Several posts ago, I ruminated about the Bible’s offensive passages, and what (if anything) we can draw from them. The question came to mind again while I was driving today, and I started reflecting on the scriptures’ most horrifying verse:
Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock! (Psalm 137:9)
What on earth do we do with this—especially in a culture where we go to great lengths to protect children?
First, a little context. This verse comes at the end of a psalm that, in heartrending fashion, expresses the utter desolation of ancient
Though extreme for the psalms, it is hardly unique. Look at the book as a whole, and you see a drop-dead honest expression of the vast range of human emotion. The psalms are raw, they’re unvarnished, they pull no punches.
As such, they present a challenge to us. Can we allow ourselves to feel so honestly? Do we actually believe that God will embrace us if we admit to such horrifying feelings?
Maybe the psalms—and especially this verse—testify that God does, in fact, embrace us, with all our baggage. Which makes God a safe place in which to feel even the ugliest emotions and face even the most unlovable parts of ourselves. If we have such a place, we are freed to reflect on all of it—and do the work of healing.
If we can draw insights like this from one extreme verse, what else can the Bible’s offensive passages teach us?
1 comment:
Having had a somewhat acrimonious dialogue on this verse in a usegroup (with me taking the "this is terrible, even considering the context" line and my fundamentalist friend defending the passage in toto), I think you've hit a profound note here.
It fits with the Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder's translation of the "ordained by God" in Romans 13 as "put in order by God" more or less after the fact. That is, "used by God to advance God's purposes" regardless of people's originial intent.
For me, the worst verses in the Bible are the genocidal ones in the Torah. To deal with those, one needs your principle plus knowledge culled from cultural anthropology plus an understanding that what people said about what they thought they heard God say was limited by their language, mindset, and other cultural assumptions.
I like the way you come out on the other side of this with a lively sense of universal acceptance.
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