Should
the Bible Be Censored?
1st
Kings 18:36-40 Psalm
137:7-9 Psalm
139: 19-24 Matthew
5:17-20
According to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, the collect for
the second Sunday in Advent (next week) informs us that concerning the
“Holy Scriptures” we are to “hear them, read, mark, learn, and
inwardly digest them.”
Digest the scriptures? Throughout
my ministry many people have told me the bible gives them indigestion.
They maintain that much of the bible is unpalatable.
What they find unpalatable, indigestible, is the bloodshed and
the carnage. But it isn’t
only the bloodshed and the carnage; it’s also the apparent attitude
lying behind the bloodshed. Not
only does this person disembowel that person; the biblical figures do it
with such enthusiasm and even appear to relish doing it.
When my sisters and I were very young my mother used to read us
instalments of the Cinderella story.
One evening my sisters broke into tears as they learned of the
nastiness of Cinderella’s stepmother.
If the Cinderella story upsets children, should we allow them,
never mind encourage them, to read bible stories?
The all-time “wretched verse” that upsets so very many people
is that verse in Psalm 137 which is directed against
Israel
’s enemies: “Happy shall
he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock.”
Are we dealing here merely with the barbarism (so-called) of
primitive people, or with the conscienceless savagery of the deranged?
In fact we are dealing with neither.
Our Israelite foreparents in faith were not deranged.
Neither were they simply spewing barbarism.
I:
--
Nonetheless, many people remain perplexed, not to say put off.
Take the book of Psalms, for instance.
The psalms were the hymnbook or prayer book of our Israelite
ancestors. The psalms have
always been the prayerbook of Christians.
The psalms are matchless. “The
Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…surely goodness and mercy shall
follow me all the days of my life.”
“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be
afraid?” “Make a joyful
noise to the Lord, all the lands. Serve
the Lord with gladness. Come
into his presence with singing.”
And then there is what many people regard as the under side.
“The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance; he will
bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked.”
“Do not I hate them that hate thee, O Lord?
And do not I loathe them that rise up against thee?
I hate them with perfect hatred.
I count them my enemies.” And
then the “cruncher” which I have already quoted:
“Happy shall he be who takes your little ones (i.e., of the
Edomites) and dashes them against the rock.”
C.S. Lewis speaks of these latter verses as “the refinement of
malice”; they express, he says, a hatred which is “festering,
gloating, undisguised.” I
have long admired Lewis and usually agree with him, but not this time.
I do not think that the verses I have quoted are a refinement of
malice; I do not think they embody a festering, gloating, undisguised
hatred. Here Lewis is wrong.
You see, the psalmist who wrote, “I hate them with perfect
hatred”, also wrote in the next line, “Search me, O God, and know my
heart. Try me, and know my
thoughts. And see if there
be any wicked way in me.…” Whatever
he meant by the so-called black verse he didn’t mean what we modern
westerners accuse him of meaning.
Moreover, the bible is perfectly clear that we are not to be
hateful toward enemies. The
book of Leviticus states unambiguously, “You shall not hate your
brother in your heart, but you shall reason with your neighbour, lest
you sin because of him. You
shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the sons of your own
people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself.
I AM THE LORD”. Animosity
toward one’s fellows isn’t even permitted in
Israel
, let alone encouraged, let alone divinely sanctioned.
The book of Exodus informs us, “If you meet your enemy’s ox
or his ass going astray, you shall bring it back to him.
If you see the ass of one who hates you lying under its burden,
you shall refrain from leaving him with it; you shall help him to lift
it up.” Even the person
who hates me I must help; I must never return hatred for hatred.
Let me say right here that I am upset when I hear people assuming
that the newer testament is new inasmuch as it is sweet and condemns
nastiness, while the older testament is old inasmuch as it is bitter and
condones nastiness. Nothing
could be farther from the truth. For
this reason I try to refrain from speaking of the “old” testament.
In modern English “old” suggests antiquated or obsolete.
That collection of books, Genesis through Malachi, is neither
antiquated nor obsolete. Let’s
think instead of the one witness of scripture consisting of an older
part and a newer part. The
older testament simply does not permit us to visit wanton cruelty upon
someone we don’t like, even when we know that that person intends to
harm us.
Think of the book of Proverbs.
“If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he is
thirsty, give him water to drink….”
We must be kind even toward those who are personal enemies.
“Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart
be glad when he stumbles – lest the Lord see it and be
displeased….” Plainly
there is to be no gloating over the misfortune of one’s enemies, no
elation that someone we don’t like (because he doesn’t like us)
finally “got it in the teeth”; no pleasure that someone who has made
his bed will now have to lie in it.
Glee that someone at last got his comeuppance may be humanly
understandable; nevertheless, the older testament insists that such glee
is sin. As Job searches his
own heart he insists that he has not rejoiced at the ruin of an enemy.
“Not so fast”, someone objects; “look at the prophet
Jeremiah. Doesn’t Jeremiah
pray that God will destroy his persecutors twice over?”
Yes he does. But what
does Jeremiah mean by this in view of the fact that he prefaces his
prayer with these words: “I
have not pressed thee (i.e., God) to send evil, nor have I desired the
day of disaster, thou knowest”?
We must be sure to note that in the older testament vengeance is
forbidden the people of God. God
everywhere forbids his people to exact revenge. “Vengeance
is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”
The text doesn’t mean that we can forget about seeking revenge
because God will do it for us. It
means rather that we are not to seek revenge inasmuch as we are never
objective and will always turn tit-for-tat into a vendetta which worsens
every day. It means that
what is to befall someone who wounds us is to be left in God’s hands.
Not that God will exact revenge on our behalf and therefore we
can leave the matter of retaliation with him; rather, we leave the
matter with him so that nasty retaliation won’t occur at all.
What about King David? As
a military commander representing his nation David behaved with the
undeflectable resolve that General Eisenhower did on D-Day.
But no one has ever suggested that Eisenhower’s military
prowess on behalf of the allied nations betokened personal cruelty.
When faced with personal enemies King David acted with uncommon
generosity. Saul tried to
kill David repeatedly. Twice
David had opportunity to rid himself of this threat on his life; he
spared Saul on both occasions. Absalom,
David’s son, tried to kill his father, even going so far as recruiting
a gang of cutthroats to help him. David
took no action at all against Absalom, and in fact was heartbroken when
Absalom suffered a fatal mishap. Yes,
David behaved unconscionably with respect to Bathsheba and her husband.
David also knew he was wrong in this; so far from pretending that
God sanctioned it, he knew he was judged for it. (And his life
thereafter fell apart on account of it.)
Then what do the “black verses” of the older testament mean?
What appear to be dreadful threats and curses are not directed
towards one’s enemies. What
appear to be threats and curses in fact are prayers.
Prayers prayed fervently to God.
Prayers of trust in God. Prayers
of confidence that God will act speedily.
They are prayers that God will vindicate his own name.
The older testament insists that vindictiveness is sin; at the
same time it cries out to God to vindicate his name, his truth, his
people.
Vindictiveness
is nasty retaliation rooted in a mean spirit.
Vindication is clearing
someone’s name of the slander which surrounds it.
Vindictiveness is a mean-spirited desire for revenge. Vindication
is public recognition that a good name has been spoken of falsely.
In the older testament what appears to us to be nasty
vindictiveness is in fact fervent prayer that God will vindicate
himself, his truth, his people.
What would you do if your child were expelled from school for
thieving when you knew that your child had not stolen?
You would stop at nothing to have your child’s name cleared.
It’s not that you personally dislike the school principal or
board of education director; there is no personal vindictiveness here.
You simply want your child vindicated; you want your child’s
name cleared. And if you
were vehement in pursuing this, really vehement, no one would fault you
for it.
For years my wife was a primary school teacher.
What would I do if parents circulated word that they didn’t
want their children in my wife’s grade one class because she was
promiscuous and they thought they shouldn’t entrust their youngsters
to such a person? What would
I do? I’d do whatever it
took to clear my wife’s name and restore public confidence in her
integrity and public trust in her suitability as a teacher.
And if I appeared vehement in doing this?
Would anyone expect me to appear placid in the face of such
slander?
The black passages, so-called, in the older testament are the
cries of God’s people pleading with God to rout evil; to rout evil so
thoroughly that no doubt will remain that it has been routed.
It’s not that the psalmist doesn’t like children or takes
fiendish pleasure in seeing them thrown on rocks.
The psalmist knows that vindictiveness is sin.
The psalmist, rather, is crying to God to vindicate himself as
the God who resists evil and supports those victimized by it.
Right now, say the psalmist and other sensitive people from the
older testament, God’s truth is falsified; God’s way is mocked;
God’s people are set upon; God’s name is dragged through the mud.
In other words, evil seems to triumph; evil gloats; evil sneers;
evil profits from evil and continues to work more evil.
Won’t God do something to clear his name and demonstrate his
truth and protect his people? Then
evil must be routed; every vestige of it.
Each Sunday at worship (if not every day) we pray, “Thy kingdom
come.” Do we mean it?
If we genuinely want the
kingdom
of
God
to come fully, then we want the kingdom of evil to go utterly.
“Kingdom of God come fully” means “kingdom of evil go
utterly.” But this is
highly abstract. The Hebrew
mind is never abstract. The
Hebrew mind is always concrete. Where
we say, “May the kingdom of evil go”, the Israelite says, “May the
cocaine-dealer drop dead. Happy
is the society whose cocaine-dealers drop dead.”
You don’t have any personal vindictiveness toward
cocaine-dealers; you don’t even know any.
But you do want vindication of the rule of law; you do want a
just society; you do want callous exploitation eliminated; you do want
defenceless people protected.
When I pray, “Thy kingdom come”, I am asking God to deal with
the wicked man who gets rich by fleecing the helpless, schizophrenic
people who frequently come to see me.
I am asking God to deal so thoroughly with this man that he will
never try to fleece defenceless people again.
This is precisely what the psalmist is doing in Psalm 139 when he
cries to God, “Your enemies are my enemies; I hate those who hate you.
I hate them with perfect hatred.”
When Jeremiah prays that God will destroy his persecutors twice
over, Jeremiah is not vindictive. He
wants only that God will act so thoroughly, so unmistakably, that the
whole world will know that God opposes persecution, God vindicates those
who are persecuted, and God vindicates himself as the saviour of the
victimized.
When next you read what appears to reflect a nasty spirit, read
again with new understanding.
II:
--
What about the death penalty, especially the death penalty for moral
offences? Should this strand
of the bible be censored? I
do not defend the death penalty, and have published an article opposing
the death penalty.
Let me set you straight on one thing:
Canada
has not abolished the death penalty.
Canada
has abolished the death penalty for first degree murder.
Canada
has retained the death penalty for treason.
Did you know that?
Canada
has said two things: murder shouldn’t be punishable by death, treason
should. Why
Canada
has made this distinction I shan’t discuss this morning.
My only point is that we shouldn’t consider
Israel
of old barbaric for classifying some offences as capital when we
civilised creatures of modernity continue to do as much ourselves.
Before we fancy ourselves wonderfully enlightened compared to
ancient Hebrews let me say something in passing.
When the criminal had to be punished in ancient
Israel
, it was decreed that he could not be punished in any way that degraded
him. Right now the penalty
for first degree murder, in
Canada
, is twenty-five years in prison, no parole; twenty-five years in jail,
no hope of early release. Is
this degrading or not? Have
we made any advance on our Israelite forebears?
In ancient
Israel
property offences were not punishable by death.
No property crime was deemed significant enough to entail
execution. But violation of
family life was. Adultery,
for instance. In
Canada
, adultery isn’t punishable at all, not even by a fine.
Doesn’t that tell you what we think of family life?
But keep your hands off my car.
My car is thirteen years old and has a market value of about $75.
If you steal it, you are going to jail.
And if you seduce my wife? No
penalty at all. Tell me,
which is a greater wound to me: theft of my car or alienation of my
wife? What warps children
more: loss of their dad’s vehicle or loss of their mother?
Question: Are
property offences exceedingly serious?
Canada
says yes,
Israel
said no. Are violations of
family life exceedingly serious?
Canada
says no,
Israel
said yes. Is car theft more
destructive humanly than adultery?
Canada
says yes,
Israel
said no. What do you think?
Let me repeat: I am not defending the death penalty.
But before we snicker at the ancient people of God because they
exercised the death penalty here or there, we must understand that we
differ from our ancestors only in what we deem valuable.
III:
--
Should the bible be censored? What
about the incidents involving extermination, like Elijah’s slaughter
of the Baal prophets? You
know the story. Elijah, the
prophet of God, confronts the prophets of Baal.
Baal was a fertility deity. Devotees
of the fertility deity worshipped any and all reproductive forces.
The temples of Baal worship featured religious prostitution, male
as well as female. You came
to the
church
of
Baal
and worshiped the fertility deity by joining yourself to
church-sponsored prostitutes of both genders.
The Israelite people assumed they could worship both God and
Baal. They didn’t want to
give up God, the living God, since he had delivered them from slavery.
But why not combine God and Baal?
Why not have one’s cake and eat it too?
Worship of God, worship of Baal, one-stop shopping, best of both
worlds. Let’s have an
inclusive church. Nobody
excluded. God plus Baal.
Holy Communion plus hookers.
Truth plus superstition. Gospel
plus greed. Why not have it
all?
It still happens. While
Jesus says we can’t be the servant of God and the servant of mammon,
many preachers tell us we can. The
banking scandals involving the
Vatican
can still be smelled around the world.
In the 1930s when Frankie Costello was the biggest mafia gangster
in
New York City
he sat, by invitation, on the Advisory Board of The Salvation Army.
A prominent Canadian family has given millions to facilitate the
worship of the God of Israel, when this money was made ruthlessly,
illegally, even murderously throughout the prohibition era.
During the French Revolution the church was disestablished in
France
. Napoleon found he
couldn’t control the masses. He
told church authorities he would re-establish the church if they
promised to keep the masses docile and subject to his tyranny.
Church authorities did just that.
Hermann Goering, head of
Germany
’s Air Force in World War II and a Nazi party member (after the war he
took the little white pill smuggled in to him rather than face
execution) was married in a Lutheran church whose communion table was
draped with the Swastika.
Is God honoured by all this?
Elijah said no. Elijah
insisted that
Israel
desperately needed radical renewal of faith.
Elijah knew as well that radical renewal of faith entailed a
radical break with Baal.
Let it never be said of me that I thirst for violence.
But may it always be said of me that I and Elijah are one with
respect to this: the church desperately needs radical renewal of faith;
and there can be radical renewal of faith only as there is a radical
break with Baal.
Should the bible be censored?
You decide. For as
long as I live I shall cherish what I have said today about the
so-called sub-Christian passages in it.
In addition, I shall remember that Jesus my Lord was raised on
the psalms – all of them – and died quoting them. I
shall remember that Jesus maintained that his advent, his coming, meant
not that the older testament had been abolished but that it had been
fulfilled. Fulfilled, it
remains the Word of God written.
And therefore I deem the Prayerbook Collect for Advent to be
correct: concerning the Holy Scriptures we must “hear them, read,
mark, learn and inwardly digest
them.”
Victor
Shepherd
Advent I
30th November 2008
Church of St.Bride, Anglican,
Mississauga
