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Contents © 2004
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

CONFESSIONS
May 2004

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WHY IS THIS IN THE BIBLE?

I was at the library book sale on Park Avenue. I found a $1 copy of illustrated Bible stories for children. The illustrations were gorgeous, primal, powerful. I bought it and brought it home to my children. There's a wonderful depiction of Abraham, knife upraised over his son Isaac, all set to kill the child he never thought he'd have, because God asked him to.

I have a son named Isaac -- named for the Jesuit martyr Isaac Jogues -- and he listens to this story with special attention. "God was testing Abraham to see if he loved God more or Isaac more," says my four-year-old son with perfect aplomb. He knows he's speaking aright -- he got the words from me. "But the angel stopped him." Yes, the angel stopped him. But God still asked Abraham to kill his son. And if God asked him to do it, then if Abraham had done it, it would have been a good thing -- how can obeying the command of a good God be bad? My son swallows this without blinking, though he does call it a "bad story" on account of God's awful request. A skeptic might reject the faith on account of this "bad story," and I have to admit, my son's ease with it gives me chills. Even when we talk about how God was willing to sacrifice His only son for our sake -- even then, I get the creeps. Shouldn't he be bothered? Am I raising children lacking in some right human feeling?

At least Abraham was trying to please God. My freshman year of college, I read the Bible all the way through for the first time, and there I encountered a nasty little story in the book of Judges. An old man has taken in a Levite traveler and his concubine in the land of the Benjaminites -- one of the 12 tribes of Israel. But that night, his house is surrounded by "base fellows," who shout, "Bring out the man who came into your house, that we may know him." The host does not wish to see his guest raped, so he says, "Behold, here are my virgin daughter and his concubine; let me bring them out now. Ravish them and do with them what seems good to you; but against this man do not do so vile a thing." The crowd isn't satisfied by this offer, but when the visitor puts out his concubine, "they knew her, and abused her all night until morning."

The raped concubine dies, and the Levite carves her into 12 pieces and sends them throughout Israel. The Benjaminites are punished, but not before they kill 40,000 of their fellow Israelites. And even then, they are preserved from ruin by being allowed to carry off women from the daughters of Shiloh. "In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes." That's how the story ends. Why is this in the Bible? I have no idea. In his book On Christian Doctrine, Saint Augustine proposes that before you begin to interpret Scripture, you ought to have a working knowledge of the entire text. That alone should give most people pause before cracking their Bibles for study. Lots of passages will tempt you to interpretation -- but do you meet the minimum requirement? Is it any wonder that the reading of Scripture was reserved for the learned? The Old Testament in particular is a bloody book. Here is a bit from Ezekiel, where God talks about his dealings with unfaithful Israel. "Moreover, I gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not have life; and I defiled them through their very gifts in making them offer by fire all their first-born, that I might horrify them; I did it that they might know that I am the Lord."

That story from Judges is referred to in Alexander Waugh's book, God. It is not a book for the easily shaken. It pokes at any number of these odd stories, like a curious tongue investigating a split lip. Stories wherein God does horrify, where it is hard to match Him to the God who is Love, who desires the salvation of all. Waugh notes that a ship owner named Marcion set up a Christian church that rivaled Rome's, a church which claimed that the warlike Old Testament God was not the same God as the loving Jesus Christ. "Christ said, 'Let the little children come unto me,'" notes Waugh. "But God fed little children to the bears" for calling Elisha "baldhead." After reading God, it's easy to sympathize with Marcion. I cannot answer all the questions Waugh raises about God. I do not feel I have to in order to keep the faith. But it does make a body curious.

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