davebarnhart.net

Monday, March 09, 2009

Monday Afternoon Alabama Constitutional Haiku

I have killed a tree
Printing the constitution
Alabama rocks

Friday, March 06, 2009

Blog Saturation

I have a backlog of 1000 church and religion blogs that I haven’t read in months. I just got to the point where I find discussions of church and what’s wrong with it tiresome. And apart from a few exceptions, most of the theologizing I was reading also left me tired. I get much more of a charge from looking at art blogs or reading about innovative people doing cool things.

The stuff I want to read isn’t out there. It’s in me. I’ve just got to get it out.

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Monday Morning (Belated) Bible Haiku: Genesis 15 and the Covenant of Caanan

Covenant problem:
People already live here.
No land for you yet.

I don’t mean for this haiku to sound flip. The problem with this story is that the land promised to Abraham already has people living on it. How you deal theologically with the subsequent story from Exodus to Samuel depends on whether you think God is okay with genocide or not, and whether you think Joshua and Judges represent the history of a conquering people or are a re-interpretation of some other social struggle, a myth of Israelite national identity.

It’s a problem for the modern world, as well. I heard an Israeli settler justify his occupation of Palestinian land with this chapter from the Bible. He believes that God has given the land “from the Nile to the Euphrates” to Jewish people. One of our group pointed out that that meant from Cairo to Baghdad. Our speaker’s opinion was that it might sound crazy now, but God had ordained it, and if Israelis didn’t take the land now, someone would attack them and they would be forced to. He believed God had already punished his people with the holocaust for not returning to Zion. How can you argue with that kind of logic? Manifest Destiny. We either act barbarically toward our neighbors, or God will act barbarically toward us.

Now I wish I had pointed out: Abraham’s descendants already occupy from the land from the Nile to the Euphrates. The challenge for the other part of the covenant is whether the children of Abraham will bless the world or tear it apart (Gen 12:2-3).