Backward-Thinking

1.  I am not conservative.  I am traditional.  There is a difference.  Tradition can be the most radical force in the world.

2.  On Catholic radio yesterday I heard a priest downplaying God's role in the slaughter the Canaanites in Deuteronomy.  "The Israelites thought that's what God wanted - but that's not what he really wanted."  For some reason this explanation does not sit well with me.  We can't simply write off the parts of Scripture that we think are incompatible with human understandings of justice by saying that the Israelites "didn't know any better."  Perhaps they didn't, but they had a theological reason for saying that God ordered the deaths of the Canaanite women and children, and we can't dismiss that reason.  Nor does it sit well with me to argue that, "Well, the Canaanites had it coming, they were so sinful!"  Perhaps the Canaanites were sinful, but God also declares His ongoing love for the sinner throughout Scripture.

So what can it mean?  What is the lesson?  There is the lesson that a sinful people will call down the wrath of God.  There is a lesson that God's will takes precedence over human judgment.  There is a lesson that disobedience to God is not to be tolerated.  It is not a story for Canannites, but a story told to Israelites to warn them about the cost of straying from God.

But perhaps, fundamentally, there is no lesson.  Perhaps it something meant to disturb us, shake us up out of our notion that God will always be good and kind to us no matter what, so that we can then dismiss Him from our minds and lives.  Perhaps the story was meant to sound a note of discord, to shake us out of complacency.  The story of the Canaanites sits heavy upon us, undigested and unassimilable.  Reminding us that we can never understand fully the mind of God.

We want God to be rational according to our notion of reason.  We want God to be just according to our notion of justice.  We are shocked when He isn't.  We are reminded that He is the source of reason, He is the source of justice, and when He seems to break the rules He has established it is only because we have failed to truly understand them.

3.  Imagine: you have a friend you know very well.  This friend is always a good and kind person.  But one day he begins to act in a shocking way, a manner out of conformity with his previous behavior, a manner that seems cruel and unfair.  What is your first assumption?  That the kind person you always knew is actually a vicious and evil person - or that there must be a good reason for this shift in behavior?

Why can we not offer the same benefit of the doubt to God?  And to do so without cooking up false reasons to explain His behavior.  To accept God as He is, entirely in His inscrutability.  Is that not, finally, the lesson of Job?

4.  What does self-determination mean?  I am so tired of hearing about it.  The pressure to "determine oneself" is an awful pressure.  It is not freedom.  It is entrapment, deprivation.  It is awful and confusing and chaotic and miserable.

No one determines themselves.  The self is determined in relationship to others, and especially to God.  And we all have a god, whether we acknowledge it or not.  (Chesterton said: There are two kinds of people in the world: those who are dogmatic and know it, and those who are dogmatic and don't know it.)  The self is forged in a dialectic between the individual and the world around the individual.  It does not exist except in relationship to others.

What is this notion of not wanting to foist your pre-conceived notions on others?  You don't have to color within the lines, you don't have to play by the rules.  It makes me want to pull out my hair.  There is no real creativity without some sense of structure.  And rules exist to provide structure.  They pass on the wisdom of those who came before.  They give us something to test ourselves and our ideas against.  Why deprive our children of that benefit?

5.  What can I say to justify myself?  Nothing.  I can only say: I am sorry.  I did not do enough.  I did not love enough.  I did not try hard enough.  I did not give enough.  I could have done more, I should have done more.  I can only point to Christ's wounds and say: do not reject Your Son's sacrifice.  He loved me though I did not deserve it.  Let me hide behind His wounds.  Let me bathe them in my tears.  I am sorry.

6.  I am grateful today to be alive.  I thank God that He has kept me alive this day.