An Accommodating Bible

Across the five years that I have been writing these columns, two rules for interpreting the Christian faith sensibly have been especially important to me. One calls for acknowledging and respecting the sometimes very wide differences between the apostolic age and the present-day, and the adjustments that we must make to the fact that, in James Russell Lowell's words, time can make ancient good "uncouth." The other calls for assessing carefully the accommodations that must be made in order to transmit convincingly a saving message generated in one era and culture to people in other eras and cultures with vastly different mind-sets. Contrary to those who think that the Bible is undefiled by such, the Scriptures actually contain some of the most flagrant examples of accommodation at its best and at its worst. What follows looks more to the worst; the best are yet to come.

This Spring, preparing some new material for a World Religions course I was teaching, I found myself struggling anew to work out a coherent account of ancient Israel's transition from tribal confederations to a full-blown monarchy, and to make sense out of a number of so-called historical texts that in today's world surely are better forgotten. One set gleefully pictured God riding roughshod over the property rights of the Canaanites and the Philistines. If today's Arab-Israeli conflicts are any indication, the tribal deity invoked by both sides still delights in fomenting this kind of uproar, and the cost of catering to his whim has simply become too great for the rest of us to bear.

And then there is 2 Samuel 22, prefaced in the Revised English Bible this way: "These are the words of the song David sang to the Lord on the day when the Lord delivered him from the power of all his enemies and from the power of Saul." (Psalm 18 repeats the word with few variations.) The deliverance was really something: the whole earth shook from God's anger; smoke poured out of God's nostrils, and fire from his mouth; he swooped down from heaven, darkened everything, and pummeled his enemies with arrows of lightning, hail, and even burning coals. Why? For one reason, he had really gotten into the monarchy thing, at first with Saul, who initially wanted no part of it --- wisely, as it turned out. But here, there is another reason: the Lord rescued David because he "delighted" in him, repaying David as his "righteousness" deserved. (vss.20, 21)

Discussions with several of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim students to whom I introduced this material brought me to a new appreciation of just how "uncouth" the idea is of a God who will set our leaders' feet on our enemies' necks and wipe out those who hate us. (vs. 40) What did it was my horrified discovery that each was worshipping this very God, under different religious banners, and that I may have unwittingly supplied all of them with still another "holy" justification for expecting the destruction of their own enemies as the just desserts of being loyal practitioners of their respective faiths.

As if its accommodation to the need of an enslaved people for a God stronger than Babylon's were not enough, the text also offers succor in the face of the obvious fact that Israel and Judah proved to be no match for the rulers of Assyria, Persia, Macedonia, and Rome as well, except for --- are you ready for this?--- in the superior righteousness of King David himself. Huh? The cloyingly self-congratulatory king of this text is now the model of righteousness for everyone else, kings and emporers included? Hardly. The song here attributed to him bends the truth about God and his expectations of us at about the angle that the real David must have bent Bathsheba, after seeing to it of course that Uriah would not be around to complain, ever. (And whatever Bathsheba's own complaints may have been about it apparently did not count at all.)

Sometimes, biblical faith can accommodate itself to changing circumstances by means of relatively easy tasks like getting its own history reconsidered and even rewritten. Other times, the accommodation may require nothing less than the incorporation of a wholly new world-view. The writer of Ephesians seems to have had something like the latter in mind when he situated the true enemies of God on a different plane altogether from that of earthly battlefields. Our struggle, he wrote, "is not against human foes, but against cosmic powers…the superhuman forces of evil in the heavenly realms." (6:12) Or just maybe it is against the evil that is in our own hearts. The willingness to confront all the "maybes" in the Bible, and the different accommodations that incorporate them, is what interpreting the Christian faith sensibly is all about.

Little Ones To Him Belong

The reception was in full, boisterous swing, and having done my duty as the newly-weds' officiant, I was quietly making my way to the parking lot. Standing near my car was a young couple with whom I had chatted during the cake-cutting. Now, she was almost hysterical and he, clearly unsuccessful in comforting her, had settled for trying to shut her up. Perhaps it was the tone of my voice, or the robe and stole I still had on my arm, or just their desperation, but they took me up on my offer of help, and we headed back into the church to find a room where we could talk.

What had gotten Jan (not her real name) going was an unexpected encounter in a corner of the hall with a smiling bridesmaid who was breast-feeding her baby. For a few excruciating minutes, Jan held herself together, and then ran for the door. Confronted by her tears and near screaming, her husband, whom I will call Jim, substituted embarrassment and anger for acknowledging and respecting the source of Jan's melt-down: a sudden reminder of their two-month-old in her crib, not breathing. At the time of their baby's death, they had not arranged for her baptism, and for this failure Jan could not forgive herself. She described herself as having abandoned her baby to hell. Jim chastised her for holding on to "superstitious nonsense."

For more Christians than Jim could have known, the belief that unbaptized infants are consigned to hell is anything but nonsense. And far from being a superstition, it is rooted in what is supposed to be the most terrible "fact" of all, the primordial disobedience of Adam and Eve, whose sinfulness infected the whole human race from that time forward, pre-determining actions and character in a sinful direction, and dooming everyone to eternal damnation. The only cure for this disease is a single act of atonement alone deemed acceptable by and to God, the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. And to Jan and the church in which she was raised, the only way to that cure is baptism. For the unbaptized --- even babies victimized by their parents' indifference, unbelief, or sloth --- only everlasting punishment awaits.

If it were possible to rescind elevations to sainthood, and I am not sure that even Popes can undo this process, I would do my best to be the first signer of a petition to reconsider the status of "Saint" Augustine. Actually, for a lot of reasons, but most assuredly for this particularly vile concoction of outrageous deductions from mis-read biblical texts. Even his own church found it hard to accept the rigorism of his teaching on infant baptism, choosing instead to temper it with the image of an intermediate state, "limbo," between eternal blessedness and eternal damnation, to which unbaptized infants are consigned.

It is encouraging to read and hear that in the highest Roman Catholic circles, limbo is undergoing serious re-consideration. Now, some teachers of the church, the Pope included, are at least wondering whether a loving God would deny infants access to highest heaven before they can commit even their first sins themselves. I know we are supposed to be more charitable in our ecumenical conversations than I am about this one, but having stared into Jan's eyes and soul for as long as I did, about all I can muster by way of further reaction to this news from Rome is that it's about time. Once the idea of limbo goes, maybe that of the eternal damnation of infants will go, too. To hell with both of them.

That anguished afternoon, I did not add to Jan's pain or to Jim's need for reassurance by imposing on them my own ideas on this subject. What they needed was simply to be listened to and heard by a fellow Christian struggling to understand their loss and conflicting theologies and to convey respect and love to both of them in the process. Toward the end of our conversation, both Jan and Jim expressed a willingness to talk more with a priest acquaintance of mine, whom I knew would be able to help them to experience a new vision and hope beyond what their church had provided them to this point in their lives.

In the early days of television, Christians of all varieties were well served by a weekly broadcast of a magnificent orator, Fulton J. Sheen. For 30 minutes each time, Bishop Sheen expounded the Roman Catholic vision of life clearly and captivatingly, and ended each broadcast with a hale and hearty, "See you in heaven!" Especially the little ones.