I am aware that one wanders out where the ice becomes thin when one suggests altering any part of any sacred text, the Bible among them. I am conscious that posing specific changes, particularly regarding what God is said to have spoken, will seem audacious at the least, more likely heretical. But I want to propose just that! I think I’ll blame last week’s session at my church’s Wednesday evening adult education series. We were watching a beautifully filmed video and listening to its engaging narrative, a briskly moving Holy Land tour, the commentator linking each location with an important biblical event. A particular phrase became a mantra: “This is the place where God told ______________ to ______________.” A not unfamiliar phrasing, repeated in differing verbal forms throughout both testaments. But something about it seemed dissonant, dare I say dangerous, with each repetition. I want to briefly explore that dissonance, and then offer that heretical/necessary proposal.

(Pastor and theolgian that I am, unapologetically, I must confess that these reflections have been influenced significantly by my intentional, disciplined reading of Richard Dawkins (particularly the God Delusion) and Sam Harris (End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation), two of the four currently prominent atheists, their crisp, at times strident, but focused and telling critiques worthy of reading by Christians.  My principle rebuttal, beside what seems a deepening respect and appreciation of their writing, is that they confuse the reality of God with perceptions of God.

“And God said to Noah, ‘Build a boat for yourself’” . . .  “Lord say to Abraham, ‘Do not be afraid’” . . .  “God said to Jacob, ‘Go to Bethel’” . . . “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Assemble seventy elders’”  . . . “The Lord called, ‘Samuel.  Samuel’” . . .  “Then I [Isaiah] heard the Lord say, ‘Whom shall I send?’”  . . . “And the Lord said, ‘Before you [Jeremiah] were born, I selected you to be a prophet.’” . . .  “Led by the Spirit, Simeon went up to the Temple.” . . .  “One night Paul had a vision in which the Lord said to him, ‘Go to Troas’” Nothing startling nor troublesome here.  No problem so far.  Indeed the biblical narrative appears to turn, unfold and chart its course around such texts.  Lives of individuals and communities intersecting with divine presence, discerning divine instruction, “God said to me” almost natural.

But other verses began to come to mind, and the earlier discomfort returned. “And Moses said that the Lord says, ‘About midnight I will go through Egypt and every first born son in Egypt will die’” . . .  “The Lord gave the following regulations, ‘Anyone who curses his mother or father shall be put to death . . . if a man has  sexual relations with another man, both shall be put to death.” . . .  “A man, during a quarrel, cursed the Lord.  The Lord said to Moses, ‘let the community stone the man to death’” . . .  “A man gathered firewood on the Sabbath and was taken to Moses.  Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘This man must be put to death’.”  Can I offer worship and praise to a God who institutes such widely applied capital offenses, and directly orders executions?

Then I found myself thumbing through Joshua, my stomach churning, twisting with inner turmoil, approaching  the edge of outright rebellion.  “And Joshua said, ‘The Lord has given you the city.  The city and everything in it must be destroyed’ and with their swords they killed everyone in the city, men and women, young and old.” . . . “Then the Lord said to Joshua, ‘Point your spear at Ai’ . . . and the men of Ai were completely surrounded and they were all killed.”  It’s commonly called The Ban, God’s instructions to utterly destroy the conquered cities, killing all that breathes.  Perhaps history’s first genocide.  Sometimes I have to allow myself the full outrage of my thoughts and feelings, to let myself speak the ultimately heretical.  I will not believe in, I cannot believe in, I refuse to follow such a God.  Atheism is the clearly more reasonable choice.  I refuse to worship a God who issues orders to exterminate a people.

I want to give worship and praise to the Divine!  I want to read scripture, because it has been such a source of comfort and guidance, forgiveness and grace, calling and direction-giving in my life.  I have come to a conclusion that offers a solution to redeem my faith in God.  But it means venturing out onto that thin ice, mounting that unapologetic audacity, and risking being named a heretic. 

I have made a decision, a firm commitment, to read such passages in an altered form.  Henceforth, when a text says some variation of: “And God told _________ to __________.” I will change it to read, “And __________ came to believe that God told him to ___________.”  And it is the assault of Jericho and Ai that ultimately forced the change.  I am guessing that Joshua and those other leaders, desiring a rapid and thorough conquest of Canaan, transformed their God of mercy and justice, forgiveness and love, into a warrior.  They colluded to create a God, the “Lord God of Hosts” (God imaged as Commander in Chief of the invading Hebrew armies) who gave orders to massacre the inhabitants of a land to which they felt entitled.  Daring to presume to know the mind of God, an ultimate audacity, I believe God must have been appalled, heart-broken, outraged that the people he had brought through the wilderness to a beautiful and bountiful land had now transformed, no transmuted him into a warrior king.

Try it out.  Maybe privately and silently at first.  Though some of you, like me, may read scripture publicly.  Integrity requires me to make this change.  I wonder what the reaction will be the next time I read a text in this altered form.  Or what your reaction is to these paragraphs.