A gentleman on Facebook asked me to say how I know Christianity is true. My post questioning God about King Saul prompted his questions and our conversation. Eric is particularly incensed by verses like: Numbers 31: 1-3
“Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Take vengeance on the Midianites for the sons of Israel; afterward you will be gathered to your people.“ So Moses spoke to the people, saying, “Arm men from among you for the war, so that they may go against Midian to execute the Lord’s vengeance on Midian.“
I have wondered about this sort of thing myself. The question was on the front of my mind, when I was browsing at Barnes and Noble. Spine facing forward, I saw the title: Not in God’s Name by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. I was surprised when I opened it this time to see I’d actually read it through. Sacks says:
“Never say, I hate, I kill because my religion says so. Every text needs interpretation. Every interpretation needs wisdom. Every wisdom needs careful negotiation between timeless and time. Fundamentalism reads texts as if God were as simple as we are. That is unlikely to be true.
Religions, especially religions of the Book have hard texts: verses, commands, episodes, narratives, that if understood literally and applied directly would not merely offend our moral sense. They would go against our best understanding of the religion itself. There are many examples in the Hebrew Bible. There is the war of revenge against the Midianites. There is the war mandated against the seven nations in the land of Canaan. There is the book of Joshua with its wars of conquest, and the bloody revenge against the Amalekites in the book of Samuel. These strike us as barbaric and at odds with an ethic of compassion, or even with a just war doctrine of the kind that emerged in both the Jewish and Christian traditions“ (207).
My best reply to Eric is what Sacks goes on to say,
“These texts“”and there are notorious examples in the New Testament, the Qur’an and Hadith also“”require the most careful interpretation if they are not to do great harm. That is why every text-based religion develops its own traditions of interpretation. Rabbinic Judaism declared Biblicism“”accepting the authority of the written word while rejecting oral tradition, the position of the Sadducees and Karaites“”as heresy. The rabbis said: “˜One who translates a verse literally is a liar.’ The point is clear: no texts without interpretation; no interpretation without tradition; or as 2 Corinthians puts it, “˜The letter kills, but the spirit gives life’ (NIV, 2 Cor. 3: 6).
Many people who bring up these points or point out contradictions in scripture, ignore the tradition of interpretation that has built up around those words. Scripture belongs to the liturgical community from which it originated. If a person truly wants to understand these difficult scriptures, they might consider reading the chapter, “Hard Texts“ in Not in God’s Name.
Tom Holland in Dominion would say the very reason Eric is incensed by the brutality of these Hebrew Scriptures is proof of the truth and influence of Christianity on western culture. Holland says,
Assumptions that I had grown up with“”about how a society should properly be organized and the principles that it should uphold“”were not bred in classical antiquity, still less of “˜human nature’ but very distinctly of that civilization’s Christian past. So profound has been the impact of Christianity on the development of Western civilization that it has come to be hidden from view(16).
Jesus said the kingdom of God was like a mustard seed spreading until it grew to be a giant bush, where birds nested. This is exactly what happened. How could an obscure Jew in a backwater of the Roman Empire, who claimed to be god, but who was crucified, in a most vile death reserved for slaves and the rebellious, conquer the Roman empire and spread through the west, in such a way that we take its influence for granted unless its claims were true. Unless Jesus really did rise from the dead.
Another truth I have observed is how Jesus compared the kingdom of God to a mustard seed that becomes a large bush with many branches. The evidence I see is that world poverty is down. According to the UN:
The global poverty rate decreased by an average of 1.1 percentage points each year, from 37.8 percent to 11.2 percent in 2014. However, between 2014 and 2019, the pace of poverty reduction slowed to 0.6 percentage points per year, which is the slowest rate seen in the past three decades. Within the 24-year period, most of the poverty reduction was observed in East Asia and the Pacific, as well as South Asia.“
Eric questions the following words of Jesus: “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom’ (Matt 16: 28). He asked, “Show me in the Bible where it says that please. I don’t see this at all. There are various accounts of earthquakes, the sky darkening, and spirits raising from the dead when Jesus died, but nobody saw him “˜coming in his kingdom.’“
His disciples did see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom when Jesus died, harrowed hell and appeared the forty days after his resurrection. Theologians have said that Jesus was glorified when he was lifted to the cross. The cross was his throne. Again Eric is reading scripture literally, entirely out of context of church tradition and interpretation and the rest of scripture.
Eric added, “Also he never had a kingdom because he was never a king“ except Christians belief in Jesus ultimately defeated Rome and established Christendom throughout Europe and as Holland says, influenced most of the world, in ways we don’t even notice. So yes Jesus is king. Even better than that, he fills the whole world. As St. Paul writes, “And he is before all things and in him all things hold together” (Col. 1: 17).
Well, this is the best I have. Far better minds than mine have answered these questions. But Eric appealed to my evangelical upbringing, which laid terrible pressure on me as a girl, to introduce people to Jesus, which often blurred into the burden that it was our responsibility to save someone’s soul.
Well, “saving someone’s soul“ is not my job.
I can only present the good news that God became incarnate, a full human being, from birth to death. He felt everything we felt. He challenged us to care for the poor, bless our enemies, turn the other cheek. He was divine and we murdered him“”our religious system, our political system and our mob, murdered him. From the beginning we’ve chosen death. But as I said before Jesus conquered death by death. He has introduced new creation into the world. We will all be raised one day.
Brad Jersak in Sharing Hope: Pressure, Resistance, and Invitation talks about this pressure to share the gospel. He closes with “what Peter tells us, and he was pretty good at it:
“Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you“¦â€ś
Final note: did you notice that “˜demanding’ is what the asker does, not the teller. I aspire to live in such a way that others demand to know about this hope. When I get there, I’ll let you know.
So here is the hope I have.
As deep as my bones I felt my mother pushed out of the grave, past the metal coffin, past the concrete box, up through the dirt right into the Presence. Her funeral felt more like a wedding, the feast, that shows up throughout holy writ“”from the Hebrew scriptures to the New Testament. I felt the same when my father went home to be with the Lord.
The morning my brother died, I dreamed: In the kitchen, the two-hundred-year-old house, where I grew up. I saw demons jumping into the sky. Gryphons“”part lion, part eagle“”wings clacking, mechanical. Or were they the crazed, flying monkeys doing the witch’s bidding in the Wizard of Oz? Locusts buzzing like high tension lines on a damp day, but deadly loud. Their talons extended. The big barn towered over me.
I ran outside, shook my fist.
“You are dead.“
The barns and woods smacked an echo: Dead.
One circled back. Laughed.
My rottweiler vomited a bone and blood. He lay down. Stiffened. Back in the kitchen I saw a soup pot, saw blood and intestines. A black stew.
I jolted awake like someone had touched the bottoms of my feet with a cattle prod. I touched Bruce’s back. He flinched but did not come awake. I fell, and I mean fell back to sleep.
I dreamed a third time. At a barn, the trainer wanted me to work a black horse with a sculpted head and quiet eye. He was muscled and powerful. My thighs ached to cradle his heart, ribs and hide. My calves wanted to feel the stallion’s warmth. I felt a little bit wild as when a man lies between my legs. I knew I had to leave them loose because if I tightened a muscle just a bit, the horse would move one side to the other. He might even gather himself and dance in place.
But I had no boots. The first rule I learned as a kid was always ride with boots, so your feet don’t slide through the stirrups and your feet get stuck and if you fall, you could be dragged, instead of a clean, hard fall. The second rule was ride with a crash helmet.
“Your sneakers are fine,“ the trainer said.
She tossed me up on the horse.
I woke to my rottweiler lying next to my bed. I patted his side. He jumped into a sit, his eyes, liquid and soft. Cane“”dog of my grief, a dog I’d bought after my parents had died, a dog I was not good to because I worked too many hours in my job and played too hard and traveled.
After I walked him, I opened my Bible to read the following: “Yes, and I will continue to rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help given by the Spirit of Jesus Christ what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance. I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For me to live is Christ and to die is gain“ (Phil. 1: 18b -21, NIV).
I was vacuuming when the phone rang. My brother’s wife. She said, “We had a little trouble at the farm today.“ She paused. “Your brother died. Do you think you will come home?“
“Yes of course. I’ll come.“
“I came home for lunch and found him lying in the bathroom, in a nosebleed.“
“I’m so sorry.“
“He didn’t feel good last night. He thought he was having a heart attack. But we wanted to wait to see how he felt this morning.“
I don’t remember anything else I said to her. I was frantic to get Bruce home from work. This was before cell phones. I drove around town hoping I’d see him splicing cable, his hands weaving wires, along the road, but I couldn’t find him. I stopped to see Pastor Wille who said everything would be all right, who prayed with me, who put me on the church prayer chain.
When he got home, Bruce wrapped me up in his arms and held me a long time. My tears were already locked up, except for the frozen regret I felt. I’d almost called my brother the night before, just to talk, but I was watching a movie about a robot that I figured he was watching too and didn’t want to be bothered. If only I’d called, we might have spoken one last time. I might have said call the ambulance. I might have called them myself.
Once on the jet, I leaned against the window, I heard my shout, the shaken fist at those demons flapping: “Death is dead. You are dead.“ I heard the echo off the big barn and the woods.
Throughout the dreadful days of my brother’s funeral and the years following, where I was left as the surviving member of my family, that fist shaken, death is dead, rose from my bones, giving me hope. Those years following were dreadful. The fact that I am sane, at peace and not a bitter old woman is testament to the power and truth of Christianity. This is the hope that I have to share.
This death and resurrection stuff plays out over and over again in nature. Larva become a liquid mess and are reborn as butterflies. Seeds are buried in the ground and rise as plants.
A poem I wrote:
I watch the earth boil and break, bright green pushing up row upon row, an army risen to stand at attention until its cut.
Wheat shoots and soybeans push up clods of dirt, as much miracle as corpses shoving back dirt to haunt the sunlight.
Babies roll over boulders open tombs where I sit, weep, wait for the farmer to tell me what it means.
This is as good a picture of the truth of Christianity as any I can share.
Eric made the comment that it wasn’t me he hated but Christianity. He agreed that I’m not good at arguing, that maybe I’m a preacher. Yes. That’s what I’ve been trying to say. You can’t argue someone into the kingdom. Though I remember my brother and I had invited friends to an evangelism talk at one of our youth leaders’ houses. The arguments were hot, impassioned. Years later I came across a Christian book, A Way in the World by Earnest Boyer Jr., written by one of the young men we’d argued with so passionately. It wasn’t me Eric hates, but my religion. Perhaps there’s hope. He knows he is in my prayers.
Works Cited
Holland, Tom. Dominion. Basic, 2019.
Sacks, Jonathan. Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence. Schocken, 2017.
