Keeping Perspective

Readings for today: Joshua 11-14

It’s about this time every year in my Bible reading that I start to get weary. Worn down by all the bloodshed and violence. Worn down by all the God-sanctioned religious warfare. Worn down by the thoughts of men, women, and children dying in these cities as Israel conquers the Promised Land. I am worn down by a world I do not understand. Worn down by the brutality of it all. Worn down trying to understand how God is driving it all. I come to the end of my finite mind. I come the end of my understanding. I come to the end of my ability to reason my way through. And I just sit with the horror of it all. Overwhelmed.  

Several years ago, I had dinner with some friends. One of them does a lot of work in Rwanda with the mountain gorillas. He and his family have been engaged over there for decades helping with the research. He was there just after the genocide. He saw the bodies piled up in the streets. Stacks upon stacks. It was horrifying. He can never get the images out of his head. I have another friend who survived the Killing Fields of Cambodia. He remembers the mass graves. Miraculously escaped one himself. He remembers standing in a line as soldiers executed one person after the next and when it came his turn, they pulled him out of line for some reason and kept on killing. If there’s anything history has taught us, it’s that humanity’s inhumanity knows no bounds. The purges in Maoist China and Stalinist Russia. The Holocaust. The recent invasion of Ukraine. Those are just the more recent examples! Think of the Mongolian conquest. The Crusades. The African slave trade. British occupation of India. Rome’s brutal conquest of the Germanic tribes. For as long as human beings have walked this earth, there has been war. There has been violence. There has been suffering. In fact, some historians calculate that in the history of the entire human race, we’ve experienced four years of peace. FOUR! Can you imagine?  

When human beings engage in such violence, they tend to pull on a common thread…God. God ordains this war. God sanctions this violence. God is on our side. God commands us to fight these battles and destroy these enemies. But is this really true? I readily admit I struggle through the histories of the Old Testament even more than I do Leviticus. In my head, I can make some sense of the law code but I cannot rationalize all the death and destruction. So what’s a faithful, Bible-believing Christian to do?   

Three things help get me through this part of the reading every single year...

  1. Joshua 5:13-15. At the beginning of the conquest, before the fall of Jericho, the commander of the Lord’s armies appears to Joshua. Joshua falls on his face before him and asks him if He is for Israel or for their adversaries. It’s a great question. It’s a common question. Essentially, he’s asking the angel, “Are you for us or against us?” Are you on our side or their side? Are you team Israel or team Canaanite? I love the angel’s response. “No, I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come.” Basically, the only “side” I’m on is my own! I am no tribal deity. I am not like the other gods. I reign and rule according to my own sovereign purposes and plan.

  2. My finite mind. My understanding of the world is shaped by time, culture, space, nation, etc. I am not an “objective” observer of history. There is no such thing. I have built-in biases and assumptions that I bring to the table when I read the Word of God that act as “filters.” These filters can be helpful or harmful depending on the text and will shape how I “receive” the Word of God in any situation.

  3. Humility. I need to read with humility because I do not know all the answers. Nor will I ever. My questions and fears and doubts are real and I may not find satisfaction this side of heaven. That’s okay. If there is a God who rules and reigns over the universe and if this God is good then I can ultimately trust Him. I can trust He sees things I cannot and He is orchestrating things to His own ends which are ultimately holy and righteous and just.

There is one more thing I always try to keep in mind. My own sinfulness. The evil I carry in my own heart. Like the Apostle Paul, I do things I know I should not do. I don’t do things I know I should do. Every day is full of the sins of “commission” and the sins of “omission” that negatively impact the lives of those I love and the lives of those I am around. The evil in the world is not just “out there” but inside of me as well. So I read with the understanding that but for the grace of God, I too deserve death and destruction. And that moves my heart to praise and thanksgiving for what God has done in Jesus Christ.  

Readings for tomorrow: Joshua 15-18