Century marks

Christian Century, May 17, 2003

BIBLICAL BAD EXAMPLE: The Muslim extremists who attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon took their inspiration from the Qur'an, but they could have used the Bible. During the Israelites' conquest of the land, for instance, they were directed not only to overcome but also to destroy all the inhabitants (Deut. 7:1-6). Although such "texts of terror" stand in sharp contrast to texts that command people to care for aliens in their midst, they have been used to justify various "righteous causes": Oliver Cromwell against the Irish Catholics, the Puritans in the New World against indigenous peoples, white South Africans against blacks, and Zionists--both Jewish and Christian--against the Palestinians. And what are Christians (and Jews) to make of these texts that sanction not only violence but ethnic cleansing? John J. Collins, in his presidential address to the Society of Biblical Literature in November, argued for an honest recognition that there is much in the Bible "not worthy to serve as a model for imitation." That does not mean the "dark side of the Bible" should be ignored. "The power of the Bible," says Collins, "is largely that it gives an unvarnished picture of human nature and of the dynamics of history, and also of religion and the things that people do in its name.... The biblical portrayal of human reality becomes pernicious only when it is vested with authority and assumed to reflect, without qualification or differentiation, the wisdom of God or the will of God" (Journal of Biblical Literature, Spring).

MORE ON THE DARK SIDE: When in her childhood Francine Prose celebrated the seder with her family, she delighted in the ceremonial recitation of the plagues. She was drawn to them because, like a horror film, they seemed so forbidden and disturbing. Never did she think, nor did anyone point out to her, that there were actual human victims involved. While the themes of the Book of Exodus--oppression and liberation, courage and determination--are stirring and uplifting, there is that dark side, the brutality, including the killing of innocent children: first Pharaoh commanded the killing of all the Jewish male babies, and then God commanded the killing of the firstborn child in all Egyptian families. Imagine what Exodus reports: "There was not a house where there was no one dead." It was, Prose says, "genocide without apology." What bothers Prose most about Exodus is what she knows she should admire--that it tells the truth about human behavior: "Humans clump together in arbitrary, tightly knit groups that want to kill other groups.... Children are merely bodies, especially other people's children." What happened in Egypt long ago can, and does, happen again and again. Every group is capable of this kind of brutality, Prose concludes (American Scholar, Spring).

JESUS AND THE HOMELESS: When a church youth group visited a Catholic Worker house in Birmingham, they wished to know how successful the work was with the homeless: How many families move into their own housing? How many adults find jobs? How many children enroll in school? The host responded: "I am not often privileged to see the end of God's work in these people's lives. This house is one stop on their long journey. While they are here with me, they will see Jesus" (The Gospel and Our Culture newsletter, September-December, 2002).

GOOD QUESTION: In 1989, 96 fans were crushed to death in a soccer stadium in Sheffield, England, and another 200 were injured. At one of the hospitals to which these victims were taken, an attending surgeon spoke to the parents who had come to find out the fate of their children. The surgeon read the names of those killed, expressed his sympathy to the parents, and then said that as a Christian he believed that God understood the parents' grief and was with them in the time of need. One father bitterly responded: "What does God know about losing a son?" (Expository Times, May).

CAUTION--IRONIC TWISTS: American officials admit they underestimated the power of the Shi'ites' aspiration to form a fundamentalist Islamic government in a post-Saddam Iraq. What was originally designed as an attempt to establish a beachhead of democracy in the gulf region and Arab world could turn out to spark instead a revitalized Islamic regime. "We tried liberalism, communism and secularism, but none of them worked, so why not try an Islamic state?" asked a public affairs officer at Karbala University. Such a prospect is cause for great concern to the approximately 650,000 Christians who live in Iraq. The largest Christian body is the Chaldean Church (Eastern rite Catholic); other denominations include the (Assyrian) Church of the East, which is Nestorian; Syrian, Armenian and Greek Catholic churches; and a few Orthodox groups. In Baghdad, the Christians tend to be more highly educated and prosperous than their Muslim neighbors. Religious violence and persecution, which has been part of their history going back to Genghis Khan, is an extremely frightening prospect for them, so they are keeping a low profile (Christian Science Monitor, April 21; Washington Post, April 22; New York Times, April 23).