Wrath, Vengeance, and Smiting - Oh, My!

During my Easter hike this year, I wandered into the Old Testament prophets and was struck by the amount of anger, vengeance and violent feeling that was present in the Bible, especially in those sections.  It got me thinking about my recent post correlating different sections of the Bible to different phases of human existence.  So where do the "Lord, smite my enemies" sections fit?  Where do the "God is pissed at you for all your evildoing and he will wipe you from the earth" fit?  Where does this angry, vengeful God fit?  We like to pretend that sort of stuff isn't there in the Bible, that the folks whose spirituality finds its expression in wrath are fundamentally de facto wrong and misguided.  But it is there.  So, why?

God's anger is supposed to be righteous anger.  So, if something happens that seems to represent God's anger, some natural cataclysm or a defeat in battle, we then believe we can deem that event righteous.  We attack those we see as our enemies and if we are victorious, we claim that our cause was righteous, thereby justifying our own violence and anger.  Then we point to these many, many Biblical passages to further support our claims.

Perhaps all that bile is not there as a justification for anger and hatred and vengefulness.  The Bible is still brought to us through human instruments.  Perhaps those angry, vengeful passages are there simply to acknowledge the presence of such feelings in the fabric of human life.  To hold a mirror up.  When we see God that way, maybe we're trying to see him too much in our image.

Of course, that explanation flies in the face of those who claim the Bible is the inspired word of God, that the human instruments who recorded it didn't impact, filter or obstruct the divine messages it contained.  I don't take that view.

Like it or not, the Bible was written, compiled and translated by humans.  That's a lot of layers of flawed humanity between us and the divine.

Most of those passages are humans speaking on behalf of God, too.  The prophets are human beings telling others what God said.  The Psalms are human beings writing songs and poems to call upon God or thank God or comment on what they see as God's actions.  All of these passages read more like angry, vengeful, bitter humans pouring their pain into their own visions of God.

I can understand righteous anger, the anger I feel when I see what I believe is wrongdoing.  The problem is when humanity takes righteous anger as our due, it doesn't work.  Anti-abortion advocates believe their anger is righteous.  The religious zealots behind the World Trade Center attacks believed their violence was righteous.  Nearly every army who has ever fought a war and won has claimed God was on their side.  We humans just can't get it right.

Does this mean I've made God into some sort of wishy-washy warm-fuzzy universal energy?  Do I discount the true notion that God might get angry or vengeful?  No.  But I think we human beings have to be awfully careful not to assume we know what makes God angry, not to try to wreak vengeance on God's behalf, and not to believe that we ourselves have the right to engage in the kind of vengeful, righteous anger that would make us equal to God.  We are not God.  We can't see into another person's heart.

Genesis to Revelation - the Human Life Cycle.

Reviewing all these seminal stories from Genesis, I started wondering if Genesis wasn't really just a description of the stages of  human development.  Creation - from formless cells into a human being.  Finding companionship.  The development of language.  Basic needs and obedience.  The development of morality (a knowledge of good and evil).  Sibling rivalry.  Standing up to authority and declaring your independence.  Leaving home and starting your own tribe.  There is at least one section of the Bible that speaks  to every one of these stages of human existence.

It gets me wondering.  What are the Biblical stories that speak to the journey of middle age, old age, and facing death?  I imagine we first have to understand the developmental tasks of middle age and old age.  To me, the task of middle age is one of letting go of the past, making peace with my choices and accepting the role I have to play in the great world, a role that includes settling down and providing guidance and support to others.

In some ways, middle age seems to correspond most to the New Testament.  God taking on human limitations.  Jesus accepting the role that has been given to him, in spite of the sacrifices.  Mankind recognizing its failures and limitations, and God recognizing that as well, recognizing that we can never be perfect.  Then the church comes into its own and begins to act in a wider way in the world, faced with the cold realities of sacrifice, opposition and inner conflict, all for the sake of a greater long term vision.  In middle age, we have to have that view, that awareness of a greater vision, and the need to make sacrifices for it becomes paramount.

It ends with this wild, fantastical, allegorical, slightly incomprehensible, other-wordly vision of Revelations.  Maybe that's how life ends, too.  With revelations.

Revisiting Biblical stories you think you know: Cain and Abel

Cain and Abel is another one of those foundational stories of Genesis, the root of the phrase "Am I my brother's keeper?" and the archetypal tale of sibling rivalry, where God is in the role of the parent.  It goes like this:

Abel kept flocks and Cain worked the soil.  Cain brought God an offering from the fruits of the soil, and Abel brought God an offering of fat portions from the firstborn of his flock.  God looked with favor on Abel's offering, but not on Cain's.  So Cain was angry.  God says "Why are you angry?  Why is your face downcast?  If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?  But if you do not do what is right, evil is crouching at your door; it desires to have you but you must master it."

Then Cain takes his brother out into the field and kills him.  When God asks where his brother is, Cain says "I don't know.  Am I my brother's keeper?"  God curses him and says "You will be a restless wanderer upon the earth."  Cain is afraid he will be killed by whoever finds him, so God protects him with a mark.

This story is, in its way, as problematic as any.  After all, Cain does his level best.  He works the soil.  So he brings the fruits of his labors, just like his brother does.  And God turns his nose up at it.  (God, in this story, is obviously not a vegetarian.)  Then, when Cain's feelings are hurt by this, God says, basically, "Get over it."

It's always bothered me that God turns his nose up at Cain's offering.  Why does he do this?  It seems so unfair.  Perhaps that's the point.  There will be times when we will ask, "God, why did you let this happen?  This seems so unfair."  And those are the times when evil crouches at the door and we must master it.

I find myself coming back again and again not to the phrase "Am I my brother's keeper?" or the sibling rivalry in this story but to that phrase about evil crouching at the door.  Some translations say "sin" instead of "evil."  I think "evil" as a word casts a wider net and gives that phrase more resonance.  It's not just the evil that we ourselves may do.  It's the evil that humanity may do.  Evil is always crouching at our door and we "must master it."  What does it mean to master the evil in our world?

Obedience seems to be an important biblical value, at least in the Old Testament.  Case in point, the story of Adam and Eve.  Likewise, Abraham and Isaac (a story I'll write more about in a later post).  And yet, time and again in our lives, we see that to act in a moral way, to master evil, we sometimes must demonstrate disobedience.  Nazi Germany is one powerful example of this.  The Vietnam War is another.  The Civil Rights Movement.  Women's Suffrage.  Over and over again, we learn that sometimes we must disobey a figure in authority because we believe their commands to be morally wrong.  It is not acceptable to claim that we were "just obeying orders."  We are morally aware creatures, and therefore we bear the onus of moral responsibility.  

Of course, there are many disagreements about what is right or wrong in given circumstances.  That's the price of the more complex world that comes with moral awareness, with the knowledge of good and evil.  Evil crouches at our door and we must master it.  We must be able to recognize it and overcome it.  Not a simple task.

I sometimes think "mastering evil" means something more than just stopping it, preventing it.  Mastering evil may also mean finding hope, strength, faith and belief in good even when we are faced with the presence of an evil that has occured, that could not be prevented.  This understanding of the phrase occurred to me as I struggled with the murder of children in Newtown, Connecticut, and I asked "Why?"  We are surrounded by such examples of evil in our world.  Some of them are too great for any one individual to overcome.  How do we make our peace with that? Perhaps mastering evil means believing in the power of good in such situations, believing that striving for good is still a worthy goal.

Evil crouches at your door.  You must master it.