Abraham and Abimelech
How the Bible doesn't care about Fairness
I don’t want to alarm you, but the Bible is full of bad people. As I begin my second journey through the Holy Scriptures in a mere ten months, I am once again astonished by how wicked the main characters are.
In fact, I think I am beginning to have a better idea about why the Bible is so little discussed amongst very online “Christians” in these latter days. In the first place, the Bible unwaveringly presents a view of the person as so damaged and dumb that to accept the veracity of the text, one has to relinquish the modern conception of the imago dei as charmingly, indeed very cutely “broken.” Sin isn’t cute, ngl. The real condition of your imago dei, if anyone could see it, would make all your friends and relations shudder.
Even more alarming, the Bible is full of Patriarchs. There are so many. They are all bad, of course, but they are all there. This morning I endured Lot’s troubled righteous soul as he was invited to be so drunk that he didn’t know when both his daughters (there’s no way to say this delicately) became pregnant with his children. And then there was this horrifying occasion:
From there Abraham journeyed toward the territory of the Negeb and lived between Kadesh and Shur; and he sojourned in Gerar. And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, “She is my sister.” And Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah. But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, “Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man's wife.” Now Abimelech had not approached her. So he said, “Lord, will you kill an innocent people? Did he not himself say to me, ‘She is my sister’? And she herself said, ‘He is my brother.’ In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands I have done this.” Then God said to him in the dream, “Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart, and it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her. Now then, return the man's wife, for he is a prophet, so that he will pray for you, and you shall live. But if you do not return her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours.”
Now, if you are rapturously enamored of your own egalitarian imago dei, what are you going to do with this text? If you think that the only thing that stands between you and heaven is reaching your best potential, that Eve was right to eat the apple and let it burn, and that diversity, equity, and inclusion are the best and purest way to eternal life, how are you going to interpret this curious moment in salvation history? In the first place, I would imagine that you would not read it, for fear of endangering your “worldview.” In the second place, if you did happen to read it, you would have to explain how the Bible is not a faithful witness to the work of God. It is merely an accumulation of weird human stories that just show how men are bad and women are victims. God is probably there somewhere, but he isn’t the driver of the narrative, he doesn’t have the power to faithfully relate either what happened or what we should think about what happened.
If you take that view, you have probably already become one of the 40 million Americans who no longer attend church. Why would you? You might hear some stories read about the work of God through human sinners and that is a weird and uncomfortable phenomenon to encounter. How could this little anecdote, for example, have any bearing on how you live your life or what you are meant to do in the next three hours before your afternoon venti-non-fat-oatmilk-decaf macchiato?
If you are someone who “believes the Bible” still, though all the world mock you at every turn, do you have a way to sort this out? What would you have to acknowledge for the text to become coherent under your gaze?
Well, the first thing you would have to accept is that your imago dei has been broken in pieces through sin. You are bad, and so is everyone else. Not just a little bit bad—really bad. Even Abraham was really bad. And Sarah also. And Abimelech. And every person who ever lived.
Second, you would have to accept that God has an inscrutable will that is worked out in particular people doing particular things. God decided to bless Abraham and make him the spiritual Patriarch of the world. In other words, God was going to so forgive his sins and protect his offspring that even you and I, millennia later, would be brought into his family.
Third, you would have to begin to understand the spiritual nature of the cosmos. Certainly, the body—yours and everyone else’s—isn’t something to discount. For, there is Abraham literally trying to pass his wife off as his sister to save his own skin. And there is Abimelech with his whole household struck with ailments and barrenness until God delivers them. Nevertheless, it is Abraham’s spiritual position, as head and patriarch of the family of God, that brings that narrow world into chaos and then restores it. He is the head. He can act like it or not, he can create order or dissonance, he can be anxious and wicked or righteous and brave. But in all of these, he is a certain thing—the head.
One thing you can not do, if you are going to accept the text on its own terms, is complain that none of it is fair. What is fair? When all the creatures of God have decided to rebel against him, is that fair? Something has to be done, and if God, in his mercy, decides to do something, what can Abimalech or anyone say about it?
Well, there is one thing you can say—you can say, “Okay.” I’ll accept the terms even if they seem strange and unnerving. I will admit that I’m the wrong one. I will acknowledge the existence of a good God who can do things in his own fashion and according to his own strange thoughts. And then, looking out over the vast horizon of people who don’t know their right hands from their left hands, I can be grateful that God is God, and that there is no other.
Have a nice day.
I love your writing, Anne. Every time, you cut a clear path through the twisted wilderness of modern thought, issuing out into a clearing where is to be found truth and peace.
My latest pet peeve is with the wimpescence of the 1928 BCP Lectionary designers, who cut out (i.e., have us pass over in the readings) all the parts of Scripture which sound "hard" to the modern ear. Just the other day, they cut out most of what Jehu did after becoming ... umm ... the "head" ... including the exciting death of Jezebel. No wonder TEC eventually took the path it did.
From C.S. Lewis' sermon, The Weight of Glory:
The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour's glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.
Anne, in keeping with your observation of the corruption in which we share, especially his words, "else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare." Yet, the Gospel announces a surprise, that our corruption has been covered, our shame clothed, our guilt appeased, our brokenness repaired, not by ourselves, but in the righteousness of Christ our Lord. His robe of righteousness clothes us, His blood cleanses; His holiness is mine and yours. All by grace through faith.
Yet, what your shared, clearly and boldly, must first be heard, first swallowed, first seen.