While the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day. And those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation. They put him in custody, because it had not been made clear what should be done to him. And the Lord said to Moses, "The man shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.". And all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones, as the Lord commanded Moses.
My knee jerk reaction when I read this passage is to forget that I just read the passage. Put my hands over my ears, squeeze my eyes shut and blurt, "Nananananananana!!!!! I can't seeing anything!!!! Nanananananananan!!!!!!!!! Can't hear anything!!!!!!!!!" Or whatever the spiritual equivalent is. I like to think of God as the Good Shepherd. Not the Great Smiter. These passages are not taught in Sunday school. Not preached from the pulpit. Chances are that if they are ever mentioned, it's by some guy who is also holding a sign that says, "God hates figs." Or something.
But after reading this passage today I decided to open my eyes, take my fingers out of my ears and look at God's word closely, even if it makes me pucker.
But having set out down the path there is immediately a fork in the road and I must choose one of three routes:
Deny
Deny the validity of the Bible. Simply write off what what written, because it is such an old book and couldn't have any bearing on my life today. Conclude that the author was a sicko painting an image of a sicko deity (after all a good God wouldn't do such a bad thing). Or be generous and say that this was a mistranslation and the original text and meaning has long been lost. Or maybe the cultural gap is too great to understand the meaning back then. Or I might decide to pick and choose which parts of Scripture I like and feel comfortable with, like selecting melons from a fruit stand. Thump it, smell it, squeeze and if it feels good, toss it in the cart. All of these can be reduced to a denial of the authority and sufficiency of the Bible. But this is not an option for me, so I move on to the next.
Diminish
Reduce the importance of the passage by some trick of Xerox, hit the 25% zoom button and make it shrink in substance. So that somehow I convince myself that God didn't really command the stoning of a guy because he wanted to warm his family by the fire some Saturday, or cook his Hungry Man meal. Or maybe the author stuck a figurative tale in the midst of a historical account. Or perhaps the author was ascribing to God the actions of humans to justify his own personal guilt or shame in the murder of an innocent man. The idea is that if I get uncomfortable with a text, I won't outright deny it, but I'll shrink it down to a smaller size. So it can fit into the small cubbyhole in my small head labeled "Brian's Image of God" (with an acronym that is often not appropriate.)
Yet this option also doesn't sit well with me. So I move on to the last option:
Dig
Pick up a shovel and put in some toil and hard work to dig for the significance of the passage. Ask difficult questions, seek answers from multiple sources, starting with the Bible itself. What does the immediate context of passage indicate? Do verses adjoining before and after shed any light or give new information? Dig into the rest of the book of Numbers to see what the larger context is in the book. Dig into the historical context of the Israelites in the desert. What do the previous days, weeks, months, years and centuries say about God's character/actions as related to this wood gatherer? Dig into other books of the Bible to search for passages that deepen our understanding. Then move out of scripture to external sources: commentaries, sermons, biblical scholars. Dig into original language studies. Dig. And pray for the Spirit's guidance to teach us.
But be prepared, at the bottom of the deep hole we've dug, we'll hear the clank of a buried chest. And inside that is a treasure: the Truth. And the truth of the passage might be what our gut told us at the outset. Or the truth might force us to expand our understanding of the Almighty. But even if we don't fully understand it, we should value what was found, not diminish or deny it.
Next post in Part II, I'll try to do this very thing and dig for the truth about the stoning of a man with sticks in his hands.
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