When the Bible Story Shocks
I read Joshua 24, including Joshua’s farewell speech today. There are quite a number of texts in this chapter that are quoted regularly without any knowledge of their source or of the circumstances. One is Joshua 24:15 “… as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” Now there’s a pink elephant in the room, the genocide of the Canaanites, which is generally ignored. I will just point out that it cannot actually have happened quite that way, because the Canaanites survived in large numbers, as the book of Judges tells us. Yet there’s still the issue of the claim. That’s a shocking point in a story, but I’m going to ignore it today myself.
I’m interested in the fact that the call to faithfulness presented here, described as a torah, or instruction (v. 26, “written in the book of the torah of God”), is embedded in a story. Joshua goes way back to give us the shocking information that Abraham worshiped other gods. There is a much abbreviated presentation of the history that has brought the Israelites to this place.
But the use of story is also challenging. In the book of Jonah, God behaves in unprecedented ways. The book or Ruth presents a story that stands in contrast to specific instructions regarding the Moabites. While Daniel is commended for keeping to Torah, Esther appears to live without people realizing she’s a Jew.
The actual stories present a much more complex picture of God related to his people and God’s people in their activities, ethics, and theology. The story of Samson in Judges is one of those surprises. We can dress it up for Sunday School as a servant of the Lord carrying out his mission for his people with miraculous support, but it really reads like someone who couldn’t ditch the stupid and kept stumbling into ways to kill Philistines, the enemies of Israel. He ends up kill a few thousand while committing suicide.
I believe that theology is easy, but life is hard. Yes, we can debate theology all day, and it’s pretty near impossible to understand the trinity. A pastor friend of mine told me that with the trinity, if you think you understand it you probably don’t. But face it, as much as we enjoy debating theology, mistakes in the classroom have little impact.
When they get into real life, however, theological ideas can end up healing the sick or burning people at the stake. And everything in between. That’s the value, I believe, in reading stories and placing all our theology in real life as much as we can.
It’s not that there’s no truth. It’s not that there’s no right or wrong. It’s just that life manages to scramble our hopes of always having a clear knowledge of it. That’s why we need to exercise our faculties so we can tell.
And when we read stories, and live our lives, we need to go deeper than just finding the moral. If you find just one moral of a story, you probably haven’t thought of it enough. If you learned just one thing from an experience, spend some more time thinking about it.
Life is hard. Theology can help you.
But only if you hone your theology in real life.
(Image credit: Adobe Stock [105521664]. I have licensed this image, but it is NOT public domain.)
