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 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 could be 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.
That’s usually when God brings me some perspective. It might be a news story. It might be an experience overseas. It might be meeting people along the way who have come face to face with humanity’s inhumanity and lived to tell the tale. For example, several years ago I was at a dinner party with some new 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 and preservation of the species. As it turns out, he was there during the genocide in 1994. He saw the bodies piled up in the streets. Stacks upon stacks. He can never get the images out of his head. And it forced him to ask a couple of very hard questions. First, how could a good God allow such suffering? Second, how could a loving God not respond with wrath over the atrocities? Third, how could a just God not punish the guilty forever? You see, hell becomes a lot more palatable when you’ve come face to face with horrific violence. Eternal damnation seems almost necessary if God is going to truly address evil. His wrath and anger at human sin makes perfect sense to us when we see children dying or the vulnerable suffer. If we are courageous enough to take an honest look at human history, we know humanity’s inhumanity seemingly knows no bounds. The Killing Fields in Cambodia. The purges in Maoist China and Stalinist Russia. The Holocaust. And those are just the 20th century examples! The Mongolian conquest. The Crusades. The African slave trade. The 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. There has been evil. And God - if He is who He has revealed Himself to be - must respond.
So what does a good, loving, and perfectly just and righteous God do about the evil in the world? He executes judgment. He uses human beings as His instruments to punish the guilty. Not just guilty people but guilty societies. Guilty systems of oppression. Guilty nations locked in idolatry and sin. And what we read in Joshua is but a foretaste of the judgment God levels on His Son and the judgment He will finally bring upon the world when His Son comes again. This is why the Lord appears to Joshua in 5:13-15. We read this story just a few days ago. Before 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. And I will execute my judgments on the earth against the powers of evil, sin, and death.
The fundamental truth we don’t want to face is that - deep down - we want God to be just. We want God to punish the guilty. We want God to confront and overthrow evil and sin. We want God to eradicate systems of injustice and oppression. We are in favor of all these things…for other people. We approve of all these things…for other nations and societies. We are good with all these things…as long as we receive mercy. This is what makes these readings so hard. We cannot fathom how God could be justified in going to war against the different Canaanite tribes. We cannot understand the depths of the evil that would elicit such a harsh response from God. And that’s because we have yet to fully appreciate the seriousness and weight of our own sin. The evil we carry in our own hearts. 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 sins of “commission” and 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 try to read with the understanding that but for the grace of God, I too deserve judgment. I too deserve punishment. 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