On divine judgement in history, part 2

There is a wonderful book in the Old Testament named for its central character, Job. It is set in the ancient near east, at a time when our ancestors had domesticated livestock, established settlements, and formed alliances with neighbouring settlements. A world of networks and interdependency, in which life was no longer terrifying, nor survival all-consuming, and yet lived experience extended significantly beyond human control. A world in which some, at least, had the luxury of telling stories around the campfire; and in which receiving such stories was, if no-longer a necessity of survival, a prerequisite for flourishing. A world that, while far-removed from many of our lives, is not entirely unfamiliar nor consigned to the past.

Within this world, Job stands out as a man committed to being in rightly ordered relationship with others. This approach has served him well, and he is held in respect, by humans and gods alike.

Within this world, but on another level, we meet the gods, beings who are at once active in the world and, to a significant degree, veiled. Over all else is Yahweh. This God is not distant, but takes an active interest in (his) creation, in the experience and wellbeing of every creature. Yahweh exercises this concern both directly and, befitting one who delights in relationship and engaging others, through the gods who proceed from him. As the story unfolds, we are drawn into conversation between Yahweh and the satan, a restless god who is out of sorts. Like Yahweh himself, the satan explores the earth; but, in contrast, seems to find nothing in which to delight. Yahweh invites him to consider Job, in whom Yahweh delights; Job is known to the satan, who remains unimpressed. They enter into something of an experiment, in which Job is an unwitting player, but not, I would suggest, a plaything. At all times, Job retains agency.

As Job’s world collapses around him, his friends gather. And the first thing that they do is brilliant. For seven days, they simply sit with Job, in silence, in solidarity with him in the experience of which he cannot make sense, in solidarity with his suffering. These are the very best of friends. But after seven days, they break; entering, tentatively at first and with increasing boldness, into speculative problem-solving—in which they are further wrong-footed by the counsel of the satan by night. Meanwhile, Yahweh alone, present but in the shadows, keeps silence.

Eventually, when everyone else comes to an end of words, Yahweh rouses himself to speak; an act that stirs up a whirlwind, in whose wake job and his friends receive revelation. Yahweh’s speech is primarily a list of the wonder of creation, and his particular delight in and concern for all that he has made. Again, this is not a distant God who already knows all that can be known, but a person who seeks personal knowledge, shared experience, relationship. And who longs for creation, even rebellious gods, to enter into peace and joy.

Within his list of examples, Yahweh cites two famously untameable beasts, the Behemoth and the Leviathan. Some have sought to explain these as the hippopotamus and crocodile, but these are beings of cosmic mythic proportions, not simply zoological ones. They cannot be stilled with nets and spears, but only by one who is willing to hear their pain, their suffering, their turmoil, until it is spent and calm returns. Such is the wisdom and the love of this God.

In the end, and to the dis-satisfaction of many who read but do not listen, Yahweh restores Job’s lost fortune; and also calls on him to intercede on behalf of his tone-deaf friends, who were not attuned to pain.

What relevance might this have to the current novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, to God’s loving attention to his creation, and the exercising of divine judgement?

Firstly, this outbreak might be understood, theologically, as the cry of creation, against humanity, in the face of broken-down relationship. The creatures charged with exercising delegated divine rule, to bring the natural environment back into harmonious balance whenever its equilibrium is threatened by too much chaos, have not acted in good faith. Moreover, their technology will not prevail in subduing this cry, but only loving attention and patient listening. Viruses, like humans, have their place and part to play in the created order. But beneath the shrill notes of the novel coronavirus, we are called to hear the deeper parts of earth and sea and skies.

Secondly, then, we might speak of God’s judgement as being, ‘I will listen; I will hear your petition, and decide justly.’ This includes upholding the cause of the wider creation as a whole, but also the individual personal laments of humanity caught up in the bigger picture of suffering. That the earth has a legitimate plea in regard to exploitation at the hands of humans does not rule out the possibility that, satan-like or even satanically provoked, a virus should not overstep its bounds. All pain, including all human pain, matters to this God, who alone is capable of the eternal listening, active, attentive, that can draw all things into reconciliation.

If, then, the world is more mysterious, and more interconnected, than we imagine, might this present moment be a summons to appear in court, to come face-to-face with a merciful and breathtakingly daring judge?

And if so, might that have a baring on the restoration that will follow?

On divine judgement in history, part 1

Throughout both the Old and the New Testament, disruptive disasters, both ‘natural’ and of human origin, are understood as the means by which Yahweh exercises judgement, in history, in response to gross and persistent injustice. This is both foundational, and structurally key as the story told of this God continues to unfold.

The cradle of humanity is judged in both the flooding of the fertile crescent—an act that may hide within itself a struggle between the gods as to the extent of judgement, and through which Yahweh saves a family and secures a future—and the linguistic confusion of Babel(on), the pinnacle of human engineering.

Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed by fire from heaven—perhaps by lightening striking tar pits; but ‘from heaven’ does not merely reference an originating direction, but, rather, an authorial intention—because they are merciless, because instead of offering hospitality to strangers they employ gang rape as a weapon of power. And in this episode, we see Abraham, the father of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims, intercede on behalf of the people of the Cities of the Plain, albeit to no avail.

Yahweh brings a series of increasingly devastating plagues against Egypt, relenting each time that Pharaoh repents, but returning each time Pharaoh subsequently hardens his heart. This sequence, ultimately resulting in the liberation of the people of Israel, is presented as a clash not only between a god and a mortal, but between a particular God, Yahweh, and a pantheon of gods who exert influence for oppression.

Later, once the tribes of Israel enter and settle the land promised to Abraham’s descendants, defeat at the hand of neighbouring tribes in the time of the judges, and extended periods of drought in the time of the divided kingdoms, are alike seen as divine judgement on his own people, for their unfaithfulness to a covenant of just relationship.

Joel proclaims Yahweh’s judgement on his people in waves of locusts stripping the early and later harvests; but even within that devastation, holds out the possibility that blessing may be known.

Jonah is sent to the merciless imperial power of Nineveh, to notify the Assyrians—enemy of his own people—that unless they repent, their great capital will be overthrown in forty days. The king of Nineveh leads his people in public repentance, and—much to Jonah’s disgust—Yahweh relents from punishment. There is, however, no historical record of a lasting change of heart, and soon enough, Nineveh will be overthrown.

The defeat of the northern kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians, and, later, of the southern kingdom Judah to the Babylonians, with the royal court of Jerusalem being carried off into exile, are likewise understood to be acts of divine judgement. Nehemiah teaches the community that the appropriate immediate response is lament, for all that was good that has been—arguably unnecessarily, had the people only repented when they had the chance—lost.

In the Gospels, Jesus is clear that, the people having rejected his persistent call to turn back to God, Jerusalem would fall (again) and the Temple be desecrated (again) and thrown down. While he healed physical sicknesses and drove out literal demons, these were at the same time symbolic of a communal social and spiritual disease, and the possibility to receive, or reject, cure. His response to the refusal of the leaders of the nation to receive him was to weep over Jerusalem; his response at the grave of Lazarus, whose death was grievous in and of itself but also symbolised a wider dying, was, likewise, to weep.

Later in the New Testament, famine is seen as divine judgement on the Greco-Roman world, within which a made-new humanity ensured that no one within their community would go without their needs being provided for. Ultimately, a succession of plague, famine, and warfare—imagined as apocalyptic horsemen—would bring down the grossly unjust Roman empire.

There is, then, no progression of understanding from a God who engages in history in such a manner to a God who does not, who is no longer directly concerned with injustice or active in history. There is, however, throughout all this, and pre-eminently revealed in the person of Jesus, a God who fully identifies with his people in particular and humanity in general in their suffering—Pharaoh will lose his firstborn son, but so will Yahweh—even if it is brought upon themselves by their rejection of God’s loving wisdom.

Theologically, it is right that we should speak of novel coronavirus COVID-19 as an outpouring of divine judgement—one that was repeatedly forewarned by voices we chose to ignore. But how we speak of it matters, too. This pandemic is an outpouring of judgement on and for the whole world. On our common humanity—and, emphatically, not some group we can ‘other’ in order to socially distance ourselves from them—for the liberation of the non-human world we have argued over but refused to release from exploitation. In this present disruptive moment, the planet itself gets to breathe, to exhale the pain of subjugation as a prayer of longing, and inhale hope and a foretaste of the world made new, sharing in a glorious liberty.

Theologically, it is also right that we should intercede on behalf of our neighbours; prophetically call the nations to repentance; hold out the possibility even in judgement to experience blessing; lament the good things that have, for now and perhaps forever, been lost, and the poverty that comes in the wake of disaster, including upon those who were poor to begin with; model a new way of being that ensures that every member of the community has what they need; extend compassion, and not seek to shield ourselves from suffering.

Moreover, it is right to note that this is a recurring pattern, on a long trajectory of liberation. We must speak out, prophetically, resisting the siren song to return, as quickly as possible, to how the world was: for ‘how the world was’ was, in need of divine judgement. Instead, we must foster an imagination for justice, for the earth we share, and for all her inhabitants, including (but not limited to) all people regardless of where they come from. Economics concerns the ordered running of the household, for the wellbeing of society, and is a good servant but a poor master. If this moment in history is something that those of us with the most resources come out of least scathed, unrepentant and glorying in our ego, it will be merely a stay of execution.

In this present disruptive moment, the planet itself gets to breathe. But it also holds its breath, watching to see how we will respond.

Lament

July has been a very full month, and my writing has been focused elsewhere. From 2-12 July, I took part in a clergy consultation at St George’s House, within Windsor Castle. Our theme was God: Some Conversations, considering how we speak about God in the context of various challenges and potential opportunities facing us nationally and globally, including the state of the Church, the future of healthcare and the NHS, the arts, Brexit, democracy in a ‘post-truth’ Information Age, organised criminal gangs, and environmental issues.

As part of my contribution to the consultation, I presented a paper on lament. If you are interested, you can link to it here.

As it turned out, lament was a theme we returned to over again in the course of our deliberations, noting that it was missing from our public discourse. We also observed that evil often counterfeits good, and that, in the absence of a robust practice of lament, the tabloid press holds out a counterfeit version: endless daily tales of woe, framed by outrage and identifying scapegoats to blame. In contrast, genuine lament acknowledges our pain – and inability, at times, to rescue ourselves – and recognises the pain of others, showing empathy; leads to an appropriate accepting of our own responsibility, and repentance; and always, even in the most apparently hopeless of situations, holds fast to hope.

I came to Windsor with a hunch that lament would be one necessary and helpful way to frame God-conversations and came away with that sense very much affirmed. Come the autumn, I will want to explore this further.