But what about children and upstanding members of the community? Once He had created a beautiful world teeming with flora and fauna, He made mankind in His image to dwell in His creation. For that moment, creation was as it should be. God dwelled with man, and there was no such thing as death and decay. When Adam and Eve rebelled, the entire world was shaken. They were separated from God, away from His perfection. Sin exploded into the world. Even now, the earth and the people who live upon it are still subject to the death, decay, and corruption of sin.
God allowed them to choose, and they chose poorly. In John 9 , Jesus and his disciples encountered a man who had been blind from birth. However, because of it, Jesus was able to work a miracle and heal him, showing those around him the power and love of God. In Psalm , for example, which is a creation poem praising God for all of these different things happening in the different tiers of the cosmos. There's this part in the middle of the poem where it says, "Praise God for His works.
And then it says, "The ships of humans that go on the sea" but humans made those ships. For the poet, that would be a proximate or immediate cause. So in the same way, even though humans ruin the land with their violence, God is the ultimate one who is either going to allow it to go on or allow creation to collapse in on itself.
But ultimately, it's God allows it. It's as much direct as it is passive. And that's why I just don't think active or passive are terms that help us understand these narratives.
Tim: I think at core, if we're letting Genesis 1 through 11 set the melody for the rest of the Hebrew Bible, it's that God's posture in the story is to generously create a safe, ordered, stable place, the dry land, and then within the dry land, a sacred hub of space in the middle of it all that's the source of life flowing out from the river, and so on going out to it. So the moment that humans do something to threaten sacred space or threaten stability, God will allow the cosmos to collapse back in on itself.
And that's what's happening with the flood. But that's their view of earthquakes too. That's an earthquake is God no longer sustaining the pillars of the earth and allowing the pillars of the earth to crumble. Tim: Yeah, totally. But it's the same with locusts plague. It's animals. Dangerous animals. So in the garden, it's cultivated. So God keeps the dangerous animals out. Jon: Let's talk about locusts. If there is a big plague of locusts because of some environmental conditions, there was the right conditions.
There was enough food for them, they laid enough eggs and they're born and they need a lot of food. That's like the natural explanation of why there's all these locusts. And let's say that God sees that coming and He's like, "That's great. I'm going to let those locusts come.
That feels kind of Jon: It feels kind of passive but still in some way active because He could have stopped the locusts from coming. Or there's another situation where God's like, "Egypt needs some locusts and so I'm going to plant some locusts seed over here and I'm going to set up the perfect conditions so that the locusts could come. And then I'm going to direct them over to Egypt. Jon: I think in every situation you can do a thought experiment of sorts of how actively involved was God in that moment of wrath.
Jon: What I hear you saying is you don't even want me to try to think in those dimensions. Tim: No. Because notice what you had to do is make up a little story and insert that and read the biblical narrative in light of your little hidden divine figure who plants eggs or something. Tim: So the narrative isn't trying actually to create a systematic, comprehensive philosophical account of God's agency in the world.
What the biblical authors want us to know is that God is the one who provides the relative stability of the cosmos that keeps us safe. And it's real. But that stability is sometimes compromised. And whenever that stability is compromised and chaos breaks in, it's a moment of One is that it's because of human evil, flood story, the Korah story, the locusts in Joel, it's all because of Israel breaking the covenant.
It distorts the moral order, and therefore distorts the cosmic order. But then you get the book of Job and Ecclesiastes who come along and say "but not always. And he bites your hand off because he's a Leviathan. And it's not because God hates you. It's wrapped up in the mystery of the cosmos. Carissa: So that's to make sure that readers or the audience doesn't attribute every act to God as the cause. Tim: Yeah, that's right. Or they don't want us to assume—this is argument of Job—just because chaos breaks out in someone's life and the stability of their order is shattered to pieces doesn't mean that they were a covenant violator like the generation of the flood or like the Again, all I'm trying to do is for years, and I'll be doing this till the day I die, is trying to reorient my worldview to at least read sympathetically, and try and understand what the biblical authors But that stability is always under threat of the waters above, and the waters below and of the dry land cracking apart.
And of wild, dangerous animals from the wilderness invading their way into the cultivated order of the sacred garden. Those are the two. So you have dangers above and below, and you have dangerous outside. Jon: And what we can say is that when this order is fractured, God will do a number of different things.
Sometimes just be patient. Sometimes He'll actually speed it up, and sometimes He will fix it. I think we kind of want this systematic explanation for why God does what in what situation. Jon: And what I'm hearing is that's not the questions the biblical authors are wrestling with.
Tim: Yeah. Or it's just if the Bible was designed to give us that kind of comprehensive explanation, Christians wouldn't have been arguing vehemently about this for years.
So it's as if the Bible stakes out in arena of core convictions within which we can then wrestle with these complex issues. What the biblical authors want us to know is that God's character is just and that it's generous and good. Tim: So you read the severe stories of God's judgment, like in the Pentateuch, you know, Rob, you mentioned the story of Korah with the earthquake and the lightning, and so on.
But again, part of it is also each narrative is also just one little tile of the bigger Mosaic. There's the whole Hebrew Bible. For example, in that, that story is set in the middle of seven rebellion stories in numbers 11 to And you have to read them all together, and they're all developing one bigger picture. That helps make sense of each individual one. Carissa: The terminology is not passive or active. It's the terminology used by the biblical authors is more this terminology of handing over, but it's not getting into the active-passive debate.
But it's more emphasizing the consistency of maybe what happens with how the people acted. There's consistency there. And even in Korah's rebellion in Numbers 16, that people are complaining about the land that they're in, and then the land swallows them up.
And the people are offering incense and then fire consumes them. It's like there's still a consistency in how the story plays out even though it feels very destructive. Dude, Number This is actually really amazing. Because they're rebelling against Moses and the high priest who is the anointed one.
It's a story about the rebellion of God's people against their own Anointed One. Come now. It's a rebellion against their own Messiah, and it results in their self-destruction. They reject their Messiah Aaron, the anointed high priest and that results in their ruin. So there's always more going on in the stories than just what's happening on maybe your first reading.
There's a lot. But that's true of the whole Bible. One other thought. You were making that really good point, Carissa, and then it made me realize too these conversations about anger of God were not meant to be a comprehensive study of the theme of divine judgment.
I was isolating the phrase, and there was hot anger to God. And what you notice is when you study that phrase, one of the most consistent companion phrases is "and He handed them over. So there is this important leak between God's anger and handing people over. But there are many narratives about God hiding His face, the cosmos collapses, somebody's life collapses, where God's anger is not mentioned.
I don't know if we're going to do a theme study on that. Carissa: Which we'd think it is because that there's such a strong connection with judgment in that passage. Tim: Correct. And that itself is another God promised but that he wouldn't rain. But what He does in Tim: In flood story. But the next time the word rain is used in the book of Genesis is the raining of the fire. Tim: I know. I thought about that, too. But it's another instance of the cosmos collapsing. In this time, it turns lightning.
Raining fire is a standard Hebrew phrase for "lightning". It's lightning. And you were told in Genesis 14 that the land is full of these pits that have all of this flammable sulfur in it. Or pitch and tar. Lightning ball on one of those? It's going to go out. Tim: Carissa did a great summary. I keep problematizing things, and Jon you're sitting there looking unsatisfied.
Carissa: There are problems. Especially with Korah's rebellion, even when we try to understand what the authors are doing with that story and how it fits in the overall storyline, it's still Korah and all of the family members that are associated with Korah, including their little ones.
I remember reading that specifically. The authors included that it was also little ones who were standing at the tents, and they're all swallowed any earth. And I think that we have a question about that too. Community judgment or First of all, thank you for all the work you've put into the Bible Project.
I've learned so much from all the resources you provide. I struggle with the notion that God is handing over frequently targets a whole group of people, often based on the actions of a few. How can I better understand God's love, wrath, and justice in this context? Tim: Excellent question. Isaac, you are expressing very articulately, something that many, many, many people, including the three of us, I'm certain, have felt.
Carissa: And it's true that sin affects the whole community, even people who don't deserve it. Our parents' problems affect us and so on and so on. So maybe there's something that's true about that in the stories of Scripture too where it feels unjust, but it's also kind of the way that the world works. Tim: You're saying that even within hyper-individualized Western culture, if you really think about it, it doesn't take too much time to get the fact that my decisions affect the people around me.
My negative decisions. Carissa: Yeah. The negative consequences of my actions will unjustly fall on the people around me. I think that's one helpful way to go with this. Isaak, you put your thumb on another part, which is I think there is a difference of cultural worldview and a different way of viewing the human individual and their relationship to the community.
And you're right. Every significant philosophical, political, and economic movement in the West over the last years has been about creating this new thing called the individual who is the autonomous. And if they have enough privilege and status, they can be mobile and create a whole life independence from their tribe and family.
You can go move away, get a job, never need anything from your parents. I mean, it's just I think unhealthy way to be a human being but. But it's our cultural setting. So I think you're right, we read these narratives with an extra layer of strangeness. Jon: Help me understand. The tension though is not whether or not I believe other people's actions will affect me. Because even in a hyper-individualistic society, I might completely tie myself off from family and maybe my friend and move somewhere and try to be as individualistic and rustic as possible.
Or even if I move out into the woods, I'm going to be dealing with the consequences of bears and moose and stuff. There's no situation where I'm purely only affected by my decisions. So I don't think the conflict here is realizing that other people's decisions affect me. It's that is it fair to be held accountable for other people's decisions? Like if there's some sort of final judgment or if God's going to intervene and start giving consequences out, shouldn't He be able to tease out the difference between the people in the community that caused it and the people who were just along for the ride?
Actually, I need to do more work on this theme but I'm convinced it's there. I think this theme of one person acting and their evil bearing consequences on the many or the many acting, and then it creates an unfair circumstance for the one. And this is a major theme that gets inverted and turned over in all these narratives in the Hebrew Bible.
It is really interesting. The design pattern. So the outcry of the poor and oppressed. It's like "Carissa, should I tell you? So Abraham gets in God's face. He says, "What? My nephew's there. And he's not perfect, but he's like Carissa: But isn't the reason that Abraham appeals to God because surely the just Judge wouldn't do that. So in other words, Abraham is afraid that God's about to violate His own character by doing one of these cosmos Carissa: Which is interesting, because, okay, in this communal society, non-individualistic culture, Abraham still in the story is discerning between the individual and the community.
Tim: Absolutely. Yeah, that's right. And notice God's the one to get Abraham talking in the first place by speaking in His presence. Tim: And then they start what you think is negotiation. But then you realize that every turn God just says yes. God never bargains. Abraham's just like, "45?
I will forgive the city on account of 5. In that case, Lot's righteousness is not sufficient to cover for the many. Well, it's more complex. But the point is that narrative is raising this theme that you're saying, Isaak. It's problematizing it. And Abraham is saying, "Wouldn't be just for you to let the whole cosmos of Sodom and Gomorrah, the little mini Cosmos collapse on that account.
So I think the Korah narrative, we mentioned earlier, is inverting that. What God says to Moses when the leaders with Korah rebel is "I'm done with all these people," which has happened like four or five times now.
And Moses says, "Will you…" Here, I'm going to quote it. So what Moses says to God is, "Oh, God, God of the ruach of all flesh, when one person sins, will you be angry with all of them? But this time it's the inverse.
It's when one person sins and leads the rest into rebellion, will you punish everybody? Another inversion of this is Daniel. Daniel is sitting in Babylon through no fault of his own. He's legit. But yet he will take personal He'll take personal responsibility for the entire history of his ancestor's rebellion against God.
So in that case, he doesn't differentiate his individual self from his tribe. And even though he's righteous, he will count himself among the many sinful people. So there's something happening here. The biblical narrative is exploring explicitly this theme about God's fairness, and about how individuals and their community's sins and consequences relate to each other. And it's nuanced I think. And it's all leading up forward to the suffering servant, who will be the one, in Isaiah, who bears the sins of the many.
And then Jesus takes that mantle upon Himself, as the one who dies for the sins of the many. Jon: So, through that One, all have died. And in the same way, life comes through the One so many can live. I mean, it's hard to do, but it's like all these stories on their own are working together towards this bigger depiction or exploration of these themes.
And you have to take each of these individual narratives on their own, but then let this mosaic emerge. That's pretty more nuanced than I usually give credit to. I don't know if that makes any sense. When I read this question, I was trying to think about the question behind the question. And I think he states it at the end that sometimes it feels unfair. So it's a question of God's fairness or justice, how God views people in those moments when the community is suffering for a sin that Or maybe not even for a sin, but just because of wicked systems because of whatever reason people are suffering.
Where is God in that? And where's His fairness? And I don't know the answer to that. But I think, as I was reflecting on this, some of the things that came to mind are just, well, this verse God doesn't delight in people suffering. Well, actually, this whole chapter, Ezekiel 18, starts off with that parable, that the children's teeth are set on edge because of the parents' sin, and the people are complaining that We didn't deserve this. You're in exile because of your own stuff.
But at the end of that passage, God's saying that "Hey, I don't delight in the suffering of the wicked. Any suffering that comes upon people, my hope is that they would turn from their sin and turn to me. It's like, again, that picture of God as compassionate as always wanting people to turn back to Him. For me, that's what I want to remember in those moments of like, man, there's so much suffering going on in the world, and it is unfair. That's the only thing maybe that gives me comfort is God's compassion toward that.
I don't know if that makes sense. Tim: Yeah, it does make sense. Something that's emerging out of all these questions we've talked about so far, which is only three, but they're whoppers, something that's sinking in with me more, I feel like it's taken me a long time, when we come to these huge topics in the Bible, the Christians and Jews have been arguing about for millennia.
When I see all of these different camps staking out different viewpoints on these issues, to me that becomes like a little flag saying, maybe the function of the Bible isn't to give us clarity.
But it's trying to create the venue within which we go to wrestle with God with our deepest questions. And what we discover is not a systematic answer. What we discover is a portrait of God's character that emerges throughout the story that we are to take with us as we go into the complexities of reality, and justice and suffering and death and pain and joy.
And that kind of becomes like a north star guiding us through a complex world. God's character is the north star, and also the function of each of these stories in the broader narrative. Those are maybe the two main questions that can give us more solid answers than a category or a system. Kayleigh: Hey, guys, this is Kayleigh from South Africa. Thanks and keep up the great work. Tim: Thanks, Kayleigh.
We'll talk about that. But it says "quick to anger". Obviously, you notice that in contrast to the phrase "slow to anger. But I think it's actually a good example of maybe applying what we were just talking about, about this way of engaging the Bible that thinks both in terms of the little tree I'm looking at, but always keep an eye on the forest. Carissa: Psalm It says, this is NIV, "Kiss his son, or he will be angry and your way will lead to your destruction, for his wrath can flare up in a moment.
Tim: Yes. So one important distinction here is that this is the anger of the Messianic King. And his anger is directed towards the tyrants and corrupt rulers of this world who are introducing the opening paragraph of the poem.
So the bad guys are in the opening and closing paragraphs. So you know, they're thinking of your Nebchadnezzars and your and Sennacheribs and your Ashurbanipals, and all the other bad guys in the Bible.
Imperial tyrants. So first of all, if you have never lived under one of those or in the nation, enslaved by one of those, you know, it's always good to be So the hope in Psalm 2 is for a Mashiach, an anointed one, that Yahweh will raise up who will confront those nations. And in verse 9, break them with a rod of iron and shatter them like earthenware. Welcome to the Psalms. Carissa: This is an example of God's anger being good in the eyes of the psalmist that it's just And specifically, that God employs an agent, namely, the Messianic son.
And with evil tyrants, He's quick to get angry and will bring them what they have coming to them. So that's a portrait of the Messianic king in Psalm 2. This is Psalm 2. There's more. So this is just the first little tile, so to speak, in the mosaic of the Messianic King in the book of Psalms.
But then when you move forward, that portrait gets made a little more complex. If God exists, what is he like? What is his response to my suffering? At the heart of the Christian faith is a God who knows what it is to suffer.
Jesus ended his days on earth nailed to a cross. He suffered brutality at the hands of Roman soldiers. He was abandoned by his closest friends in his hour of deepest need. Jesus has suffered in ways that go beyond anything we can imagine. He did this to give us life, so that the evils we face need not absorb and overwhelm us.
Suffering does not have to have the last word in our lives. God has not left us alone in our suffering. If we turn to Him, there is strength we never thought we had. There is comfort we never thought was possible. And there is hope for today and tomorrow. Well, one day he will. Evil was defeated on that first Easter, and one day it will be removed altogether.
How do you fix a story that is broken? We all have our stories.
0コメント