Recently, a Christian nationalist pastor named Brian Sauvé was asked if black Christians would be welcomed into his church, to which he responded, “Black Christians yes! Black culture no”! He continued to suggest that “black culture” (a furiously problematic phrase in itself) was “evil, murderous, violent and bestial”. He attempted to use statistics about violent crime, depravity in certain inner cities, the number of single parent families in black communities etc. peppered with typically sanctimonious rhetoric to legitimate his obtuse ideas. The flaws in his reasoning were foregrounded in the wave of criticism he received - I would add to this backlash by saying that he chose to freeze a particular moment of the history of black Americans and then make general comments. One could easily freeze a moment in history - like the Third Reich, the Transatlantic slave trade, Apartheid South Africa, and make all sorts of generalisations about “white culture” (equally problematic)! These kinds of straw man arguments appear so wide of the mark, it is difficult to believe that their proponents do not have agendas other than sincere socio-political critique.
I raise this particular case to shed a spotlight on how “Christian” rhetoric is routinely weaponized in modern socio-political discourse, how this rhetoric is often buttressed with quotations and/or ideology from scripture and how the emergent portrait is that potentially the biblical text is indeed, as Phyllis Trible famously proposed, a text of terror. In an earlier post I suggested that there will be those in the throes of deconstruction who have been so traumatised by the weaponization of the Bible, that any attempt to suggest that the biblical text has redemptive value will grate the ears. However, there are important reasons for reclaiming the power of the Bible to act as a narrative of resistance to abuse and serve as a text which can be life-affirming.
In the initial instance, roughly one-third of the world identifies as Christian. We need not attempt to dissect the obvious assumptions in this claim - the numerous denominations, the divergence in how different people so identifying relate to the Bible, the difference between deeply committed believers and those who check in to midnight mass once a year, and so on and so forth. If in any sense it can be suggested that Christian scripture might be a source which informs the way humans experience the world, there is surely merit in grappling with its ideas.
Secondly, increasingly, and most especially in the United States, religious ideology is influencing political decision making (it has been a major influence in political lobbying since the days of the Moral Majority). The oft vaunted separation of church and state is being shown more and more to be a comforting illusion. There will be those who argue strongly that a theocratic state is the best thing for society; others will be rightly nervous! Whilst in a perfect world, a society whose values were, say, founded upon the Sermon on the Mount could be beautiful and harmonious, the evidence suggests a very different landscape. Lobbyists become very exercised about particular issues (abortion, sexual ethics, family values, etc.) and simply scour the pages of scripture for suitable corroboration. These kinds of hermeneutics are fraught with perils and pitfalls; citing, “For You created my innermost parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb” (Ps. 139:13) or “Your eyes have seen my formless substance” (Ps. 139:16) as a “pro-life” apologetic is no more legitimate than asserting, “Behold, I was brought forth in guilt and in sin my mother conceived me” (Ps. 51:5) to argue a case for original sin.
Thirdly, as church attendance declines and more and more young people seek spirituality beyond the confessional borders of religious institutions, it does appear that the human fascination with Jesus of Nazareth shows no sign of waning. In their 2013 book Who’s Bigger? Where Historical Figures Really Rank, computer scientist Steven Skiena and the Google engineer Charles Ward employed Wikipedia page views, length, edits, and PageRank algorithms to determine who was the most influential person of history; Jesus ranked far and away number one. The MIT Media Lab/Pantheon Project enterprise “Pantheon 1.0 Dataset” (2013) used data-driven analysis of cultural production and historical visibility, again, identifying Jesus as the most significant figure of human history. Time Magazine routinely does a “100 most influential figures of history” – Jesus routinely ranks in first place. Given that the Bible is our earliest and most reliable source for information about Jesus, it seems critical to recover the Bible as a life affirming resistance narrative.
Almost needless to say, this is a far easier task to theorise about than it is to put into any kind of practice. There are numerous reasons for this, not least of all the notion that Bible reading is as much an art as it is a science. Different interpretations are not easily reduced to correct ones and incorrect ones. As western readers, we operate at a great geographical, temporal, cultural and historical remove from the communities the biblical text emerged from, and how we read will of necessity reflect an array of influences on what we emphasise in the texts, how we apply the ideas and even our hermeneutical lenses. As such, any attempt to recover the power of the biblical witness to be healing, nurturing and encouraging, has its limitations. With this awareness in mind we can proceed, reflecting on issues pertinent to the encouragement of those for whom deconstruction of some of the internal infrastructure of Christianity is an essential component of maintaining a Christ-centred faith.
1. Jesus as the Key to Understanding the Big Picture
Greg Boyd is one of the great champions of a cross-shaped method for biblical interpretation. Having argued that Jesus is the ultimate revelation of God and the destination of the whole biblical narrative, he describes Jesus as the “‘hermeneutical key’ to all of Scripture” through whom every Old Testament text must be interpreted [Gregory A. Boyd. The Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament’s Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017), 42]. It seems to me that Boyd is acknowledging that which Jesus himself already made clear in his address to the two disciples journeying to Emmaus after the resurrection: all of the scriptures point to Him and He is the absolute centre of their meaning (Luke 24:27, 44–45). Speaking of these very passages in Luke, Litwak observes:
…the totality of Scripture reveals a divine plan and Jesus and his disciples’ own experience somehow actualize the patterns found in the Scriptures or carries out the divine plan which encompasses the Scriptures [Kenneth D Litwak, Echoes of Scripture in Luke-Acts: Telling The History of God’s People Intertextually (New York: T&T Clark International, 2005), 131].
If, as the majority of believing commentators assert, (and I would include myself in this number), the death and resurrection of Jesus is the crescendo to which the entire biblical witness was always pointing, then the death and resurrection of Jesus is also the interpretive lens through which we understand what God has done, is doing and will ultimately accomplish in the world. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “We must read this book of books with all human methods. But through the brittle Bible, God meets us in the voice of the Risen One” [Reflections on the Bible, from Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke 12:315]. I have previously cautioned against elevating the Bible to the level of the Spirit who inspired it. As I have also argued previously, Christians are not people of the book (as suggested by the Islamic holy text) but rather, the earliest believers were gathered around the power, impact and life of a person - Jesus, who they believed was the Jewish Messiah and who they believed had been raised from the dead by the creator God. Three centuries of believers had lived without a New Testament text to appeal to. The New Testament crystallised the thoughts, reflections, and teachings of those who knew Jesus personally, the students of Jesus’ personal acquaintances and the generation inheriting these ideas as they were handed down. The direction of travel was that they began with Jesus and moved to a text. Naturally as heirs of that tradition, who do not have the earthly Jesus available in person, we find ourselves having to start with the text. As such, I urge us all to not just focus on the text of scripture, even though I suggest that is where we begin. We must employ the rest of Wesley’s quadrangle, and engage experience, reason and tradition (to which I would add ‘community’ and the ‘Spirit’) as we meditate and pour over the Gospels and meet the voice of the risen Christ in the way that Dietrich Bonhoeffer suggests above. The Jesus that we meet must then be the lens through which we understand all of scripture - even the ugly bits!
You probably will not hear very many sermons on passages like Judges 19, 2 Samuel 13 or Genesis 34, which all deal with gratuitous sexual assault, and I would not expect you to! As I intimated in an earlier post, one of the most frequent questions I hear in relation to such passages is why they are in the biblical text at all. I hope that part two of this reflection went some way towards answering that question. I want to add that alongside expressing divine outrage at sexual assault and indeed, all forms of dehumanising abuse, that when these narratives are read within Christ believing contexts, they take on an extra level of significance. When we consider the myriad ways in which Jesus defended, stood up for, spoke on behalf of and championed the innate value and dignity of women (Luke 11:11–17; John 8:1–11; 20:11–18) stories of sexual assault within the people of God stand in even starker, more disturbing contrast. Once we truly start to encounter the Jesus of the Gospels, we can start to see stories of gratuitous abuse in the biblical text in fresh and reinvigorating light. For Jesus teaches us to hear the voice of the victim; as we will see in the next section below, Jesus teaches us to be wisely critical of power structures that oppress; Jesus does not pursue popularity but rather defends the cause of the marginalised.
2. Jesus as Critic of Domineering Power Structures.
I do not think I am exaggerating to say that the Christian right has hijacked the message of Jesus for its own political ends. The Jesus portrayed in the canonical gospels is certainly not the kind of person most modern ultra conservatives, especially in the evangelical tradition, would want at the helm of their political bandwagon.
The most recent and perhaps most pernicious incarnation of this kind of thought, and one which is very much at the centre of current political and religious discourse, is Christian nationalism. Campaigner and fellow Substacker William Youngblood once insightfully tweeted, “Christian Nationalism is looking at Jesus’ three temptations and thinking he made the wrong choices”. Christian nationalism is a complex phenomenon, which in a brief treatment like this, we can only scratch the surface of. To anchor the discussion, the following appraisal by Christian historian Martyn Whittock (and I suggest you read his entire article) deserves to be quoted in full:
As Christians feel they are a minority in 21st-century societies and that their nation lacks the (apparent) cultural cohesion (and claimed ‘Christian character’) that they associate with the past (real or imaginary), there is a growing tendency to want to assert and impose ‘Christian values & symbols’ on a recalcitrant society. This is Christian nationalism today. As in the past, it involves people stressing their ethnic identity and asserting that there is something particularly Christian about it. It can often involve assertions of superiority over—or antagonism towards—other ethnic groups or others identified as ‘not belonging.’ Race is often in the mix but not in every case. It is complex. It is increasing as a phenomenon.
In this process, Christian nationalists join a growing coalition that is far from homogenous. Within it can be found: far-right racists; antisemites; those opposed to any Muslim presence in the UK; those anxious at radical Islamism; disillusioned members of post-industrial urban working class communities; members of rural communities that feel cut-off; members of the white working class; those feeling uncertain and adrift in a multi-cultural society; those alarmed at unsustainable levels of inward migration in a turbulent world; climate-change deniers; conspiracy-theory believers; those anxious about trans ideologies; opponents of gender equality; those wanting a return to old certainties. And there are many who just want to assert patriotism and pride in national achievements – without repeated reminders of shameful historic national behaviour raining on the parade. It is not possible to place one label on this mix, except for one that reads: ‘Dangerously volatile and open to manipulation!’
Which brings us back to a desire to assert and impose ‘Christian values & symbols’ on a recalcitrant society. Because it is done for God, it is assumed that this must be justified. Every would-be theocrat and ‘Dominionist’ feels that God’s (claimed) approval justifies the imposition of ‘Christian values’ on society, even if it means the dismantling of liberal democratic norms. ‘Godly ends’ justify ‘messy means.’ That is why some Christians in the UK and USA today are heartened by the crosses and Christian slogans apparent at far-right nationalist rallies. Some have even likened it to ‘revival.’ They feel an affinity with this strident Christian nationalism. They need to read their history”.
There is a deep-rooted frustration amongst many in the Christ-believing academic tradition (one I feel most days). It is almost like an “Emperor’s New Clothes” moment. We look up at right wing fanatics intoxicated by power, driven by the desire to control social narratives, obsessed with silencing and even ridiculing the voices of the marginalised, whilst simultaneously hailing, worshipping and praising Jesus, and even spouting biblical passages like political slogans. Then we look down and read the Gospels, marvelling at the mercy, justice, compassion, empathy and love of Jesus of Nazareth. Then we look up again and ask ourselves if we are going slowly crazy. At times, the current religious-political landscape feels like a nightmare we can’t wake up from. How did the creed of a powerless minority in the first century, who attempted to change the world through selfless, sacrificial service, become the symbol for a form of ethnocentric power-lust, attempting to change the world by turning that creed into a capitalist mantra and bludgeoning its opponents into silence? Any attempt to answer this question is bound to be fraught with complexities too thorny to delve into here. We can, however, make one or two inroads into demonstrating how the biblical, historical Jesus lived in such a way as to subvert the bullying manoeuvring of the religious and political power brokers in his own social world.
Preston Sprinkle acutely observes:
The radicality of Jesus’ foot-washing incident can hardly be overstated (John 13:1–20). For a king to wash his disciples’ feet wasn’t just some random humble gesture on the part of Christ. It was a bold attempt at turning Rome’s view of power and authority upside down [Preston Sprinkle, Exiles: The Church in the Shadow of Empire (Colorado Springs, CO: David C Cook, 2024), 86].
Sprinkle’s considerations above are even more potent when one considers how John begins his gospel. The eternal Word who was with God at the beginning of everything has been made flesh and now assumes the posture of a servant washing the feet of his master’s guests. Imagine, if you will, King Charles (or the nearest equivalent in your own geographical context!!) came to your house, filled a bucket with water, bowed down before you and washed your feet. The scene would almost be comical in its inversion of what is expected. Make no mistake about it: the earliest Christ believing communities did not interpret power in the way their Roman overlords or modern political power brokers do. As the risen Messiah relayed to the Apostle Paul, his power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9).
Whittock ends his article powerfully and poignantly saying: “And pursuing national interests at the expense of other nations is unacceptable. For Christians, it should never be ‘America First,’ ‘UK First,’ (or whatever). Rather, it should be ‘Christ’s International Kingdom of Humble Loving Service First.’ I love my country, but Christ and gospel principles come first. I believe that ‘Christian nationalism’ is a contradiction in terms” (emphasis added).
My colleague Drew Strait, Assistant Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, has written the most brilliant book entitled “Strange Worship” aimed at challenging Christian nationalism. The title is based on an idea from Jewish antiquity, where to offer worship to anyone other than Yahweh was considered “strange worship”, which the earlier Rabbinic tradition called avodah zarah. Strait’s thesis is that Christian nationalism is avodah zarah. He ends the book with 12-steps to resisting strange worship - the summation of what he calls the church’s responsibility to “get in the way” of these harmful narratives. These deeply biblical reflections are a powerfully pragmatic set of steps to take as we consider Jesus the subverter of power, and I urge all of you to give careful and thoughtful consideration to these ideas. He writes:
1. We resist strange worship when we take exceptional care of our spiritual selves and mental health.
2. We resist strange worship when we practice mindfulness about our loyalty to partisan allegiances and the kingdoms of this world.
3. We resist strange worship when we offer generous hospitality to friends and strangers.
4. We resist strange worship when we practice generosity with our wealth and possessions.
5. We resist strange worship when we intentionally build diverse relationship networks to build horizontal capacity.
6. We resist strange worship when we partake in or facilitate cross-cultural experiences.
7. We resist strange worship when we pray for our enemies.
8. We resist strange worship when we periodically fast from social media and educate others about misinformation, brain hacking, and fake news.
9. We resist strange worship when we disrupt racial progress narratives.
10. We resist strange worship when we gain skills for dialogue and empathic resistance.
11. We resist strange worship when we challenge biblical authoritarianism and create space for sustained and serious study of the whole life of Jesus.
12. We resist strange worship when we use our public voice to build vertical capacity to reduce violence and minimize harm toward our vulnerable neighbors [Drew J. Strait, Strange Worship: Six Steps for Challenging Christian Nationalism (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2024), 137].
When we comprehend Jesus as the quintessential Saboteur of human systems of power which aim to bracket people into particular social enclaves and impose self-serving hierarchies on communities, those biblical narratives embedded in rape culture can clearly be seen for what they are - indictments of the failure of leadership and deep-rooted critiques of fractured and unstable masculinity.
3. Jesus as the Template of Authentic Humanity.
As someone who has spent most of his academic research career investigating the letters and theology of Paul, it seems almost a strange thing to say, but I have long lamented the modern church’s over reliance on Paul and slighting of Jesus and the Gospels. I usually (and probably correctly) blame the Protestant Reformers for making justification by faith the Church’s cardinal doctrine. As this found its centre in the work of Paul, in my estimations, the modern church has a very Pauline texture and needs to recover the Jesus of the Gospels as its blueprint for existence. Now do not misunderstand me; I love Paul, and I am deeply fascinated by his thought world. However, we are Christians and not Neo-Paulinists, and I firmly believe that Paul himself would affirm my contention here.
With the above said, at the heart of the Christian narrative is the moment when, in a display of ultimate and unparalleled humility, Jesus was born amongst us, as one of us. Yet, as the earliest believers attested to, the incarnation was a moment when heaven and earth collided. Jesus was, in one sense, completely human, and yet in the same theological moment, the whole fullness of deity dwelled bodily (Colossians 2:9). However, not only was this Heaven and earth moment, something to behold, it was something to imitate:
3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others. 5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness (Philippians 2:3–7).
As I read Paul’s letter to the Philippians these days, I am increasingly convinced that the entire letter was aimed at getting these two quarrelling women Euodia and Syntyche to be reconciled (Phil 4:2). They were key leaders and central to the Pauline mission. We are not privy to what it was they had clashed over, but it does appear that these were two big personalities, and to bring them together was going to require them both to drink deeply of a tall cup of humility. As such, the Apostle instructs them not to consider their own interests but think about one another and have the heart and mind of Jesus in so doing. In Jesus, all that is heavenly and all that is beautiful about what is earthly meet. Jesus, the one whom Paul goes on to describe as the one before whom every knee will bow and every tongue will confess (Phil. 2:9 –11), echoing a reflection which the prophet Isaiah ascribed to Yahweh himself (Isa. 45:23), came into the earth as one of us, assuming a servant’s posture and having to eat, drink, sleep, navigate illness and everything else you or I would have to do. This was not just Jesus’ reality, but it was a template for how the believers were to relate to one another. Euodia and Syntyche would only be completely reconciled if they behaved towards one another in the same way that Jesus behaved in coming to the earth.
History has always had commentators dictating ideal figures. Aristotle championed virtue claiming that the ideal expression of virtue was discovering (by practice) the mean position between two extremes of access and efficiency. This was how the philosopher suggested that we use rationality to develop virtue: Courage is the middle way between cowardice (deficiency) and rashness (excess). Confidence is the middle way between self-deprecation (deficiency) and hubris (excess). Generosity is the middle way between tightfistedness (deficiency) and extravagance (excess).
Friedrich Nietzsche was one of Christianity’s staunchest critics. He considered Christianity to be a superstition for first century of Greco-Roman slaves too weak and impoverished to get ahead – it was a ‘religion of the weak and decadent’. He considered the Christians to be so pathetic that they devised a philosophy that made their cowardice a virtue – this creed denounced natural pleasures they were too soft to obtain and championed un-spirited alternatives. So, for example, Christians wanted fulfilling sex lives, but could not attain it, so translated sexlessness as chastity. They were too weak to get revenge, so developed notion of forgiveness. Failure to achieve freedom became ‘cross-centred submission’. Christianity justified passivity and failure to self-actualise. Nietzsche’s alternative was to replace God with the “will-to-power” – a constant overcoming, growth for its own sake. This growth was nature’s driving force, and the Übermensch (German for “Overman” sometimes rendered “Superman”) was the real-world manifestation of this ideal in antithesis to God.
Bizarrely, when we consider even the Christian landscape today, one has to wonder which ideal would be most enthusiastically welcomed – Jesus’ or Nietzsche’s? This final point is to suggest that the art of Bible reading is itself an incarnational moment. Again, to quote Bonhoeffer, through the Bible, God meets us in the voice of Christ. When our profound sense of being human collides with that inimitable Divinity during the act of Bible reading, we find meaning. The sincerest way of showing up and embracing our humanity is in fashioning our internal life upon the template of Messiah Jesus. He is not only the heart of the scriptural story, but its most perfect exponent. He is not just the lens we look through, but the one whose way of reading scripture most effectively reveals its truth. Consider briefly Jesus’ responses to exchanges in the interrogation sections of Mark 12 (and other synoptic parallels).
In the first, the Sadducees, an ancient Jewish sect who rejected the existence of an afterlife, angels, or a final resurrection (Acts 23:8 – Josephus implies that this is because there is no explicit mention of resurrection or afterlife in the law, which the Sadducees considered more sacred than the prophets [Antiquities 18:16]. However, I suspect it is more likely that the Sadducees were concerned that hopes of an afterlife might motivate Jewish radicals to try to violently challenge the authority of Rome, against their political agenda of compromise and collaboration with the Roman authorities). They spin a complex yarn about a widow who marries her dead brother’s husband only to have him die, and for this process to repeat itself until she has successively married seven of her first husband’s brothers (levirate marriage). Which of them, the Sadducees asked, will be married to her in the resurrection? The question is clearly rhetorical and aimed at suggesting the resurrection is nonsensical. However, it is Jesus’ response that I want us to consider carefully:
24 Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures nor the power of God? 25 For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. 26 But regarding the fact that the dead rise, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? 27 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; you are greatly mistaken” (Mark 12:24–27).
Jesus connected the Sadducees’ failure to acknowledge resurrection with the ignorance of scripture and of divine power. God is the God of life giving and so, even though these three patriarchs were long since physically dead, to the God who sees the complete arc of existence, earthly and beyond, they live. This is the power of God displayed in scripture! The life of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is in His hand till the final day because, as in Luke’s rendering, they “live to him” (Luke 20:38). God’s word is the word of life, so Abraham, Isaac and Jacob continue to speak (cf. Heb. 11:4, 19) and Jesus heard their voice. God is the God of the patriarchs (Exod. 3:6), the I AM who always is (Exod. 3:14) and because the patriarchs live, they continue to testify to Him. To see scripture as Jesus sees scripture, is to always see the life affirming, life giving and life celebrating power of God!
When questioned about the most important component of the Law, Jesus answered in the following way:
29 Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30 you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:29–31, emphasis added).
To bring together Deut. 6:4–5 and Lev. 19:18 (even the ideas if not the precise citations) was certainly not unique to Jesus (for example, in two Jewish sources roughly approximate with Jesus, these ideas come together: Jubilees 36:7–8 and Philo, On the Special Laws, 2.63). The emphasis in the citation from Mark 12:30 above is to indicate that Jesus has added the word ‘mind’ to the prayer of Deuteronomy 6 which is outlined below:
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might (Deut. 6:4–5).
Why would Jesus amend the prayer in such fashion? It could just be added emphasis on the basis that Jesus may not have made neat distinctions between mind, soul and heart. It could have been a subtle jab towards his interlocutors, as if to say, if you really love God, use your head and you’ll see the answers to your questions! Most likely, it was intended as a clarification of the Shema prayer (Deut. 6:4–5) to outline that to love God is to bring the entirety of one’s being into His presence and to hold nothing back from Him. To love God is not just to be devoted and committed, but to continue to think through what it means to love and to be loved by the Creator of all things and have that to affect the way one shows up in the world. To see our place in the world as the juxtaposition of love for God and love for humanity requires deep contemplation. To read Scripture with the eyes of love is to read as Christ read, and so see, even in the most ghastly of biblical narratives, hope, redemption and healing.
Christ-Centred Deconstruction
We began this trilogy surveying biblical rape culture and in the second instalment wrestled with one of the most gruesome accounts in the entire biblical text. As I mentioned then, you would not expect to hear sermons based on these very disturbing stories on a Sunday morning too often. Nonetheless, they do appear in our sacred text, and one of the most common questions raised about them is why - why would ancient Jewish communities want such a horrific tale recounted in the history of their relationship with God? On the one hand, it is a question of honesty; the biblical authors were determined to provide unvarnished biographies of Israel’s development. However, this goes significantly beyond just telling the truth.
The Bible invites us into the total arc of human experience - all of its beauty and ugliness are on display. Yet both in darkness and in light, the writers of these stories are at pains to show that God is never distant. In humankind’s fortitude and fragility, wisdom and folly, blessedness and curse, God, sometimes silently and other times with great volume, breathes His restorative life, providing seed to the sower and bread to the eater (Isa. 55:10). This, of course, reaches full bloom and most graphic beauty and horror on the cross, where mercy and justice collide in an explosion of divine love. Here, the story of the divine and the story of the human coalesce. It is not a story that can be sanitised, diluted, submerged in religious rhetoric or couched in convenient platitudes. Beauty and horror must coexist there; just as they did on that fateful night in Benjamite Gibeah, when the horror of Israelite depravity left an innocent woman ravaged and murdered, but who in the light of our embrace of Jesus, beckons us to hear loudly the cry to “Consider it, make a plan, and speak up!” (Judges 19:30). Even when the biblical narrative draws us into the darkest and most repugnant recesses of the human condition, surveying these texts with the eyes of he who was crucified and risen allows us to see the heart of God with all the clarity we need to survive, heal and thrive when the darkness surrounds us. As Seibert writes:
…the violent parts of the Bible can help us see ourselves more clearly and can provide useful insights into the nature and problem of violence itself. Violent texts expose our own violent tendencies and our desperate need for transformation. As Jacqueline Lapsley recognizes: “Part of the need to retain ‘texts of terror’ in the biblical witness is … their painful mimetic quality: they reveal us to ourselves.” We see ourselves when we read these texts, and the image is not particularly flattering [Eric A. Seibert, The Violence of Scripture: Overcoming the Old Testament’s Troubling Legacy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012), 88].
Or in the words of Brown-Taylor:
In the same way, I believe, texts of terror are recognizable to us. Judgment, violence, rejection, death—they are all present in our world, if not in our lives, and there is some crazy kind of consolation in the fact that they are present in the Bible as well. They remind us that the Bible is not all lambs and rainbows. If it were, it would not be our book. Our book has everything in it—wonders and terrors, worst fears and best hopes—both for ourselves and for our relationship with God. The best hope of all is that because the terrors are included here, as part of the covenant story, they may turn out to be redemptive in the end, when we see dimly no more but are face to face at last. That is the fundamental hope all texts of terror drive us to: that however wrong they may seem to us, however misbegotten and needlessly cruel, God may yet be present in them, working redemption in ways we are not equipped to discern [Barbara Brown Taylor, “Preaching the Terrors,” in M. Shelley (Ed.), Deepening Your Ministry Through Prayer and Personal Growth: 30 Strategies to Transform Your Ministry (Nashville, TN: Moorings, 1996), 245–246].
As we navigate what it means to deconstruct one’s faith and keep Jesus the Messiah, very much front and centre, the “texts of terror” can actually bring us into the throne room of God. We must acknowledge the trauma in the narratives - in so doing, we are able to see our own trauma (and trauma in the world) with greater clarity. Those who have been marginalised can find their voice and articulate a response—one which begins with despair but ends in hope, because the God who brings life from death meets us there. Surveying these texts will not necessarily clear up every confusion and they will certainly not pacify us. Indeed, they are far more likely to stir up the kind of necessary anger that leads to change. To that end, I bid us all to read these difficult narratives and get angry and allow our anger to drive us to the One who brings life from death. To the victims of violence, sexual assault, abuse, subjugation, oppression, marginalisation or bullying, the texts of terror are your stories. They are your voice. They prove that God has not only been speaking through scripture, He’s been listening.
