Some quotes from A Generous Orthodoxy…
This is a collection of quotes from McLaren’s A Generous Orthodoxy. I am 3/4 of the way through this book. I think McLaren is on to something in this book. Any of you read this book, what are your thoughts to McLaren’s premise?
“How are we going to respond when our kids (with their post-modern mindset) ask us if what the Israelites did to the Canaanites was genocide?”
I am making an assumption that some of our kids at camps, and even in our youth groups come to a place like this in Scripture and are blown away at the seemingly hostile accounts put forth. For some of our students, and adults a like, this sort of scene turns people off, but I want to make it clear here and every where that the problem isn’t the Bible!
Let me say that again, the problem isn’t the Bible, (I will not qoute at length from Brian McLaren’s, A Generous Orthodoxy, El Cajon: California, Youth Specialties, 2004, 166-171) The problem isn’t the Bible, “but our modern assumptions about the Bible and our modern interpretive approaches to it…there is a better way to understand the Bible and apply the Bible, a largely new and unexplored way that can be summarized like this: We need to reclaim the Bible as narrative. The Bible is a story, and just because it recounts … what happened, that doesn’t mean it tells what should always happen or even what should have happened” (McLaren, 166-167).
[McLaren provides a really helpful flow chart, that I can't recreate here...] Anyway…
“We must begin with the recognition of how violent the world of the Middle East was. The violence of the Jews entering Canaan in 1400 B.C. was not extraordinary; it was typcial of their day. And so we ask: in that context was God commanding the people to do, not what was ideal or ethically desirable for all time, but what was necessary to survive in that world at that point? Was there a viable alternative at the time for a group of wandering, homeless, liberated slaves seeking a homeland? In other words, assuming history is real and not a simulation, not a chess game in which God plays both sides, not a video game moving to the pressure of God’s thumbs on a controller — if God is going to enter into a relationship with people, then God has to work with them as they are in their individual and cultural moral development. And back in those days, that meant that any group of people, if they were to survive, had to fight” (McLaren, 167-168).
But there is more… McLaren provides two helpful analogies that I won’t go into detail here, but he uses our American past, and our American present of the example of God working with the sometimes worst in society to accomplish his purposes. Interesting stuff.
“According to Torah, while God is commanding the destruction of Canaan, God simultaneously commands that once it was subdued the Jews should treat their neighbors and aliens with respect and kindness. God never commands them to build a divinely sanctioned empire that will conquer all their neighbors and destroy or assimilate them; after all they had been victims of empire themselves in Egypt. Instead God stricly limits violence and leads the Jews to create a society that was a step above that of their neighbors ethically” (McLaren, 170).
“We have to face, sadly but honestly, the reality that in many circumstances…people who ostensibly follow Jesus Christ have violated the plot line of our story, have reversed the flow of the narrative. They have acted regressively, as if the slaugher of the Canaanites were intended as an expression of God’s desire for all time, honoring Moses above Jesus, denying where they are in the unfolding narrative. They have kept the ethnic cleansing card in their back pocket, and they have thus become perpetrators and victims of tragically had literacy, confusing the genre of ancient biblical narrative with the modern genres of political constitution or moral dictionary or religious blueprint. As a result they have perferred to read the Bible as a timeless document rather than a timely one” (McLaren, 170).
“And Jesus comes with a new command that fulfills and supersedes all Torah: to love one another, especially to love one’s enemies - to forgive, not to inflict revenge, to give, not to take or even grasp what you already have…” (McLaren, 170).
“This narrative approach does not lesson the agony one feels reading the conquest of Canaan with the eyes of one taught by Jesus to love all, including enemies. But it helps turn the Bible back into what it is, not a look it up encylopedia of timeless moral truths, but the unfolding narrative of God at work in a violent, sinful world, calling people, beginning with Abraham, into a new way of life. This isn’t deterministic progress of Marxism or capitalism; this is the struggle of common people in the journey of faith, hope and love. And it challenges us: to be truly biblical does not mean being preoccupied with some golden age in the ancient world and God’s word to people back then. It means learning from the past to let God’s story, God’s will, and God’s dream continue to come true in us and our children” (McLaren, 171).
Hope this helps a little bit. I know it’s rather long, but I think the key argument is seeing the Bible as narrative, and reading this story of the Canaanites in light of the historical-sociological aspects of their day.
Filed under: Helpful Places
Jason, I have read this and it has really affected my thought processes. I think you have nailed it in your thoughts. Great stuff.