Hi folks, I hope you are doing ok, we will be meeting at 7.30 in the Crescent Club in the upstairs lounge that looks out onto the seafront, you would be very welcome to join us.
This week we are thinking about ‘Imagining and Reimagining God’. As I read this chapter it reminded me of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, they portray the world we live in amongst many other planets and universes with their own selection of gods, like Thor, and then on earth we have super heroes like Hulk and Iron Man, etc, all trying to protect earth. Not all of these superheroes had their powers and gifts from birth, some acquired them through accidents and other-worldly goings on!
Pete talks in this chapter around two ideas, one is that the bible seems happy to see that, ’other gods’, live alongside Yahweh. He illustrates this using 2 Kings 3, at the end of the story the Moabites are outnumbered and are found inside a besieged city. Mesha the then King sacrificed his first born son on the city walls to the god Chemosh in the vain hope that it would drive back Israel… But then we read 2 Kings 3:27
Then he took his firstborn son who was to succeed him, and offered him as a burnt offering on the wall. And great wrath came upon Israel, so they withdrew from him and returned to their own land.
And that’s where the story stops! Did Chemosh really take on Yahweh and win, because the King sacrificed his first born?
We have to remember that back then in ‘ancient marvel land’ the people had to appease the gods in order to have decent crops, good water supply, produce offspring and win wars! So if things were going badly it would normally mean that one of their gods wasn’t best pleased with them, and so they would need to make sacrifices to appease the gods, just like King Mesha did. These folks believed it was the case… and not only that, even the writers of these stories are happy to write them in such a way that other marvel characters if you like exist among the great Yahweh, without any explanation to help. Not only that but there is nothing about why Yahweh didn’t intervene either!
This is one story Pete talks about alongside the Exodus story and the giving of the 10 commandments that seem to suggest that these Israelites seemed to be living in a kind of marvel universe where other ‘gods’ compete alongside Yahweh for attention!
Also in this chapter Pete talks about the thorny question of God’s propensity for violence, and lists his top ten! All of this faces us with a side to God that we don’t like… Of course we can choose to believe, or not, that is the kind of God we believe in. With that in mind Pete suggests it’s important to remember, and maybe even come as a relief to some, that God is inextricably linked to our human experience.
We know that violence is part of our history, and indeed our present. Imagine for a moment a small child growing up in Ukraine, or Afghanistan… or anywhere there is conflict and imagine that these conflicts are raging around you for decades… What are you going to believe about the world? What are you going to believe about God? How will you interpret life? Pete suggests that by placing God in the context of the history of humankind and its story it may help us think differently about some of the more difficult passages of the bible and the kind of God we believe in.
Some Questions
Who is your favourite superhero and why?
In what ways do we bargain with God today?
Other gods and other faiths… What do we think?
What do you think about a God who is violent?
What kind of God do you believe in?
How do we know where God’s influence stops and human influence begins?
Peace, Rob
Rob Wylie is the founder of BeachcomberFX and guides its leadership team. He has worked in the North East for over 20 years and has vast experience from various roles he has held. He has a passion for Fresh Expressions of Church and Pioneer Ministry as well as beer, beaches and Miniature Schnauzers.
Comments 1
Believing in a God who is not violent in any way but loving is a given for me. Violence though in my understanding is inextricably linked with human evolutionary history though so how can we get out of this? As hunter gatherers over thousands of years. We lived with inter tribal conflict with violent religious sacrifice to various Gods being part of this. For me the Bible describes a Good God created world threatened by dominating violent power and control but God in the person of Jesus shows a way of Peace through this.