As a covenant, an agreement, between God and Israel, the formal agreement to uphold the moral revelation of Yahweh came with terms of success and failure for the Israelites, much like some modern contracts. There is an entire chapter of the Torah devoted to describing in great detail what the blessings and curses are for respectively adhering to or forsaking God's commands, many of which were already obligatory prior to their formal revelation to Moses in Christian theology because they are/were rooted in God's nature, with God already existing and his core nature remaining unchanging (Malachi 3:6). Deuteronomy 28 is this chapter--but let it be clarified that the blessings and curses, along with some select categories of obligations that are context-specific (no one can be obligated to sacrifice animals at a Temple if there is no Temple), are all from the contents of Mosaic Law that are not universally obligatory on the Christian worldview [1]. It is not just the obligation to not murder or steal that do not change thanks to their tie to God's nature; it is the command to kill all rapists (male or female), kidnappers, and people who commit bestiality as well, among other things. The curses were terms specifically set with ancient Israel although the vast majority of Mosaic Law is inherently binding for all people if Christianity is true.
Since some of the covenant curses in Deuteronomy 28 for disobedience are particularly brutal or could be easily misunderstood, there is actually a lot at stake in Christian theology found in this chapter. There are enormous ramifications one way or another. Now, among the curses are meteorological and pathological disasters, and things like these promised plagues and the withholding of agricultural abundance are not moral issues of humans mistreating other humans or even mistreating animals, much less God making people sin against the Israelites to hypocritically punish them for sin. Moreover, since an uncaused cause with a moral nature is the only possible anchor point of justice and the Christian uncaused cause is the one directly inflicting these calamities, there is nothing to object to internally within Christianity or externally because the only objections would be based in meaningless subjective discomfort.
Other curses, though, involve outside nations committing acts against Israel that are very clearly condemned as evil, in some cases even sins deserving of execution, in the very laws the Jews were supposed to uphold to obtain the covenant blessings rather than curses, as well as to simply do that which is morally obligatory. Speaking of the male Jews, though of course this could happen to they themselves, Yahweh says, "'You will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and ravish her'" (Deuteronomy 28:30). Shortly after, the following is written: "'Your donkey will be forcibly taken from you and will not be returned'" (28:31). Later still there is a statement made saying the Israelites will stoop to idol worship in foreign lands. "The Lord will drive you and the king you set over you to a nation unknown to you or your fathers. There you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone" (28:36). Rape, theft, and idol worship are of course condemned quite harshly by Yahweh in Deuteronomy or Exodus, with rape and kidnapping, the supreme form of theft, all being sins deserving execution (Deuteronomy 22:25-27 and Exodus 21:16 respectively are some of the most relevant verses). In this context, it is foreigners who are mistreating the Jews while making themselves guilty in the process that are inflicting some of these curses, not God. They are still listed among the curses all the same.
What about where Yahweh spends several sentences describing just how severe the circumstances will be when he removes his political protection from Israel? He says the following: "Because of the suffering that your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you. Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating . . . The most gentle and sensitive woman among you . . . will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter . . . For she intends to eat them secretly during the siege (28:53-57). Even here, again, it is acts done by people as a response to other acts done by people that are in view. God is not making anyone commit murder or cannibalism here (though perhaps the person being consumed had already died because of starvation during the siege), and, indeed, murder with cannibalistic intent would outright be a sin worthy of death (Exodus 21:12-14). The worst covenant curses of Deuteronomy 28, which include things like cannibalism, rape, and submission to idolatry are all the results of human interactions with each other; all God is said to directly do in every curse is refrain from giving the Jews a special status of protection from some calamities.
Yes, someone who sins does not deserve divine favor, and so it is justice to withhold certain blessings from them, yet to either force someone to commit evil, Jew or Gentile, or make others victimize them through heinous mistreatment for the sins they have committed would by necessity be unjust. It would be extremely hypocrisy. The Christian God does not make anyone sin, so the sinful acts that would be inflicted on the Jews by other nations are at most occurring because vile people chose to do such things and God did not intervene. This, of course, is similar to how most conceptions of a deity already behave: they do not intervene in all human affairs, regardless of their motives for doing so, and humans are the ones who choose to make themselves innocent or guilty of specific moral offenses. Inside or outside of the context of Christianity, it is objectively impossible for a deity (or person) that is not literally controlling the minds of people to be responsible for their beliefs and deeds rather than the people themselves. Besides, the way Deuteronomy 28 is written describes God withholding protection and allowing events to happen when it comes to the curses that involve humans sinning against God or other humans. The covenant curses of Deuteronomy are not a case of the Biblical Yahweh forcing some people to sin and forcing other people to be victims of those sins all to ironically punish more sins.
No comments:
Post a Comment