Looking back

When things become difficult, it's always tempting to look back to the "good old days".

Sometimes, like Lot's wife, we look back in regret. We compare the genuinely good things we've lost - the relationships, the comforts, the circumstances - with what we have now. It's easy then to become bitter, or to live mentally and emotionally in the past instead of the present. Unwilling to let go of what has gone, we resist moving forwards into the future. It's as if we become rigid and immobilised, a "pillar of salt".

At other times we become nostalgic for a past that looks far better in hindsight than it really was at the time. Out in the desert and feeling hungry, the people of Israel forgot the hardships they had endured as slaves in Egypt. They began to grumble and longed for the supposedly good things they had left behind - trivial things like leeks and onions.

Regret and nostalgia are seldom helpful. They prevent us from dealing with the reality in which we now live, and keep us from having hope for the future. Neither Lot's wife nor the people of Israel benefited from their backward-looking attitude. It only left them doubting God's faithfulness.

Yet the Bible does tell us to "remember". We're told to remember what God has done and the way that he has provided for us in the past. But rather than mourning for what we have lost, we are called to be thankful for the blessings we have received.  Remembering God's goodness to us in the past is a means of reminding us to live in hope that he will continue to provide what we need in the future.

We're also told to remember the way that God has been with us through difficult times. Instead of becoming nostalgic, we can live in the reality of the present, knowing that the same God is still with us now and will continue to be with us forever. Remembering will give us the strength to endure.

Jesus, are you the one?

Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”
And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”  Luke 7:2-6 (English Standard Version)

John the Baptist
 by Leonardo da Vinci

John the Baptist had staked his whole life on obeying God's call to be the forerunner, the herald, of the Messiah. He'd never shirked speaking the truth as God revealed it to him, whether to the despised local soldiers and tax collectors, or to the respectable and respected Pharisees, or to the powerful King Herod. He'd pointed repeatedly to Jesus as the coming Messiah, and humbly acknowledged his own inferior status. Now he sat in a dark, stinking cell in Herod's prison. It was unlikely that he'd ever leave that cell alive.

He could have followed his father into the temple service, an honorable and respectable occupation, with the opportunity to marry and have a family. Instead he'd gone off into the desert, living rough with only his disciples for company. While not making any claim himself that he was the expected Elijah, sent to call the people to repentance, he'd lived with the same fierce determination that Elijah had to do God's will and turn God's people back to him. He was a prophet like the prophets of old.

John the Baptist
by Guido Reni

Not long before his arrest, he'd met Jesus by the banks of the Jordan and recognised him as the one he'd been telling people about. Jesus had come to him and asked to be baptised. It must have been an awe-inspiring experience for John. What made him so certain, at that moment, that Jesus was the messiah? Did he receive some prompt from God? (John 1:32) He certainly appeared to be in no doubt that all that he had predicted about the one who was to come was fulfilled in this man Jesus.

Yet now, in the prison cell, he seems to have had a crisis of belief. He's heard rumours and reports about what Jesus is doing, but they don't seem to encourage him. He sends his disciples to Jesus to ask him "Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?"

Does the Old Testament demean women? (Reading the Old Testament part 7)

"The Old Testament is fundamentally a blokes' book, written by men, about men, and for men. Women are seldom mentioned, and when they are, it is usually as the property, whores or victims of men. Modern women will find little encouragement in reading such a chauvinistic, misogynist text."

Or so the commonly held theory goes. And let's face it, it's not an entirely untrue assessment of the Old Testament. As far as anyone can be sure, none of the books of the Old Testament were written by women. The society described (or should we say 'societies' since the Old Testament covers a period of over a thousand years) is decidedly patriarchal. The laws given in the books of the Pentateuch sometimes seem to treat women as second class citizens. The focus is frequently on political struggles, battles, wars, and rapine. Why would any woman want to read it?

Not-so-simple questions about the Old Testament (Reading the Old Testament part 6)

Asking “who, what, when” questions can be very helpful in understanding the Old Testament. But what about the “difficult” passages – the ones you hope your unbelieving friends won’t read (but they inevitably do, and then want you to explain why you would want them to read such a barbaric, sexist, racist book.) I’m thinking of texts such as Deuteronomy 20:10-18, Numbers 5:11-31, Judges 19, etc

The usual response to such questions is to attempt to explain away the difficulties those passages pose by appealing to cultural differences, poor translation of the text and/or the overwhelming sovereignty of God. Although many commentators frustratingly gloss over the difficulties, there are lots of books on the market that valiantly tackle them.

Some explanations are helpful. Others border on being rationalisations, or seem barely more acceptable than the passages they seek to explain. Many are just as culturally bound to the author’s time as the original texts were to theirs.

I’d like to suggest a different approach, one that doesn’t attempt to squeeze the Old Testament into our own comfort zone.

First, we need to recognise that there is nothing new about finding parts of the Old Testament objectionable. The Gnostic Bishop Marcion in the second century was so appalled by the Old Testament that he produced his own version of the Bible which excluded it (along with large chunks of the New Testament.) He was condemned as a heretic for his views, but he still had an audience.

Augustine of Hippo, who lived in the 4th century, was brought up in a Christian family. But as a young adult he dismissed the Old Testament as crude and barbaric compared to the writings of people like Cicero and the Manicheans. He later became one of the greatest theologians, and came to terms with the Old Testament. So Christianity hasn’t fallen apart because of these difficult passages, despite generations of struggling with them.

Second, we need to recognise that the Bible often leaves us to draw our own conclusions about the “rightness or wrongness” of a story. The fact that something happens in the Bible without comment doesn’t mean that it is therefore approved as God’s will. It could just as well be an example of human depravity. Wisdom is required.

Third, and more importantly, we have to deal with Jesus’ attitude towards the Old Testament. Most of our ‘modern’ objections to the apparent sexism, racism etc of the Old Testament are actually based on Jesus’ own teaching about loving our enemies, and Jesus’ example of treating all people with compassion and respect for their dignity. It would be ironic if we rejected the Old Testament while using the teaching of the one who inspired its writers and who appealed to it so often.

I'm not suggesting that Jesus  openly commended the passages we find so difficult. He didn't quote them or even allude to them as far as I'm aware. He sometimes added his own teaching to the words of scripture: “You have heard it said…but I say to you…”

But nowhere did he condemn the scriptures (the Old Testament of our Bible), though he often condemned its misuse (Matthew 23:4). He said that he had not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. (Matthew 5:17) He told his disciples that the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms spoke about him (Luke 24:41). We don’t have a mandate from Jesus to dump the Old Testament.

To be honest, I don’t know what to make of this in terms of how we should read the 'difficult' texts. But it says to me that if Jesus could live with the Old Testament as it was written, not as we’d like it to be, we should also be willing to live with it, even if we can’t explain everything in it. Jesus lived with the brutality and sexism and discrimination of the world around him, not accepting it, but not running from it or destroying it. He offered the world a new way to live, then died to redeem that world. Is there perhaps a sense in which Jesus also ‘redeemed’ the Old Testament?

We are people of the New Testament. We live by Christ’s standards and understand the world through his teachings and those of his disciples. More importantly we have the Spirit of Christ within us, who strives to show us the mind of Christ. It’s easy to throw up our hands and say “this is too much, I can’t stomach this” when we come across something unpalatable in the Old Testament. (I know, I've done it often.) Perhaps where we struggle with the text we should simply bring it to him and be content to wait for understanding. Then let's go on reading.

This post is part 6 of a series on reading the Old Testament:

Reading the Old Testament part 7 - Is the Old Testament misogynistic?
Reading the Old Testament part 6 - Not-so-simple questions about the Old Testament
Reading the Old Testament part 5 - A simple set of questions to use when reading the Old Testament 
Reading the Old Testament part 4 - The Old Testament wasn't written in a day
Reading the Old Testament part 3 - Remember the Old Testament is old
Reading the Old Testament part 2 - Getting an overview
Reading the Old Testament part 1 - Know your history