Peter Enns was interviewed on the Drew Marshall Show
shortly after I wrote my piece referenced at the end
on the violence found in the OT...
I Have Conquered Canada: My Interview on The Drew Marshall Show
by Peter Enns
March 15, 2013
The Drew Marshall Show is “Canada’s most listened to spiritual talk show,” though probably not any more: last week they interviewed me.
All kidding aside, this was a fun 15 minutes and I hope to be invited back so I can pontificate further on Evangelicalism’s failure to offer a convincing explanatory paradigm, the problem of divine violence in the OT, and perhaps have a chance to dislodge the shoe from my mouth.
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Some Notes
mostly mine own by premeditated arrangement
:)
R.E. Slater
March 16, 2013
According to Iron Age tribalism, found between 1200 to 500 BC, it was believed that "God's" preferred means of conflict resolution was to slaughter people and wipe them out (sic, Noah and the Flood, Israel's enemies, even Israel herself through her Exiles). This was thought to bring about purity amongst people, and maintain fideism to God.
Consequently, the church has kept to old Israel's ancient ways and mindset by burning martyrs at the stake; banning witchcraft by the same; locking away and/or torturing those who differed with the church's "official" attitudes; subjugating people groups in power battles of "might-and-right."
Many centuries later, when Jesus came along in the NT, He changes things up and said, "Love your enemies. Pray for them that do evil against you. Don't kill each other. Don't wipe each other out so you can get their property and land. Don't stone those who differ from you, whom you thought has created transgression."
In effect, I say unto you "Stay within the tension that you live within, and try to get along with each other justly, rightly, fairly, without resorting to murder, killing, and war. This is what God says... And by the way, 'I am God.' So, this is what I'm telling you to do. Not like what your ancient forefathers once thought I had told them to do. Nor in how they tried to explain how I rolled with the universe. But to learn to love one another. To get along with one another. For if you love one another then have you seen God."
"Back then, in the OT, they couldn't explain me because they couldn't see any other way other than how they saw it being done around them. But my ways are higher than man's ways so much farther than the East is from the West, and the heavens are higher than the seas. Finally, know that I have come to humanity to explain how God rolls through myself. Hopefully to make things absolutely clear how God operates, and what He thinks about people - those that doubt; those that live self-righteously; those that would make a religion out of a living faith of trust and commitment." This is God's word to you, my friends and my sheep.
Continued from ...
