Thursday, January 28, 2021

THE BIBLE'S VIRUS OF VIOLENCE
by The Rev. Wayne Ibara

For nearly a year now, the world has been afflicted with the Covid-19 pandemic. But another virus has also been all too active, including in our own country. It is the virus of violence. We have always struggled with this virus, but its threat took new form on January 6, when the U.S. Capitol was invaded, looted and desecrated, and five people died, one a police officer. Many other officers were injured; some very seriously. And this weekend, as the inauguration of a new president approaches, there are more soldiers deployed in our nation’s capital city than in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria combined. Twenty-thousand fully armed and equipped national guardsmen. As a nation we are on edge. As former ambassador Fiona Hill said last week, we are on the brink of civil war. What is going on with us as a country? Why is the virus of violence so potent in our society?

One answer is that the Judeo-Christian faith and the Bible are huge in our history, culture and society. And the Bible contains a virus of violence that we have not fully acknowledged, addressed and dealt with. And I think we need to. What do I mean by “the Bible’s virus of violence”? I mean the many texts in the Bible, as in Deuteronomy 7, where God explicitly commands genocide. The Conquest of the Promised Land, filled with “seven nations larger and stronger than you.” God says, “…you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.”

Most of us are aware of this “Dark Side” to the Bible—those disturbing passages, especially in the Old Testament, where God calls for horrendous acts of bloodshed--the bloody pages of the Bible. Our response is often like the lectionary: we ignore them. We leave them out. But like a new coronavirus, ignoring the virus of violence in the Bible does not make it go away. And I’ve come to believe that continuing to ignore the Bible’s violent passages means the virus remains—and spreads.

Take the Conquest story—told largely in Joshua and in the Book of Judges. It’s cast a dark shadow throughout history. Most relevant to us is the way that the American Colonists used this story to justify warfare against Native American peoples, driving them out and often exterminating them from the East Coast to the West. The same thing happened in Central and South America with Spanish conquistadors. In the name of God, native peoples were killed, driven out and enslaved. In what has been called the Doctrine of Discovery, Christianity supplied the spiritual justification for the European conquest of the Americas based on Israel’s Conquest of the Promised Land. The U.S. Supreme Court in the 1800’s even provided the official legal basis for this racist policy.

Both the Catholic Church and some Protestant churches—including our own United Church of Christ—have for years now repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery. But the Bible’s virus of violence is a deeply-rooted and slippery thing. The ultimate anti-virus, of course, is Jesus. Instead of conquering, Jesus sacrificed himself, allowing human depravity, death and the devil to conquer him. The short version of my lesson today could be to simply look to Jesus as our example. But that leaves the virus of violence out there.

We will serve the LORD, Joshua proclaims. But what does this look like when in the context of Joshua’s declaration, serving the LORD has apparently meant all out genocide—the slaughter of men, women and children—even their animals? We will serve the LORD. This rallying cry resounds through the millennia to our present day and our own country, fueling self-identifying Christian right-wing militias wielding assault rifles. The Bible’s virus of violence is potent precisely because it is the Bible’s virus. And there are basically four ways to respond to it.

The first way is to ignore it, which we have largely been doing. But this doesn’t make it go away.

The second way is to defend it, usually by emphasizing God’s holiness over the Canaanites’ evil. This was my take for a long time. But I’m not satisfied with this argument any longer. Because in our own day, it’s become clear that demonizing groups of people is a tactic of thugs with their racist agendas. And in the end, it always seems to turn out that we have more in common with others than not. We are all flawed, broken, sinful humans.

The third way to deal with the Bible’s violence is to say that God changes from the Old Testament to the New, that God evolves. I’ve never been especially drawn to this approach because it solves one problem by creating another.

But the fourth way is the way I think most Christians ought to consider first, and that is to learn to read the Bible differently. To many of us who come from a conservative Christian background, the Bible was always the Holy Bible, inspired by God, inerrant or infallible, the Word of God. It was like God wrote it out himself and handed it to his people as a complete and perfect rulebook, written for our benefit and for all time. The problem is that reading the Bible this way creates a lot of opportunity for the virus of violence to grow.

Pete Enns, who teaches Bible at Eastern University, challenges this perspective in a good way. He urges his students to recognize that God didn’t write the Bible and hand it down. God let his children tell the story. God inspired the Bible, but God used people to write it. This introduces an important layer of human perception and experience into what we now have as our Bible. The Bible is revelation, but it is revelation from our limited, human point of view, expressed in the terms and ideas current in each of its historical human settings.

At the beginning, for example, in the earliest and most ancient stories, everything is tribal. It’s win or lose, us or them, and everybody’s god is a Tribal Warrior God. That’s the way the world was 3,000-plus years ago. But after Israel itself is conquered by the Assyrians and then the Babylonians, and sent into Exile, the Warrior God of Israel obviously does not reign supreme. And the Old Testament ends without a resolution. Yet out of this disaster, Israel is inspired—we would say by God—to reinterpret and transform her understanding of God. The Bible itself benefits from this dynamic process.

That is why we can take the bloody pages of the Bible with a grain of historical salt. We can notice that the Bible itself gives us a nuanced story. Deuteronomy 7 describes total genocide. Joshua offers specific stories of cities being razed, beginning with Jericho. But the first chapter of Judges reports plainly that the Conquest was not complete; that in most cases, the tribes of Israel did not drive out all the inhabitants. This is why Israel has a persistent problem worshiping the gods of these pagan people.

So the Bible is not a perfect, polished, supernatural account of the history of the world and of what the future holds. It is instead an authentic, inspired and ancient account of an on-going relationship between a people and a God who hears their cries, chooses them and offers them guidance and grace. The Bible is not a story of people who got things right and were therefore rewarded by God. It is a bunch of stories of all kinds of people, many of whom got things terribly wrong. It doesn’t give us all the answers. In fact, it triggers a lot more questions.

What the Bible offers us is not a black and white record of “everything you ever wanted to know about God” but a record of God’s people wrestling with life and coming to perceive God’s purpose for them. Rather than view the Bible as a rule book, or a how-to manual for life, Enns proposes that we look to the Bible for wisdom. And we do this by joining in the conversation of faith that the Bible represents. (argue like the Jews)

And the virus of violence? Jesus is our anti-virus—but we ourselves are the ones who need to carry the vaccine. And we do this by reading the Bible better.

Pete Enns often tells his Bible students, “The Bible is a terrible evangelistic tool!” He does this to jar them into looking at the Bible from a different point of view. His point is that the Bible is not really as simple as we’ve all been told it is. Using the Bible with someone who has never read it before can easily become confusing, complex and frustrating. What Enns tells his students is that they are—we are—the best evangelistic tool. It’s Christ the Word in us that communicates most effectively, most powerfully, most persuasively. And that’s really what the church mostly had for most of its history. Not a printed book to hold over people’s heads, but a living testimony—most convincingly demonstrated by a flesh and blood community—the church. If we can see the Bible less as a supernatural idol and more as an inspired and unique human treasure that offers us wisdom for life as well as revelation of God—crowned by the coming of Jesus—the virus of violence is largely contained and defeated. May it be so with us. And with our nation as well. Amen.
The Rev. Wayne Ibara was born and raised on the island of Kaua`i, and received his Master of Divinity degree from Fuller Theological Seminary. After serving as pastor for the Los Angeles Holiness Church, he returned to Hawai`i, where he has led the Makiki Christian Church as its senior pastor since 1995. Rev. Ibara and his wife, Phyllis, have a teenaged son, Isaac. 

We pause to remember...

Monday, January 25, 2021

WITH PRAYERS FOR HEALTH WORKERS
by Gerard Livaudais, M.D. and Felicitas Livaudais, M.D.

On and after September 11, 2001, it was the firemen and policemen who were rightly hailed as heroes for doing their jobs. Now and over the past year, our healthcare workers are the ones facing down their fears to do their jobs. Both the courage and the toll paid are real. 

Saturday, 1/16/2021

An Introduction to Today's Meditation, from The Rev. Scott Landis, Shine Your Light Team member:
Born and raised on Maui, Kekoa Harman is an associate professor of Hawaiian studies and Hawaiian language at the University of Hawai’i at Hilo. He is an educator not just for the benefit of his students, but to ensure the preservation of the sacred dialect that is ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi. (language of Hawai`i). Realizing its importance, Harman has borne the responsibility of carrying on the Hawaiian language through teaching since being hired as a lecturer in 2003. He started his current position in 2010 and graduated this past spring with his doctorate in indigenous language and cultural revitalization. Kekoa and his wife, Pelehonuamea, are Kumu hula (teachers of hula) of Halau I Ka Leo Ola O Na Mamo. Their mission is to perpetuate the Hawaiian language and culture through mele (song) and hula. In this personal testimony Kekoa offers a word of hope for our day based on his experience of scripture, `ohana (family), and church. We offer his thoughts by inviting you to look beyond the despair of our present moment to the hope which is ours when we remain grounded in tradition and family. Kekoa Harman is a symbol of giving and connecting—to his students, to his people, to the language, and to the culture.

A Christian layman and nuclear physicist writes...

Seeking an Understanding
of a Divided Religion & Nation

by Dr. Calvin Wood, 1/15/2021

After the November election and recent developments, I have felt the need to understand my fellow Christians who are characterized in the media as Christian Nationalists, who are working to write many of their beliefs into laws in the USA as we work to heal and unite the divided nation. 

Some who identify as Christians claim that we are a Christian nation and that our laws must reflect this. Their aim, as best I can surmise, is that we should make this political entity, the USA, into the kingdom of God (KOG). I ask myself, what did Jesus say about his kingdom? “The KOG is within you” (Luke 17:21, KJV) and, to Pontius Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). So the problem of turning a political realm into the KOG may be ignoring what He said. A real problem that I see is that many of the laws proposed are not shared in principle by all Christians.

For example, there is wide difference between Christians who see LGBTQ folks as fully God’s children and those who find them aberrant; those who are pro choice vs. pro life; those who feel differently about birth control access; those who feel that deviation from some outward of expression of patriotism is ‘un-American,’ even though kneeling during the national anthem may be a way for some to publicly express a feeling that perceived injustices should be addressed, etc. So perhaps the thrust to Christianize the USA may miss an important point about the freedom of will that Christ thought was necessary for us to be able to choose freely to come to Him. If these ideas are some of the deep divisions among different Christian churches about these things, how do we accommodate those who practice other religions, or none? 

The notion that the KOG is within me has come to mean to me that personal spiritual transformation is the goal of the KOG, not the wielding of political influence in the world. And I find some backing for this idea when Jesus asks what profit there would be to a man to gain the whole world [political power] and lose his own soul? (Matthew 16:26). Perhaps the principle of the separation of Church and State was indeed the hand of God inspiring the founding fathers in the beginning. 

As a child, I privately addressed my feelings, when bullied, by imagining having the power to punish the bully, often violently. My imaginative life found a way for me to live out fantasies by being the hero in my interior narrative. But eventually I read a book that expressed the idea of living ‘inside out.’ I soon came to realize that I truly wanted to be a man of peace inside, as well as in my public persona. But I then discovered that the neuronal pathways of my brain had been so strongly conditioned by my past that my thoughts went there automatically, even when I tried to reprogram them. The only pathway that worked for me was to appeal to God to take over my entire inner life and change me into a truly peaceful person. A downside for my slowly changing interior peace was that I recently found that I was so genuinely distressed that men in our government, that appeared to me to be hypocrites [Jesus’ most damning epithet], could be expelled from the presence of God that it genuinely caused me a new and unusual deep sadness for their souls, as if my evaluation of the situation were indeed the truth of the matter. I think change is possible. But I now feel that the salvation of souls is an individual enterprise and is not accomplished en masse. 

My personal quest is to find a closer walk with Jesus through meditation and prayer, praying only for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out. May God grant us guidance in seeking healing for this Nation.
Dr. Calvin Wood lives in Livermore, CA. He graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in Physics (1957) and a PhD in High Energy Particle Physics in 1961 and was an assistant professor at the University of Utah (1962-1964). He served as a U.N. Inspector after the first Gulf War in Iraq (1991) where he helped discover and dismantle an extensive nuclear weapon development program there. After retirement from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories in 1993, he has continued to work with LLNL as a consultant. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (LDS), he served as an LDS missionary (1952-1955), later joining the United Methodist Church in the mid1-990’s. Married in 1955, he has 5 children, 16 grandchildren, 20 great grandchildren. He is involved in several community projects in Livermore (providing low-cost housing for seniors, distributing food to low income families, taking a program into the local penitentiary, etc.). and spends a significant amount of time on Maui each year where he is part of the Keawala`i Congregational Church `ohana.

From the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness- that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

From Ellen Caringer, Ph.D. -

Come Together in Prayer & Meditation

Let us, from all faiths, come together in prayer and meditation over these next four days, just as we did in the days leading up to the November election.

At a time when the community is suffering, no one should say, “I will go home, eat, drink, and be at peace with myself."  – Babylonian Talmud Taanit, 11a.

Do not defraud people of their property, nor go about spreading corruption in then land . . And O my people, give full measure and weight in justice and do not deprive the people of their due and do not commit abuse on the earth, spreading corruption.  - The Q’uran, Surah Hud 11:85

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds n Christ Jesus.  - Philippians 4:6-7 (ESV)

On Tuesday we face a crucial election in Georgia. This election may very well determine our ability to make any progress toward healing and restoring a nation. We have suffered at the hands of public servants who put themselves and their party ahead of the wellbeing of the nation and the preservation of this democracy.

On Wednesday, we face an electoral college count like none we’ve ever experienced. There will be senators and congressmen willing to overthrow the will of the people, by claiming without evidence that there has been a massive fraud in our election system. While this is not expected to succeed in overturning the will of the people and the Biden/Harris election, it can succeed in further dividing our nation, and deliberately making it more difficult for those public servants who are seeking to bring us together as a nation.

And so, in the spirit of the passages above, let us, from all faiths, come together in prayer and meditation over these next four days, just as we did in the days leading up to the November election. Let us envision and prayerfully ask that ethics, justice and righteousness be restored in our nation. Let us pray for the election of leaders who are willing to address the hard questions of systemic racism and intolerance. In Hawaii we talk about the need to be “pono” in our actions and our deeds so that our community can be one that is righteous and just for all people, not just the preferred few. So please consider this a call to prayer and meditation for the health and wellbeing of our democracy, and that the events in our nation will be events that lead to peace and justice, rather than violence and hatred. Mahalo for joining us!
Dr. Ellen Caringer is a member of the Shine Your Light Team, and is a psychologist and neuropsychologist on the island of Maui. She has been church pianist for Keawala`i Congregational Church for over twenty years, and is one of the founders of Hui Aloha `o Maui Indivisible.