Lesson 9: The Elijah Story
I decided to examine Old Testament stories to counter Christians who are using their faith to endorse self-serving MAGA programs. For the most part that has worked out. A good portion of the stories call God’s people to care for the poor and extend kindness to foreigners living among us. They picture believers resisting the greed of the rich and speaking truth to the politically powerful.
At the same time, the stories create problems in two areas. There ia no effort to control the male domination that afflicts them then and us now. And they often present killing and genocide as following God’s will.
Let me use Elijah to conclude before moving on to the New Testament. The scriptures often portray the Old Testament message by picturing Moses representing the law and Elijah the prophets. Both appear with Jesus at the Transfiguration, both ascend directly into heaven without dying, and both meet God on Mount Sinai.
Like the other prophets, a great deal of Elijah’s message is care for the poor. A poor widow feeds him when he is running for his life. He raises her son from the dead. He condemns King Ahaz for allowing Queen Jezebel to arrange the death of the poor man Naboth so she could have his field for her garden.
Although Elijah’s bravado often turns to fear, he nevertheless speaks truth to political power. King Ahaz addresses him as “You Troubler of Israel.”
However, the story makes me very uncomfortable when he concludes his great victory over the priests of Baal by killing them all. The peace of his encounter with God on Sinai is quickly shattered. God is not in the mighty destructive wind, nor the lightning, nor the fire, but rather in the silence. But when the still small voice speaks, it instructs Elijah to anoint three men whose task is to kill those who oppose him. “Whoever escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall kill, and whoever escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall kill.”
Those kinds of passages create difficulties. Many Christians use them to justify violently attacking those who oppose their views, even supporting the genocide which is threatened or prevailing in our time. They go so far as endorsing the government’s deportation of those protesting genocide.
We undoubtably need to have some very serious discussions about how to oppose violence in our nuclear age. An absolute unconditional pacifism is not a workable political approach. However, unrestricted violence clearly rejects Jesus’ message. Let’s begin seeing how some New Testament stories help next week.
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Thanks for this. I’ve always been puzzled by the almost parallel lines of life-affirming and death-dealing in stories like Elijah’s. How does one account for them? I don’t want to say that our Hebrew ancestors were less “smart” or “morally good” than we Christians. Nor do I want to play the cultural relativism game of shrugging my shoulders and refusing to make a moral judgment about death-dealing, either then or now. So how do I account for the disturbing coupling? How can I understand it?
Indeed Kerry I share you concerns. For me at least herein in Elijah and this Lesson we see Theodicy laid clearly before us. One expression for Auschwitz was that ‘god didnt visit us’. This is, for me, a basic conundrum of life – sometimes yes one can see good in all then another time clearly some are unregenerate and will kill no matter what. Possibly the pacifists take one side and the MAGA’s take the other. Jesus seemed to bridge the two yet there were two there was a coupling.
It is refreshing that this ‘disturbing coupling’ can be raised and discussed in our lessons such as this one. IMO it is a credit to Frits and our colleagues that he/we take this head on.
ciao paul