The readings - Days 55-56 - Numbers 31-34
I heard on the radio not too long ago an interview with an author who was expounding on a theory that humans as a species were getting less and less violent as time goes by.
My initial reaction was to think that considering the last century was the bloodiest in history he may not be entirely right about that, but on a deeper level I think he's on to something.
These chapters in Numbers suck, and maybe they do so because I am a product of an inherently less violent age where the idea of a people of God mercilessly slaughtering an entire civilization, and then being told off for sparing the women and children, is one that steadfastly refuses to sit well.
It's interesting what that says about society as I experience it - safe, secure and utterly peaceful. It's not that academically I don't know that war and violence have not, at other times in history and in other places around the world today, been inextricably linked to everyday life. Neither do I necessarily subscribe to a blanket pacifism that writes off any potential need for acts of violence or war.
However, this story just doesn't jive with anything I believe about God. It's this kind of thing that, I think, offers one of the very, very few justifications for the still-weird dualistic belief in an Old-Testament-God and a New-Testament-God.
It's always hard to read these things about people in the past. Not just in the Bible, but lots of places, from the holocaust to the treatment of women and slaves in ancient times. Sometimes I sit and think "why was I born now? what makes me so lucky?"
ReplyDeleteThis story also doesn't flow with my belief about God. My next question might be a whole can of messy worms, but what if it's not really God, but some of the humans who wrote it and passed it down through the years blamed God for their own actions? It's scary to apply that to the people IN the Bible, because then what can we really think? Or are we just avoiding unpleasantness?
Messy worms is right. I've often thought of the "people just writing stuff and attributing it to God" and I think in places there's evidence that something like that is happening (like when David takes a sentence and in Kings it says God made him do it while in Chronicles it says Satan made him do it) but I try to stay away from that, since I feel like it provides a too-easy out for the uncomfortable bits, and once you stop taking the text for what it is then everything just becomes pretty chaotic...
DeleteI know. It's too easy and doesn't feel right. I felt gross just typing it there! Lol!
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