So now, after talking about the God who is with us and for us, I want to explore with you the God who I believe is ahead of us, pulling us forward.
Is this how you’ve heard God described?
Ahead?
Pulling us forward?
Is God progressive, with a better, more inspiring vision for our future than we could ever imagine,
or is God behind,
back there,
in the past,
endlessly trying to get us to return to how it used to be?
In many ways this is one of the central questions of our time about everything: Is the best future a return to an imagined pristine era when things were ideal, or is our best future actually in the future?
In the spring of 2008 I was in Seattle, speaking at an event with the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu and a number of other spiritual leaders. The purpose of the gathering was to talk about how we can teach compassion to younger generations so that the world will be more and more a peaceful, less violent place.
It was incredibly inspiring to be there. I clearly remember sitting there, taking it all in, looking around the room at all of the extraordinary people from all over the world from every religion—all of us there out of a shared desire for a better tomorrow. And then somebody leaned over and told me there were protesters out in front of the building.
Protesters?
Who could possibly think this was a bad idea?
What sort of people got up that morning and thought that the best possible use of their energies and talents and time was to make signs and then go downtown to demonstrate in opposition to a peacemaking event?
Who’s against peace?
That’s like being against puppies, or flowers, or Taylor Swift.
I asked who was protesting and was told it was a group of Christians.
(Sigh.)
I tell you about that event because God was there, at that event, as God has always been, present with all of humanity, leading and calling and inviting and drawing and pulling all of humanity into greater and greater love and joy and justice and equality and peace. It is possible, then, to be very religious and very committed, as I’m sure those protesters were, and yet be working against the new thing that God is doing.
On the sidewalk, in front of the building,
missing out on what God was up to inside.
Sometimes religions are in harmony with this pulling and drawing and calling and inviting, helping people move forward toward their best selves and a better future for all of us, and sometimes religions work against this pulling and drawing and calling and inviting, resisting the very real work of God’s ruach in the world.
So where did I get this idea that God is ahead of us?
I got it from the Bible.
Which I’ve learned, over the years, is surprising for most people to hear. For many in the modern world, the Bible is one of the central reasons for the backwardness of religion.
God is ahead?
And I found that in the Bible?
Yes, and to talk about that, I’ll first take you to several of those violent old testament passages, the kind that are generally used as evidence for God being behind. So stay with me, because I want to show you something else at work in those stories, something surprising and compelling that I hope changes the way you understand God.
We’ll start with a phrase that I’m certain you’ve read or heard quoted somewhere along the way. It’s found in the second book of the Bible, called Exodus, and it reads,
But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life,
eye for eye, tooth for tooth . . .
You’ve heard this phrase before, right—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth? We usually hear it quoted when someone’s talking about revenge.
You get hit; you hit back.
They bomb us; we bomb them back.
They spread an ugly rumor about us; we ask, “Have you heard what they did last summer?”
It’s become a euphemism of sorts, a way of justifying the right to get even and settle the score.
There is, however, another way to read this verse.
The chapter this verse is found in deals with issues surrounding personal injury and property damage. It includes instructions about what to do when someone is kidnapped, the importance of making a distinction between whether personal injury was intentional or not, what happens if there’s a fistfight and one person doesn’t kill the other but injures him enough that he’s confined to bed, what the proper procedure is when someone digs a hole and someone else’s animal falls into it. There are even specific instructions on what to do if a person’s bull gores someone to death, the key question being: Did the bull have a habit of goring and had the owner been warned?
(And we all know how awkward that conversation can be: “Hey Phil? Yeah, Bob here. Am I catching you at a bad time? No? Great. Listen, this will take just a minute, and I don’t mean any disrespect and I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but—folks have been talking, and I didn’t know if you were aware of it or not, but your bull has been goring some of the neighbor kids lately, and I just thought you should know . . .”)
Dead animals and digging holes and pregnant women getting punched and slaves getting their teeth knocked out—it can all seem quite distant, chaotic, and foreign . . . unless, of course, you turn on the television any time of the day, where you’ll find a number of shows in which cameras follow police as they—wait for it—break up fights and settle property disputes and calm down neighbors who are quarreling over damaged goods. And then there are those courtroom shows where people argue their case for why the other person owes them money for—wait for it again—property damage and personal injury! It all sounds quite familiar after all. But I’m getting ahead of myself—we’re still dealing with back then . . .
In the midst of all these rules about fistfights and bull gorings is the line about “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” which meant that if someone killed your cow, he owed you a cow, not two cows, not a cow and a horse, and not a chicken. If you dug a hole and his donkey fell in it and was injured, you owed him proper compensation for the injury to that donkey—nothing more, nothing less.
“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” was another way of saying that the punishment must fit the crime. It was a law given to lessen violence, and it demonstrates a profound insight into human nature and the character of revenge.
Revenge always escalates.
When someone wrongs us, we rarely (if ever) want to do the same thing back. Why? Because we want to do something more harmful. Likewise, when someone insults us, our instinct is to search for words that will be more insulting.
Revenge always escalates.
In the ancient world, this truth about human nature had serious consequences. Someone kills your cow—what’s to stop you from killing two or three or four of his cows?
Someone injures your wife—what’s to stop you from paying him back with something far more lethal?
“An eye for an eye” was a succinct way of creating a legal barrier to prevent the escalation of violence and injury.
When we read this passage in our present context, the wisdom of it is often lost on us because it’s in among all that talk of slaves and bulls and people getting teeth knocked out and digging holes in the ground. At first glance it can easily appear to be another example of primitive, regressive culture. But at the time this regulation was given, it was a significant advance in the creation of a less volatile, more civil society.
(I assume some of you are thinking at this point: “Hey wait, we in the modern world aren’t that much farther ahead; we’re just violent and barbaric in other ways.” Excellent point. We’ll get to that in a moment. And others of you may be thinking, “Actually, ‘eye for eye’ is reflected in the Latin concept of lex talionis, which is the basis of our modern legal system. It’s not the least bit dated.” Again, good point. You’re tracking with me. Well done.)
What sounds like a primitive, barbaric, violent phrase was actually, for its time and place, a step forward.
What we see is God meeting real people in a real place at a real time in history and drawing them forward, calling them to greater and greater shalom, the Hebrew word for peace and wholeness and well-being.
Did they still have a long way to go?
Of course.
But in Exodus we see a step forward.
Now let’s fast-forward hundreds of years to the time of Jesus, because by his day something destructive had happened to the way this command was understood and interpreted. People would have some violence or injustice done to them, and they would justify their desire for revenge by quoting, you guessed it, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” In other words: “I’m just doing to them what they did to me!” (Sound familiar?)
The same verse that was intended to create a fair and just legal system, lessening violence and revenge, was by Jesus’s day being used to justify violence and revenge.
Which leads us to a crucial insight: these were very religious people, deeply committed to the scriptures, who were quoting the scriptures in such a way that those people were actually working against God’s purposes in the world.
Imagine that—religious people quoting the Bible to defend actions that were the exact opposite of the intent and purpose of those very same scriptures!
It’s possible, then, to be quoting the Bible out of the conviction that you’re defending God’s way when in fact you’re in that exact moment working against how God wants to continue drawing and pulling and calling humanity forward.
And then, to put a finer point on it, it’s possible to take something that was a step forward at one point and still be clinging to it later on in the story, to the point where it becomes a step backward.
With that said, let’s move from the “eye for eye” passage to another passage, this one from the book of Deuteronomy. I’ll let you read it through before we go any further:
When you go to war against your enemies and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife. Bring her into your home and have her shave her head, trim her nails, and put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured. After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife. If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes. You must not sell her or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her.
Where do we even start? Brutal, isn’t it?
What a primitive, barbaric, sexist, demeaning, and degrading passage. How could anyone with an ounce of respect for women find this passage anything but offensive, repulsive, and a giant step backward?
Good point.
Let’s break it down a bit.
This is a passage about the spoils of war, a common occurrence in the ancient Near East, where people were constantly going into battle, which meant people were constantly winning, which meant people were also losing, which meant being killed. It was customary that whoever won a battle took whatever had belonged to their (now-dead) adversaries for themselves. Animals, jewelry, tents, food, slaves, and of course wives. According to the conventional wisdom of the day, you were free to do whatever you wanted with the spoils of war because those spoils were all seen as your property. And property was seen as less than human, to be used or sold or discarded or abused as you saw fit.
That was how things were done.
It’s into that world that this passage comes, which lists rules for the spoils of war.
First, taking the woman you found attractive into your home meant you were providing for her. She would have a roof, protection, food, clothes, whatever else she needed.
Second, having her shave her head and trim her nails and change her clothes was to allow her to take on the marks of mourning. She had suffered a horrific loss, and so she was to be given time to properly grieve. Grief is a human emotion, and possessions don’t have emotions; spoils of war don’t have feelings. To give her time to grieve was to treat her as a person, not as a possession.
Third, to make her your wife meant she was now a fully functioning member of the household, with responsibilities and rights and position.
And then fourth, when a man in that day was not pleased with a woman, he was free to send her away, into a culture in which she had no rights, no standing, and no form of protection against exploitation. As a result, women who had been sent away often had no option but prostitution. This passage forbids sending a rejected woman away without rights and honor and dignity—a significant deviation from the cultural norms regarding spoils of war, because at the center of it was the simple affirmation that women are people, not possessions.
An obvious truth to us, but a revolutionary one at the time—one that went against conventional wisdom regarding the spoils of war, one that significantly improved the treatment of women.
What is a shocking and offensive cultural practice to us was a groundbreaking advancement at that time.
We look back on this passage and it’s clearly a number of steps backward for us, but for the original audience, at that time, it was a step forward.
Did that culture still have a long way to go in their treatment of women?
Of course.
Does our culture still have a long way to go in our treatment of women?
Of course.
There is a chain of restaurants called Hooters.
Do I need to say anymore?
What we see in these passages is God meeting people, tribes, and cultures right where they are and drawing and inviting and calling them forward, into greater and greater shalom and respect and rights and peace and dignity and equality. It’s as if human history were progressing along a trajectory, an arc, a continuum; and sacred history is the capturing and recording of those moments when people became aware that they were being called and drawn and pulled forward by the divine force and power and energy that gives life to everything.
To make it really clear and simple, let’s call this movement across history we see in passages like the ones we just looked at from Exodus and Deuteronomy clicks. What we see is God meeting people at the click they’re at, and then drawing them forward.
When they’re at F, God calls them to G.
When we’re at L, God calls us to M.
And if we’re way back there at A, God meets us way back there at A and does what God always does: invites us forward to B.
This is true for individuals, families, tribes, nations, cultures, organizations, institutions, and churches. All of it taking place on a continuum, a trajectory, a God-fueled movement within and through human history.
This bit about the clicks leads us to an obvious truth about the Bible, but one we should point out anyway: the Bible is a library of radically progressive books, books that were ahead of their time, books that tell stories about human interactions with the divine being who never, ever gives up on us and never stops calling us and pulling us and inviting us into new and better futures.
Several observations, then, about this divine pull.
First, the dominant sins, structures, systems, and stagnations of each of us and the cultures we live in often resist the radically progressive movement of God in the world and therefore hold us back from the growth and flourishing God intends for us.
Here’s an example of this resistance, from the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. God promises a man named Abraham that he is going to be blessed and that out of him is going to come a great tribe and out of that tribe the whole world is going to be blessed.
There’s a progression in this promise, a progression that is loaded with implications for our world. Abraham, who doesn’t have any children, learns that he is going to be the father of a tribe, a nation. This would have made sense to Abraham, because that’s how people in his day understood the world: everybody was part of a tribe and every tribe had a father—an originator, a patriarch. Some tribes wandered and some tribes were more settled and some had lots of possessions and were quite wealthy and some had land and some had large armies and some didn’t and some went to war often and others avoided conflict at all costs and some formed alliances with other tribes in order to defend themselves against other alliances of other tribes. Your identity as an individual in a tribal culture like Abraham’s was found in the tribe that you belonged to. (Kind of like college football.)
It’s in this tribal-centered culture that God calls Abraham to be the father of a tribe that will be different from all the other tribes.
Abraham’s tribe will have a higher purpose than simply their own wealth, preservation, and well-being. Abraham’s tribe will exist to bless and benefit all the other tribes. God calls Abraham to a new state of being that—and here’s the really important part—includes tribal identity and preservation but then transcends it to a higher calling—a calling beyond just maintaining and protecting his own tribe, a calling to help and bless and elevate all the other tribes.
Abraham’s calling isn’t just about him,
and it isn’t just about his tribe;
it’s also about the well-being of all other tribes.
The rest of the Bible tells the story of Abraham’s tribe—the Jews—and their struggles to live up to their destiny and calling. Even their name, Israel, means “the one who struggles with God.” Over time prophets rise up and call Israel back to their destiny, one of those prophets, Isaiah, telling them that they’re a “light to the Gentiles.” (The Gentiles is a phrase that essentially means everybody else.) Jesus arrives and what does he teach Abraham’s descendants? Don’t hide your light; let it shine!
Jesus continually reminds Abraham’s tribe of their identity and mission and calling, essentially asking them time and time again, “how did you so badly lose the plot? This was supposed to be your story!”
And many of them don’t get it,
because
tribes naturally have a tendency to become all about themselves.
Sound familiar?
Have you ever been part of an organization and the experience soured because you realized there wasn’t any larger mission or purpose or motivation beyond its own preservation?
Have you ever heard of a nation becoming so addicted to a particular natural resource that it could not produce enough to meet its insatiable need? But instead of cutting back and going with less, it spent even more resources and used a wide array of questionable and sometimes even violent means to obtain this resource from other countries, at the risk of bankrupting itself and causing the loss of untold life?
These truths about the call of Abraham and Jesus’s teaching to his tribe lead us to another truth about the divine pull, one that speaks directly to religious communities. It is possible for religious people who see themselves as God’s people to resist the forward-calling of God to such a degree that the larger culture around them is actually ahead of them in a particular area, such as the protection of human dignity or the integration of the mind and body or the treatment of women or inclusion of the forgotten and marginalized or compassion or intellectual honesty or care for the environment. Churches and religious communities and organizations can claim to speak for God while at the same time actually being behind the movement of God that is continuing forward in the culture around them . . .
without their participation.
Which takes us back to the divine pull, to a truth about the promise to Abraham that leads to a truth about our day: self-centered, our-tribe-above-all-others consciousness is at the root of untold war, conflict, racism, ethnic cleansing, environmental destruction, and suffering in the world, and when we talk about God meeting people in the Bible back then right where they were, we must, in the next breath, acknowledge that the promise to Abraham is still unrealized.
The click God was calling them to there and then is a click we still aren’t at here and now.
The life-giving ruach we see at work in the scriptures is still ahead, because in the Bible we find God ahead, confronting and calling people to a new vision of life together that still hasn’t been fully realized, that we still haven’t seen fully come into existence thousands of years later.
And that truth leads to one about the human heart: as advanced and intelligent and educated as we are, there are some things about the human condition that have not changed in thousands of years. It’s very important that we are honest about this glaring reality. We have progressed so incredibly far, invented so many things, found an endless array of new ways to process and share and communicate information, and yet the human heart has remained significantly unchanged, in that it still possesses the tremendous capacity to produce extraordinary ignorance, evil, and destruction.
We need help.
At this very moment there is a great deal of energy being spent by nations around the world to make sure that certain other nations do not get the capability to use nuclear weapons. The nation that is leading this charge is the United States, which has enough nuclear weapons to blow the world up several times and that, contrary to all other nations, has actually used nuclear weapons in the past, killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians. The United States has around 6 percent of the world’s population and possesses a little less than half of the world’s weapons. If there were a group of one hundred people, and six of them had half the guns—well, we would have a serious problem.
We need help.
To read the Bible, then, as a book about those primitive people who had made a mess of things and how God was calling them forward and miss the glaring fact that it’s also a book about us and our desperate need to be rescued and helped and brought forward into a better future is an epic, historic case of seeing the splinter in someone else’s eye and not the log in our own.
All of which leads me to a story about Jesus’s disciples, who come to him agitated because they saw someone driving demons out in Jesus’s name. They tried to stop the man, they tell Jesus, “because he is not one of us.”
Driving out demons is a good thing, correct?
I think we’d all agree that the fewer demons we have, the better off our day is, right?
So this man is doing something good, something needed, something healing, and yet according to the disciples, “he is not one of us.”
And so they try to stop him.
They do this because, for them, the world is divided up a particular way.
Us. And then everybody else.
However they reached this conclusion, we can assume that their culture and families and a number of other factors had worked together to shape them in such a way that they would try to stop someone from doing good.
Jesus, however, is quite relaxed about the whole thing. He tells them not to stop the man, because “whoever is not against you is for you.”
I tell you this story because there’s something going on in both the disciples’ actions and Jesus’s response that has been going on for thousands and thousands of years. We divide the world up and label people and create rules and feel righteous about our traditional or progressive stances. We spend a great deal of time arguing for these positions that we’ve taken and working to get the words right so that we can best articulate why we take the stand that we do.
Only to discover that whatever God is up to, it’s bigger and better and wider and stronger and more inspiring and expansive and liberating than we first imagined.
A careful reading of the Bible reveals a book about people having their minds blown and hearts exploded with a vision for humanity so thrilling and joyous it can’t be grasped all at once. It has to be broken down into a step, followed by a step, followed by a step, followed by a step. Click, then a click, then a click.
All of which raises the question: So what’s God up to at this moment? What does all this talk about the God who is with us and for us and ahead of us look like in everyday life here in the modern world?
That’s a great question,
one that will take another chapter.