Friday, February 06, 2009
Joshua fought the battle of meta-narratives
I am sitting here with my 4 year old son who asked “What are you typing?” I told him, “I am typing about Joshua,” to which he replied, “Joshua won the battle of Jericho because he listened to God.” With a smile I nodded, “That is what the book of Joshua says.” And, that may be all that really matters. The rest of what I am going to write is probably just so much filler that should be prefaced with the phrase “lean not on your own understanding.”
The story goes that God was interviewing for a people. (I read this story in a book a while back and I can’t remember which one in order to offer credit where it is due. Suffice it to say, this story is not original to me.) God met with the Greeks and they said, “We are a nation of philosophers, poets, and artists. If you make us your people, we will expound upon your attributes at length, put your beauty on display, and disseminate knowledge of you far and wide.” He came to the Romans and they said, “We are a nation of warriors. We will expand your kingdom over the entire world converting the nations as we conquer.” He went down to Egypt and they said, “We are a very superstitious nation of builders. If you make us your people we will build great monuments in your honor which will last as a legacy to your name for millenia.” Then on his way up out of Egypt, God found a small group of peasants on the Sinai peninsula. They said, “We are not a great nation of profound thinkers, powerful warriors, or precise builders. We are a group of storytellers and if you make us your people we will remember and tell your story.” God responded, “At last, I have found my people.”
Appropriately enough, the book of Joshua contains some great stories. The fact that my 4 year old remembers the story of Jericho and got the essential message of the book is proof. Yet, there is a dark side to the familiar stories. After the walls of Jericho fell, the Israelites went in and slaughtered the entire population. At least that is what I have always thought the story said since I read the text in light of modern total warfare culminating in atrocities like Hiroshima and Nagasaki and with a modern understanding of genocide informed by places like Auschwitz, Cambodia’s killing fields, Rwanda, and Darfur. Instead, perhaps I should have been informed by more ancient forms of warfare. In ancient times it seems the general population was more or less incidental. They may or may not become involved but the goal was really to capture the leaders. (I can't help thinking that if this was still true today there would be a lot less war.) The spoils of war included the livestock, belongings, and other treasures of the ruling class, even including the slaves, wives, children, and kings themselves. (e.g. Nebuchadnezzar ordering Ashpenaz to bring in some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility at the beginning of Daniel.) So, perhaps the statements in Joshua to kill all men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys refers not so much to the general population but rather more specifically to the spoils of war and the rulers of each city in recognition that God is the victor and not the individual Isrealites. If this is the case, Joshua could be read as a liberation campaign with the Israelites freeing the local population from oppressive regimes.
I find this explanation for the problem of genocide in Joshua a bit more palatable to my postmodern sensibilities. And yet, even though some of the cities which were supposed to have been cleared of every living thing early on in Joshua still have inhabitants which must be faced again later in the book, I am not sure the text supports my reading between the lines. The premodern author of Joshua seems to have had no qualm with genocide when practiced in devotion God. In the author’s mind, slaughtering entire people groups was a spiritual act of obedience in response to the mercy God had shown Israel by bringing them out of slavery, renewing the covenant, and giving them the Torah.
I really struggle with this. God’s name has been used to support all sorts of horrible atrocities committed by the professed faithful in Jericho and Medina, Rome and Seville, Berlin and Afghanistan. In each instance, the assumption that God exclusively blessed the aggressors and condemned the victims was used as justification for appalling violence. This attitude reached its zenith in Germany during the early 20th century. When coupled with a national sense of injustice, modern rationalism, Darwinian influenced philosophy, and scientific progress, Hitler’s religious rhetoric culminated in the terrifyingly efficient extermination of Jewish, homosexual, handicapped, elderly, and other such undesirable and excluded people. Reaction against these and other atrocities led to a postmodern rejection of modern meta-narratives (religious or otherwise) which had been used by those in power to transform entire societies into killing machines. When I bring this perspective back to Joshua I am appalled and yet I need to remember that the perspective of the Israelites is not that of the powerful aggressor. Instead, their perspective is almost invariably that of the outnumbered and excluded outsider – David facing Goliath.
At the same time, exclusivity is the ideal which the author of Joshua would have the Israelites attain. If, as some believe, the book of Joshua was written near the end of the Babylonian exile, the point may have been to maintain Jewish purity after returning to the promised-land with the book of Joshua serving as a reminder to maintain devotion to God and avoid contamination by the larger surrounding culture. The purpose of the book of Joshua may have been to maintain the community in response to and in order to continue within God’s blessing. What is lacking is the second part of God’s original covenant with Abraham, the part about extending the blessing to others. Israel was meant to be a lighthouse to bless the nations and instead they replaced the windows with mirrors, thus keeping the blessing to themselves.
This tendency toward exclusivity is inherent in every religious system but none more so than my lifelong love, the Seventh-day Adventist church. Since we first heeded the call out of Babylon over 150 years ago, we have sought to build ourselves a sanctuary and insulate ourselves from society. We have accomplished this by demonizing ‘secular’ culture, suspecting all other religions and denominations, and creating a structure separate from and similar to the surrounding society with our own elaborate denominational hierarchy, school systems, and even our own hospitals. In the process, we have often succeeded in recapitulating the error of the Israelites. Too often, we have forgotten that we have been blessed to be a blessing.
I may not like the way Joshua took the promised-land by force, but at least the Israelites were actively engaged in their local context even while maintaining their exclusivity. This is a lesson for modern and postmodern readers to take to heart. Maintaining our exclusivity is not equivalent with disengaging from society. Rather, seeing the Israelites as engaged in liberating the promised-land from oppression and remembering the great prophetic voices of our faith community from Isaiah and Jeremiah to Ellen White and Martin Luther King, may we become inspired to find our own voice and reengage with society in order to speak truth to power. God is still looking for a people of storytellers who will remember and tell the stories that undermine and cut the giant meta-narratives of our day down to size.
The story goes that God was interviewing for a people. (I read this story in a book a while back and I can’t remember which one in order to offer credit where it is due. Suffice it to say, this story is not original to me.) God met with the Greeks and they said, “We are a nation of philosophers, poets, and artists. If you make us your people, we will expound upon your attributes at length, put your beauty on display, and disseminate knowledge of you far and wide.” He came to the Romans and they said, “We are a nation of warriors. We will expand your kingdom over the entire world converting the nations as we conquer.” He went down to Egypt and they said, “We are a very superstitious nation of builders. If you make us your people we will build great monuments in your honor which will last as a legacy to your name for millenia.” Then on his way up out of Egypt, God found a small group of peasants on the Sinai peninsula. They said, “We are not a great nation of profound thinkers, powerful warriors, or precise builders. We are a group of storytellers and if you make us your people we will remember and tell your story.” God responded, “At last, I have found my people.”
Appropriately enough, the book of Joshua contains some great stories. The fact that my 4 year old remembers the story of Jericho and got the essential message of the book is proof. Yet, there is a dark side to the familiar stories. After the walls of Jericho fell, the Israelites went in and slaughtered the entire population. At least that is what I have always thought the story said since I read the text in light of modern total warfare culminating in atrocities like Hiroshima and Nagasaki and with a modern understanding of genocide informed by places like Auschwitz, Cambodia’s killing fields, Rwanda, and Darfur. Instead, perhaps I should have been informed by more ancient forms of warfare. In ancient times it seems the general population was more or less incidental. They may or may not become involved but the goal was really to capture the leaders. (I can't help thinking that if this was still true today there would be a lot less war.) The spoils of war included the livestock, belongings, and other treasures of the ruling class, even including the slaves, wives, children, and kings themselves. (e.g. Nebuchadnezzar ordering Ashpenaz to bring in some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility at the beginning of Daniel.) So, perhaps the statements in Joshua to kill all men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys refers not so much to the general population but rather more specifically to the spoils of war and the rulers of each city in recognition that God is the victor and not the individual Isrealites. If this is the case, Joshua could be read as a liberation campaign with the Israelites freeing the local population from oppressive regimes.
I find this explanation for the problem of genocide in Joshua a bit more palatable to my postmodern sensibilities. And yet, even though some of the cities which were supposed to have been cleared of every living thing early on in Joshua still have inhabitants which must be faced again later in the book, I am not sure the text supports my reading between the lines. The premodern author of Joshua seems to have had no qualm with genocide when practiced in devotion God. In the author’s mind, slaughtering entire people groups was a spiritual act of obedience in response to the mercy God had shown Israel by bringing them out of slavery, renewing the covenant, and giving them the Torah.
I really struggle with this. God’s name has been used to support all sorts of horrible atrocities committed by the professed faithful in Jericho and Medina, Rome and Seville, Berlin and Afghanistan. In each instance, the assumption that God exclusively blessed the aggressors and condemned the victims was used as justification for appalling violence. This attitude reached its zenith in Germany during the early 20th century. When coupled with a national sense of injustice, modern rationalism, Darwinian influenced philosophy, and scientific progress, Hitler’s religious rhetoric culminated in the terrifyingly efficient extermination of Jewish, homosexual, handicapped, elderly, and other such undesirable and excluded people. Reaction against these and other atrocities led to a postmodern rejection of modern meta-narratives (religious or otherwise) which had been used by those in power to transform entire societies into killing machines. When I bring this perspective back to Joshua I am appalled and yet I need to remember that the perspective of the Israelites is not that of the powerful aggressor. Instead, their perspective is almost invariably that of the outnumbered and excluded outsider – David facing Goliath.
At the same time, exclusivity is the ideal which the author of Joshua would have the Israelites attain. If, as some believe, the book of Joshua was written near the end of the Babylonian exile, the point may have been to maintain Jewish purity after returning to the promised-land with the book of Joshua serving as a reminder to maintain devotion to God and avoid contamination by the larger surrounding culture. The purpose of the book of Joshua may have been to maintain the community in response to and in order to continue within God’s blessing. What is lacking is the second part of God’s original covenant with Abraham, the part about extending the blessing to others. Israel was meant to be a lighthouse to bless the nations and instead they replaced the windows with mirrors, thus keeping the blessing to themselves.
This tendency toward exclusivity is inherent in every religious system but none more so than my lifelong love, the Seventh-day Adventist church. Since we first heeded the call out of Babylon over 150 years ago, we have sought to build ourselves a sanctuary and insulate ourselves from society. We have accomplished this by demonizing ‘secular’ culture, suspecting all other religions and denominations, and creating a structure separate from and similar to the surrounding society with our own elaborate denominational hierarchy, school systems, and even our own hospitals. In the process, we have often succeeded in recapitulating the error of the Israelites. Too often, we have forgotten that we have been blessed to be a blessing.
I may not like the way Joshua took the promised-land by force, but at least the Israelites were actively engaged in their local context even while maintaining their exclusivity. This is a lesson for modern and postmodern readers to take to heart. Maintaining our exclusivity is not equivalent with disengaging from society. Rather, seeing the Israelites as engaged in liberating the promised-land from oppression and remembering the great prophetic voices of our faith community from Isaiah and Jeremiah to Ellen White and Martin Luther King, may we become inspired to find our own voice and reengage with society in order to speak truth to power. God is still looking for a people of storytellers who will remember and tell the stories that undermine and cut the giant meta-narratives of our day down to size.
Labels: Adventist, community, Epicenter, Joshua, meta-narratives, postmodernity, Sanctuary
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