How can we make sense of some of the stories in the Old Testament in which God orders the complete destruction of Israel’s enemies, including not just soldiers but civilians and even livestock? Here’s one answer: Look elsewhere in the Old Testament for a different perspective – one more in keeping with the merciful God we encounter in the New Testament.
Phil pointed me last night at a terrific post on the progressive evangelical blog Slacktivist. Slacktivist takes up the book of Jonah – one my favorites – and makes a great case that this book is a theological argument. Read Jonah sometime, if you haven’t – it’s short, and it’s a lively and humorous story of a prophet who runs away from God’s call, sojourns briefly inside a fish, finally and reluctantly calls Nineveh (a heathen city) to repentance, and then is furious when the Ninevites actually repent and God forgives them.
Slacktivist argues (and I tend to agree) that the author of Jonah was explicitly taking aim at the vision of a vengeful and destructive God, found elsewhere in the Old Testament. Slacktivist goes on to discuss how to handle differences in perspective and theology between books of the Bible – a fascinating issue that is troubling for literalist evangelical Christians, and probably not much considered by most mainline Christians.
Slacktivist adds another post expanding a few points in his argument here. Look particularly at point 3 – “Jesus really liked this book” – and his interpretation of Jesus’ remark about the “sign of Jonah” (it’s not the three days in the fish/tomb, it’s the repentance of the Gentiles). I think he’s right on, there. On reconciling different perspectives within the Biblical canon, Slacktivist writes -
Just for the sake of argument, some of my fellow evangelicals say, let’s pretend you’re right and there actually are conflicting views present within the canon of scripture. How, then, are we to know which side to choose? How can we know which of these conflicting views we ought to be following?
A classmate of mine asked exactly that question years ago of one of my seminary professors. The professor said nothing at first, but just turned around and walked to the blackboard. Holding a short piece of chalk sideways he made two broad, sweeping strokes and turned back to the class, pointing behind him to the cross he had just drawn. “That,” he said. “That is the standard by which I judge everything we read in the Bible.”
Good answer. That same answer is why I side with the author of Jonah against the biblical views that the story of Jonah attacks.
The God of the book of Jonah, the God who rebukes Jonah for his anger over the salvation of Nineveh by saying, “Should I not be concerned about Ninevah, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” - that’s a God I want to follow.