. But there are special features of the command to Israel that both make it unique (and therefore not open to be imitated) and allow it to be seen in a moral light. This command is one reason why Exodus records the call of Moses in such detail (Ex. 3:1–4:17; cf. Num. 12:1–15): Moses is God's unique choice to be the lawgiver for his people, and the commands given through Moses come from God's own mind (cf. Deut. 18:15–20). Believers accept God's appointment of Moses to speak his will. Without this command from God as delivered through Moses, Israel would have had no right to the land."
http://www.esvstudybible.org/sb/objects/introduction-to-joshua.html
To give you even more to consider as if you don't have enough already :) I would like to recommend the question from the Euthyphro dilemma here:
ReplyDelete"Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" from here
The appeal to a "special" command above suggests at minimum a temporary Divine Command theory of morality. For example, would rape be ok if it was commanded by God? If a divine command is the only moral principle we use in this case, then it would have to be moral. Anything could be moral as long as it was commanded.
Based on the Euthyphro discussion above, I don't understand why you would ever want to appeal to this Divine Command theory. When we talk about the morality of a particular action, typically it is always through a duty-based or consequentialist perspective. Not whether or not it was simply commanded by God. Consider the following questions: Will this action have bad consequences? Do I have a moral duty to perform this action in order to respect rational beings? These are much better ways to analyze morality. I am not saying there is one way to think morally, just that some are much better than others.