The Hebrew bible is the story of a people fighting for survival. Here we have God who is drawing people forward into a world more like God’s dream. And throughout the bible this narrative is impacted by a zionist world view. Where nation building and security become the defining concern rather than a faithful adherence to God’s way. We as people interpret what happens in the world. We try to make meaning out of the events in our lives. We assign God actions to the choices of people. In war, in victory, in loss we see God’s hand. Often in ways that justify our own end goals.
So when we now look at the people we see this nationalism streaked throughout. This justification of oppression of others. And we think that means we too are entitled, as God’s favored nation of America, to be isolationist. To segregate. To get rid of other people. To create systems and rules that favor a Norman Rockwell painting view of the US.
Yet again and again God calls the unexpected people. God criticizes empire. God changes the rules of oppression- this passage from Deuteronomy 27 was progressive at the time when women were treated as slaves and spoils of war- 10 “When the Lord your God gives you victory in battle and you take prisoners, 11 you may see among them a beautiful woman that you like and want to marry. 12 Take her to your home, where she will shave her head,[a] cut her fingernails, 13 and change her clothes. She is to stay in your home and mourn for her parents for a month; after that, you may marry her. 14 Later, if you no longer want her, you are to let her go free. Since you forced her to have intercourse with you, you cannot treat her as a slave and sell her. While we see this as horrific, to force a woman to marry and this is not the current standard of what we know about the world, this was an improvement at the time. God is calling people to use the power more justly. What if God is ever calling us as people to be better?
Human nature calls us to value power, survival, our own supremacy over others. And this is in the bible, as a product of the human interaction with God. The way of God calls us to see beyond self, and to recognize the sacredness of all creation and all people.
May we each be on that journey to more fully live God’s dream.
-Eilidh
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