Questions

Last night in a conversation with my wife I asked a question that stuck in my mind like a rusty nail. I haven’t been able to extract it yet. Here it is: If Yahweh was unable to maintain a lasting theocracy with the Israelites, then what hope does any human have of establishing a successful system of government?

Of course as with most questions there are numerous other questions underlying this one such as: Why was Yahweh unable to maintain a lasting theocracy with Israel? Many people would blame Israel for this, saying that because of human weakness, sin, lack of faith, etc. God was unable to proceed with the theocracy he intended because humans have free will. While this may seem like a reasonable solution to the problem, it isn’t saying much about God’s ability to understand human nature and psychology as well as his ability to motivate people and gain their trust. If this were truly the case, I’m reminded of a quote by Woody Allen: “If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.” This quote fits the situation in the sense that if you believe what Yahweh truly wanted was to maintain a theocracy with Israel he eventually gave up trying to do so because he couldn’t convince Israel it was the best thing to do. I can understand that Yahweh would be upset about Israel’s grumbling and complaining. This is not only nothing new about human nature; we haven’t come any further in over 2,000 years. People will always find something to complain about. But in terms of getting people to follow along, despite their grumbling and complaining, this is not something that’s too difficult to do. In general most people will follow a compelling leader, even if that leader is compelled to do all sorts of terrible things. That too is human nature. So I find it hard to believe that if anyone is capable of motivating people, getting them to follow along and gaining their trust and faith-and there are plenty of examples of human leaders who have accomplished this throughout history-than God should have that ability a million times in excess of any of them. As a side-note to this objection I would also like to add that I’ve never been content with the free will argument letting God off the hook for sin and suffering, etc. because God was the one to create such easily fallible creatures in the first place. Had he created humans from stronger material this notion of free will and choice would seem a bit more plausible. To borrow a metaphor from the Bible, a sculpture doesn’t blame the lump of clay for being a lousy lump of clay instead of a masterpiece; he only has himself to blame for that. (Disclaimer: this is only a metaphor and should be used only to illustrate my point in the usual way metaphors help us understand an idea. Of course, you can push the metaphor further and it will easily crumble. It in no way is a perfectly accurate picture of the human condition and God’s interaction with humans).

Another way to answer this question would be to say that a theocracy was not Yahweh’s plan to begin with, that it was merely an initial phase of a much larger plan that eventually involved God taking human form and dying to abolish evil (the metanarrative response). This answer will seem attractive to many Christians because it makes sense out of the New Testament, the story of Jesus, etc. and it will probably infuriate Jews for obvious reasons. However, from my perspective (whatever that’s worth-which might not be much) it does seem like a very unnecessarily complicated plan, and I’m not sure why Yahweh would want to intentionally set his theocracy up for failure. If that’s the case, the ambiguity of that plan has caused a lot of confusion and division, wars and suffering. It also makes it difficult to take Yahweh’s theocracy seriously and makes much of the Old Testament barely intelligible.

A third way to answer this question would be to say that Yahweh changed his mind about the best way to pursue a relationship or govern people. But this answer also falls prey, I think, to the underachiever rebuttal and also makes most of the Old Testament irrelevant as well.

I’m sure there are other ways to answer this question, but I’m trying to cut back on the length of these posts on the advice of a good friend. These are just some initial thoughts I have on the topic. There are really at least two things I’m struggling to understand here, and I’ll try to briefly summarize them here. The first thing goes along with my post on “Organic Green,” and that’s “How can I have faith in any human form of government…especially if I’m reading the Old Testament correctly and it seems even God couldn’t establish a successful government over humans?” The second is that I find it very difficult to reconcile the Old and New Testament into a coherent picture of who God is and how exactly he relates with humans. To quote Woody Allen again (and I believe here he was actually quoting someone else but I’m not sure), “God does not play dice with the universe…he plays hide and seek.”

Does anyone in the bloggersphere have any thoughts? Is anybody out there?