For a change, that's not a rote confession. It's an actual heartfelt, anguished plea to our Lord God almighty to forgive me for something horrendous that I left undone. I'm the type of person that best deals with their grief and anger and all those other emotions through writing - it's how I vent, and I have a lot to vent right now as I work through this horrific tragedy. So some of this may not make sense at the moment...and some of it may be misplaced anger and my desire to blame someone, anyone, for something that should have never happened... but I just keep asking myself: How could this have happened? How did we let this happen?
Sarah was always a little different, and I confess to being guilty of probably not reaching out to her the way I probably should have. I spoke to her frequently in the parking lot of our apartment building when she would be out walking her dog those first two years of seminary before she left for Alaska on internship. But beyond that, I never invited her in, I never took the time to sit down with her and find out what life was like for Sarah. When she didn't show up for graduation... I briefly wondered why she wasn't there, then immediately forgot about her again as I concentrated on myself. While I will continue to beg God's forgiveness, and I hope and pray her family can forgive me as well, for not reaching out more to her, not including her more in activities my friends and I would do together, I do wonder what changes will this bring about within the seminary community as a whole?
From early on in my seminary career, I always felt the community life was terrible at Luther and that more needed to be done to connect people to one another there. I admit, I tried for a brief period of time, but before long, I was overwhelmed by the task of trying to coordinate it myself, go to school full time, and work four jobs, so I didn't keep it up. But my experience at seminary was if it hadn't for my small group of friends who were constantly there to pick me up when I was down... I might have suffered the same fate as Sarah. Perhaps that's an extreme. But at the very least, I have no doubt that I would not have had the strength to continue going without my group of friends there to keep my chin up. No one seemed to ever care about the students and what we went through, of the reality of how much our faith lives were strained, our spiritual lives left shattered on the ground, the financial strains of tuition, health care, books, rent, daily living, etc. etc. It was as though many of our instructors wanted to shatter our faith. "Tear you down so we can build you back up" was a phrase I heard over and over again. Only... I must have missed the part where they built it back up. Our instructors for the most part were not interested in getting to know us as people and colleagues in ministry, it was a rare few who took time out to meet with us in his/her office, and that was usually at the student's prompting. Something I always found strange for a supposed faith community. Most of us had to go OUTSIDE the seminary to find some sort of spiritual fulfillment. And why is it we are expected to go out into the parish and magically create a "community" of faithful believers, when the pastors-to-be themselves were never a) trained to, or b) experienced it themselves?? We couldn't seem to create it amongst ourselves except in small pockets here and there for those of us who were fortunate to find some friends that we felt accepted by. You want to know how I made my very first friend at seminary? I bribed her. Yes... she needed help with her Greek homework, and not only did I gladly help her, but I bought her hot chocolate and bribed her to sit and talk with me because I was so desperate for some REAL human contact those first few weeks of seminary. Sad, I know. We're best friends now, but that's how it started out. What is wrong with this picture? I think what frightens me most about all of this is I have to wonder, had I not found my small group of friends who I could vent to, talk with and joke with - would I have wound up like Sarah? I'm no stranger to feelings of isolation and loneliness and the despair and depression that can come from feeling like there's no one who gives a damn. Add to that an environment that wants you to take everything you've ever believed about your faith and not only begin to question it, but down right contradicts it at times, and what potential do we have there for another Sarah? I can't tell you how many times my friends and I would sit around in the evenings and go, "You know... I'm really tired of being told every day that everything I've ever believed about the bible either isn't true or never really happened." We'd joke about it and bolster one another and tell one another - ignore it. Just get through it. Learn what you can that will be helpful in your ministry. But we struggled with those issues and things together. I made the mistake of figuring because she was married, she had her built in support. She had that person she could struggle with - forgetting that just because someone is married, doesn't mean they're getting the support and help they need within the context of ministry and the challenges we face there. Jesus sent the disciples/apostles out two by two - not all alone. Paul never went by himself from city to city. Ministry was not done in a vacuum where the messenger was in isolation. So why is that how we do it today? Why do we send people out into the middle of nowhere all alone?
I know most people are afraid to say this for fear of reprisal, and I admit, it's only my deep grief and emotions of despair, and yes, my own guilt over this that are probably giving me the courage to write this, because no, I haven't had my final synod approval interview yet or gone through assignment, so I run the risk of the "wrong" person reading this and my career as a pastor may be over... but at the same time - we are called to be advocates for the poor, the oppressed, the hurting and sick. Sarah was hurting and sick, and we were not there for her. If my condemnation of that gets me into trouble, then so be it. But I can only follow my conscience and it's screaming foul at the moment.
But how... HOW could a community that is supposedly being trained to be the hand of Christ fail so miserably at doing just that for one of our own? What can be done so that we don't have another Sarah in another few years who feels so alone and desperate in a community that is supposed to be the body of Christ, supposed to be building up faith not tearing it down, that he or she comes to the same ultimate conclusion Sarah did? We have gone terribly wrong somewhere - pushed people to the brink, maybe played God with their lives just one too many times of telling them to suck it up and "trust the process," and ignored their pain and struggles because they were just a little "different." I don't know what other things were going on in Sarah's life, what other issues were at play... but isn't that part of the problem? I never knew, because I NEVER ASKED. I know this was my lesson and wake up call that as much as I thought I was helping people who were struggling in the parish, I was ignoring my colleagues who are people, too... suffering from many of the same problems the people in our parish do. Just because we're in ministry doesn't mean we aren't susceptible to these thoughts of despair.
I don't want Sarah's death to mean nothing and to have nothing potentially good come from this unthinkable horrific tragedy. If this is was the wake-up call we needed - I heard it loud and clear. I just wish the price tag had not been so high. Will the rest of Luther hear it as well? Or will what usually happens at Luther happen again? Will it get brushed under the rug, forgotten about, and it's business as usual? We are in the business of giving people HOPE in the midst of despair. Who gave Sarah hope? Who pastored the pastor? Maybe someone did or tried that I'm not aware of. Like I said - I don't know, because I didn't bother finding out what was going on in Sarah's life. Maybe she had a friend and confident or therapist, or whoever... but I don't know because I didn't ask. And now I never can. God may forgive me, her family may one day forgive me... but it's going to be a while before I'm able to forgive myself. I'll never utter the confession, "God forgive me for the things I've done, and for the things I've left undone" ever the same again.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
A God of Our Own Making
Let's face it... there are parts of scripture most of us find troubling--what kind of God wipes out all of humanity with a flood? What sort of God orders genocide? How can a God that seems capable of so much love and grace, also be a God of so much wrath and anger? While, on the one hand, I suppose I could use Rolf Jacobson's flippant, but very true, answer that God loves people so much that he gets angry when one person hurts another person and that anger is sometimes taken out in ways that thousands of years later we are able to look at and judge as not being very God-like. (Because after all, we are now "like" God in our knowledge of good and evil, and this is most definitely evil, is it not?) Let's toss aside the fact that none of us were actually there to witness what transpired or had any clue how truly "wicked" humanity might have been. None of us knew the full story or every circumstance behind these actions. Yet our more "enlightened" 21st century minds reason much more clearly than all previous generations of both Jewish and Christian faithful, and we now have the right and the responsibility to state these things simply could not be the work of God.
But then I read something like Matthew 16:23, when Peter has the very natural and human response of not wanting Jesus to be killed (seems like the right thing to say, doesn't it? "Jesus, I'd really rather you didn't die"), and Jesus' response is:
And it is for that very reason that we struggle with the disturbing aspects of scripture, and are tempted to throw them out or say "this couldn't possibly be what God wanted," or "there is no way God would have willed this." Surely God was not behind or willing the death of all the first-born of Egypt! Because it rails against our human sensibilities, and it rails against the very things God himself has laid out--loving our neighbors, loving our enemies, not killing--all of those things that we love about God stand in stark opposition to those things that we find most appalling about God. God orders the killing of women and children? How awful! And I mean that sincerely. It is awful! We must somehow find a way to reconcile this text, or just ignore it. How can we do that? Shall we instead cling to authors and others who start pointing us in a decidedly different direction, claiming that well... maybe those things aren't really the word of God? Maybe those parts are just human interpretation of events that happened and are ascribing things to God that never were really God in the first place--in short, the Biblical authors are misrepresenting God. They have to be. We can't trust that the Word of God has been captured in such a way that it is able to reveal God truthfully because humans actually wrote it... not God. And indeed--when only God is perfect, it is impossible for anything, including scripture, to be perfect since scripture is not God, it is only God's revelation, God's reflection being sent out into the world to immediately be misunderstood by extremely fallible humans.
But now... what are we to believe then? Which parts of scripture are we going to adhere to and which parts of scripture can we toss aside? In short... what and who do we trust??
Ah... the sin of Adam and Eve--not trusting the word of God, but instead turning to listen to what the serpent had to say, which sounded MUCH more appealing, and which sounded like a much better deal than what God actually said. God says we'll die... the snake says no you won't... which would I rather believe? God's word says God wiped out large groups of people, and I don't like that much. So someone comes along and says that's OK, you shouldn't believe those parts because that isn't really what the God you've created in your own image would do.
But of course, how silly of me! I forgot - I can't trust the Adam and Eve story either, because it's most likely just a fable or folk-tale. In essence - I apparently can't trust anything the Bible says because the Bible doesn't portray my vision of who I want God to be... because I want God to be like...well... me. I want God to operate within my parameters of human understanding. I need God to be in my box, to play by the rules I want Him (sorry, I mean her, because God is like I am) to play by. I'm going to look at history instead and see how human beings most likely were picking and choosing which scripture to put into play. And yet... there's this problem. If it were solely human reason picking and choosing scripture, then human reason would have done away with the seemingly incongruent and bothersome parts of the text. Look at what we are currently trying to do! Either we make excuses for it and attempt to reconcile it in some way like the fundamentalists, or we go extremely liberal and just start ignoring that which makes us uncomfortable. Are we so arrogant as to think we're the ONLY ones in the past several thousand years who are suddenly recognizing some of these issues with scripture?
Perhaps I am being silly in paying attention to what Jesus has to say about how humans set their minds on human things, not divine things. Jesus probably never said any of that, either. In fact - the whole blooming Bible is probably just a delusion that was written by a bunch of crack-pots in order to control the masses, and anyone who follows its horrendous teachings (except for the few good ones that do please me, like love your neighbors - that's ok, you can follow that one) is just being narrow minded and ridiculous. And anyone who thinks that any of these other ideas that are being spouted are wrong and potentially dangerous - they're just scared and afraid they might discover the truth that what they've believed the Word of God to be is a farce and a lie. When Jesus says "I am the way, the truth, and the life..." that's not what he meant. The truth as claimed by Jesus is not really the truth. His "I am" claims that identify him as God... all part of an agenda by the author of John to stamp out opposing views of Jesus. Right?
So where do we find the Word of God? Inside ourselves? Trust our own intuition and our own ideas and our own vision of who and what God is? Trust our own reason and experience? Is that how this works?
I apologize for the sarcasm, but I couldn't help myself. These are the things we Christians must wrestle with. While questioning parts of the Bible is healthy, and wrestling with your faith is healthy - at some point faith has to enter into the equation. If we rely solely on reason and experience and our own sense of who and what we want God to be to be our only guiding principles, it's as Mark Allan Powell states, trying to sit on a two-legged stool. In order for that stool to stand properly... we need a third leg to stand on. We need divine revelation. We NEED scripture. Because some truth can only come through divine revelation. All the reason and experience in the world will never reveal God as God truly is. After all - if we look to nature alone for who and what God is, we will despair. Because everything dies. There is pain and suffering in the world. Unless we know that God has something to say about that, we must continue on with only our two-legged stool of reason and experience. And if we rely solely on reason and experience to dictate what we believe and don't believe in the bible--again, we've got a two-legged stool because we are not allowing scripture to be scripture. We are not allowing God's word to stand as God's word. We are attempting to reconcile or dismiss those parts of the bible we find uncomfortable and distinctly un-Godlike to our minds. We can't fathom that there might possibly have been some point, purpose, and meaning beyond our understanding for why God did some of the things He did or set forth some of the rules he did that don't fit in with our modern sensibilities. So instead... let's just say He didn't do them, because that makes us feel better about God.
There is an arrogance in this stance, however. That we are somehow more knowledgeable and more aptly able to represent who and what God is than these people thousands of years ago could. We surely would never state these things about God because we're arrogant enough to think we know that God would never do such a thing.
So at what point do we put our arrogance aside and instead have faith in what has been written and passed down as inspired revelation of God? Can we eventually TRUST that when scripture says it comes from God, that maybe it actually does come from God? "For all scripture is inspired by God." Can we believe this statement? No, not as a book that just dropped out of heaven or that God dictated... but to trust that God inspired a truthful representation of who and what He is, even if it isn't very palatable at times, and even when we humans mess it up and twist its meaning into something that it shouldn't be? Perhaps the scriptural representation of God falls short of fully comprehending and revealing every nuance of who and what God is--hence why scripture itself is not God--but gives us enough that we are able to begin to know that despite the parts that disturb us, we do have a God who has revealed himself most fully in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, to show us His heart, to show us his love that was previously so veiled and hidden. As Paul said, we see only dimly as though in mirror. We do not fully understand the ways of God. For even in Jesus, we still see God's disturbing attributes--we still see a violence inherent in his radical dealings with sin. For in seeing Jesus, we must always also see the cross. We cannot have a Jesus without the cross, which then means we cannot have a God who doesn't utilize the violent nature of mankind at times to accomplish his good will and work. We can't have it both ways--a Jesus who died a violent death but not have a God who doesn't utilize violence. The two stand in complete opposition to one another and denies the very nature and purpose of the cross itself.
We always run a risk with a hidden God, with a God who has not revealed every part of himself and has chosen fallible, screwed up humans to reveal himself through. That is what faith is about. Not total illogical "leaps of faith" in things that just are ridiculous, but in hearing the voices of many different people working both independently and in conjunction with another to reveal a very diverse and interesting God and actually believing what is said to be true. To hear one prophet confirm another prophet, to hear Jesus say, "I did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill the law." That Jesus was not interested in changing scripture--because in Jesus' mind, scripture itself is fine as is and scripture is not the problem, but people's hearing and people's understandings of scripture is what needed to change.
So we have two sides to the same coin--we have those who wish to wield the abusive parts to pump themselves up, to shove it in people's faces and go "we're right, you're wrong." The people who pick and choose these more offensive texts to oppress and harm others. The flip side of that coin are the people who want to go the exact opposite direction and throw those parts out and cling only to the parts that make them feel good, that give them warm-fuzzy feelings about God.
We simply cannot deny that people's experiences are always at play when they read scripture. If they have come from an abusive home, the seemingly abusive aspects of scripture are extremely troubling, because God cannot be associated in any way shape or form with their abuser. This is totally understandable and I have a sympathetic view in such situations. Because can we really turn away from what seems to be the abusive nature of God and just sweep it under the rug like it doesn't exist? The consummate child abuser who abandoned his own son to die an excruciating death on the cross? That it was not only him allowing it, but in some respect actually saying it was somehow NECESSARY?
What can we say to this? How can one argue in the face of our human suffering and in the face of our own experiences that such a God should be allowed to exist in our consciousness? Shame on scripture and shame upon the writers of scripture for writing texts such as these...
Or was Jesus right after all? Is the fact that we have trouble with these texts precisely because they come out of our human experience and that is how we are informed by them? That we have our mind set on the human experience and on human understanding, rather than the unfathomable, radical, and sometimes just downright foolish and odd workings of the divine? That in the violence on the cross, salvation to all people came into being? That in the foolishness of it wisdom can be found? That God, by entering into human suffering and experiencing such things we humans experience on a daily basis--the abandonment of God, the painful existence that defines humanity--could possibly have been working some good out of that? And if God might have been working some good out of that, might he also been working some good out of the things we still fail to understand and comprehend and seem equally as violent and terrible?
I can't say I like many of these texts that portray God as being a genocidal tyrant--because I don't. But am I going to dismiss them as being unfaithful representations of God? Well, I can't really do that either. To do so would make me just as guilty as those who grab hold of these texts and elevate them above other parts of scripture.
For Jesus did not abolish scripture--not even the parts of scripture that we don't like very much. Not one jot or tittle has passed away. I have placed my trust in Jesus Christ and the only way I am able to know what this Jesus has to say to me is to read scripture. Scripture is the way in which God's word is revealed, imperfect though it may be because of the fact that nothing can capture God in His entirety, but can I come to these words of scripture and acknowledge that I don't fully understand everything that is in there? That those seemingly "evil" parts simply have to stand as those parts of God and of scripture that I cannot fully fathom? I think that's the only way to actually acknowledge that yes, I am a creature of God, not God himself, and His ways are not my ways, His thoughts are not my thoughts. (Isa 55:8) I set my mind on the things that are human, not on the things that are divine.
But then I read something like Matthew 16:23, when Peter has the very natural and human response of not wanting Jesus to be killed (seems like the right thing to say, doesn't it? "Jesus, I'd really rather you didn't die"), and Jesus' response is:
"Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things."These seem like such harsh words against a man who only reacted the way any...well...human... would react when they hear that it is God's will that someone should die. And not just die--but die a horrendous death. We react very much the same way Peter does... God forbid! This must never happen!
And it is for that very reason that we struggle with the disturbing aspects of scripture, and are tempted to throw them out or say "this couldn't possibly be what God wanted," or "there is no way God would have willed this." Surely God was not behind or willing the death of all the first-born of Egypt! Because it rails against our human sensibilities, and it rails against the very things God himself has laid out--loving our neighbors, loving our enemies, not killing--all of those things that we love about God stand in stark opposition to those things that we find most appalling about God. God orders the killing of women and children? How awful! And I mean that sincerely. It is awful! We must somehow find a way to reconcile this text, or just ignore it. How can we do that? Shall we instead cling to authors and others who start pointing us in a decidedly different direction, claiming that well... maybe those things aren't really the word of God? Maybe those parts are just human interpretation of events that happened and are ascribing things to God that never were really God in the first place--in short, the Biblical authors are misrepresenting God. They have to be. We can't trust that the Word of God has been captured in such a way that it is able to reveal God truthfully because humans actually wrote it... not God. And indeed--when only God is perfect, it is impossible for anything, including scripture, to be perfect since scripture is not God, it is only God's revelation, God's reflection being sent out into the world to immediately be misunderstood by extremely fallible humans.
But now... what are we to believe then? Which parts of scripture are we going to adhere to and which parts of scripture can we toss aside? In short... what and who do we trust??
Ah... the sin of Adam and Eve--not trusting the word of God, but instead turning to listen to what the serpent had to say, which sounded MUCH more appealing, and which sounded like a much better deal than what God actually said. God says we'll die... the snake says no you won't... which would I rather believe? God's word says God wiped out large groups of people, and I don't like that much. So someone comes along and says that's OK, you shouldn't believe those parts because that isn't really what the God you've created in your own image would do.
But of course, how silly of me! I forgot - I can't trust the Adam and Eve story either, because it's most likely just a fable or folk-tale. In essence - I apparently can't trust anything the Bible says because the Bible doesn't portray my vision of who I want God to be... because I want God to be like...well... me. I want God to operate within my parameters of human understanding. I need God to be in my box, to play by the rules I want Him (sorry, I mean her, because God is like I am) to play by. I'm going to look at history instead and see how human beings most likely were picking and choosing which scripture to put into play. And yet... there's this problem. If it were solely human reason picking and choosing scripture, then human reason would have done away with the seemingly incongruent and bothersome parts of the text. Look at what we are currently trying to do! Either we make excuses for it and attempt to reconcile it in some way like the fundamentalists, or we go extremely liberal and just start ignoring that which makes us uncomfortable. Are we so arrogant as to think we're the ONLY ones in the past several thousand years who are suddenly recognizing some of these issues with scripture?
Perhaps I am being silly in paying attention to what Jesus has to say about how humans set their minds on human things, not divine things. Jesus probably never said any of that, either. In fact - the whole blooming Bible is probably just a delusion that was written by a bunch of crack-pots in order to control the masses, and anyone who follows its horrendous teachings (except for the few good ones that do please me, like love your neighbors - that's ok, you can follow that one) is just being narrow minded and ridiculous. And anyone who thinks that any of these other ideas that are being spouted are wrong and potentially dangerous - they're just scared and afraid they might discover the truth that what they've believed the Word of God to be is a farce and a lie. When Jesus says "I am the way, the truth, and the life..." that's not what he meant. The truth as claimed by Jesus is not really the truth. His "I am" claims that identify him as God... all part of an agenda by the author of John to stamp out opposing views of Jesus. Right?
So where do we find the Word of God? Inside ourselves? Trust our own intuition and our own ideas and our own vision of who and what God is? Trust our own reason and experience? Is that how this works?
I apologize for the sarcasm, but I couldn't help myself. These are the things we Christians must wrestle with. While questioning parts of the Bible is healthy, and wrestling with your faith is healthy - at some point faith has to enter into the equation. If we rely solely on reason and experience and our own sense of who and what we want God to be to be our only guiding principles, it's as Mark Allan Powell states, trying to sit on a two-legged stool. In order for that stool to stand properly... we need a third leg to stand on. We need divine revelation. We NEED scripture. Because some truth can only come through divine revelation. All the reason and experience in the world will never reveal God as God truly is. After all - if we look to nature alone for who and what God is, we will despair. Because everything dies. There is pain and suffering in the world. Unless we know that God has something to say about that, we must continue on with only our two-legged stool of reason and experience. And if we rely solely on reason and experience to dictate what we believe and don't believe in the bible--again, we've got a two-legged stool because we are not allowing scripture to be scripture. We are not allowing God's word to stand as God's word. We are attempting to reconcile or dismiss those parts of the bible we find uncomfortable and distinctly un-Godlike to our minds. We can't fathom that there might possibly have been some point, purpose, and meaning beyond our understanding for why God did some of the things He did or set forth some of the rules he did that don't fit in with our modern sensibilities. So instead... let's just say He didn't do them, because that makes us feel better about God.
There is an arrogance in this stance, however. That we are somehow more knowledgeable and more aptly able to represent who and what God is than these people thousands of years ago could. We surely would never state these things about God because we're arrogant enough to think we know that God would never do such a thing.
So at what point do we put our arrogance aside and instead have faith in what has been written and passed down as inspired revelation of God? Can we eventually TRUST that when scripture says it comes from God, that maybe it actually does come from God? "For all scripture is inspired by God." Can we believe this statement? No, not as a book that just dropped out of heaven or that God dictated... but to trust that God inspired a truthful representation of who and what He is, even if it isn't very palatable at times, and even when we humans mess it up and twist its meaning into something that it shouldn't be? Perhaps the scriptural representation of God falls short of fully comprehending and revealing every nuance of who and what God is--hence why scripture itself is not God--but gives us enough that we are able to begin to know that despite the parts that disturb us, we do have a God who has revealed himself most fully in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, to show us His heart, to show us his love that was previously so veiled and hidden. As Paul said, we see only dimly as though in mirror. We do not fully understand the ways of God. For even in Jesus, we still see God's disturbing attributes--we still see a violence inherent in his radical dealings with sin. For in seeing Jesus, we must always also see the cross. We cannot have a Jesus without the cross, which then means we cannot have a God who doesn't utilize the violent nature of mankind at times to accomplish his good will and work. We can't have it both ways--a Jesus who died a violent death but not have a God who doesn't utilize violence. The two stand in complete opposition to one another and denies the very nature and purpose of the cross itself.
We always run a risk with a hidden God, with a God who has not revealed every part of himself and has chosen fallible, screwed up humans to reveal himself through. That is what faith is about. Not total illogical "leaps of faith" in things that just are ridiculous, but in hearing the voices of many different people working both independently and in conjunction with another to reveal a very diverse and interesting God and actually believing what is said to be true. To hear one prophet confirm another prophet, to hear Jesus say, "I did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill the law." That Jesus was not interested in changing scripture--because in Jesus' mind, scripture itself is fine as is and scripture is not the problem, but people's hearing and people's understandings of scripture is what needed to change.
So we have two sides to the same coin--we have those who wish to wield the abusive parts to pump themselves up, to shove it in people's faces and go "we're right, you're wrong." The people who pick and choose these more offensive texts to oppress and harm others. The flip side of that coin are the people who want to go the exact opposite direction and throw those parts out and cling only to the parts that make them feel good, that give them warm-fuzzy feelings about God.
We simply cannot deny that people's experiences are always at play when they read scripture. If they have come from an abusive home, the seemingly abusive aspects of scripture are extremely troubling, because God cannot be associated in any way shape or form with their abuser. This is totally understandable and I have a sympathetic view in such situations. Because can we really turn away from what seems to be the abusive nature of God and just sweep it under the rug like it doesn't exist? The consummate child abuser who abandoned his own son to die an excruciating death on the cross? That it was not only him allowing it, but in some respect actually saying it was somehow NECESSARY?
What can we say to this? How can one argue in the face of our human suffering and in the face of our own experiences that such a God should be allowed to exist in our consciousness? Shame on scripture and shame upon the writers of scripture for writing texts such as these...
Or was Jesus right after all? Is the fact that we have trouble with these texts precisely because they come out of our human experience and that is how we are informed by them? That we have our mind set on the human experience and on human understanding, rather than the unfathomable, radical, and sometimes just downright foolish and odd workings of the divine? That in the violence on the cross, salvation to all people came into being? That in the foolishness of it wisdom can be found? That God, by entering into human suffering and experiencing such things we humans experience on a daily basis--the abandonment of God, the painful existence that defines humanity--could possibly have been working some good out of that? And if God might have been working some good out of that, might he also been working some good out of the things we still fail to understand and comprehend and seem equally as violent and terrible?
I can't say I like many of these texts that portray God as being a genocidal tyrant--because I don't. But am I going to dismiss them as being unfaithful representations of God? Well, I can't really do that either. To do so would make me just as guilty as those who grab hold of these texts and elevate them above other parts of scripture.
For Jesus did not abolish scripture--not even the parts of scripture that we don't like very much. Not one jot or tittle has passed away. I have placed my trust in Jesus Christ and the only way I am able to know what this Jesus has to say to me is to read scripture. Scripture is the way in which God's word is revealed, imperfect though it may be because of the fact that nothing can capture God in His entirety, but can I come to these words of scripture and acknowledge that I don't fully understand everything that is in there? That those seemingly "evil" parts simply have to stand as those parts of God and of scripture that I cannot fully fathom? I think that's the only way to actually acknowledge that yes, I am a creature of God, not God himself, and His ways are not my ways, His thoughts are not my thoughts. (Isa 55:8) I set my mind on the things that are human, not on the things that are divine.
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