04 May 2023
God built the Hebrew nation as the tool of His revelation. He developed their language and culture as the best way to reveal Himself. The whole focus of that culture is that we should know Him personally.
He is a person who is consistent with His own character. The ancient Hebrew people would snicker at the common assertion that the Bible is "propositional truth". They would regard that as a juvenile obsession, something to be outgrown. It falls into the same category as smart-ass punks playing semantic word-games to prove how clever they are. It is just barely possible for words to give some hint of who God is, but only if we don't take the words themselves too seriously. The Hebrew language is inherently parabolic; it indicates something about ultimate truth. However, it is utterly impossible for words assembled to contain truth.
Justice as God defines it is you and I face down before Him, eagerly awaiting His whims. This is in our own best interests. Nothing could possibly be better. Anything else is unjust; anything else is defined as "sin". But to make things easier, God has revealed Himself in terms of a fairly consistent behavior pattern through His Covenants. He expects people to organize into feudal tribal nations under some variation of His Law Codes.
A fundamental element in His reckoning of good and evil is the that He already knows our hearts and how evil we can be. While He really demands everyone's heart, He's willing and able to make the codes work with only a minimum core of devoted servants. The whole point of the Covenants is to bring us closer to giving our hearts to Him. The codes start with the assumption that we will not voluntarily serve Him without a big nudge. So His Covenants are loaded with promises that work to drive us into trusting Him.
But the whole thing is fundamentally personal in nature. You as the individual under any of His Covenants have a duty to personally submit to Him as Lord. The codes point to a system of justice that builds on that foundation. The system generally calls for building a boundary with penalties for crossing it. The moment you cease pushing on the boundary, that's when the punishment stops. He's patient, as we must also be, but it's selective.
There are a lot of death penalties for things that mystify western minds. That's because human reason doesn't see threats to justice the way God does. The core value here is the social stability of a covenant community. Whatever threatens that stability can be crossing a fatal boundary.
In Biblical thinking, all the way back to Eden, all bloodshed is de jure an offering to God. If the blood is not consciously offered to Him, you have stepped over the boundary. You are obliged to know when blood is forfeited to Him. If something about that offering is not acceptable, you have crossed Him. You have threatened His majesty and the stability of His covenant community. According to Genesis 9, taking with it the historical context, it is the duty of the covenant community leaders to offer the blood of those in their community who murder, which is defined as shedding blood God will not accept as an offering.
It is the mercy of God to take the lives of those who cross certain lines. It is the best He will offer to those who have sinned in certain ways. Contrast this with the American concept of justice: an angry determination to torment. It doesn't matter what you owe to God; the American government and society are incensed and determined to make you pay.
Yes, there are moderating factors, but the underlying assumptions about the American system of justice are a matter of debt to society. But the punitive nature completely fails the test of divine justice. It's based on the with humiliation and degrading their soul. It really is reluctant to execute capital punishment, preferring torment. There's nothing corrective or restorative about it.
Worse, American justice assumes most people are supposed to be fundamentally good. Think about the implications of that for a moment. You start off being a good person, and how dare you deviate from social expectations! Divine justice takes for granted that you are fighting your own demons and that the law should serve to redeem you. I'll grant you that the application of American justice is all over the place, because of how things are administered under wildly varying notions of how it should be applied, but the underlying philosophy is what I describe here.
Biblical justice is all about teaching you to restrain the beast in your flesh, and paying back only what you have taken or destroyed. It's not angry and vengeful in the American sense. Thus, the biblical notion of prison is slavery in which you pay back for losses. You are deprived of liberty and gain until accounts are settled. The American notion is watching you suffer, delighting in sorrow and torment, trying to make your life meaningless.
American justice surrenders us all to demons.
Comments
Fun and Prophet
All this rings true.
For instance, I conclude that the Genesis' serpent's offer of ingesting "Knowledge of Good and Evil" amounts to the eclipse of the Personal by the propositional; introducing to human mentality
Please be encouraged and continue writing.
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