throwing stones at bad people (and other biblical principles)
So, God says we should throw stones at bad people so they will die. But only if they are really bad.
As espero recently reported, this was our four-year-old son’s rather wonderful summary of the moral lessons to be drawn from the story of David and Goliath. I nearly died of laughter.
But it also made me think about how we read the Bible. Caleb was taking the story in a wonderfully straightforward, literal, honest way. Yet most of us would be at least a little uncomfortable with his conclusion. I hope.
I think what his response shows is that none of us read the Bible quite as straightforwardly as we claim. If I ask, “is all of Scripture God’s Word?”, many of us would say it is. If I ask, “is all of Scripture God’s Word to us in the same way?”, we might still be tempted to say yes.
But our reaction to Caleb’s interpretation suggests otherwise. Why do we not accept his take on the story? I think it’s because we know that within the flow of the whole biblical story, the David and Goliath incident is not the final, definitive word on how we are to treat our enemies. Within the Old Testament itself, prophets like Isaiah present a vivid picture of Israel becoming a source of blessing and healing to all the nations. And then, of course there’s Jesus, who tells us (and shows us) to turn the other cheek, to return good for evil, and to love our enemies.
In other words, we read the David and Goliath story in light of the whole flow of the biblical story, and especially in light of Jesus, who is the centre and goal and focus of the whole story. And we decide that, whatever this story means for us, it doesn’t mean that we should throw stones at bad people, even if they’re really bad.
What this example shows is that, in practice, we don’t treat the Bible as the Word-of-God-for-us in a flat, uniform way. We read some things in light of others – OT narratives in light of the prophets, the OT in light of the NT, and everything in light of Jesus.
And I think this is right and proper. It’s what we all do, whether we admit it or not. And it makes all kinds of sense. Before the Bible is the Word of God, we believe that Jesus himself is God’s Word. He is God’s ultimate, definitive, self-expression and self-revelation. So it’s natural and good and right that everything else is read in light of him. All Scripture is read in light of the good news about Jesus, in light of the grace and forgiveness and healing and new community and new creation which flows into our fractured world through him.
I believe, as the famous text says, that all of Scripture is in some way God-inspired, and useful for shaping our lives to reflect God’s goodness. But I don’t think all of it is inspired and useful in the same way.
I’m only now finding the courage to think these thoughts out loud. I remember a few years ago, sitting in a coffee shop in Greystones, Co. Wexford, with an older Christian I had great affection and respect for. I casually threw out an observation that, within the canon of Scripture, the gospels have a certain priority and centrality, and that within the gospels, the Sermon on the Mount has a certain priority. I don’t know where I’d picked up that idea from, but my friend nearly choked on his latte, and told me in no uncertain terms that I was barking up a dangerous tree. He told me that all of Scripture should be written in red ink, because all of it is the words of Jesus in the same, direct sense.
Well, I’m sometimes a little slow at on-the-spot responses. But I am now officially ready to announce that I think my wise and thoughtful friend was wrong. Scripture is not a flat, uniform book. It is a story which twists and turns and flows towards a climax and pinnacle and centre in the person of Jesus, his life and teaching and death and resurrection.
When I get troubled and sidetracked by the slaughter of the Amalekites and the general violence of the OT, this principle is pretty important to me – I can look forward to the centre of the story in Jesus and find my bearings and orientation there. Or when I get confused by Paul’s detailed instructions over head-coverings and speaking in tongues, I can look back to the centre, to Jesus and his message of the kingdom and new life in him. This is not a cop-out, it’s just the natural way to read the story around its centre. And we can and should continue to wrestle with the trickier questions, but with a sense of peace and perspective drawn from looking at the beautiful life and words and actions of God-with-us.
The gospels have a certain priority only because the gospel, the good news about Jesus has a certain centrality and priority. Everything else, including the rest of Scripture, is relativised, reconfigured, re-imagined and re-interpreted in the light of him.
To some of you, this will seem so obvious it’s hardly worth saying. To others, it may seem a little controversial. My sense is that this is how many of us instinctively read Scripture, but we’re not entirely honest about it when we talk about the Bible as God’s Word. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Don’t ask me exactly how it works in practice. But my son is helping me stumble towards a more honest reading of this strange book which reads and shapes and questions our lives.
QMonkey says:
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:47 am
I think this is the only reasonable way to rationalize the bible without falling into daily hypocrisy, but…How do you guard against the danger of deciding that the bits you don’t like or that seem crazy are the bits which are metaphor or not quite so god-breathed as the bits you hold as direct and vital word for word fact?
This gives you quite a liberal blank canvas doesn’t it? To assign to the bible what ever your personal view of the ‘over arching’ direction of the bible is. Is the reason that the 12th century crusades where wrong in their violent butchery and you are correct in your liberal lets-be-nice-and-love-everyone angle because you are more enlightened, smarter and able to read the bible correctly? Can you think of a better way the bible could be written or is obviously a perfect communication from a loving creator god? There’s the wiff of post-rationalization to me.
unorthodoxology says:
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:45 pm
That’s the best exegesis on David and Goliath I’ve ever heard!!!
beardy bastard says:
June 3rd, 2008 at 7:05 pm
i think you make a good point.
i also think qm makes a good point.
caleb’s got it wrong though
jaybercrow says:
June 3rd, 2008 at 8:55 pm
QM – I think I’ll have to respond to your thoughts in several points.
1. I’m certainly not proposing a blank canvas where we can make the Bible mean whatever we please. I’m suggesting a very specific hermeneutic – that everything is to be read and interpreted in light of the good news about Jesus.
2. I’m pretty sure the idea of a Jesus-centred hermeneutic is not a new one. In fact, for about the first 14 centuries I think most interpretation went too far in this direction, seeing most of the OT as an allegory about Jesus. It’s actually only in the modern era that people started to read the OT more historically, creating a new set of challenges.
3. I think plenty of ordinary Christians read the Bible this way instinctively, without being too self-conscious about their hermeneutic. I’m pretty sure my brethren granny read the Bible in a Jesus-centred, gospel-centred, love-centred way. You don’t have to be a genius to come up with this approach. Common sense and a good heart will lead in this direction.
4. For the centrality of love in biblical faith, check out the following post-modern, Guardian-reading, bleeding-heart liberals: Irenaeus (2nd century), Augustine of Hippo (4th), John Cassian (5th), Bernard of Clairvaux (12th), Martin Luther (16th), John Wesley (18th). This is more like the rediscovery of what’s been lost, not a new innovation.
5. The crusades are a much more complicated story. For example, Bernard of Clairvaux had an approach to Scripture that was Jesus-centred and love-centred. But he also preached in favour of the crusades. It’s a bloody hard thing to understand in historical retrospect.
Unorthodoxology – I’ll pass on your respect to caleb.
Beardy – I’ll also pass on your disagreement. He’ll be raging.
QMonkey says:
June 4th, 2008 at 8:21 am
I understand the need to blur the edges of OT… but the water-to-wine etc… that definitely happened yeah? J walked past starving children to alakazam some booze at a wedding, rather than mentioning to them say, water hygiene…? Or is that allegory too? When you start to say that some bits are fact and some arnt, I fear you tread on a very sticky wicket.
How do you judge which reports in the OT are historical… Jonah and the whale? Samson? Adam and eve? The walls of Jericho? Joseph and pharaoh? Are all of these stories factual or all non factual or some are and some arnt?
In any case… I find books which mix historic happens with ‘made up’ ones and morality tales very dangerous indeed. eg Dan Brown’s stuff. When you talk about a non historical OT you relegate the bible to the D Brown league I fear. I hate the fact that I read Brown’s Angels and demons… I know that some of the things mentioned in it were true and some wernt, but im not sure what… very dangerous, could almost spawn a religion
that’s for another post though I guess.
jaybercrow says:
June 5th, 2008 at 3:05 am
Ah QM, you do have a habit of throwing a hundred vaguely related points at me at the same time and hoping that some are bound to stick!
I’ll limit myself to one response, in the hope that other commenters might then return us to the theme of the original post…
Just to clarify, I don’t personally subscribe to the medieval view that the OT is largely allegorical. I was just pointing out that a Jesus-centred hermeneutic has a long pedigree. I think the more recent move towards reading it in a largely historical way is right (and affirms God’s interest in and love for the messiness of ordinary human life).
The new challenge this raises is to read it as a historical narrative which moves towards Jesus as its pinnacle and climax, not as a flat narrative in which every part can be read and used in exactly the same way.
There are parts of the OT whose historicity I’m less certain about (the early chapters of Genesis, maybe Job and Jonah), but that’s because of clues within those texts as to their literary genre, not because I don’t like their content. I take the gospels as pretty much reliable eye-witness testimony.
Now, someone else please save me from another QM barrage…
QMonkey says:
June 5th, 2008 at 8:29 am
>>>Ah QM, you do have a habit of throwing a hundred vaguely related points at me at the same time and hoping that some are bound to stick!
sorry… you’re right, focus isn’t my strong point. (’point’, geddit?)
I do understand your ‘way of reading’ it. I’m just not sure that there is evidence that this ‘way of reading’ is the way Jesus and the disciples did (if I concede some of the NT narrative for the sake of argument) …or that this way of reading will convince Caleb very much -- he wants to know if the david & goliath story is like ‘Humpty Dumpty’ or like ‘The Somme’, its important, truth maters.
I have a way of reading it too. I accept most reported narrative in the absence of any other disagreeing narrative -- I won’t put my proverbial house on it but I don’t feel the need to have nailed down irrefutable evidence before I accept that Jonah existed or went to Nineveh… I do need nailed down strong evidence to accept that he lived inside a whale. The thing is, I carry this on to the NT as well, and indeed other texts from other ancient societies. What’s wrong with my way of reading it? Seems logical to a non theologian like me.
I think my reading method is quite consistent, I also think that reading every word of the bible as god breathed, flawless and accurate, whilst being a bit mental, is consistent. I’m not 100% sure that yours is.
jaybercrow says:
June 5th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
I always tell myself I’m not going to respond to your next comment, and then you reel me in.
OK, so on the issue of “consistency.” Roughly my approach to reading the Bible is “read every part according to its genre and its historical-cultural context, and in light of the good news about Jesus.” Because the Bible is a wonderfully diverse collection of books, when you apply that principle consistently, you’ll read Genesis, Jonah, Kings, Proverbs, Mark and Revelation in very different ways. To read them all in the same way is consistency of a very obstinate and peculiar kind.
Your limitation of all the possible options for literary genre to essentially “fact” or “fiction” is the crudest kind of reductionism. There’s no room in that kind of choice for poetry, parable, saga, myth, proverb, apocalyptic, prophetic vision etc etc. My four year old has no desire to reduce all the colourful variety of stories he hears to those two neat little boxes, and hopefully it’ll be a while before he gets contaminated by the dull reductionism of enlightenment rationalism!!
QMonkey says:
June 6th, 2008 at 7:57 am
>>>I always tell myself I’m not going to respond to your next comment, and then you reel me in.
ME TOO!
in fact im writing this before i’ve read past your first paragraph… so im FORCED not to respond. nuffin but luv
QM
Van Peebles says:
June 6th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
“God says we should throw stones at bad people so they will die. But only if they are really bad.”
I’ve never heard such a brilliant articulation of neoconservative thought!
But, actually, this chimes with a very interesting discussion over at Jesus Creed concerning the writings on Bonhoeffer and R Niehbuhr and the concept of Christian realism.
Is there a time when we “should” throw stones at giants (even though we know we’re never without sin). This is fighting Nazis territory, to be sure. But it’s interesting that within Emerging circles the discussion seems to have moved away from Hauerwasian pacifism towards a study of realism and political responsibility. The question is less “What would Jesus do?” but “What would Jesus have us do?”
kickedbyanelephant says:
June 22nd, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Great post as always Jayber. I think you’re totally right. I think as Christians we do need to be more honest about how we read the Bible. I don’t see how your friend in Greystones could give each little bit of scripture the same priority in terms of importance. To me that is more dangerous than what you were warned of and rings a bit of what QM might refer to as blind faith.
Surely when Paul wrote to Timothy that all scripture was God breathed he was referring to what we call (more or less) the Old Testament. So this verse doesn’t necessarily apply to our New Testament. I don’t really know where I’m going with this suffice to say whilst I do believe that what we have as our Bible is God inspired (as much because of inherent authority and overall consistency as anything else), it is I believe healthy and sensible to consciously challenge the way we read scripture. I think as you say the only (safe) way to do this is in light of the central theme, the Good News of Jesus.
If I can pose perhaps an even more controversial question: Might it even be true to say that some of Paul’s letters are no more inspired by God than books published by Christian writers of this age e.g. CS Lewis??!!
To come back to David & Goliath, I think, as Van Peebles hints, perhaps Caleb isn’t a million miles off with his interpretation. It’s a good question ‘What would Jesus have us do?’ Jesus avoided the politics of his day and lived submissively under Roman occupation. Perhaps to do otherwise would have confused the world about the purpose of his mission. But is that the same for us? I wonder whether Christians need to be more prepared to throw stones in certain circumstances.
I reckon (as I hinted recently on QM’s blog) if I had opportunity, I might well be tempted to throw a brick in Robert Mugabe’s direction without it pricking my conscience! Is that wrong?!
Myemotionsarestrongaroundmygran says:
July 3rd, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Isnt what you are talking about the theology discipline called “Biblical Theology ” i have a great big book of it at home. I think its also called Historical-redemptive theology. A man by the name of Geerhardus Vos started it (or re-started?) heres a link to some stuff on it. http://catalystresources.org/issues/284motyer.html
rachg says:
July 10th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
And all this time I was just excited about you and your beautiful wife coming home!!! Now I know the REALLY exciting part is this incredibly gifted (if yet to mature) preacher, Caleb! I’m about to teach this story to a bunch of CSSM kids next week – this is a most helpful insight… I wait with bated breath to hear what pearls of wisdom number 2 has to share with us when he gets his very own Norn Irish accent.
Have to say, I love the very vivid picture of the choked-upon latte. I love, too, that even though it took you this long to articulate your comeback, you still shared it! Promise to teach me how?!?