Justifications born from fear

In the century II, there was a famous heretic named Marcion. Marcion's heresy was built around the following question: What is God like? This question arose because Marcion saw in the Old Testament a vengeful, jealous, legalistic, resentful, and racist Jehovah, compared to a God and Father of Jesus who is Spirit, truth, love, and goodness in the New Testament. Finally, in the second century, the church overcame the challenge of Marcianism (which, I warn you, is much deeper than my brief description). It declared what, to this day, whether we know it or not, we confess: That the God and Father of Jesus Christ is none other than Jehovah, creator of the universe and all that is in it. 

Obviously and slightly, we understand that Marcion was wrong. However, his question and the approach around that question do not seem far-fetched. Sadly for centuries in the Christian Church (and I say this with all the shame in the world), we have boasted and justified killing the enemy based on the Old Testament. To this day, I still cannot find the license that the Bible is supposed to give us to go killing in the name of God under the puerile claim that we are the bearers of truth.

This column is born from my conjugated reality: returning to Colombia has once again allowed me to see the ravages of violence (unjustified in any circumstance, even the most painful and darkest that we can imagine) and one of the last papers of the semester I had to present about the character of the manifestations of God in the Old Testament and the character of Jesus as the son of God who walks full of the presence of the Spirit of God "and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily forms, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, "You are my beloved Son; with you, I am well pleased." Luke 3:22.

In my reflections on this topic, it has genuinely pained me to think about the number of justifications we have that are born out of fear of many things. From those justifications, we construct miserable theologies that guide our lives while we believe that topics like this are secondary and not primordial in our Christian life.

There is an episode in the New Testament where it seems that the position of Jesus, who, as I said, walked full of the Holy Spirit among us, and who, according to the sacred scriptures, is the very image of His being (of God) Hebrews 1, 3, shows His position in front of any reaction before the crude reality. 

According to the book of Matthew, while Jesus was with his disciples in Gethsemane, a mob came to arrest Jesus, and one of those who was with Jesus drew a sword and cut off the ear of a High priest's servant. Jesus' intervention? A lesson that is still talked about today. Then Jesus said to him, "Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will send me more than twelve legions of angels at once? (Mt 26:52-53) Wait! What? What does this tell us about Jesus' character? At least that violence for Him is not an option beyond having the power and authority to use it.

What do we do then with the manifestations of Jehovah's Spirit in the Old Testament? For now, wait two more weeks until the next installment.

This column is inspired by the book Genocides in the Bible by Dionisio Byler (CLIE, 1997), author of Making War and Making Peace (Scottdale: Herald, 1989), whom I had the joy of meeting a few days ago in Bogotá.