I stand before a group of God created people, with the
command to lead an army to utterly destroy those people, men, women, and
children. Everything in me screams out
for the justice of God and the protection of the innocent, and yet through the
messengers of God, the very anointed ones which we follow, I am told to kill,
and to kill mercilessly. Should I doubt
the anointed ones? Should I go
rogue? Should I begin an insurrection
amongst my own people in order to change the course of history? Or should I do as my leaders have commanded? I mean, it is “our” promised land, the land
which God had sworn to our fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Yet, there are women and children in that
land, unsuspecting women and children who will die by my sword… if I obey. How do I know that God has spoken these
things?
One of the most troubling sections of scripture to most
believers is the conquest of the Holy Land by Israel. I think we tend to approach the text, placing
ourselves in it, and have emotions elicited that follow the path of the
paragraph above. It is impossible to
simply spiritualize the hostile takeover and still respect the scriptures
themselves. The Hebrew texts present
this take over as historical text, and you would be hard pressed to read it as allegory. Many well-meaning pastors have tried to turn
this historical text into a mere life lesson about overcoming hardships, or
claiming God’s promises. In doing this
the pastor, knowingly or not, is attempting to make a beeline past the history
itself in hopes that nobody will notice.
The people of Canaan simply become ‘obstacles in our lives’ the land
simply becomes ‘our idealized Christian existence’ and the carnage is quickly
sterilized into mere addictions and habits that have fallen by the
wayside. We do this sort of thing with
the cross as well, but that is another topic altogether. The question is how do we deal with the
history itself? I suppose we could ignore
it in favor of platitudes about victory.
We could do the opposite and celebrate it and find some sort of twisted
pleasure in God’s vengeance. We could
write it off as God becoming progressively nicer, I mean the slaughter of
Canaanites is certainly not as drastic as the flood account so God must be
getting gradually nicer… right? We could,
in the same vein as Brian McLaren, view it as the people of God gradually
becoming more aware of the mercy of God, and choose to see this hostile
takeover as progress from seeing the flood as an act of God, but not yet seeing
the fully realized mercy and inclusion we find in Christ. There are a lot of ways to look at. The spiritualized way is to ignore the
history. The ‘joy in the vengeance of
God’ is a way to affirm the history, while ignoring all the other attributes of
God which we cherish. The ‘progressive
understanding of God’ method acknowledges the history but denies God’s action in
or authorization of it. Where is a good
place to stand?
I tend to think that we come to this section of scripture
with some pretty faulty presumptions.
First we presume that these people of Canaan were relatively innocent,
believing they were ‘sort of’ bad, but the women and children surely must have
been innocent. We give the benefit of
the doubt, but on what is that founded?
Recall in the whole account of Sodom and Gomorrah, “yea if I find just 5
righteous men I will spare the city.” To
deny God’s patience is a mistake. What
was so horrific about these people that they needed wiped out? Or was it merely the manifest destiny of
Israel and these Canaanites were innocent by-standers?
I think we ought to at least consider the possibility that
the people of Canaan were violently opposed to God, violently opposed to mercy,
and violently opposed to life and creation, and that maybe, just maybe, they
were getting the just rewards of their actions.
Recall that God waited until their ‘iniquity was fulfilled’ before
sending in the troops so to speak. We
are back to Genesis “If I find 5 good men, I will spare the city.” The question I ask is what ought to be done
with a people who heat up bronze statues till they glow, and then place their
infants in the hands of that statue in the belief that they could please their
gods? Moreover to consider that the
reason they were trying to please their gods was so that they would have better
weather and be able to grow more crops for themselves? Ought a nation, or religion like that be
allowed to continue? Would we not cry out for the justice of God against such a
people? Yet now we read of God carrying
out his justice against such a people and we bristle at the thought that God
would order the death of anyone. Don’t
leave this completely in the Old Testament either, lest you stumble across Ananias
and Saphira in Acts.
I am not about to say that I am comfortable with the
conquest of Canaan, or that I have some warm fuzzy feeling about it, or that I have
reconciled the carnage in my mind. I am
not about to say that this portion of scripture fits neatly into my
understanding of God, and ultimately of the grace of Christ toward the
world. It doesn’t fit neatly at
all. At the same time few people cried “injustice!”
when storm troopers offed Nazis who saw it a duty to their god to mercilessly
kill infant Jews and other minorities.
In fact if anything it seemed an injustice that many survived.
It’s good that we are troubled by death and conquest. It is good that we are not comfortable with
the conquest of Canaan, I don’t think God would want us comfortable with
it. At the same time, we ought to look
more objectively at the people conquered, and be willing to see that there was
a lot more justice in the whole thing than we tend to be willing to see. Moreover as we look at the failing of Israel
to fully carry out these gruesome commands of God, we see the very injustice of
the Canaanite people infecting Israel themselves as they begin to make the same
hideous offerings once made only by the people of the land.
I’m optimistic. I
think when Christ came, announced His kingdom, lived died and rose for the
world, that things have gotten better. I
believe things will continue to get better, at least in regards to Canaanite-like
death worship.
As we approach the conquest portion of scripture, at the
very least, let us not minimize the culture of death which Israel was called to
eradicate. It is also critically
important for us to see that post- life, death and resurrection of Christ for
the sin of the world, there is no place whatsoever for militant conquest of a
people. The conquest was finished on the
cross. Nonetheless we ought to be a bit
more objective regarding the conquest narrative of the Old Testament before we
raise our fist at God and cry out ‘that’s not fair! My god wouldn’t do that!”