How we read the Bible is vitally important. Do we see Jesus as the supreme revelation of Divinity? The One who condensed the Old Testament Law and the Prophets down to ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind, and your neighbour as yourself’.
Or, as many prefer, to qualify New Testament commands with Old. Instead of the reverse. While paying special attention to the ‘Chosen People for a Promised Land’ narrative.
The latter is much worse than the narrow Nationalism of ‘Imagined Communities,’ where skin pigment, linguistic, religious, or cultural preferences are used first to define ‘people groups’ and then mobilise them to assert control over a piece of land and its resources.
Why is it worse? Because it’s a Religious Nationalism.
Something violent, primitive, binary, and non-negotiable. Without nuance. Its Divine mandate endorsing one group as ‘special’. Enabling ignorance of the competing Old Testament narratives, like the Prophetic calls for justice and mercy.
Where compromise with any ‘Other’ is portrayed as traitorous. Remind you of anywhere? But back to the Jesus option.
Surely the Incarnation conclusively elevates the supremacy of a person—the ‘Word’ of God, with a capital W, God personified, as John puts it at the start of his Gospel? He deploys the Greek term Logos to describe the divine logic and wisdom of the creator of all as the unifying principle that holds the universe together instead of atoms and subatomic particles flying apart.
As Brian Zhand points out, the rest of the Biblical library is commonly known as the Word of God. However, it should be spelt with a lowercase w. This must be clarified, qualified, or amended by the Living Word, who is God, speaking directly and not through an intermediary.
This was how the early Church Mothers and Fathers understood things.
The Old Testament is then an inspired record of a people’s journey, trying to grasp the mystery of the Divine but always looking forward to Messiah’s appearance.
The Word (person) surely must have supremacy in all debates. No one really knew what the unseen God was like until Jesus showed them, as John says in his first 18 verses. Shockingly here to heal, bless, and forgive all. Even his murderers to be.
His demands are clear and simple. But challenging to follow.
Our understanding of the centrality of The Word’s message has decayed to such an extent that last year, an American pastor preaching on the Sermon on Mount was angrily confronted immediately afterwards by a member of his church, demanding to know ‘Where’d you get those Liberal talking points.’ Others have said, ‘It’s just not realistic,’ or, ‘not manly’, etc.
So, my guess is that Christian Zionism, with its intense focus on Israel – is, for many, a convenient creed that helps one avoid the centrality of Christ’s teaching re non-violence, mercy, and forgiveness. Because they’re ‘God’s People.’ With unfinished business. So, they get a ‘Free Pass’ to expand their brand of territorial Religious Nationalism. Endorsed by an ancient promise from a War-God marching with his people.
Of course, many other nations and empires have found it convenient to appropriate and repackage the ‘Chosen People’s narrative, walking back in time to bypass the New Testament for the Old – as cover or means to the ends of Spanish Conquistadores in Latin America, or the British Empire’s supposedly ‘civilising’ mission abroad, or of America’s ‘Manifest Destiny,’ to push ever westward, towards a genocide of the indigenous population. All were supposedly under Divine mandate, sporting Christian clothes but drawing inspiration from ancient Israel as cover for greed.
And now modern Christian Zionists elevate a reverence for Old Testament Religious Nationalism as a ‘cover ‘for Israel’s violence without restraint, its dehumanisation of the Other. With the Old Testament weaponised again to de-prioritise the Word’s call for compassion and mercy.
So, how one reads the Bible is vitally important. Either as a ‘Flat’ text, with each verse of equal weight – enabling justification for almost anything you want to do or any view you want to hold. And untroubled by ethics.
Or, do we see ‘The Word,‘ the Logos personified, as the summit of scripture, the ultimate arbiter, the lens through which we must view and weigh all scripture- old and new. The one who clarified what the Divine is actually like. Come as an unlicensed Rabbi who didn’t conform, who wasn’t speaking for big religion or the powerful, an outsider walking long days on the edge, throwing parties for outcasts, touching the supposedly unclean, preaching a gospel of love and being willing to die for it. And weeping over Jerusalem still.
Roy Uprichard is a retired teacher who has published three ‘Camino type’ memoirs:
- On (and off) The Portuguese Way. Celtic Connections – Galicia, Ireland and Everywhere.(2021)
- Stone and Water – Walking the Variante route of the Camino Portugues.(2018)
- Restless Hearts – Walking the Camino de Santiago. (2016)
You can view his profile on Amazon.
He is also a member of Christians4Palestine.
Discover more from Slugger O'Toole
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
