This sounded like a good discussion topic when I came across this article on Wednesday and needed to come up with something to put in Grace’s bulletin:
Is the Bible Immoral? Messiah College Professor Says Yes, Sometimes
Eric Seibert, an Old Testament professor at Messiah College, is quoted as saying: "Not everything in the 'good book' is either good, or good for us." He says that Christians have a moral obligation to critique the Bible and condemn immoral passages.
My first thoughts were: Can we wrestle with passages in the Bible – such as those on violence and slavery – without declaring the Bible immoral? Can we disagree with interpretations of some who use the passages to keep women out of leadership positions or to keep gays out of the church without saying we think God got that wrong? I hope so, because that’s kind of what we've been doing for a while: wrestling with hard questions about the Bible, not claiming the Bible is immoral or God is wrong.
When I looked more into it, it got ugly. One side called it a “shameful piece” and said the professor should be dismissed (Can a Messiah College OT Professor Really Teach the Bible’s “Immoral”?). The other side responded in a “there they go again stifling questions” tone (White evangelical gatekeeping: A particularly ugly example in real time). It’s possible that Seibert himself is being provocative in order to sell one of his books.
Call it the hazards of asking questions about the Bible. While some have no problem asking questions, others are tentative in voicing questions or doubts they have about faith or God or Jesus or…. Sometimes you might get a thoughtful response. Sometimes you might get words of reassurance that not only are you not a heretic for asking those questions, but others also struggle with them. You might find others who invite you to struggle with them – a community of people who believe in God, who follow Jesus, and who don’t claim to have all the answers or dismiss your questions.*
But I’ve found it’s at least as likely that your question will be seen as threatening and you’ll be accused of some sort of blasphemy for daring to ask. If you’re in a larger group with a diverse background, someone else might jump in and disagree. And then, while the debate rages, usually on points that have little to do with your original question, you walk away, still plagued with the question but pretty sure you’re not going to get anywhere with these church folk.**
What exactly did Eric Seibert say was immoral and why? He wrote a series of articles (linked below) on passages in the Bible that appear to sanction violence, a topic we wrestled with earlier (see Does the Bible justify violence and retaliation? and How do we resolve Old Testament commands on violence and vengeance with Jesus’ commands to love your enemies and turn the other cheek?).
When the “Good Book” Is Bad: Challenging the Bible’s Violent Portrayals of God
When the Bible Sanctions Violence, Must We?
Learning to Read the Bible Nonviolently
Those posts are a good follow up to the earlier discussions here. I’m still not comfortable with some of the Old Testament passages where it seems like God is directing the destruction of whole villages. I’d like to ignore those passages altogether. I don’t know what happened, but I’d like to think that we’re reading these events from the perspective of the people who wrote about it. Maybe they believed this we what God directed them to do more than it was God commanding it. That’s a hard conclusion to make if you believe that every passage was dictated by God.
Seibert argues that critiquing those passages in the Bible that seem to make violence virtuous does not mean discounting them altogether. Instead, we need to wrestle with them in context and seek to use them in positive ways that affirm the dignity and well-being of all people. That’s not too different from what many of the responses in Christian Piatt’s Banned Questions about the Bible said.
But does questioning a passage, even arguing that it doesn't make sense with what else we know about God, mean we’re calling it immoral? One of the recurring themes in Banned Questions… suggests that, when we wrestle with some of these passages in the Bible, we’re joining in a dialogue (or even a debate in some cases) that spans time. Siebert encourages us to read these passages from the perspective of the victims so that we remain sensitized to the impacts of the violence. I haven't tried that but I've found different meanings to some of Jesus’ parables when I've considered the message from different characters in the story (the parable of the prodigal son, for instance).
How do you deal with the passages in the Old Testament that suggest that God sanctioned the violence? Do you accept it as something God deemed and we can’t fully understand because we don’t know God’s intent? Do you dismiss it because it reflects an Old Testament picture of God as vengeful and that’s all changed in the New Testament? Do you believe these passages reflect more of a human attempt to interpret God rather than God’s actual will? Do you agree with Seibert that passages such as these are immoral? Do you think that, even if they don’t reflect God’s actual will, these passages are there for a reason? Please share your thoughts in the comments below (and don't be afraid to disagree with me because this is one aspect I continue to struggle with).
* I grew up with enough of that kind of experience to know you can ask questions and I’m in church now because I found a place where that experience happens.
** But I've also been in that position before and walked away from church for many years because I was tired of being told why I was wrong for asking.
To me, the Bible is a window on what ancient people were thinking. Ancient Israel was a weak country compared to its neighbors. It's not surprising that the people there hoped (believed) that God would destroy their enemies. There are many violent passages along those lines. There are also passages about the need to help widows and orphans -- which is more in sync with modern values. There is universal condemnation of homosexuality in the Bible. Our current generation is still struggling with that issue although tolerance appears to be gradually winning out in Western countries. Stoning adulterors was ok in Old Testament times but is out of the question for Western people today. "Honor killings" are an outrage to Western people but are still ok with some Muslims. I think calling people "immoral" is just name calling. All we can say for sure is that the values people hold vary greatly over time and they vary greatly at a given time such as the present. The fact that the Bible writers in some cases had very different values and beliefs from present day people should not be surprising or disturbing.
ReplyDeleteSounds like what you're saying is that there is a dynamic element in our relationship with God. Like you mentioned, we can't really 'typecast' God as violent and vengeful in the Old Testament because there are passages that reflect God's mercy and grace. I like to think that the narrative of God's relationship with humanity continues beyond what's captured in the Bible and we continue to grow in our understanding of what God wants us to be.
DeleteIt appears to me that Seibert has picked a value or two from a part of the Bible and then used it to pass a moral judgment on the rest of it as “bad”. However, he has apparently failed to consider if violence may ever be necessary and that it may ultimately produce some greater good. What’s more disturbing to me though, is that he has apparently decided to pass judgment on God, or on some of God’s actions, particularly in the Old Testament. I have two major problems with this.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I don’t think that the Bible condones ALL violence, even that in the name of religion. To wage war in the name of Christianity is possible and in fact has been done, BUT it takes a great deal of biblical misinterpretation. I wholeheartedly agree with Seibert that there have been instances where the Bible has been unjustly used to oppress and kill people (although historian Paul Johnson asserts that atheists have killed more people than in all wars combined) and that modern violence in the name of religion is wrong. Blowing up abortion clinics or injuring and killing abortion doctors for instance, is very clearly wrong. Note that the Bible doesn’t set up a church hierarchy or give an explicit license to wage war on others based on that hierarchy’s edicts. That said, violence can sometimes be good. African slavery (not the kind in the Bible) was ended based on Christian movements in Great Britain and the U.S. In our country, its demise was cemented by the Civil War, paid for by the deaths of 360,000 Union Soldiers and another 275,000 wounded. Sometimes, war produces an ultimate good.
Second, I can’t see Seibert setting himself up in judgment of some God’s actions. Where is his moral authority for passing judgment? How has he determined that what God did or had others do as reported in the Bible is immoral? It begs the basic question of where morality comes from. Some would say that it has evolved along with other human processes over time, having little to do with God. The problem with this relativistic morality is that there is no standard for saying that one view is better than another. Carried to its logical conclusion, all views are equal, which essentially means that there is no morality. This view is logically inconsistent. I’ve read that most philosophers today believe that there are objective moral values. I believe that those moral values and the duties that flow from them come from God and the main way He communicates them is through the Bible. You have to be just read the story and let it take you where it goes. You don’t read it, find the part you like and disdain and/or disregard the rest.
In sum, I share Seibert’s discomfort with the violence in the Old Testament, but carefully note its context of God trying to get the attention of a world gone seriously astray and also note the violence’s explicit limitations. The Bible does not tell us that since God it, we should try this at home. Further, God is good, not just good some of the time. If God creates life, doesn’t that also mean that he has the right to take it away as He sees fit? I admire Seibert for his devotion; he’s ahead of me in that he’s made Christianity his life’s work and I appreciate his views. In the final analysis, in my opinion, Seibert is certainly right to question the violence in the Bible, but certainly not right to label it as immoral.
I'm also not comfortable with declaring that particular passages in the Bible are immoral. Yes, there are passages that cause me to struggle with what they mean. These are mostly the ones that appear to suggest that God condoned such and such a violent act. I struggle because it conflicts with everything else I've learned about God from other parts of the Bible and with everything else I've learned/gleaned in my spiritual journey. While I'll argue that certain passages don't seem to be in keeping with God as I know, I won't say it's 'immoral' because there's more than I know. Maybe I'm missing something (or am looking through current cultural filters and don't understand the full context of the time. And maybe it's there for us to wrestle with.
DeleteWhere I get uncomfortable is when these passages are used as misguided justifications for violence in the name of God, as you note. Or to justify continued repression of different groups, races, sexes, or religions.
Sometimes the difficulty in resolving what we know (or think we know) about the nature of God with accounts of violence that seem to go against that nature is because we assume that, where the authors of those passages directly attribute the destruction of a whole group of people (as when the Israelites were settling into the Promised Land) to God, God actually did that. Is it possible that these accounts represent what the writers perceived as they tried to understand what it means to be God's people? Maybe God didn't actually tell them to wipe out whole towns, but that's what they believed. There's no record that the Israelites actually expelled (whether by violence or eviction) all of the Canaanites who were already settled in the land. Maybe that suggests that God didn't intend for them to do so.