searching out proper ethic principles

"As you know I am an extreme pacifist but if God asked me to do something that ran across that, I would obey God (now, if only I can differentiate God's voice from the other ones in my head) because God is God and I am not."

I'm sure you also have strong feelings on children's welfare. If God told you to horribly abuse a group of preschoolers sexually and physically, would you do it?

Of course you wouldn't -- because you recognize that such an instruction wouldn't be from God. We all feel that we know the voice of God well enough to differentiate what comes from him, and what does not.

Yet without a doubt much of this knowledge and understanding of God's voice has its roots in what our culture or particular subculture says is correct or moral. Few (healthy) people in any Western culture could kill another person without feeling some guilt, even if the act was completely justified; yet there are Christians from other cultures who would find killing in some contexts to be not only morally permissble but morally laudable.

It's precisely those cultural differences that should to some extent us cautious about developing a "biblical mindset"; the ancient Israelites had a decidedly premodern mindset, while Western society is twixt modern and premodern mindsets. We have radically different ideas on slavery, women's rights, the nature of God, and so on from what the authors of the Bible believed. While it doubtless is correct to say that those differences don't necessarily speak well of us, I think it's fair to say that a number of them do, and many of the others merely indicate differences in our social glue, rather than fault or merit in one society or the other.

So God is bigger than us. No question. His ways are higher than ours. Also agreed. But to what extent are those ways reflected in the lives of the ancient Israelites and their culture as recorded in Scripture? The ancients equated obedience to God with wealth and worldly success, but by the time Job was added to the canon, their understanding of God had reached the point where they concluded that such an equation was too facile an understanding of God.

I'm sure I make some people uncomfortable with the questions I'm asking these days, and even with the conclusions I'm starting to find, but I don't think I've strayed into any heresy. Just into uncertain gray areas, but I'm used to living there.

racial purity in ezra

I'm looking at Ezra 9 right now, and I get the strong impression that racial purity is a significant part of this issue, as Ezra saw it. He notes, quoting the Israelite leaders, "They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, and have mingled the holy race with the peoples around them" (emphasis mine).

There is a bit later on about the "detestable practices" but honestly, the theme they keep referring to is interracial marriage.

the fate of the women in ezra

While it may show that God did not abandon the divorced women to destitution, prostitution, or a synonym for slavery that ends in "-itution," there's no indication within the context of this particular book that Ezra or the others (except maybe those few clans who refused to go along with his program of ethnic cleansing) gave any consideration for the fate of the women.

I'm sure some of them did, naturally, and maybe even wept over the harsh necessity of the act, from a sense of proper charity, but the whole point of the passage is: We have intermarried with foreign women, this has angered God, and we need to drive them out.

And I note again the irony that God is strangely silent this entire book. No prophets appear and advise this course of action; the Word of the Lord never trumpets forth any guidance or advice. It's just Ezra, fasting and in mourning over the sin of his people.

I don't think God views women as more evil then men, but look at the relatively low importance they get in the Bible. They have names like Potiphar's wife, Noah's wife, and Pilate's wife; they're viewed as possessions to be given away or claimed, or in this case, sent away; and they're often held us as examples of evil, as with Jezebel, the voice of destruction in Proverbs, and for that matter many proverbs paint them poorly: "Better to live a desert by yourself than to share a roof with an ill-manner and contentious woman"; "Among a thousand men, I found one upright, but among a thousand women, I found none" and so on.

There are some great examples of strong women in the Bible -- Deborah, Ruth and Esther -- but with the exception of those last two, the details on their lives are sparse and their roles are secondary and limited to being someone's wife or mother

You know how some feminists, when there's a domestic dispute, always blame the husband? Or how some women view every man as a potential rapist, and automatically assume that we're scoping them out for sex? That's what life is like, on a daily basis, for women who live in a patriarchy. It's not just a matter of a little bit of chauvanism. It's an automatic assumption of guilt, and disproportionate punishment ... much like what Ezra did.

The account of Hagar in the book of Genesis may suggest something in the larger biblical context, that God did not abandon these women, but the book of Ezra gives the impression that the foreign women were a source of evil, and needed to be driven out before they led the men astray. Read on its own, for what it says, the book of Ezra suggests that God did not give a crap about these women, because they were foreign.

And the flip side is that the book gives the added impresson that God probably didn't give a crap about the Jewish women who had married foreign men in Babylon or elsewhere. No one is urged to put away her foreign husband or half-breed children. I say it again: Patriarchy sucks.

understanding ezra

Here is the essential conflict in discussion of how to understand Ezra correctly: It's one how to interpret scripture wisely and responsibly. Some would posit that the Quran is the Muslim "Bible"; that may be, but I would argue that we err in viewing the Bible as a Christian Quran, dictated in all its wordsby God himself.

The view of Scripture I'm coming to is one where I understand the Bible as a collection of writings of people who were feeling their way in the dark toward God. Thus we see echoed in Scripture the same struggles that we deal with ourselves as a society and a church, viz. how much to assimilate and how much to retreat from "foreign" ways. That Ezra acted in the way he did, even though the book affirms his actions, does not mean that his position is solidly rooted in God as much as it is solidily rooted in his understanding of God within his socio-cultural context.

I think the man was a misogynist and a racist, whatever virtues may rightly be attributed to him, and so I object to his action. Questioning the rightness of his action, even as I understand the reasons for doing so, leads me to a deeper inquiry into my understanding of God and the ways my experiences and culture act as a filter; it also leads me into a deeper exploration of Scripture itself.

Others have views different from mine. But it leads them on a parallel odyssey of the spirit, as they see the contrasting voices in Scripture and meditate on the same issues and conflicts, and move toward a deeper understanding of God. On the way, we run into each other, disagree (sometimes sharply) and hopefully learn from one another. I see this as a good thing, though stubborn know-it-all that I am, I probably don't come across that way.

ezra again

Still pondering the ethnic cleansing in the book of Ezra. The traditional justification for this act, among evangelicals, is that it what needed to maintain the identity of the Jewish people, and to protect the Jewish faith from pagan influences. I follow this reasoning completely, understand it, have heard it before, and used it myself as well.

A few problems with it:

• It's inhumane. It involved mass divorce, ripping husbands and wives apart, and tearing children away from their fathers because the kids weren't "pure enough." Whether the wives and children made the journey from Babylon or were local non-Jewish women, the result was the same: dishonor, shame, and a life of misery. The "extreme circumstances call for extreme measures" line is used to justify all manner of atrocities, and I'm unconvinced that more humane measures weren't possible.
• Jesus flat-out says that to divorce a spouse who has not been unfaithful is to commit adultery. Paul adds an allowance for divorce when one partner has converted and the other can't stand it, but in that case it's a mutually agreed-upon release from an unpleasant situation, not a racially driven purge.
• It's inconsistent with obvious cases like Ruth and Rahab, where pagan women were accorded places of honor in Israel and Judah's histories.
• It's also inconsistent with the scriptural principle of honoring your vow for the vow's sake, even if you realize it was a vow you were unwise to have made in the first place.

And of course, lastly, it raises the question of just how does God work, anyway? I've heard people argue that salvation became available to Gentiles only because the Jewish people of Christ's day rejected him, i.e., that salvation originally was racially based; that from the time of Moses to Jesus God worked one way, but he now works another way, as in the time of Abraham, and so on. Does God change, or is he the same?

Lastly lastly, I really hate the idea that women are the source of evil and destruction in Israel and Judah. Patriarchy sucks.

What I'm hitting on here is one of the thematic struggles of the Tanakh, whose authors sometimes had sharply differing views of how to treat Gentiles. I believe it's the Priestly writer who warns sharply about the dangers of associating with Gentiles, tells the people that they can enslave foreigners in their midst, and so on; while the Deuteronomist tells the reader to show kindness to the foreigner in their midst, for the Israelites themselves were once aliens and strangers in a foreign land, and reminds them to leave grain on the ground for the needy and the alien. Ezra says "Get rid of these foreign women"; the book of Ruth says "Let them in, so they can experience the wonders of our God and our people."

On the one hand you have the order to keep separate from the pagan nations surrounding them -- something particularly hammered home in the books written post-Exile -- yet with the other hand, you have writers like 2 Isaiah saying that all the nations will come to Israel and worship the Lord on his holy mountain.

I've heard the "keep them pure, keep them separate" argument before, but it doesn't match up with vast other parts of the Tanakh, where Israel is meant to be a blessing to the nations, where the Queen of Sheba comes to Solomon and leaves amazed at the great wisdom the Lord has given to him, where the nation is uniquely positioned to spread news of the One God throughout the ancient world.

Did the command to evangelize the world come with Christ, or was it in place thousands of years earlier?

bedtime bible stories

Let me caution parents against reading Bibles with their children if they think it's going to be all peaches and ice cream. There's sweets in there, but there's a few rocks to be found too.

Like many children's Bibles, the one we’re reading with Rachel right now streamlines the accounts of Scripture so you don’t encounter situations like reading the story of Jesus four times in a row, or reading about the history of the kingdom from David to the Exile, and then starting it all over again. And like other children's Bibles, it also makes sure kids get the officially proper understanding of the story, not quite to the point of Mary saying, "Oh, Joseph, I feel so happy that our baby will take all our sins on himself and save us from the fires of hell by dying in our place!" but it’s still got a few unnecessary whetstones to sharpen its point. (Strange we think that so necessary when the Scriptures themselves don't have that degree of polemic.)

But at least it’s (mostly) tolerable. It’s no Prayer of Jabez or Rhema Bible College children's Bible, and though it adds a few details to make the story more interesting, they at least appear to be historically accurate and provide the bonus information preachers usually provide in their sermons. I have one children's Bible that used to be my mother's, with a very definite colonialist bent. It actually says that Nimrod pleased God because he went out and conquered the superstitious peoples of the world. Um, yeah.

For Evangeline, we read the actual Bible. So far we've read Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, Esther, Daniel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts, more or less in their entirety. (We skipped the genealogies in 2 Chronicles, the law part of Exodus, and some of the more graphic stuff in Judges.)

As a result, bedtime Bible reading with Evangeline has been an education and a half by itself. We've read stuff I think many people don't read with their children, or at all. We've wrestled together with the story of Jephthah and his decision to offer his daughter as a human sacrifice to God, and concluded together that while God may indeed have appointed Jephthah to lead the Israelites in war against the Moabites, only an idiot would think that he was qualified to be a spiritual leader as well. And that led us in turn to a discussion of leadership and authority, and how God sometimes will give people authority in one area but not in another, and how we should stop and evaluate whether their leadership in a second area really is valid. (I was thinking of our president in some nebulous way, and of preachers who tell their parishioners how to vote, more specifically.)

We just started Nehemiah last Tuesday night, after finishing the book of Ezra on Monday, and I found myself wondering at the sharp differences in the writing style between Ezra/Nehemiah and the other historyish books in the Tanakh. The books from Genesis through 2 Chronicles have a very clear sense of God as a participant in history. The authors ascribe words and motivations to God for what happens, and there's a sense of wonder and awe about God that permeates, and develops through, the books. In Ezra and Nehemiah, the books read more like the sort of thing you would find in a Christian bookstore or hear during testimonials night. "The hand of God was upon us," the writer says as an explanation for why things worked out well. God is more removed in these books than elsewhere in the entire Tanakh, with the exception of the Esther, where he's not even mentioned. (Though at least that book is so well structured that you get a sense of God's involvement as the plot progresses.)

In all honesty, Ezra and Nehemiah aren't books about God’s dealings with Israel as much as they're books about having a proper nationalist spirit, and why other peoples shouldn't mess with the Jews. The one begins with the reconstruction of the Temple and ends with the exiles purging themselves of all the unclean Gentile women and half-breed children they've polluted themselves with; and the other is about the city of Jerusalem itself and the efforts to repair the damage inflicted a century previous, by Nebuchadnezzar. It's been a while since I read Nehemiah, but if memory serves, it also ends with some sort of purging. The chapter we read Friday night has Nehemiah flipping out over 1 percent interest being charged against fellow Jews on loans.

Anyway, Evangeline is asking all the questions you'd expect her to, the questions that simultaneously make you want to cheer her on because it shows she's thinking, and tell her to stop being so difficult because they show you that you haven't been thinking enough.

For instance: Ezra is beside himself with grief that the exiles have married non-Jewish women and actually had children with them, and he convinces the people that in order to be right with God, they have to divorce all these foreign wives and send away both them and their children. That's horrible, and I found myself cheered immensely when I read that there were two clans that refused to comply.

Evangeline, naturally enough, wanted to know why they did this. So I gave the traditional explanation that the Jewish people were meant to be a unique people, possessed not only of the knowledge of the One God but of a special relationship with him that required keeping themselves separate from the pagan peoples around them. Why? Well, because if they married people with other religious beliefs, they might be led to worship other gods, their children might, or the worship of the Lord could be mixed up with the worship of other gods.

"Solomon did that," Evangeline said.

"True, but look at how it worked out for him," I said, thinking of Solomon’s idolatry.

"Yeah, but he did it to keep peace."

And from there she made the leap to interfaith marriage today, wondering what was wrong with it if both people believed in God.

What she didn't ask, and to be honest, I was grateful for it, was why if Ezra did the wrong thing, the book doesn't make it sound like he did. I mean, let’s be honest: 21st-century Christian sensibilities aside, the point of the book is that Ezra did do the right thing by demanding that everyone get rid of their non-Jewish family members. There's no voice from heaven saying "Straight up!," and Christians like to use that as silence as evidence of God’s disapproval (and by extension, of his support for our strong pro-marriage stands), but the implication of the book is that this was the appropriate response.

Tuesday night she asked why it was such a big deal to repair the Temple, since we can worship God anywhere. Again, I gave her the traditional explanations about God's Name inhabiting the Temple, and Jesus' death changing everything, but at the same time, I was aware of the deficiencies of the explanation. The Israelites worshiped God at any number of shrines before Solomon built the Temple, and he was fine with that then; and he’s fine with it now, and I was starkly aware of how many inconsistent doctrines of God and dispensationalist thinking I've picked up over the years.

To be honest, I deserve this. I keep telling my children that wisdom lies in the questions you ask, and not in the answers you give, and I encourage them to ask tough questions in church. So it's only fair that they hold my feet to the fire too.