Friday 6th May 2011 - Are genocide and slavery good?

Aren’t there a lot of moral objections to the Old Testament? That was the question addressed at a lecture I went to today at Highfields Church in Cardiff. There was a free lunch, which is always a good incentive! A large crowd there, and a well-presented interesting talk. The speaker was Dr Peter Williams of Tyndale House, Cambridge, who reminded me of Marcus Brigstocke in voice and appearance!

He looked at the kind of comments that atheists (mainly) make against the Old Testament, namely that it is full of violence, that God condones genocide and that slavery is regarded as perfectly acceptable in the Old Testament.

On the question of violence he pointed out that there was no violence at creation, nor will there be at the end, in the ‘lion lies down with the lamb’ passage of Isaiah 11:6. God does not choose violence, and the message of the Old Testament is not that violence is good.

As for the genocide, the Canaanites practiced child sacrifices and did other appalling things. God judged nations according to their evil and rebellion, including judging Israel. And we see a God who is slow to anger and gives people many chances to repent. Clearly I’m summarising a long lecture into a few sentences, but the important thing is (as we were reminded at SH) to look at the Old Testament through the Jesus window. The God of love we know and who is revealed in Christ is where we start. We struggle with the Old Testament at times because of some of the stories in it, but we should realise that the Bible’s opponents are usually mis-telling the story and taking parts completely out of context.

As for slavery – God imposed regulations on the practice, which doesn’t mean he though it was a good thing. Old Testament law made it harder for people to abuse slaves. If Israel obeyed the laws about slaves in the Torah, they would be the kindest nation in the Middle East! Two other points which I had not thought of before: the use of the word ‘slave’ has increased with every new Bible translation. And the ideas that come into our heads when we hear the word ‘slave’ have a lot to do with Roman slave markets, or (for those of us of a certain age) Kunta Kinteh in chains on the TV adaptation of Roots. Neither of those forms of slavery had been invented in Old Testament times. Chains for slaves were outlawed in the Old Testament, as was kidnapping.

Of course, there is a risk in these kinds of argument that it sounds like the speaker is saying, ‘slavery isn’t really that bad!’ which clearly isn’t what is meant!

My own view is that the God of the Old Testament is in no way contradicted by the image of God we see in Christ, but it is fulfilled. There are aspects of the nationhood of Israel as God’s people in the Old Testament which simply no longer apply, therefore we must be aware that the way they were used to apply God’s judgement to the Canaanites can no longer happen.

This is why the arguments of today’s so-called Christian Zionists can be so frustrating. They fail to look at the Old Testament through the Jesus Window. Zionism didn’t actually come up in today’s lecture, so I’d better not get started on it!

I was surprised, initially, that I didn’t know a single person there. Then I spotted Dave Llewellyn from Lisvane. But I have noticed before that there are evangelical events in Cardiff attended by all the SWBA crowd, (and presumably not the Highfields and Heath people) and others attended by just one or two of us (or none of us) and lots of them. I wonder why.

It would have been interesting to stand up and ask for a show of hands if there was anyone there today who was at John Griffiths’s funeral yesterday. Of course there is another problem which is that Caerphilly and Pontypridd are many hundreds of miles from Cardiff (whereas the journey the other way is only about 10 miles!)

Another thought process that began while I was at Highfields today concerned big churches – how they become big, matters of finance, and so on. But I’d better save that for another day….. :)