Seeing the Love of the New Testament In the Wrath of the Old Testament, Part I

In February of 1945, the United States began an extensive and intensive firebombing campaign on Japan. This firebombing lasted for six months, up to the issuance of the Postdam Declaration - the Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender - on July 26, 1945.

The Postdam Declaration was issued by the United States, the United Kingdom, and China, stating that if Japan did not surrender, it would face "prompt and utter destruction."

The official Japanese reply - the only Japanese reply, really - was mokusatsu, a Japanese term meaning "silent contempt." There have been discussions since the conclusion of World War II about whether or not Japan's reply should have been taken as "silent contempt" since the termmokusatsu can also simply mean to ignore something. Perhaps there was still some deliberation going on within the Japanese government. Maybe they just needed time to decide what to do. Maybe it was all just a big misunderstanding.

Well, maybe... But probably not. The Potsdam Declaration was worded in such a way that it could not, in any way, be seen as vague, misleading, or anything other than a direct statement to Japan, saying, in no uncertain terms, "Look - if you don't surrender right now, we will kill you. We just got through beating the pants off of the Nazis, what makes you think you've got a chance?"

So for whatever reason, however it happened... Japan didn't surrender.

On August 6, 1945, at 8:15 AM local time, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress, the Enola Gay, dropped the atomic device known as "Little Boy" over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. At least 70,000 people were killed instantly, with another 70,000 injured, and by the end of 1945, somewhere between 90,000 and 140,000 had died from burns, or radiation and radiation-related diseases.

On August 7 and 8, Japan still did not surrender.

On August 9, the Bockscar dropped "Fat Man" over Nagasaki.

Prior to August 9, Japan had insisted on four conditions for their surrender. After August 9, those conditions were gone.

Emperor Hirohoto officially announced Japan's unconditional surrender a little after noon on August 15, 1945 - August 14 in America.

Since then, there has been a huge black spot on the reputation of the United States of America. The U.S. is still the only country to have actually deployed nuclear armaments in warfare. And not just once, but twice. How could we be so vicious? How could we be so cruel? How could we unleash such horrors on to innocent civilians?

Well... It stopped the war, didn't it? We're allies with Japan now, aren't we? Japan is a thriving society now, isn't it?

I am not looking to discuss the United States' nuclear warfare policy, or Japan's failures in World War II, or anything else. But I couldn't really think of anything better to lay the foundation for what I really want to talk about.

Some people have a hard time marrying the image of the wrathful, jealous I AM of Abraham, Moses, and David with the loving, merciful Father of Jesus, John, and Paul.

Some people outside of Christ take the violent view of God in the Old Testament as basis for an objection against following Him. "If God is so loving, how can He order so much genocidal slaughter in the conquest of Canaan? How can you believe in a God who kills hundreds, even thousands, of His own 'chosen people' as consequences of the sins of others, but then claims to 'love the world'? How can the God who sent the flood that killed everyone on the planet but eight people be the same God of whom John says, 'God is love'?"

I will admit, readily, that those are all really hard questions, and they are questions that deserve to be treated with seriousness and depth, as opposed to the generic brush-off answer of "God moves in mysterious ways." (That answer, by the way, is not actually Biblical at all, but rather comes from a 1774 hymn by William Cowper.)

Before I go any further with this, I want to make it very clear that I am only telling you what I personally believe. I am posting it in hopes that it makes sense to you, if you are struggling with this seeming dichotomy, but I cannot even begin to claim that I am any definitive or even reliable source of wisdom or understanding on this topic. I'm not just grasping at straws or anything; I feel confident in what I'm saying. But I do want it to be understood that I am not incredibly well-read, I am not incredibly well-educated (nor am I a particularly good student), I am not any sort of expert... I'm just giving you the answers I found through my own learning when I asked the same questions.

So here we go.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. This creation process is filled with moral education. (By the way - I definitely owe a tip of the hat to Dr. John D. Fortner of Harding University here for helping me come to a lot of this understanding about the moral lessons found in the Genesis creation . Thanks, Doc.) In God's plan for the world, from the beginning, there has been Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, Order and Chaos. The dichotomy has always existed, and it serves a purpose. God laid out Good and Evil as characteristics of the cosmos, and wove both into the very fabric of our world.

Then God creates Adam and Eve. The Garden was theirs, save for one tree: the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The serpent, most cunning in his temptation, actually speaks some truth in what led to the first sin. Adam and Eve were told that to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil would lead to their deaths. The serpent told Eve that she would "be like God, knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3:4)

So Eve eats, shares with Adam, and the world is never the same.

What happened? Did God just really like that tree? Did He just want it all for Himself? Did He create Adam and Eve to just exist in the Garden, never knowing that they were naked, never knowing Good from Evil?

I don't think so.

I think that it is only when we know the difference between Good and Evil that we can actually choose which one we want. It is in knowing that difference that we can decide to be Good, to do Good, to seek Good. And seeking Good means seeking God.

So the Garden is an inescapable lesson. God has created mankind and given them exactly one rule not to break. Obviously mankind has, from the beginning, been created with free will. Adam and Eve had, even from the beginning, the right to choose to follow God or to not follow God. They chose to not follow God, and there were consequences for their actions. Consequences that showed up not only in their own lives, but in the lives of the rest of humanity.

The Creation and the Garden show the first two points I want to make: first, that Good and Evil are laid into the very fabric of the world, and second, that, even from the beginning, mankind has been created with moral free will - the ability to choose to submit to God or not - and there are consequences for not submitting.

In Israelite thought, the sea represented the untamed wild, the chaos of the world. All of the forces of chaos were found in the sea, including the Leviathan, a great horrible creature of the deep.

[The LORD said to Job:]

Can you pull in the Leviathan with a fishhook

or tie down his tongue with a rope?

Can you put a cord through his nose

or pierce his jaw with a hook?

Will he keep begging you for mercy?

Will he speak to you with gentle words?

Will he make an agreement with you

for you to take him as your slave for life?

Can you make a pet of him like a bird

or put him on a leash for your girls?

- Job 41:1-5

Here God expresses His ultimate power over all things by stressing His power over the Leviathan, and stressing that power in such a way that He not only defeats the Leviathan, He completely dominates it, humiliating it, treating it as a pet.

In that day,

the LORD will punish with His sword,

His fierce, great and powerful sword,

Leviathan the gliding serpent,

Leviathan the coiling serpent;

He will slay the monster of the sea.

- Isaiah 27:1

But here we see that God has not yet destroyed the Leviathan - that action is reserved for a future date. In the context of Isaiah, this verse comes from the prophecy concerning the repatriation of Israel. Metaphorically, Leviathan here means the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, all of the foreign powers that have oppressed Israel. Their destruction - Israel's deliverance - had not come yet because God has a purpose for allowing chaos and evil to exist in the world. In fact...

I am the LORD, and there is no other;

apart from me there is no God.

I will strengthen you,

though you have not acknowledged me,

so that from the rising of the sun

to the place of its setting

men may know there is none besides me.

I am the LORD, and there is no other.

I form the light and create darkness,

I bring prosperity and create disaster;

I, the LORD, do all these things.

- Isaiah 45:5-7

...not only does God have a reason for allowing chaos and evil to exist, He created them! Notice the parallel structure here - light to prosperity, darkness to disaster. Think back to the words of Jesus, who uses references to light dozens of times to refer to Himself, or God, or the acts of Christians in the world. Light is good, darkness is evil. That's a pretty common theme throughout the Bible.

So that puts a different spin on Creation, doesn't it? At the beginning of all things: "the earth was formless and empty" (no form or substance sounds like chaos to me), and "darkness was over the surface of the deep" (there is an absence of light - darkness, chaos - over the gigantic chaos)... But then! "...God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness." God created the darkness, God created the light, and saw the the light was good. This pronouncement not only shows God's approval of the light, but it makes a distinction between the "good"-ness of the light and the chaos of the deep and the darkness.

And since the light and the darkness, the order and the chaos, the prosperity and the disaster all coexist within the frame of the world before Man is even created, we can understand that morality itself transcends Man. God has woven morality into the very fiber of the universe. The earth may not be able to make moral choices, but the lessons of order and chaos are there for us to see.

But what happens when we ignore those lessons? Well... We die.

The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

- Genesis 3:15-17

Notice that the introductions of morality and mortality occur in the same instance. It is the beginning of moral understanding that leads directly to the idea of a limited time in this world. Here's how I see this coming down. Sin - any sin, all sin - is an attempt to usurp the Throne of God. Yes, that's a rather dramatic turn of phrase, but ride it out with me. God has given us the rules, as well as the moral understanding to discern between good and evil, as well as the blueprint of the universe, to show that good and evil are distinct forces. So when I violate one of the rules, go against my God-given understanding of good and evil, I am placing my own desires, my own passions, my own self, above the will of God. The creation is trying to defy the Creator. That's not the order of things. In fact, that is chaos. Chaos leads to death. So morality and mortality are inextricably linked.

Now I want to turn your attention to the story of Abram.

Let us assume, for the sake of Abram's story, that the content of the first 11 chapters of Genesis were completely unknown to Abram (or anyone else, for that matter). I don't really think that's much of a stretch.

Then Joshua assembled all the tribes of Israel at Shechem. He summoned the elders, leaders, judges and officials of Israel, and they presented themselves before God.

Joshua said to all the people, "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'Long ago your forefathers, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the River and worshiped other gods.'"

- Joshua 24:1-2

To this [Stephen] replied: "Brothers and fathers, listen to me! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran. 'Leave your country and your people,' God said, 'and go to the land I will show you.'

- Acts 7:2-3

These two passages point out pretty plainly that Abram was called out of a polytheistic culture, presenting Himself as a new theological concept. Here was something bold: The One True God, not just a chief god among other, lesser gods. And it would appear that Abram was not only the first to be called, but also the only to be called.

When Laban had gone to shear his sheep, Rachel stole her father's household gods.

- Genesis 31:19

Laban's grandfather was Nahor, who was Abram's brother, but in verse 29, Laban refers to the LORD as "the God of your father" when addressing Jacob. So it seems - to me at least - that God has made a special revelation of Himself to Abram, and not necessarily to anyone else.

So now we've got humanity up and running, civilization is taking root in the Fertile Crescent, and God reveals Himself to a man from Ur, in Babylon, and tells him to leave everything behind.

The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.

- Genesis 12:1

God called Abram out of a specific culture, a specific world, a specific lifestyle, and took him to a completely new place. God met Abram where he was and took him where God wanted him to be. God had a purpose. God was calling Abram out of his world and into God's world. God was beginning the long educational journey of the world.

So over in Genesis 17, God sets up the covenant of circumcision with Abram - who is now called Abraham by God - and lays out the beginning of the nation of Israel. The covenant of circumcision immediately precedes God's prophecy of the birth of Isaac. God has called Abraham to be separate from the culture he was born into, and now God is calling Abraham's descendants to be separate from the world they will be born into. The circumcision is a sign of separation, a sign of being called apart, called into a life defined by a difference.

Now we're going to skip ahead a bit and get to Exodus 20. This is where we see the first of the Law. God gives Moses - and Israel - the Ten Commandments, and then the rest of the Law, throughout the rest of Exodus, then all of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Now God has not only chosen a people and called them to be separate, He has also given them a Law, a set of rules to live by, another way to distinguish themselves from the world that they are surrounded by.

Within the Mosaic Law, however, we see a few big things that will become important later on in this discussion, and I'd like to point those out now.

"'Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. But you must keep my decrees and my laws. The native-born and the aliens living among you must not do any of these detestable things, for all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled. And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.'"

- Leviticus 18:24-28

We see here that God's commandments for morality carry with them a conditional aspect. I touched on this very briefly in the Jephthah post, but I want to bring it up again here. God's moral law for the Israelites comes with a built-in punishment. If they violate the Law, if they defile themselves, then they lose the Promised Land. This implies a reward, as well - keeping the Law means keeping the Promised Land.

If you fully obey the LORD your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the LORD your God:

You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.

The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.

Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed.

You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out.

The LORD will grant that the enemies who rise up against you will be defeated before you. They will come at you from one direction but flee from you in seven.

The LORD will send a blessing on your barns and on everything you put your hand to. The LORD your God will bless you in the land he is giving you.

The LORD will establish you as his holy people, as he promised you on oath, if you keep the commands of the LORD your God and walk in his ways. Then all the peoples on earth will see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they will fear you. The LORD will grant you abundant prosperity—in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your ground—in the land he swore to your forefathers to give you.

The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. The LORD will make you the head, not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands of the LORD your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom. Do not turn aside from any of the commands I give you today, to the right or to the left, following other gods and serving them.

- Deuteronomy 28:1-14

Here we have Moses imparting another aspect of the conditional nature of the Law. Moses tells Israel that keeping the Law will result in an economic prosperity for the whole nation, as well as for each family. The crops will be good, the livestock will be healthy, the children will be strong, and the enemy nations will scatter at the very sight of the armies of Israel. In the rest of Deuteronomy 28, Moses also lays out some corresponding curses, but I wanted to stress the "Be Good and Good Things Will Happen To You" idea here.

The LORD said to Moses, "Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: 'Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy."

- Leviticus 19:1-2

Here we have a phrase that is repeated a few times through Leviticus as well as the rest of the Law. What it shows us is that while God is providing the Israelites with a pretty high calling, holding them to a pretty high standard, it really boils down to a cosmic "Because I said so, that's why."

So let's recap what we've got so far...

1. God created the universe with morality woven into its very fiber.
2. God created Man with the capacity for moral thought, understanding, and free will.
3. God inextricably linked Man's morality into Man's mortality.
4. God called Abraham and his descendants to be separate from the rest of the world by a physical marker.
5. God called Israel, through Moses, to be separate from the rest of the world by a legal marker.
6. God set up the Law as a standard of morality. The Law comes with rewards and punishments to serve as motivation for obedience, as well as two higher motivations: "because [God] said so" and "because it's holy."

"Because I said so" may not seem like a higher motivation, but it actually is, if you recognize that it is at least a step towards righteousness for the sake of righteousness. Righteousness for the sake of blessing (or even just the avoidance of curses) is very self-interested. "I'll be good, but only because I will get something out of it." A higher understanding of morality, then, says "I'll follow the Law, because it is the Law." But an even higher understanding than that says, "I will be holy, because it is right and good to be holy."

Here endeth Part I of "Seeing the Love of the New Testament In the Wrath of the Old Testament." Next week, I'll let you know why I opened this whole discussion with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I'll take a good look at God's use of the death penalty, and I'll lay out what I believe Jesus meant when He said "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." (Matthew 5:17)

When you hear the tone, turn the tape over and push play.

God's Role in the Story of Jephthah

Hoo-boy. Jephthah. I guess I'm doing this. Let's see what happens. It's gonna be a long one, so I hope you've got some time set aside.

Once you start getting deeper into the Bible than the typical Sunday School curriculum (complete with feltboard and fill-in-the-blank workbooks), you start to come across some stories that really don't get brought up very often from the pulpit. Some parts of the Bible just aren't used in youth group devotionals. Some Bible verses won't ever get a t-shirt, not even the really cool ones from the KJV.

Sometimes there are parts of the Bible that are brought up as accusations against the Christian faith, or against God Himself. The objection seems to be that since God allowed horrible things to happen, even within the confines of the Israelites, God's chosen people, then He's obviously no God worth following. It's an extension of the entire "problem of evil" or "the problem of pain." If God is all-powerful, all-loving, and all-benevolent, how can evil or pain exist? Why isn't life just a flawless paradise already?

I'd like to take a moment here to say that I'm not really sure if I'm stating the case for objection correctly, because it's never really made sense to me. My own personal objections to God didn't have much to do with how He treated people 5,000 years ago on the opposite side of the planet. So I realize that if I'm way off base with the objection, my defense won't necessarily work.

In this post, I'm going to be talking about the story of Jephthah, found in Judges 10:6-12:7. I realize that this is not the only problem people have with the Bible. A lot of people have a hard time reconciling the Jealous "I AM" of the First Testament to the Father God of the New Testament, especially in light of the Mosaic law's tendency towards capital punishment for seemingly minor offenses, implied acceptance of slavery, and marginalization of women, as well as the brutal nature of the conquest of Canaan as recorded in Joshua and Judges.

Rest assured, I'll get to that. Just not in this post.

For now, though... Jephthah.

I'm not going to put the whole story of Jephthah here. If you'd like to read it all, go to Judges 10:6-12:7. I will post the most troublesome part, though - this is where the objection comes in for a lot of people.

And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD : "If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the LORD's, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering."

Then Jephthah went over to fight the Ammonites, and the LORD gave them into his hands. He devastated twenty towns from Aroer to the vicinity of Minnith, as far as Abel Keramim. Thus Israel subdued Ammon.

When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of tambourines! She was an only child. Except for her he had neither son nor daughter. When he saw her, he tore his clothes and cried, "Oh! My daughter! You have made me miserable and wretched, because I have made a vow to the LORD that I cannot break."

"My father," she replied, "you have given your word to the LORD. Do to me just as you promised, now that the LORD has avenged you of your enemies, the Ammonites. But grant me this one request," she said. "Give me two months to roam the hills and weep with my friends, because I will never marry."

"You may go," he said. And he let her go for two months. She and the girls went into the hills and wept because she would never marry. After the two months, she returned to her father and he did to her as he had vowed. And she was a virgin.

From this comes the Israelite custom that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.

- Judges 11:30-40

That's pretty awful.

From a purely humanistic point of view - not even bringing questions of religion into play - this is pretty appalling. A very young girl - remember that in ancient cultures, marriage usually came pretty close to puberty - is sacrificed as a burnt offering, dying a horrifying death as a result of the religious folly of her father.

It's heartbreaking. It's absolutely terrible.

And yet it is in the Bible. And it would seem, after a surface reading, that God condoned the action, accepting the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter. It is this specific point - that God allowed the sacrifice to happen - that seems to be the most prominent problem presented in this story.

So how do we reconcile this event to the story of a holy and loving God? How can we possibly accept this story as the will of God?

Well... I don't actually think we can. I don't think we should.

I think there's a really important clue as to how we're supposed to take this story - as well as the rest of the book of Judges - in chapter 2. In Judges 2, Joshua has died, and the Israelites have begun their long-standing and oft-repeated cycle of abandoning their covenant with God. When Israel turns away from God, God allows Israel to be overtaken by one of the remaining Canaanite nations. After a while, Israel gets its mind right and calls out to God once again, and God sends a judge to deliver Israel. But as soon as the judge dies, Israel falls away again, and the cycle is repeated. That's what leads to God's decision at the end of the chapter, and a really important lesson about the educational philosophy of God.

Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel and said, "Because this nation has violated the covenant that I laid down for their forefathers and has not listened to me, I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations Joshua left when he died. I will use them to test Israel and see whether they will keep the way of the LORD and walk in it as their forefathers did."

- Judges 2:20-22, emphasis added

I believe that the story of Jephthah is an example of Israel failing that test.

I've mentioned before that sometimes loving parents have to deny their children something they want - or at least think they want - because the consequences, whether immediate or delayed, are detrimental to the overall health and happiness of that child more than the benefits of gratification would be a positive in that child's life. To reuse my original example: letting a child eat an entire bag of Oreos may result in temporary happiness - because, hey, Oreos are delicious - but it will also result in at least a stomachache for the night, and possibly, if the Oreo buffet continues and becomes a regular thing, cavities and Type II Diabetes.

But on the other hand, sometimes loving parents have to allow their children to make the poor choices that lead to negative consequences in hopes that the negative outcome will serve as its own deterrent punishment and will allow the children to learn from their own mistakes. And sometimes, even if their children aren't actually making the mistakes themselves, parents have to allow their children to see the consequences - gruesome as they may sometimes be - when someone else chooses poorly. (By the way - my own parents were pretty big fans of both of those ideas. Remind me to tell you the story of our cat, Oatmeal, and how I learned at three years old not to play in the road...)

That's what's going on here. God is allowing Jephthah to make a horrific mistake so Israel can learn from it. It's a hard lesson for Israel to learn, but it seems that it was a necessary one.

I want to point out a passage from Leviticus that sheds some interesting light on this event.

The LORD said to Moses, "Speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'I am the LORD your God. You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices. You must obey my laws and be careful to follow my decrees. I am the LORD your God. Keep my decrees and laws, for the man who obeys them will live by them. I am the LORD.

"'No one is to approach any close relative to have sexual relations. I am the LORD.

"'Do not dishonor your father by having sexual relations with your mother. She is your mother; do not have relations with her.

"'Do not have sexual relations with your father's wife; that would dishonor your father.

"'Do not have sexual relations with your sister, either your father's daughter or your mother's daughter, whether she was born in the same home or elsewhere.

"'Do not have sexual relations with your son's daughter or your daughter's daughter; that would dishonor you.

"'Do not have sexual relations with the daughter of your father's wife, born to your father; she is your sister.

"'Do not have sexual relations with your father's sister; she is your father's close relative.

"'Do not have sexual relations with your mother's sister, because she is your mother's close relative.

"'Do not dishonor your father's brother by approaching his wife to have sexual relations; she is your aunt.

"'Do not have sexual relations with your daughter-in-law. She is your son's wife; do not have relations with her.

"'Do not have sexual relations with your brother's wife; that would dishonor your brother.

"'Do not have sexual relations with both a woman and her daughter. Do not have sexual relations with either her son's daughter or her daughter's daughter; they are her close relatives. That is wickedness.

"'Do not take your wife's sister as a rival wife and have sexual relations with her while your wife is living.

"'Do not approach a woman to have sexual relations during the uncleanness of her monthly period.

"'Do not have sexual relations with your neighbor's wife and defile yourself with her.

"'Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the LORD.

"'Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.

"'Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.

"'Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. But you must keep my decrees and my laws. The native-born and the aliens living among you must not do any of these detestable things, for all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled. And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.

"'Everyone who does any of these detestable things—such persons must be cut off from their people. Keep my requirements and do not follow any of the detestable customs that were practiced before you came and do not defile yourselves with them. I am the LORD your God.' "

- Leviticus 18, emphasis added

I used to be kinda confused by this chapter. I always thought there was just something strange about the way it flowed: "Here's a big list of all the people you can't have sex with. And while we're at it, don't sacrifice your kids. Also, here are more people you can't have sex with."

But the thing is, it really makes sense once you recognize the conditional aspects of the morality being prescribed here. God is telling Israel not only that there are certain things that they, as the chosen people of a Holy God, cannot do, but He is also laying down a conditional aspect, telling Israel that the nations who were in Canaan before their arrival had been completely depraved people, sleeping with animals, having sex with their parents or children or even grandchildren, and sacrificing their children to Molech.

So Canaan has already become a place where the sacrifice of children is acceptable. Israel, now living among these Canaanite nations, has been seduced by the false gods of the surrounding nations (quite probably because they were also seduced by the temple prostitutes of those false gods). As time goes by, as the connection to the Mosaic covenant weakens in the hearts and minds of the Israelites, they begin to absorb the theology of the Canaanites on a cultural level, which replaced the cultural understanding of God that had been established during the time under Moses and Joshua.

So let's see who's been paying attention... In Judges 10, Israel has turned away from God, and has been conquered by the Ammonites. Take a guess at who the chief god of the Ammonites was.

On a hill east of Jerusalem, Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the detestable god of Moab, and for Molech the detestable god of the Ammonites.

- I Kings 11:7, emphasis added

So here we see that Israel is surrounded by a culture (the Ammonites) that practices the worship of a false god (Molech) which requires the sacrifice of children (which is completely horrible, and specifically forbidden by God on pain of land-vomit). We also see that God is allowing Israel to find their own way, testing them, to see if they will "keep the way of the LORD" or not.

Jephthah's view of how God works had been distorted by the culture he lived in. Jephthah believed that God, like Molech, was bound to the invocation of a worshiper. When someone made a sacrifice to Molech - or Ba'al, or Ashteroth, or Chemosh, or any of the other gods - it was with a sort of "payment" idea in mind. "If I slaughter this calf for Ba'al, that means that Ba'al is obligated to bless me with fertile crops this coming season." God didn't - and doesn't - work like that. Sacrifices were made to God in thanks for everything He had already done - like delivering the Israelites out of Egypt, bringing in good crops, or, you know, creating the universe - as well as sacrifices made for atonement of sins and sacrifices made just in praise and worship of the one true holy God.

So what happened? Israel fell away from God, embraced the culture of idol worship they were surrounded by, which in turn distorted their view of God when they tried to return to Him. Jephthah, operating under that distorted view, sacrifices his daughter. God does not stop Him, but allows Jephthah's truly awful sin to take place.

Jephthah's sin is so heinous, so abominable, so detestable, that the writer of Judges cannot even bring himself to write down what actually happened to Jephthah's daughter. Notice that in verse 39 it simply says that "he did to her as he had vowed."

BUT! There is something VERY important to notice here! Notice the last phrase of verse 39, and then verse 40.

From this comes the Israelite custom that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.

What is this commemoration about? Is it a thankful celebration to the God who delivered Israel from her captors, taking only a young girl as His payment? Or is it a somber memorial of how far Israel had fallen away from God? Is it a ritual to help remind Israel of their own past sin? Is it a wake-up cry for the people of God to remember that not only have they been delivered from a life of slavery in Egypt, but that they have also been delivered out of a life of slavery to sin?

God called the Israelites to live as a holy and righteous people. Several times in Leviticus, God says, "I am the LORD your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy." Their ethical behavior, specifically prescribed by God, was to be in pursuit of the holiness of God. The sacrifice of an innocent young girl was enough of a shock to wake Israel up, shake her out of her theological confusion, and bring her back closer to God.

Did God allow the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter to happen? Well... He didn't stop it, so I guess that counts as "allowing" it, yeah... But God also allowed Eve to listen to the serpent, and Adam to listen to Eve - but they learned from it. God also allowed me to make all the many, many, many mistakes I've made in my life - but I've learned from them. So did God allow Israel - through Jephthah - to make a mistake? Yes. But they learned from that mistake.

Did God accept Jephthah's sacrifice? There's nothing in the story that suggests He did. In Judges 11:29, the "spirit of the LORD" has already come over Jephthah when he makes his foolish, rash vow. This vow, by the way, was already going to get Jephthah in trouble no matter what happened. By vowing to sacrifice "whatever," Jephthah is violating Levitical code, which specifically listed the requirements for what could and could not be sacrificed to God, as well as how the sacrifices were to be made. He's also violating the very spirit of sacrifice. God wants our sacrifice to be intentional, planned out, and deliberate... not just "Well, I'll give God whatever I've got laying around when I think of it."

We also see here the danger of allowing the mindset of the world to become intermingled with our faith. Are we as Christians today in danger of sacrificing our children as burnt offerings to God if we aren't listening to the pure truth of the Gospel? Well... Probably not.

But are we in danger of leading our children down paths that aren't where God intended for us to go? Very much so.

Joel Osteen has made a bajillion dollars telling people that a life of good Christian piety leads to worldly success. The Prayer of Jabez put forth the idea that if you just pray like a guy mentioned exactly one time ever in the entire Bible, you'll be able to have an enormous stock portfolio and 3 BMWs in the garage. And of course there is always just the idea that "God wants me to be happy!"

That's the world talking. That's not God.

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

- James 1:27, emphasis added

Make sure you know what you believe. Make sure you believe what you say you believe. Make sure you live what you believe. Love God, love others, and do it in that order. Anything else just slows you down.

I would like to extend very heartfelt and sincere thanks to my dear friend Peggy Thomas for all of her help on this one. I could not have written this without her. (Well, at least not the coherent and sensible parts - I got stupid covered just fine on my own, thanks.)