4 minute read
Reflection
SNOWFLAKES
AND SCRIPTURE
by Ron Thomlinson with the Rev James Macfarlane
JIM, at the risk of lobbing a live grenade on to the pages of Salvationist, somebody has to raise the matter, so I will: snowflakes and Scripture – the ‘snowflake generation’ being a derogatory term for those seen as less resilient and more easily offended than older generations.
A Sunday morning sermon I heard just after Christmas was based on Herod’s slaughter of the innocents in Matthew 2:16 – a most heinous act. A few hours before the service, news broke of a British university censoring Greek poetry it taught because of the poem’s reference to domestic violence and the need to protect the sensitivity of students.
Shortly after, I read that various children’s classics are being rewritten to ‘reflect today’s “anxious” parents and their close watch over their youngsters’. If that is the trend, then there is a phenomenal problem facing producers of Sunday school material.
How long will it be before campaigners start on the Scriptures? The Salvation Army declares that the Bible is given by inspiration of God, even though not all its content is suitable for children. We oldies also experience a dilemma when retelling some of its stories.
I once heard a holiness meeting sermon about King David’s affair with Bathsheba. Having chosen to use the story as the basis for his talk, the preacher could not even say the word ‘adultery’. All his efforts to dance around the biblical facts served only to make us as embarrassed as he obviously felt.
What about Abraham attempting to murder his son, Isaac? Or the violent verses in the psalms? Or women driving tent pegs through men’s heads, genocide and beheadings, people being stoned to death, details of torture and an account of a crucifixion? These are all quite traumatic for anyone to read.
Might the Salvation Army Trading Company Ltd have to issue a warning on the outside of Bibles, wrapped in brown paper: ‘This book contains stories of a violent and sexual nature. Some racial language may cause offence and adult supervision is recommended at all times’?
Should we censor the nasty passages of Scripture and let so-called snowflakes read just the pleasant bits of it that reveal a really far-too-nice, saccharinesweet God? my ave to utside of n paper: ‘This a violent and ial language may supervision is s’?
Ron, history can be interpreted but it cannot be expunged. Not only does history have the power to shock, it also shows us what human beings were capable of, and still are. Outrage was as present in Bible times as it is today.
Into the bustle of King David’s court a prophet arrived. He had a shocking story to tell. A wealthy man had received an unexpected visitor. To offer him hospitality, he sent henchmen to the home of a poor man who had a pet lamb, one of the few pleasures in his life. The lamb was seized, slaughtered and served for dinner.
The king was incandescent with rage: ‘Whoever has done this is a dead man.’ The next two words spoken by the prophet were even more devastating – attha haish. In English it takes four words: ‘You are the man!’
Nothing of a saccharine-sweet God here. This is divine outrage for the abuse of absolute power that saw a common soldier assassinated in order to acquire the man’s widow.
However, we still face massive difficulties in the Old Testament if we don’t come to terms with religious growth – that is, progressive revelation.
The book of Deuteronomy is one of the treasures of the old covenant. It contains the greatest of the commandments, ‘Hear O Israel:
HANDLE WITH CARE
The Lord our God, the Lord is one’ (Deuteronomy 6:4).
Earlier in the book, though, we read of the battle against King Sihon: ‘The Lord our God delivered him over to us… At that time we took all his towns and completely destroyed them – men, women and children. We left no survivors’ (Deuteronomy 2:33 and 34).
Nothing today can reconcile us to an understanding of religious purity that requires the extermination of the ‘impure’.
Just as the book of Deuteronomy was hallowed for us in its highest insights, we need to hear the same voice rejecting its obsolete injunctions. ‘You have heard that it was said, “Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth”… You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’ (Matthew 5:38–44).
There is no way the message of Deuteronomy and the message of Matthew can be reconciled except by interpreting the older through the newer.
There is such a thing as spiritual evolution, but to see it we need the shock of outrage as well as the wonder of enlightenment.
