Hamas shot rockets into Israel from Gaza. Israel didn’t take it sitting down and returned the favor by dropping bombs on Gaza. In between these two, innocent civilians have taken the pounding. Evangelical Christians are either defending or condemning Israel. The condemnation of Israel is pretty straight forward. Their treatment of the Palestinians has been horrible. Civilians have been cut off from their homes and families as well as injured and killed by the heavy-handed response. Evangelical Christians defense of Israel’s actions affirm Israel’s right to exist as a nation and though I haven’t read it myself, I suppose there is some justification for their action based on the conquest of the Promised Land in the book of Joshua in the Bible. This, it is believed, is Israel’s land and they have a right to take it and rule it. Theologically, the debate is complex and rests more on hermeneutics than simply politics.

These are the generations of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah’s servant, bore to Abraham…They settled from Havilah to Shur, which is opposite Egypt in the direction of Assyria. – Genesis 25:12, 18Aside from the current events aspect, I bring this up because I found myself reflecting on it when I was reading through Genesis this week. Yea, I know, reflecting on modern Israel by reading Genesis and not Revelation? What kind of Evangelical am I? Well, I’ll let my readers answer that question and instead will dig into the insight from Genesis.

There is a pattern with the patriarchs that you’ll notice as you read through the life of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. There are divisions. Abraham had Ishmael and apparently cared for the boy. When God said that the blessing would not go to Ishmael but to Isaac, Abraham pleaded from Ishmael and God explained how the boy would be blessed because of Abraham. Isaac had Esau and Jacob and again God picked the wrong son and chose to bless Jacob before either was born. It didn’t help that Esau despised his birthright but that’s another discussion.

One of the things you’ll notice as you read through Genesis is that Moses doesn’t just drop Ishmael (for example) once he’s out of the story, Moses takes the time to explain Ishmael’s descendants. He wants Israel to understand the nations that surround the Promised Land that they will enter. He takes pains to explain who is and who is not a relative. Sure, they will be separated by hundreds of years but it is still true that the Edomites are the descendants of Esau, their patriarch’s brother.

Why? Why bother? Paper (well, whatever the Pentateuch was originally written on anyway) was not cheap in those days. Why spend the time writing this stuff? Because it mattered, that’s why. Yes, God would send his people in to the Promised Land and would command the execution of the Canaanites at their hands. But it wasn’t indiscriminate slaughter. It had a purpose. Israel would remain in Egypt for four hundred years “because the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Gen 15:16). ¹Notice that God didn’t judge the Amorites without waiting the their sin had reached its full measure. He gave them 400 years to knock it off. He had appointed a certain amount that he would tolerate and then the judgment would come. When Israel came into the Promised Land and killed the inhabitants it was to be a judgment upon a certain people. Israel was not allowed to then declare war on the Edomites, they were their relatives. Moses reminded them of this fact so that when they arrive in the Promised Land they will deal harshly with those whom God was judging and would deal kindly with the rest. If Edom attacked, Israel should remember that they would be waring against their relatives.

I think this is something that we should remember beyond just the conquest of Canaan. Go back a little further and you get to Noah and his three sons. Their off spring spread across the face of the globe in Genesis 10, the Table of the Nations. But they started out from three sons on a boat with a lot of animals. Go back to the beginning and we see that we all come from a common mother and father in Adam and Eve. We all, Israeli, Syrian, Palestinian, American, Egyptian, Asian, whatever, we all are descended from Adam and Eve and therefore bear the imago Dei, the image of God. Let’s remember our relatives and treat them as such. That lands not just in Israel’s and Hamas’ laps but in America’s also when we consider how we’ve treated (and may still be treating) Iraqi prisoners and “unlawful combatants” in Guantanamo. Moses took the time to remind Israel in his day that they were related to those around them. We should take the time to remember the same thing.

In my vain imaginings, I picture Moses writing Genesis, the beginning of his writings, just after the golden calf incident in Exodus 32. Israel built an image of their ‘god’, but it wasn’t the right God. What they needed at that point was a theology lesson. They needed to know who their God was and where they’d come from. Their God wasn’t anything like the gods of Egypt (where just they’d spent their entire lives) and he wasn’t anything like the gods of Canaan (where they were headed). They also needed to understand why God brought them out of Egypt and was leading them to Canaan. That meant that they needed to understand Abraham. They needed this theology lesson in a pure form, not mixed with the Egyptian or Canaanite myths. So under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Moses began to write.

I have really no way of proving this time line, it is theory and conjecture. It could have been that Moses wrote Genesis long after Mount Sinai or even before it. This just seems right to me. A clues that I might be on to something is the story of Babel in Genesis  11. Moses rushes pretty quickly from creation to Abraham so all of the stories and genealogies in the first 11 chapters of Genesis are important. They are the things Moses slows down enough to tell us so we should pay attention. With Babel, Moses is explaining how the nations came to have different languages and how they wound up where they were. Right in the middle of that is the building of the tower. They’re building it out of pride and arrogance; they’re refusing God’s instruction to Noah to go and repopulate the earth. Instead they’re going to stop and build a city to their own greatness.

In other words, the story of Babel is about rebellion against God.  And one of the things that humanity decides to do together is make bricks. “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” (Gen. 11:3) So? What’s the big deal? Well, making bricks is what Israel had been forced to do in Egypt as slaves (Ex. 5). The Pharaohs wanted to “make a name for ourselves” but they’re going to do it on the backs of the Hebrews who were celebrated when they arrived in Egypt 400 years earlier. Just as God came down and knocked over the tower at Babel and confused their languages, so he came down and judged the Egyptians and their gods and drowned the lot in the Red Sea.

Am I getting too much out of that? Perhaps, heavens knows I’ve done that kind of thing before. This isn’t a concept I’m willing to fight to defend but I do have to note that though Moses is pressing pretty quickly to get to Abraham, oddly enough he mentions the bricks twice:

And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.

Genesis 11:3

The fact that Moses repeats it, I think, is significant. In Hebrew, the word is there three times.¹The two explicit mentions and the verb “to make” is built on the same root. It catches your attention. Especially if Moses is writing soon after the departure from Egypt.

The real question is how this affects us. Or is the significance of this text stranded in the Ancient Near East? No, I think there is a lesson here. What comes to mind first is a warning against pride. God didn’t tolerate it at Babel, he didn’t tolerate it in Egypt, he didn’t tolerate it in Alexander the Great or Rome, he certainly won’t tolerate it in America or China or Brazil. The sting of the message for our country is even sharper since we built our economic greatness on the back of black African slaves. You can see why the exodus is such a powerful Biblical metaphor in Black Liberation Theology.

Another lesson I think this teaches us is to remember our place in the story. Deliverance from oppression for God’s people is something he has repeatedly done and there is no reason to think he will stop. As the church is oppressed either by governments who exceed their proper roles or by the sin that so easily entangles, God is jealous to deliver. Jesus has conquered these things and will one day to judge them and rule over them, shattering them with an iron rod.

So whether we’re making bricks for our own greatness or if we’re being forced to make them to show someone else’s greatness, God is not impressed and will not sit idly by.

Getting Things Done, David Allen – I want to be more productive. I think I’m pretty much on top of it, but feel like that could turn if I get one more thing added. This should help.

Don’t Stop Believing: Why Living Like Jesus Is Not Enough, Michael Wittmer – Got it for Christmas (thanks Becky!) and Wittmer says a lot of things I’ve been thinking about for a while. Hopefully it will motivate me to do something about them!

The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story, Craig Bartholomew & Michael Goheen – Preparing for a Sunday school class in the spring. I like the introduction of the book, we’ll see how the rest of it goes. Good so far.

Leading With a Limp, Dan Allender – I love the subtitle of this “Taking full advantage of your greatest weakness.” Not enough of that kind of thought in books on Christian leadership. We’ll get to this later in the month.

Though used in a different context, I thought these words from G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy expanded on what I was saying earlier:

Actors who can’t act believe in themselves; and debtors who won’t pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness. Believing utterly in one’s self is a hysterical and superstitious belief like believing in Joanna Southcote: the man who has it has ‘Hanwell‘ written on his face as plain as it is written on that omnibus.

Is time measurement arbitrary? That is, is the division of trips around the sun into years just something we do?

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. – Genesis 1:14-19

One of the reasons we mark years and days and (more significantly) weeks is because that’s how God set it up. In making the universe the way he did, in placing the stars where they are, in placing the earth where it is, with the atmosphere it has, on the tilted axis it twirls on, God made it so we could mark years and days. The regularity with with they pass is a testament to God’s faithfulness. Consider,

The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: “Thus says the Lord: If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night will not come at their appointed time, then also my covenant with David my servant may be broken, so that he shall not have a son to reign on his throne, and my covenant with the Levitical priests my ministers…” – Jeremiah 33:19-21

The passage of day and night at regular, predictable intervals shows God’s covenant faithfulness to his people and his promises. I think that in the passage above, we are meant to see that faithfulness fulfilled in the coming of Jesus. He is the true Son of David and he is the fulfillment of the Levitical priesthood (Hebrews 8 – 10).

So isn’t it fitting that pretty much globally we are celebrating the beginning of the year 20089 (thank you Sean) Anno Domini, that is The Year of Our Lord?  God made it so that we could mark years and days and be assured of his faithfulness till the “fullness of time” when Jesus was “born of women, born under the law”(Galatians 4:4). And now we number the years since. Amazing.

So why did I say that marking the week is most significant? Because there is no natural marker for a week. Morning and evening, a day. One trip around the sun, a year. Seven days, a week. Why? Because God created the heavens and the earth in six days and rested on the seventh. This pattern was recognized by the Hebrews (Exodus 16) before the law was given (Exodus 20 and following). The Sabbath on the seventh day recognized and solemnified that pattern and, according to Hebrews 4, Jesus fulfilled it in a way and so we rest in him. So even our seven day week is a recognition of God’s promise from the foundation of the world till the coming of Jesus.

I have had a “bad” stomach for about 20 years now. I remember in 1988 after I returned from England how by 10AM my stomach would hurt so bad that I’d have to go buy a carton of milk to get it to settle down. I couldn’t figure out what was causing it. I’d have oatmeal for breakfast and have an upset stomach by 10. I finally went to the hospital and they tested me for ulcers and such. Nothing. So they put me on medication. Don’t you love that? Couldn’t figure out what was wrong so they gave me pills! Anyway, the Zantac helped for a year or two.

Today, no more Zantac and I pretty much have my stomach problems under control. I just watch what and when I eat and I’m okay. So what was it? Wheat. Sure, I had oatmeal for breakfast, but I’d eat it with buttered toast. Took me quite a while to figure it out. But this morning I had peanut butter on buttered toast and a cup of coffee. Can I expect an attack soon? Probably not. What I’ve learned is not to totally eliminate wheat from my diet, but to take a little bit every once in a while.

You see, I’ve found that my body can tolerate some wheat. Apparently, it doesn’t like it and can’t handle large amounts of the stuff, but it can tolerate a moderate amount. That’s what tolerance is. Tolerance isn’t my body just getting over its problem with wheat and accepting it completely as part of my diet. Tolerance in this case is my body not liking it but accepting it in specific ways. That’s what the word means.

So as 2009 begins and President Obama is about to take the oath of office and Rick Warren is going to give the invocation, let’s hope there is tolerance on both sides of the political debate. Some are protesting Warren’s inclusion because of his stance on homosexuality. Some are so concerned that he might utter the name ‘Jesus’ during his prayer that they are filing a law suit to block prayer at the event. Some are concerned that Warren might pray in a bland, generic manner that doesn’t honor Christ; and by the way, Warren is a Christian pastor. I just hope that in the end, we can all stomach a little tolerance for positions we don’t agree with. That’s the kind of thing America has been struggling toward since our beginning.