The bible is disturbing.
September 27, 2011
Go ahead, try to say it isn’t. Read all of Joshua 10 and tell me that wouldn’t be the most graphic war movie you’ve ever seen. Lots of the bible is filled with that sort of violence; the slaughtering of entire villages, women and children included. Much of the text is the sort of stuff we try to keep our kids away from. Have you ever wondered why we teach our kids the story of Noah’s Ark, yet fail to mention that EVERYONE else died? Can you imagine the sort of chaos that would have been – with all sorts of people running around like mad, eventually ending up floating in a sea they never saw coming?
The truth is that with as much as I love Jesus and consider the stories about him to be the most beautiful ever told, much of the bible I just don’t get. But maybe that is just the point.
To be honest, the bible never leaves me unaffected. If I’m reading about the brutality of the Israelites under the direction of God in the OT, or pouring over a love letter Paul is writing to a bunch of people who are trying to understand Christianity, the bible always has something for me to chew on. And whether I like the taste or not, it is real. There is always something for me to process, always something to wrestle with God over, always something He is trying to tell me.
And while parts of the OT are completely over my head, I wonder if, centuries from now, people will read OUR stories – the narrative of the 21st century American Christian – and wonder, “How did God let that happen? How did Christians act like that?”
You know – things like using an entire earth’s worth of fossil fuels, allowing “church” to just happen on Sunday mornings in a building, allowing the slave trade to be greater now than it was during colonial America, understanding that nearly half the world lives in poverty but not *really* caring, hearing about children being forced into prostitution around the world (even in the U.S.) and remaining on the sidelines.
Yep, the bible is disturbing. But so are our lives. Let us not forget who we are in God’s story. And though we may never be characters in the bible with our names and stories to be read for generations to come, our lives now are just as important as Joshua and Paul.
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. YOUR kingdom come. YOUR will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Jaaaaaam
For me it’s a matter of trusting God and if He says He’s
just and impartial, I believe that He is.
I do want to talk though about what you call “the narrative of the 21st century American Christian” and “How did Christians act like that?” I do have some issues in the way western church culture has developed and I do not deny the fact that there are individuals who misrepresent who and what we are. I think a lot of that is changing and there is a new and strong generation of believers rising up and God is moving to revitalize the church (though I’m not sure if there will ever be a time when people who misrepresent what we believe will ever be gone- Paul talks of such people even in the times of the first churches). But, back to my point, I’m not sure I would say the other examples you gave are done at the hands of believers today. I would agree and say that our world is lost, that people do these things, etc. but are Christians doing this, or in some way making this happen? I would have to argue that the answer is no. We do in fact need to be going out to address these situations and try to put them to an end, there is no doubt about that. But I would also want to say that we are doing that. Don’t get me wrong, we can always be doing more, but I see and hear stories of hope all the time of people going out and working to resolve these issues. I have friends in Houston working to stop sex trafficking in the south, I know people who are constantly going to other countries, cities or even across town to fight poverty- an epidemic I think people do *really* care about. God’s kingdom is coming, and He is using us to accomplish it. And though there some things we can be working on and do better, people are acting on their faith and going out to do the work God wants accomplished in these areas.