God's Preferences

a look at the lections through the lens of a tweet

File: Peasant woman gleaning.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Rejoice with me! We survived the graduation festivities yesterday and are turning our faces steadfastly toward the wedding. We are so impressed and relieved that our own child did so well and worked so hard, and can’t wait to see where God takes her in the days and months, and years ahead. To continue the note of celebration, I had intended to sleep in this morning, but I was startled out of my restless slumber, my mind running, unbidden, through various lists, and so I thought I would do the sane thing and look at the texts appointed for the day. They cut rather against the grain of this cultural hour, and so I might as well just have a word. To set the scene, I dug up an old tweet by Zach Lambert from last October.

If you were looking around for troubles that beset vast swaths of people and make them unhappy and miserable, you need look no further than the intersection of God’s love and God’s justice. In this awful Tweet, the two are cheapened, junked up together so as to rob them both of their life-altering power:

The Bible speaks often about God’s preference for the poor and orphaned and widowed, for immigrants and outcasts and sex workers. God takes a special interest in the people we overlook. God takes in the people we cast out.

Mr. Lambert at-ed Jonathan Merritt at the end of this deep thought. Does he mean that he’s quoting that journalist? Or just hoping he’ll come in and agree? I don’t know.

Observe how, whoever is the author of this theological failure, he takes some true things and turns them round about and round about again so that they no longer tell the whole story. First, he appeals to Holy Scripture. “The Bible speaks often,” he says, which isn’t necessarily a bad start. The Bible speaks about lots of things. The question is, what does it say?

It speaks, he says, of God’s “preference for the poor and orphaned and widowed, for immigrants and outcasts and sex workers.” What, one wants to know, does the word “preference” mean in a sentence like this? It is so vague, and yet, strangely emotionally laden.

Whom does God “prefer?” The “poor,” the “orphaned,” the “widowed,” the “immigrants,” the “outcasts,” and the “sex workers.” Should all these people be jumbled together without any shadow of whimsy or nuance? Of course, I think we may safely say the orphan and widow need help and are often exploited by greedy, powerful people because they have no resources to defend themselves. Likewise, the poor, though there are a lot of reasons a person might be poor. Not every poor person is that way because other people sinned against him. He might have made a series of terrible and consequential decisions that ruined his life.

Like, remember that guy who insisted on having his inheritance before his father had even died, and took it and used it up on “sex workers?” Remember how there was then a famine, and because he had spent it all, he had to go work among the pigs, which was the lowest of all the low jobs an outcast could take. And then, in that place of utter ruin, he “came to himself” and went home, expecting to beg to be a servant? What would one say about the Father's “preferences” in that situation? He obviously “preferred” that poor person because it was his son. And of course, we know that the Father, in the story, represents God.

And what of the “immigrant?” That is a hot topic for sure, and one, if we were all interested and curious in the Bible, could be solved, though not easily. But let’s pass over it and go to the “sex-worker” bit. I think it is a bit rich to say that God “has a preference for the sex-worker.” What does that even mean? Of course, he cares for the souls and bodies of people whom he has made. That is a little bit different than saying that he “prefers” the person who is caught in darkness and degradation.

Whereas one of the things the Bible speaks about often is God’s preference that we not fall into sin, especially sexual sin. He does not desire anyone to “work” at such a “profession.” The parameters under which the creatures whom he has made are permitted to engage in that sort of activity are very clear—lifelong marriage between one man and one woman. Everything else is off the table.

So, of course, the person who has been sold or trafficked, he sees. He has the power to rescue that person. And he desires not the death of sinners, even people who voluntarily make OnlyFans accounts and sell themselves for money, but that they should turn to him and live. That goes for the people buying what’s on offer and the people offering it.

Then the author of the tweet says that God “takes a special interest in the people we overlook. God takes in the people we cast out.” And I think that we should ask some more questions. Why does he do that? What is there about God that would make him pay attention to the person left by the side of the road, virtually dead in a ditch?

To answer some of these questions, let’s trot over to Leviticus, where we find out a lot of things.

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father, and you shall keep my Sabbaths: I am the Lord your God. Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves any gods of cast metal: I am the Lord your God. “When you offer a sacrifice of peace offerings to the Lord, you shall offer it so that you may be accepted. It shall be eaten the same day you offer it or on the day after, and anything left over until the third day shall be burned up with fire. If it is eaten at all on the third day, it is tainted; it will not be accepted, and everyone who eats it shall bear his iniquity, because he has profaned what is holy to the Lord, and that person shall be cut off from his people.

If you make it to church this morning, you might not hear this bit about sacrifices, but I think it sets an interesting pall over the whole chapter. For God says over and over that he is “holy” and on that basis is going to get into the nitty gritty of our dealings with each other. And when we look at how minute God’s concern is, it may be that we would wish there could be some help, some remedy for when we get it wrong, which we will always do. And so he provided the system of sacrifices to relieve the burden of sin, which leads inexorably to death. But even the sacrifices, administered as they were by sinners, were rich with opportunities to lie, to take the easy way out, to be selfish, to get the wrong end of the stick without noticing it. Here is the bit you will probably hear in church:

“When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.

“You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; you shall not lie to one another. You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord.

“You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. The wages of a hired worker shall not remain with you all night until the morning. You shall not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.

I like to think of far-off days when almost everyone had a field, or maybe even a hired worker, and think this must have been so pertinent to those people. I also like to think of myself as on the lower end of the economic scale, and so this, if it applies to anyone, should be about people who are obviously richer than I and who have too many things. And I think that’s part of Mr. Lambert’s problem. It’s so easy to excoriate and lecture the person in an economic level above one’s own, but that’s not how any of this works. Anyone, even a poor person, can lie. Anyone can be selfish. Anyone can demand stuff from other people. This is so far-reaching—it could be time, it could be those very intimate emotional troubles whereby one manipulates another person to get affection or love. There are a thousand ways to be hard-hearted in a single day.

Next, here’s the bit that Mr. Lambert seems not to have heard about:

“You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand up against the life of your neighbor: I am the Lord.

The trouble, of course, is that being partial to the poor is one of the highest moral goods of our day. It feels empathetic. If you don’t, in a court of law, make excuses for some of the people being charged with crimes, you aren’t a good person. Likewise, deferring to the great is a matter of instinct. I feel like it’s called Italian Elite Theory or something. Also, I think most of us have imbibed the deep thought (TM) that with man, objectivity is impossible and therefore God doesn’t want us to bother.

But imagine if each person in our common life had to take responsibility for himself, no matter how much money or power he possesses. Imagine if the very poor were not invited to blame anyone, nor the very rich, but each had to stand before the earthly judge, and by extension the heavenly one, and tell the truth about his motivations, her actions, his circular and faulty thinking, her bitterness and anger. What kind of world would that be?

I think it would be one where each person suddenly realized the dignity that God imparts to the human person. What is that called? Is that the imago dei?

One last bit:

“You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.

I expect Mr. Lambert believes he has the power to do this in himself. He loves himself and so, by extension, he loves his neighbor. It’s just that he doesn’t. Only God really loves his neighbor as himself, sending his own Son into the far country to drag wretched, poor sinners out of the filthy mire, cleansing them of their sin, clothing them in the truth, making them alive by the power of his Word and his Light.

Because he is just, he will not simply let the sinner off the hook. Because he is merciful and loving, he bears the penalty of the sin himself. And what that does—and follow me closely here—is that it restores the dignity of the creature. For a person without responsibility is a person who sits in the pit he has dug for himself forever. For Mr. Lambert, that might feel loving, but it is, in fact, the opposite of love.

And now I must go to church. Hope you will go too! Have a nice day!