-
Posts
-
-
2.1 The stoning of Achan
As we begin Part Two, we will start to see how meaning opens up to us when we read Scripture through the eyes of the Forgiving Victim. Even stories that we avoided because they made us uncomfortable begin to make sense as part of a larger process of revelation and discovery.
Receiving a new story
Share ways in which you have noticed the content, questions or insights from the previous Module showing up in your lives.
Reading Scripture through new eyes
To begin this process of discovery, share an Old Testament story that has made you queasy or uncomfortable and explain why.
Food for thought
- Why does James say that we are right to feel queasy about stories in the Bible such as the stoning of Achan? Did you feel queasy? Why or why not?
- Imagine that the story you identified in Unit 2, “Reading Scripture through new eyes” was one of the stories that Jesus interpreted on the road to Emmaus. Where might you listen for the unheard voice of the Forgiving Victim in that story?
- Somehow Joshua and the Israelites’ belief in their own goodness survived the stoning, preventing them from including Achan’s perspective in their account of the event. What stories do we tell about our own goodness that prevent us from including the unheard voice of the Achans among us?
Wrap-up question
Can you think of any stories from your nation’s history that are being told differently because the perspective of the victim is being included? What other stories might be awaiting revision? Perhaps you can think of stories now in the news that are blaming the victim or excluding the victim’s perspective.
-
An OT story that makes me queasy is in Exodus 32 part of the Golden Calf incident – where the sons of Levi gather before Moses as “those who are on the Lord’s side” and proceed to slay “every man his brother, and every man his companion and every man his neighbor” What a horror! and this is what it means to be on the Lord’s side? Well that phrase is our tipoff I suppose that this story is about scapegoating because God is not in rivalry with anything that is!
-
I am really being shaken to the core as I reread my own experience of victimization inside a religious community through the lens offered here. But I want to answer the question here of who the unheard voice is in the story I chose above from Ex 32. The unheard voice, the ones who are figures of Christ are the 3,000 brothers, friends, neighbors who are put to death by the Levites. My heart aches and searches for a way to stay in the church as I see more and more clearly the endless repeating of this dynamic in so many churches through the ages – the Levites as the “righteous ones” whose own goodness must be created over and against the rest. I can also honestly admit that I have stood on both sides at various times. It does give me hope to unmask the game – that there is another way… to live together, to create unity than by making victims.
-
-
There is a HUGE story awaiting revision which is now coming to the attention of a lot of people in our country – it is the deep racial bias embedded in our criminal justice system. A book recently came out titled The New Jim Crow which seeks to shed light on this issue. The victims definitely have not been heard here – the system of mass incarceration of black people denies them a voice.
-
-
The story that jumps out to me is of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. As a father myself, I fear a God that would ask that and I fear a person who would agree to do that.
-
-
I understand that God is not in rivalry with his creation. And I understand that we also want to desire as the Other other desires not as the Social other. Sheelah, as you said in a previous post…our neighbor is all of the peoples in the world. I believe it was in book four that James said that WE ARE to be neighbor as the good Samaritan was neighbor. Perfect, I understand, its beautiful, challenging but I know it is right and will lead to peace. With Islamic extremists in the news again (Paris) I am struggling with trying to be non-rivalistic and a neighbor to the terrorists. First of all, in the past, I would have simply joined the multitudes and crucified (not literally of course, but with hate, name-calling, death wishes, etc) the terrorists. Clearly the terrorists do not wish to see all of mankind as their neighbor and rivalry is what keeps their numbers rising. We can’t just let the terrorists have their way as we wave our love and peace banners, can we?
-
Yes Lee, this is a difficult question. The sort of fundamentalist fanatic who commits these outrages is a deeply disturbed, troubled individual filled with hatred and rage. This rage can come from the family milieu, or from resentment of Western foreign policy which he or she perceives as hating Muslims, or even the West in general which is seen as decadent and corrupt and slave to the worst excesses of capitalism. The fundamentalist typically worships an angry, vengeful God for whom he is an agent, and whose duty and responsibility is to exact divine vengeance upon all those who disobey the dictates of this angry God. All religious fundamentalism is similar in this, and we should not underestimate the role of Jewish and Christian fundamentalism in the conflict and crisis in the Middle East. However, as Christians we are obliged to listen to Jesus’ words: ‘Love your enemy, do good to those who hate you…..this is not to say that we can in any way condone or dismiss the horrors visited upon those who are the targets of this violence and hate. But we can attempt to understand why these people behave like this; the hurt and pain that has brought them to this twisted way of being. In other words, hate the sin but love the sinner. This seems impossible doesn’t it? I suppose this is why Christianity is such an arduous path. There is no ‘clash of cultures’ here but there is a ‘clash of fundamentalisms’; you cannot make war on terror, it’s an abstract noun, and there is really no military solution to this problem. There people are criminals and what is needed is excellent intelligence and policing. Meanwhile while we prefer the path of non-violence, we have a perfect right to defend ourselves forcefully if needs be. But we must not descend into vengeful violence, nor trade hatred for hatred. WE are in for the long haul, this could be a generational struggle, but people can evolve out of this mindset and come to realise what horrors they have perpetrated. In the Qur’an, the Sura 2:256 forbids compulsion in matters of religion, and the most commonly occurring word in the Qur’an is compassion. Perhaps reading some of the great Sufi contemplative writers of Islam, Rumi leaps to mind, will provide you with a window into a completely different Islam.
-
-
“… an Old Testament story that has made you queasy or uncomfortable and explain why.”
Last Saturday our small Episcopalian parish had its lector and intercessor training. Since I do both the Sunday readings and the Prayers of the People at the eight o’clock service, I attended the training; which emphasized practical aspects of engaging and keeping the attention of the audience in the pews.
Our Rector did a good job keeping our attention, saying scholars built the lectionary so each Sunday’s readings reflect a common theme. Recognizing Sunday themes, the rector told us, would enhance our abilities to better engage and keep audience attention.
The Episcopal lectionary does not include the story I share here that makes me “queasy and uncomfortable”, which is the Ai Massacre in Joshua, Chapter 8. Neither is the Ai Massacre in the Lutheran, Roman Catholic or United Methodist lectionary. The Ai Massacre tells a story of utterly reprehensible violence. Not even the Revised Common Lectionary covers it.
The Ai Massacre follows the lynching of Achan. Israelite warriors butcher all of Ai’s residents, hang its king and this time are allowed to take booty. How does this story substantively differ from today’s news of Islamic State atrocities in the Middle East? When Sunday lectionaries overlook violent stories in Christian tradition like the Ai Massacre, that selective ignorance encourages the audience in the pews to see Islam, for example, as reprehensively violent as opposed to a purely peacemaking Christianity.
The Ai Massacre: http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=296532740
Here’s a hyperlink for what’s in, and what’s not in Sunday lectionaries. The web page reflects the Episcopalian lectionary. Download the spreadsheet for an analysis of five Sunday lectionaries.
http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/When_Will_It_Be_Read.htm -
-
Can you think of any stories from your nation’s history that are being told differently because the perspective of the victim is being included? What other stories might be awaiting revision? Perhaps you can think of stories now in the news that are blaming the victim or excluding the victim’s perspective.
Michael Brown’s name comes immediately to mind. Michael Brown was an eighteen year-old Black man who was shot and killed August 9, 2014 by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson. Whether he was lynched by thinly veiled racist policing; or a young man whose death was warranted by his criminal actions depends on who is telling the story.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown -
-
Because I have never read the stories as absolute history or thought of the stories as actual event/ historical happenings I am most often not disturbed by the stories of the Old Testament. However, if I were to be disturbed it would be by those that propose some form of phantasm or extravagance. For example, I find myself listening to the story of Job or Jonah.
-
-
Why does James say that we are right to feel queasy about stories in the Bible such as the stoning of Achan?
They are built around a scapegoat model. We should feel uncomfortable with them at some level.
Did you feel queasy?
No!
Why or why not?
I have been working through the work of Girard, Williams and Alison for many many years. I suspect I simply do not read the stories with the same emphasis as many.
Imagine that the story you identified in Unit 2, “Reading Scripture through new eyes,” was one of the stories that Jesus interpreted on the road to Emmaus. Where might you listen for the unheard voice of the Forgiving Victim in that story?
I do not remember the story I used.
Somehow Joshua and the Israelites’ belief in their own goodness survived the stoning, preventing them from including Achan’s perspective in their account of the event. What stories do we tell about our own goodness that prevent us from including the unheard voice of the Achans among us?
I actually think the entire narrative of the United States is built on a scapegoating theoretical constructions.
-
-
Can you think of any stories from your nation’s history that are being told differently because the perspective of the victim is being included? What other stories might be awaiting revision? Perhaps you can think of stories now in the news that
Most Native peoples stories blame the victim. Slavery story! The way we related to Mexico and the drug trade etc. Interesting enough even the fair labor conversations end up blaming the victim.
-
-
Share ways in which you have noticed the content, questions or insights from the previous Module showing up in your lives.
Someone was speaking persuasively at church this Sunday about how “The Triumphal Entry” might be bit of a misnomer for Christ’s arrival to Jerusalem before the Passion. The crowd had a triumphalist understanding of what Jesus was doing that day, but Jesus certainly didn’t. It is not as if Jesus beheld this crowd which was beholding him and thought to himself, “At last, the masses are finely getting it!” To the contrary, he was surely aware that this crowd’s triumphalist ideations were incongruent with what would actually be unfolding when he arrived in Jerusalem.So, I was struck with a parallel that I had never before considered. Next week we’ll be done with the story of an ignorant crowd leading Jesus into Jerusalem to a place of supposed honor, and we’ll be recounting the story of how an ignorant crowd led Jesus out of Jerusalem to a place of execution. On neither occasion does Jesus protest, and yet, neither does he acquiesce.
On the donkey, with palm fronds and cloaks dropping before him, Jesus doesn’t snatch up the obsequious on-lookers and start trying to shake some sense into them, “Look, you know I’m going to get handed over when I get there, don’t you? It ain’t like this is going to be a storybook ending! Snap out of it!!” Neither, presumably, does he buy into all the fuss and indulge in his own ideations of triumphalism. He merely accepts cries of well-wishing from the crowd without them altering who he is.
So it is also with the crossbeam on his bloodied back, or with it on Simon of Cyrene’s back. Jesus neither scolds the crowd for their shameful misdeeds nor does he give a sympathetic ear to their accusations and sneers. He receives the abuses of the crowd without them altering who he is.
This unalterable one is fully human. Being fully human, he is fully mimetic, i.e. he is always modeling someone else’s behavior. Crucially, however, on both of these occasions, he moves in a realm beyond the modes of mediation presented to him by the crowd. He remains steadfast as a mediated subject who’s mediator forgives in every situation.
Whether it is confused adulation or ignorant vilification, Jesus forgives. On the one hand, having exactly the same response to two completely different circumstances might indicate that Jesus is not actually “responding” at all; rather, he is the one who is acting on the crowd even when it really looks like they are acting on him. (I think this observation might be helpful for theologians wishing to sidestep the heresy of patripassianism.) On the other hand, having exactly the same response to two seemingly different circumstances might also indicate to us that these two are actually the one and the same circumstance. I.e., when human adoration goes awry, we vilify someone innocent. Similarly, when we make someone out to be a villain, we are woefully confused about who we are adoring.
-
I like the way that you describe the fickleness of the mimetic crowd and the obvious detachment of Jesus who neither protests nor acquiesces. As you say, he is fully human and fully mimetic, but perhaps he is modelling the Father? What do you think? Apropos, the thought that jumped to mind as I read your thoughts, is that so much mimetic modelling is harmless and inoffensive and only becomes dangerous when it is rivalrous or conflictual. But this, I know that you are aware of. The extraordinary detachment of Jesus, which mustn’t be confused with indifference, seems to be perfectly illustrated in James title; “Jesus the Forgiving Victim”.
A very lucid response Andrew.
-
Yes, I do suppose that the single mediator who formulates Jesus’ desires at every turn is the one he calls Abba (and the creed calls Father almighty maker of heaven and earth).
And, yes, it is certainly worth pointing out that Jesus is never indifferent to the crowds—even if he is impervious to what Andrew Marr calls their “mimetic resonance”. Working within the triangle of mimetic desire: if the Father is always his model, then the Son’s object of desire is always his neighbors. That focus is never altered. I’m reminded of Matthew 14. Jesus receives the news of John the Baptist’s gruesome death, and he sets out on a boat to find a place to be alone. Yet a persistent crowd tracks him down and calls for his attention no sooner than he comes ashore. He has compassion on them and their suffering—as opposed to demanding that they reorient themselves around his suffering at losing a dear cousin in such a horrible fashion. He heals their sick and feeds a multitude before he affords himself the opportunity to pray in solitude.
-
-
To begin this process of discovery, share an Old Testament story that has made you queasy or uncomfortable and explain why.
1 Samuel 17 is the story of David and Goliath. Chapter 18 begins with Saul’s son Jonathan being quite taken with David and his military exploits. Saul is galled and anxious that another should be more highly lauded in Israel than himself–her king. He is overcome by a frenzy of emotion and tries twice to kill David with a spear. Failing with traditional weapons of war, he looks to his daughters as weapons. If David accepts, Saul can use the position of father-in-law to coerce David into precarious situations in which he is likely to die. With Merab, the elder daughter, David is either demure or he sees through Saul’s machination; it isn’t clear which, but he declines the offer. With Michal, who loves David, the young hero allows himself to be persuaded. Bloodthirsty Saul requests 100 Philistine foreskins as a bride price, although it is clear that he is foremost desirous of David’s blood to be shed and that his interest in fetishes attained through murderous conquest are just a rationalization for sending David into a threatening environment. All this is nasty enough: using a daughter’s love to entrap a man he has no reason to fear and the complete dehumanization of national adversaries by everyone involved. But it is in verse 27, when the narrator glibly inserts the fact that David and his fighting men strike down 200 Philistines, that I am most revolted. Even if we were to find a way to excuse David for accepting Saul’s deal, how could we ever make sense of his decision to slaughter double? -
As Part Two looks intensely at the Bible, it can be difficult to find our way into these texts because of the linguistic and cultural issues that separate us from the ancient world. What you have described here as making you queasy or uncomfortable is an excellent example. As James puts it, we can feel as if we’ve stumbled into the middle of a heated conversation without knowing who the parties are or what they’re so worked up about. So we will be starting to read the Scriptures through the eyes of the Forgiving Victim, just as St. Luke teaches us to do. By the end of this Part we will have discovered that biblical scholarship is less frightening than it might seem and we will have acquired a bit more confidence to dabble for ourselves in these biblical texts without being scared of them.
Our journey through the Scriptures will allow us to glimpse the great Jewish discovery of monotheism. It’s odd for us to realize that the great prophets of old would have seemed to their contemporaries more like atheists than like devout followers of a familiar religion. But the discovery that God is not like anything that is, called into question all the religious structures of the day. The defining appearance of God to Moses at the bush that burns but is not consumed reminds us of the Emmaus theophany in which a man both dead and living is communicating with us. Slowly we are being made aware that everything that is, ourselves and all of creation, is a function of a being who is not in rivalry with any of it. What does it mean to worship a God for whom death is not and for whom Creation comes from nothing? These questions will guide us as we continue to journey with the Forgiving Victim.
Using Joshua 7, we will follow Jesus as our living interpretative principle. Joshua’s soldiers have just taken Jericho where God placed everything under a “ban”. This means there was to be no looting; everything the soldiers found was to be burned or destroyed. The lottery is the ancient equivalent of a witch hunt in which group morale is restored by finding someone to blame. The lottery organization is the only function of the word “God” in Joshua 7. The group unites against the victim – unanimity minus one. It works even better if the victim agrees to be sacrificed or if his protests are drowned out by a wailing chorus. ?
The Lord’s burning anger started at the same time as loss of morale, and it ends when morale is restored through the sacrifice of Achan. There is nothing divine about this process; it is a very human phenomenon. Consequently, we are right to be queasy about the incident. The figure of Christ in the story is Achan, the one who is held to be guilty and sacrificed. ? Joshua 7 and the Emmaus story are the same story told from two different perspectives: the first is from the point of view of the persecutors and the other is from the point of view of the victim.
The moment the victim’s story is heard, it reveals the other story to be a lie.
Does all this make sense Andrew? -
Imagine that the story you identified in Unit 2, “Reading Scripture through new eyes” was one of the stories that Jesus interpreted on the road to Emmaus. Where might you listen for the unheard voice of the Forgiving Victim in that story?
As for where we might listen for the unheard voice in 1 Samuel 18, it doesn’t seem possible to hear forgiveness in Saul (one who calls for blood), David (one who slaughters in double measure), or Jonathan (one who is enraptured by the carnage). Merab and Adriel the Meholathite are indeed voiceless characters in this story, but they are hardly victims. This leaves Michal and the slain Philistines.Could Michal (one whose love is co-opted into the ruthless power plays of political rivals) be the unheard voice of the victim? I’m reluctant to think so. While the strength of Michal’s love for David is demonstrated in the next chapter when she foils her father’s murderous plot, it seems that the only reason she loves David so much is because she, too, is taken with the gallantry of his military endeavors and the pop songs celebrating his killing of myriad Philistines. The narrator doesn’t say this explicitly, but neither does the narrator provide any alternative commentary on the nature of her love for David—so it seems fair to assume that she is smitten for the very same reason the rest of the nation (save Saul) is smitten with the young man. Absent any indication to the contrary, I’m inclined to lump Michal in with her brother, Jonathan, as one who is enraptured by David’s violent exploits.
Is it, then, the slain Philistines whose unheard voices speak to us as we read with Jesus’ eyes? If so, then we are made queasy not only by the characters of Saul, David, Jonathan, and Michal—but also by the narrative voice of the story itself. Never once in the passage is the reader encouraged to humanize any Philistine person or group. If they had been given a voice following their demise, those Philistines would certainly have something to say to their killers (David and his men), to the leadership who legitimated their deaths (Saul and his courtiers), and to those who valorized their murderers (Jonathan, Michal, and the nation at large). However, attentiveness to their absolute silence in this story (i.e. observing the shear impossibility that at any point a Philistine might actually have something to say for himself) leads us as readers to confront the storyteller.
“Don’t you see?” whisper the slain, “This was never a tale of warriors (Saul and David) killing their enemies; this was always the story of enemies (Saul and David) warring against us in place of killing each other.”
-
Yes, absolutely Andrew. You cited an excellent example of the unheard voice in 1 Samuel 18. Where might we listen for the unheard voice of the Forgiving Victim in the stoning of Achan? Somehow Joshua and the Israelites’ belief in their own goodness survived the stoning, preventing them from including Achan’s perspective in their account of the event. What stories do we tell about our own goodness that prevent us from including the unheard voice of the Achans among us?
-
No doubt it will be quite an ordeal when I finally come to grips with a personal story as told by the purportedly “evil” characters against who I’d managed to concoct a semblance of “goodness” to ascribe to myself. I don’t know that I have attained the ‘converted’ position required to do that yet. It is much easier to think of oneself unveiling the phony sin/righteousness distinctions used by others, isn’t it?
Although I don’t have a retelling of a story of Andrew as an individual, here is an attempt at retelling a story that is quite common to the contemporary American citizenry (of which I’m a member):
Most American daily news broadcasts will make some reference to stock market indices. An assessment of the nation’s economic outlook is regarded as a staple in a mature information diet, and daily NYSE and DOW J percentage points are easily digestible. There is, however, rarely any mention of the millions of undocumented workers who, by virtue of garnering remarkably substandard wages and benefits, subsidize large swathes of our nation’s economic output in agricultural, construction, and service sectors.
When attention is explicitly drawn to them in news broadcasts, somehow the contribution these workers make to the national economy is omitted. Of course, there are a few outlets who regularly fault them for “gaming” a broken immigration system, and this obviously leaves no vantage point from which to see them as benefactors to our economy. However, even in those news reports in which individuated undocumented laborers are pitied and depicted as maltreated by ruthless government policies, the truth is still not heard. This workforce is not merely an amalgam of unfortunates in our midst; their illegitimacy is actually a boon to our economy! Legal residents (as an aggregated block) are profiting from the lousy remuneration of those who can’t demand better. We use a few green (or red) percentage points flashed on the screen before the local sports report to substantiate a tall tale of a promising (or faltering) economic recovery, without acknowledging the full costs to our paperless neighbors.
-
Andrew, when you say “I don’t know that I have attained the ‘converted’ position required to do that yet.” I think that most of us spend our lives trying to attain this position and stay there, so fear not ! It is so easy to slip back into the archaic sacred.
Your description of the plight of the undocumented workers in the US is an excellent example of the voice of the victim not being heard. Curiously I think that it is much more evident in James teaching of the stoning of Achan, than it is with the workers you describe. With the exception of people like your self with a social conscience, it seems to be largely ignored.
-
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.