Today’s Scripture Reading (May 17, 2018): Genesis 6
The British, and anonymous, street artist
Banksy wrote that “the greatest crimes in the world are not committed
by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules. It's people who
follow orders that drop bombs and massacre villages.” While the artist might be
overstating the facts, it is true that obedience is not always a good thing.
Some orders should never be obeyed. But
the struggle is that we do not always know which orders are problematic. Those
who follow orders do not always have all of the necessary information available
to them to make the proper judgment call. For instance, was the bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki an example of an order that should not have been followed? More than seventy years after
the event, and with much more information than the bomber crews had at the
time, we still argue over that question. But the reality continues to be that
the only country on the planet that has actually
used Nuclear weapons on a civilian population is
the United States, a fact that bothers the conscience of many people.
Knowing what is ethical when following the orders of
a flesh and blood leader is hard, but when it is the orders of God, it is both
harder and easier. We can attack the easier first. God is omniscient. He knows
all of the possible eventual outcomes. And on top of that, he is good. What he desires is, well, godly. But the problem
is that we do not see him clearly. God is separated from us, and we see him darkly, often inferring what God wants through the
lens of our own desires and actions, and
the circumstances in which we find ourselves. For some, “God said it” is
enough. But I struggle with that thought. I am aware of how I can twist his
words so that what I want is what he wants. I need to wrestle with the word of
God, to know how he works on this earth. And in this wrestling, I need to try hard to remove myself from the equation. I
try to not understand the situation with my understanding, but rather with his.
All of this struggle brings us to
the Great Flood. I have always been bothered by the way that the
Great Flood is described in the Bible.
This God who sent his Son to die on a cross for the sins of man is described as being frustrated and regretting
the act of creation in the first place. And so he sets out to destroy all life,
man, and animal, on the planet. The story
works well as an explanation of the reality of a Great Flood, and we know that
there was a massive flood, if not a global one. But the story fails as a
description of God. So the question that I want to ask is this; in his
obedience, is it possible that Noah got it wrong? The answer is that I think it
is possible, but I can’t be sure. And the evidence is found in certain other stories
of the Bible.
The first story is this one. God tells Noah to build
an Ark. His response is to build one, and then he saves his family and a
sampling of the animals, and the rest of
creation dies. Story two happens a little later in Genesis (Genesis 18 and 19).
Abraham meets with three visitors. In the meeting,
he learns of God’s decision to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding
cities because of their sin. Abraham’s response is to plead for the cities with
the familiar “if there are fifty righteous, forty righteous … ten righteous,
will you spare the city” argument. Abraham wrestles a bit with God. God agrees,
but there are not even ten righteous in the cities. The result is that the
cites, with all of their animals, are destroyed. The third story I think sets
the example for us. This story is found
in Exodus 32. The people rebel against God by creating a Golden Calf. Once
again the anger of God burns against the
people and he is getting ready to destroy the children of Israel and start over
again with Moses. But Moses pleads with God. “Oh,
what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of
gold. But now, please forgive their sin—but if not,
then blot me out of the book you have written” (Exodus 32:31-32). Moses stands
in the midst of the people and asks God for forgiveness. He is unwilling to be
the one who escapes from God’s judgment. Instead, even though he had nothing to
do with the building of the Golden Calf, Moses stands in the midst of the people
and cries out for God’s mercy. Moses’s response reminds me of words that were
written by the prophet Joel centuries later. “Let the priests, who minister
before the Lord, weep between the
portico and the altar. Let them say, “Spare your people, Lord. Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn, a byword among
the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God’” (Joel
2:17)? I believe that we are called to stand between the porch where the people
live and the altar, the dwelling place of God, and to plead on their behalf –
even if it is not our sin. Moses did what neither Noah nor Abraham were willing
to do. The result of Moses’s actions is
that the people of Israel were spared, with all of their animals.”
The fourth story is that of Jonah, yes, of Jonah and
the Whale. God asks Jonah to intercede on behalf of the evil people of Nineveh.
Jonah refuses and then relents. He goes
to Nineveh, and God saves Nineveh, but
Jonah isn’t happy. Instead, he pouts. Listen to the closing words of the Jonah
story. “Should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which
there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many
animals” (Jonah 4:11)?
There is no question that Noah followed the
instructions of God. But it also seems to me that sometimes that is not enough.
God wants us to wrestle with him over things, to be a Moses in the places that
we live because the fate of people and animals hang in the balance.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Genesis 7
No comments:
Post a Comment