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OUR CITY AS THE ABODE OF PERSONAL AND SYSTEMIC EVIL In 1988 I visited Medellin, Colombia, where I spent an afternoon in a slum of beggars and thieves, where as many as twenty-five families occupy a single house. One pregnant woman invited me into an apartment just large enough for a bed and boxes piled in the corners. On a bed lay the woman's one-and-a-half-year-old child and her nine-month- old baby. "Every day," she said, "I carry my babies into downtown Medellin. I lay my two babies out on a blanket, sit next to them and open my coat so everyone can see how pregnant I am. And then I beg for money. All the money I have to raise these babies I get from begging this way." The only power many of the poor wield is over their own bodies. In desperation, they will sell even that for pennies. I recently walked down Falkland Road, Bombay's infamous red-light district. As far as I could see, the street was lined with alcoves equipped with curtains and a bed. Outside each one was a prostitute-there were hundreds of them, block after block, scarcely seven feet apart. What made it worse was that at least a third of them were little girls. All but one looked under sixteen. And around their feet and on their laps played swarms of even younger children -.the next generation of male and female prostitutes.! These are stories of powerlessness. And herein is the evil of the city! In the previous chapter we studied the bright side of the city-the city as the abode of God's love and creative energy. In this chapter we turn to the dark side of the city and begin examining the biblical message of the city as the abode of evil. For only in understanding both the nature of a city's goodness and its evil can we truly hope to understand the city into which God has called us, his people, to minister. WHAT IS EVIL ABOUT THE CITY? Scripture provides us with a number of indicators concerning the evil of a city. First, it stresses that much of a city's evil is personal. When such sin accumulates among its people (as it did in Sodom [Gen. 19]), the city itself becomes overwhelmed by and possessed by such sin. Thus, in a profound sense the sin takes on corporate dimensions because it is being very slavishly indulged in by a vast number of that city's citizens. Perhaps the people who most carefully analyzed the dimensions of such sin were Israel's prophets. Isaiah and Jeremiah The books of Isaiah and Jeremiah are both essentially explorations of the nature, breadth, and depth of Israel's sin. Since both prophets were city prophets, both living in and having a deep commitment to Jerusalem, their analysis of Israel's sin was inevitably an analysis of Jerusalem's sin. Isaiah the prophet, in chapter 58, asks the question: What is true worship (or fasting)? The people ask: "'Why have we fasted,' they say, 'and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you [God] have not noticed?'" (v. 3). God answers: "On the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers. Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high" (vv. 3-4). What, then, is true worship? God declares: "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter- when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?" (vv. 6-7). On behalf of his people, the prophet confesses the nature of Israel's and Jerusalem's evil: For our offenses are many in your sight, and our sins testify against us. Our offenses are ever with us, and we acknowledge our iniquities: rebellion and treachery against the LORD, turning our backs on our God, fomenting oppression and revolt, uttering lies our hearts have conceived. So justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter (Isa. 59:12-14). Through these repeated themes the Isaiah passages express the nature of the sin of Jerusalem's residents: injustice toward the powerless, oppression of the poor, exploitation of workers. All these, Isaiah suggests, cause God's people to turn their backs on God so that "truth has stumbled" on Jerusalem's streets and "honesty cannot enter" there. Jeremiah takes it a step further. Neither economic, political, and social irresponsibility toward the poor, nor the powerless and the marginalized of the city are in themselves the problem, Jeremiah suggests. Rather, such are manifestations of the underlying sin of the city's people: idolatry. "Hear the word of the LORD, 0 kings of Judah and people of Jerusalem. This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Listen! I am going to bring a disaster on this place that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned sacrifices in it to gods that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. They have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as offerings to Baal-something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind" Ger. 19:3-5). "People from many nations will pass by this city and will ask one another, 'Why has the LORD done such a thing to this great city?' And the answer will be: 'Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD their God and have worshiped and served other gods'" Ger. 22:8-9). The sins of a city's people include self-indulgence, economic injustice, exploitation, and the oppression of those less powerful than the oppressor (we see it even in the class bully in an elementary school). But all such social sins, the prophets declare, are the inevitable manifestations of people who have given themselves over to the service of other gods (money, power, prestige, or commitment to their own group) rather than centering their city's life in the worship of the Lord God. Jerusalem the Bride: Part 2 Perhaps the most dramatic and vivid presentation of this under- standing of a city's sin is given by Ezekiel in the continuation of his figure of Jerusalem as the bride of God. In Ezekiel 16, God's love for Jerusalem is portrayed as a liberating, sexual love that manifests itself in the Lord's marriage to the city. But whereas verses 1-14 deal with Jerusalem as the bride of God, verses 15- 34 deal with her fall from grace. That fall does not come suddenly. It is a process: a slow, steadily developing unfaithfulness to God and his covenant with the city. She first becomes infatuated with her own beauty, impressed by herself and the status she has apparently won in the world. Then she increasingly prostitutes herself: "You lavished your favors on anyone who passed by and your beauty became his" (v. 15). Jerusalem's people increasingly succumb to idolatry and thus adulterate the covenant. The bride then begins offering her sons and daughters in human sacrifice to the gods of Canaan and the nations around Israel. Finally, the bride disseminates the worship of false gods throughout the land: "In addition to all your other wickedness, you built a mound for yourself and made a lofty shrine in every public square" (vv. 23-24). Why? It is not for political gain or the making of allegiances to other nations, Ezekiel states. That could at least be understood,. even if not condoned. It is not for economic advantage, especially in doing business with other nations. No, the bride Israel gives "gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from everywhere for your illicit favors. So in your prostitution you are the opposite of others; no one runs after you for your favors. You are the very opposite, for you give payment and none is given to you" (vv. 33-34). This is a picture of the decline and destruction of a soul-not simply the souls of the individuals who make up Jerusalem, but of the city herself. It is a reminder that a city can abandon God. And it does so, not so much by one awful decision, but little by little as it pursues wealth, prestige, and power to the exclusion of responsibility toward humanity and obedience toward God. Such disloyalty toward God, Ezekiel points out, will not benefit Jerusalem in the end. Her "lovers "-the other nations of the Near East- will eventually conquer Jerusalem, destroy her temple, raze the city, seize Israel's wealth as booty, and take the city's leaders into captivity. What is the advantage, then, of being disloyal to God and rejecting him? The people have lost out to absolutely everyone, have gained no long-term political advantage, and have rejected their only potential source of salvation and liberation. They have alienated the only One who could actually save them. Ezekiel poignantly describes the seriousness of this crime as he compares Jerusalem's crime with the sins of her sister cities Sodom and Samaria. He writes: "Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen. Samaria did not commit half the sins you did. You have done more detestable things than they, and have made your sisters seem righteous by all these things you have done" (Ezek. 16:49-51) Social injustice (especially toward a city's own poor), exploitation, sexual perversity, pride, gluttony, arrogance, complacency are all terrible sins. Combined, they are capable of destroying the soul of a city. Nothing, however, is as evil as idolatry. To worship something other than God as god is to reject the only One who can actually bring salvation. This was Jerusalem's sin, for the city placed national security ahead of God; the city was willing to sacrifice God in order to worship security. WHAT ARE THE ROOTS OF A CITY'S EVIL? A city's evil is made up of personal aggrandizement, self-indulgence, social injustice, and idolatry. But such-while extremely grave-do not get at the heart of a city's sin. What are the roots of a city's evil? There is no more critical question for urban Christians to ask than this one, because we Christians as individuals and the church as the body of Christ are hopelessly naive about the nature and extent of evil in the city. That is why the church has been essentially ineffective in urban ministry. We are told that the first rule of warfare is to know the enemy. As long as we hold to an inadequate and naive understanding of a city's evil, we will never appreciate the full scope and power of the enemy we face. It is imperative that we have an adequate biblical understanding of the nature of urban evil. Only then can we, as God's people, hope to have any significant impact on that city. Evil: Individual or Corporate? Evangelical Protestantism has tended to center its theology in God's work of salvation. Particularly in its more popular, non-reflective forms, the evangel has historically been proclaimed in terms of individual salvation-the calling of the sinner to Christ. Because of this emphasis on individual salvation, evangelicals have been inclined to approach evil as individual. If Christ's atoning work is sufficient to cover all sin, and if salvation is understood as individual, then the sin that salvation covers must be individual as well. Otherwise, Christ's death is insufficient to cover our sins. Because it is sufficient and because salvation is seen as the redemption of the individual, the evangelical preacher is forced into an examination of sin that is individual. The danger with such an approach is that. those who stress exclusively the individual dimensions of salvation can neither understand the full extent of evil nor appreciate the full salvific work of Christ. It is instructive to note that three major theologies of Christendom- Calvinism, Roman Catholicism, and Orthodoxy-have avoided this .problem. Calvinism centers its theologizing in the sovereignty of God, Roman Catholicism in the efficacy of church and sacrament, and orthodoxy in God as creator. With these theologies, all three traditions have developed a strong sense of corporate and societal sin, which is reflected in each church's historical involvement in the social, economic, and political issues of society. It is the contention of this book that Scripture presents salvation as both individual and corporate. The biblical writers understood evil this way. Note the broad use of corporate images to describe the saved condition-covenant people, the nation Israel, the people of God, the remnant, the kingdom of God, the church, the New Jerusalem. I came face-to-face with the evil of a city early in my ministry. Although it was a grim and most painful experience, I thank God that I was brought to an early awareness of the corporate dimensions of a city's evil. Glimpsing the depth of evil of that city transformed my entire ministry. I learned the truth while I was still a college student. It was an overwhelming and bitter truth to learn. But it taught me that city evil was far greater than my limited biblical understanding. And that insight changed my ministry. I was working among black teenagers in a government project (in which the poor were warehoused in high-rise buildings) in a United States city. Our youth ministry included a spectrum of recreational and athletic activities centered around Bible studies. A fourteen-year-old girl (whom I will call Eva) began to attend one of these Bible study groups. Eva was an exceptionally beautiful teenager, physically mature for .her age. She became even more radiant when she received Christ as her Lord and Savior. I began discipling Eva, building her up in the "nurture and' admonition" of the Lord. My academic year was drawing to a close and I was looking forward to returning home for summer vacation. Just before I was to leave my teenage "parish," Eva came to me greatly troubled. "Bob," she said, "I am under terrible pressure and I don't know what to do. There is a very large gang in this project that recruits girls to De prostitutes for wealthy white men in the suburbs. They are trying to farce me to join them. I know it's wrong. But what should I do?" I gave Eva all the appropriate advice I had learned in church and college about how if she resisted evil, it would flee from her. I urged her to stick with her Bible study group and not to give in to this gang's demands. Then I left for my summer vacation. Three months later, I returned to school and to the ministry in which I was engaged in that city. Eva was nowhere to be found. When I asked about her at the Bible study, the other youth told me she had stopped coming about a month after I had left. I went to Eva's apartment in one of the project buildings to talk with her. Eva answered to my knock on the door. As soon as she saw me, she burst into tears. "They got to me, Bob," she said. "I've become a whore!" "Eva, how could you give in like that?" I unsympathetically responded. "Why didn't you resist?" "I didn't give in," she responded. "I was forced." Then she told me a story of terror. "First, they told me they would beat my father if I didn't become one of their prostitutes. I refused, and they beat him-bad. Then they said my brother was to be next. He ended up in the hospital. Then they told me that if I didn't yield, they would gang-rape my mother. I knew they meant it, and I had no alternative. So I gave in and became one of their whores." "But, Eva," I said, "why didn't you get some protection? Why didn't you go to the police?" "Bob, you white honkey," Eva responded. "Who do you think they are ?" I had come face-to-face with evil in that city. I was introduced to the corporate, systemic nature of urban evil. I suddenly realized that the police were the gang operating the prostitution ring and recruiting young girls like Eva out of that slum. The police in that precinct-the very people entrusted with the task of protecting and defending the people-were the worst exploiters of the people. 1 eventually discovered that what the police were doing in that one precinct was only the tip of the iceberg of what was happening all over that city, because the entire legal and political system was arrayed to protect those who were betraying the people in order to enrich themselves. It was in this encounter in 1957 that 1 first realized that a city's evil is far greater than the sum of the sin of its individuals. The very systems of a city could become corrupt, grasping, oppressive, and exploitative. Sin in the city could be systemic and corporate. And it little mattered even if all the Evas among a city's poor were to be converted, because the evil in the systems could destroy them through the corrupting corporate power. We cannot simply save individuals in the city and expect that the city will get saved. If the church does not deal with the systems and structures of evil in the city, then it will not effectively transform the lives of that city's individuals. I still grieve over what happened to Eva. I have often repented of the inadequate support I gave to her in the greatest crisis of her young life. But I also thank God for what I learned from this experience. This event forced me to take a look at my theology and to recognize that my understanding of the city and its evil was inadequate for ministering there in a truly effective way. So began my lifetime quest for a biblical theology as big as the city itself. This book and twenty-nine years of urban ministry are the result. The Systems of a City Understanding the nature of evil in the city requires examining the primary systems that make a city function and then analyzing these systems biblically. What are the classic systems of a city-that is, the systems any city must have in order to function? It is widely suggested that the systems that order the life of a city are economic, political, and religious. By "religious" I mean the system that gives the city its reason for existence (the word's original sense, from the Latin religio, means "to bind fast" or "to structure"). A religion is that which structures or brings ordered meaning to life. With such a definition, we can readily see that even the most secular and materialistic city has a religion, because it uses a commitment to modernity to bring order and structure to its existence. All other social institutions (education, health care, culture and the arts, social services) are subsystems of the economic, political, and religious systems of a city. In fact, until several hundred years ago, each of these subsystems was regarded as a part of the religious system, for it was the responsibility of the church to carry out these services and to be patron of the city's art and culture. What insights can we gain from Scripture to help us make these urban systems godly and beneficial instead of corrupt and evil? GODLY POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, AND RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS The clearest exposition of the development of the systems of Israel's corporate life may be found in the book of Deuteronomy. This book, especially chapter 6, lays out the principles and laws that provided order and structure to the nation. Chapter 6 is part of Moses' final speech to his people. For forty years he led them through the wilderness, taking a ragtag, rebellious band of former slaves and building them into a nation. But the time finally arrived when Israel could no longer remain in the wilderness and had to get on with their national life and enter the Promised Land. Before they crossed over the Jordan River, the narrative tells us, Moses gathered the children of Israel to speak to them one more time. He said he would not go with them, but would return to the desert to die; his disciple, Joshua, would lead them. Infinitely wiser than they, Moses knew that the difficulties and trials of the desert were as nothing compared with the difficulties and trials of life in the Promised Land. The trials of the wilderness had disciplined and strengthened Israel; the trials of the Promised Land would erode and weaken the nation. Moses had to warn the people against the temptations of wealth, power, and prestige that awaited them in their land. In his final speech Moses reminded Israel that he had dreamed a great dream about a new nation, a kingdom lived under God. That new society had been carefully constructed and practiced in the desert. But now, Moses told the people in Deuteronomy 6, you are to go into a new land to possess it. It will be a land of pagans who will not accept or even appreciate your way of life; instead, they will oppose it. The new land will be filled with cities of great wealth, which you will appropriate; that wealth may erode your way of life. That new land will bring you much prosperity so that you will think you have made yourself strong rather than perceiving all as a gift from God; that power will undermine your dependence on God. This is what you will face in the new land-people who will oppose, wealth that will erode, power that will undermine your way of life. What do you need to do, Moses asked, to establish the kingdom of God in a pagan land? The answer to that question is what Deuteronomy, especially the sixth chapter, is all about. A Religion of Relationship According to the text, Moses proclaimed, Hear, 0 Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD,is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts (Deut. 6:4-6). Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you; for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and his anger will bum against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the land. Do not test the LORD your God as you did at Massah (vv. 14-16). The foundation for the building of a nation or of a city, the author of Deuteronomy tells us, is relationship with God. True religion is not the observance of liturgies, laws, and rituals, but an active, growing relationship with God. Moses called Israel to love God "with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." Commandments were not rules to be obeyed, but conditions of relationship engraved on one's heart. To follow other gods, therefore, was the cruelest possible thing an Israelite could do-it would be striking at the very heart of the human society God wished to create in Palestine. Moses wanted Israel to build the systems of its cities and nation on relationship with God. A Politics of Justice In light of his call; to relationship with God, Moses commanded Israel, These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates (Deut. 6:6-9). Be sure to keep the commands of the lord your God and the stipulations and decrees he has given you. Do what is right and good in the LORD'S sight, so that it may go well with you and you may go in and take over the good land that the LORD promised on oath to your forefathers, thrusting out all your enemies before you, as the'LoRD said (Dent. 6:17-19). Authentic ,corporate relationship with God inevitably leads to a politics of justice. Moses instructed Israel to be sure to "keep the commands of the LORD your God," to engrave them "upon your hearts," "impress them on your children," and be consumed with reflecting on them and obeying them in every activity. But what are these commandments and stipulations and decrees that Israel was to obey? Whether the blueprint was Plato's Republic or Thomas More's Utopia or Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto, every creator of a new order for humanity has made a fatal mistake. All such dreams of a perfect society have failed because humans are not perfect. The new society that Moses prepared the Israelites to inaugurate in the Promised Land was not, however, a utopian state. The commandments, stipulations, and decrees that formed the fiber of that new society were all laws and covenants, not of perfection, but of justice! When we read the commandments and regulations that follow Moses' speech in Deuteronomy, we are amazed to discover that they deal mostly with issues of justice. They deal with such concerns as .the redistribution of wealth to the poor, protection of the widow, liberation of the enslaved, limitations on the power of rulers, justice in warfare, safeguarding the welfare of wives and unmarried women in adjudication and cases of homicide, and protection of the divorcee, the orphan, the stranger, the sick, the visitor, and the enfeebled. To fulfill the kingdom of God successfully in a pagan city, according to Moses, Israel was to develop and maintain a politics of justice. It now becomes clear why Moses' first command to the Israelites was to "love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." It would have been insufficient to build a nation by practicing individual justice. The people needed to recognize the authentic origin of justice, namely, a righteous God, and just actions as a grateful response to him. People are truly motivated to practice the Golden Rule when the source of that motivation is a love relationship with God. Those who are at peace with God will wish to be at peace with their neighbor. When we see that all the good in life has not been deserved but has been given by God, we will desire to share that good with others. The foundation for a just order, therefore, is a personal, active relationship with God. Israel was able to maintain God's just kingdom in the Promised Land and in her cities to the degree that she was able to maintain a vital, personal faith in God. An Economics of Stewardship Finally, Moses taught Israel, When the LORD your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you-a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant-then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery (Deut. 6:10-12). To maintain God's kingdom successfully in the cities of a pagan land, Moses said, Israel would have to adopt an economics of stewardship. And here is exposed the radically different perception of ownership under which Israel ordered its national and urban life. The people of Israel did not believe that a person could own land; they believed he could only have temporary custody. God was the owner, and both the nation in general and each Israelite were given temporary trust over some of God's possessions. Thus the Promised Land was given to Israel by God, and with it, the valleys and hills and rivers and wheat and fig trees, its iron and copper and its great and flourishing cities. This was all gift-given to Israel by the land's owner, God. And those in whom God had invested the land were to be responsible and good stewards of this trust, for they would one day be held accountable for their custodianship of that land. That is why it was so horrible for an Israelite to say, "My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me" (Deut. 8:17). That boast was not simply arrogance; it was blasphemy, for it denied that God had freely given the land to him, had placed the riches in the land for him to mine and grow, so that he could care for, cultivate, and protect that land as God's trustee. The new kingdom of God that Moses had prepared Israel to institute in the land of Canaan, therefore, was to be the land and city of God, the place God owned. Because God owned this land and freely and graciously offered it and its cities to Israel, the people were to be responsible stewards of it. They were to treat each other and all people around them justly-for they were all sojourners on God's land (Deut. 6:20-25). They were to eliminate poverty and economic and political oppression and were to protect the weak, because all were created equally as children of God. And they were to love God and live in gratitude to him, for he was the high King of their land, the One who wanted to live among them and love his people. To love justice, to treat each other tenderly as equal children of God, to live gratefully before God-this the Israelites had to do to maintain God's kingdom in the cities of a pagan land. Biblical Systems-and How They Fared Deuteronomy describes the relationship God wanted for the people of his cities and nation as they developed their religious, political, and economic systems. For nearly two hundred years Israel was relatively successful in "singing the Lord's song" in the new land. Except for a few notable relapses, Israel faithfully practiced devotion to God, a corporate politics of justice for all the occupants of Canaan, and an economics of stewardship of all God had given them. But as the years and generations and then centuries rolled by, Israel began to change. Slowly, inexorably, political power became concentrated in only two of the twelve tribes. Wealth began to accumulate in the hands of specific families. First winking at the law, then gradual injustice, and then outright disobedience of the law and covenant became prevalent. The uniqueness and power of Israel instilled by Moses in the desert gradually dissolved. Then came a crisis-an external crisis. The dreaded Philistines from the Mediterranean invaded the land of Canaan. Weakened by their own spiritual and moral decay, Israel retreated frantically before the advancing Philestine army. In the face of this danger occurred one of the most Poignant tragedies recorded in the Bible. All the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, "You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have" (1 Sam. 8:4-5). It seems a reasonable, even innocent, request. The very future of Israel was being threatened by the Philistines, and a king would seem to have the power to unite the twelve tribes, build a large army, and defeat the invaders. It was not an innocent request, however. God was Israel's king-the God who had brought the people out of Egypt, the God who had protected them in the wilderness, the God who had led them into the Promised Land, the God who had graced them with "flourishing cities you did not build." God was the high King of Israel, and no man! How tragic are God's words to Samuel: "Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king" (1 Sam. 8:7). "They have rejected me. . . ." For Israel to choose to have a man as their king was to say that they no longer trusted God. They could no longer depend on him to protect them from an invading nation. They would no longer depend on his laws to maintain justice in their cities, because the justice they wanted-a justice favoring the rich instead of the poor-was at sword's point with the justice demanded by God. Faced with the decay of their nation's inward life and threatened by potential defeat from the outside, Israel decided to depend on the empire's way instead of God's ways. To decide to be like all the other nations of the earth was to accept the conventional wisdom that a nation's destiny was determined by its military power, political strength, and economic production. Thus, in the period of the kings Israel's theocracy ended, a theocracy that had been carefully prescribed by Moses and functioning for more than two hundred years. We can best see how a city's and country's systems are corrupted by humanity and become demonic in their capacity to generate evil if we study the economic, political, and religious dynamics at work through the kings of Israel and Judah. THE CORRUPTION OF THE SYSTEMS We could cite a number of examples to trace the process by which Israel's political, economic, and religious systems became corrupt. In the story of Daniel we see a power-crazed Nebuchadnezzar, who on a whim brought unbelievable oppression on Hebrew youth. Or we can observe the political might of the Roman Empire joining forces with the economic power of the Jewish religious institution in the time of Jesus to hold the common people in thrall while justifying such exploitation by appealing to Jewish religious nationalism. We could also turn to the time of Paul and view the urban churches he founded as they struggled against Roman power, the self-serving of Greek and Near Eastern religions, and a matrix of Jewish and gentile local and international economics. We find the clearest biblical examples of urban corruption, however, during the time of the kings of Israel and Judah. Three kings in particular merit attention-Solomon, Ahab, and Josiah. Solomon: The Economics of Privilege and Exploitation Israel was warned about the dangers of monarchy when the people first pressed for a king while they were still in the period of the judges. In a profoundly prophetic passage, the charismatic leader Samuel told the complaining Israelites: "This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be Commanders of thousands and Commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves, and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his Own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day" (1 Sam. 8:11-18). Under King Solomon: what was once only a threat became stark reality. During his reign the Israelite empire reached both its greatest extent and its financial peak. Scripture graphically describes the growing power and wealth of the Israelite nation: And Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the (Euphrates] River to the land of the Philistines, as far as the border of Egypt. These Countries brought tribute and were Solomon's subjects all his life. . . . For (Solomon] ruled over all the kingdoms west of the River, from Tiphsah to Gaza, and had peace on all sides. During Solomon's lifetime Judah and Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, lived in safety, each man under his own vine and fig tree (1 Kings 4:21, 24-25). E It sounds like the idyllic life for Israel-almost a second Garden of den: But the nation actually paid a terrible price for such development. The lifestyle of Israel's "rich and famous" became profligate. Consider, for example, the daily provision for the palace alone: Solomon's daily provisions were thirty cors [185 bushels] of fine flour and sixty cors [375 bushels] of meal, ten head of stall-fed cattle, twenty of pasture-fed cattle and a hundred sheep and goats, as well as deer, gazelles, roebucks and choice fowl (1 Kings 4:22-23). The wealth and power accumulating in this one man's hands were enormous by any standards: Solomon accumulated chariots and horses; he had fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand horses, which he kept in the chariot cities and also with him in Jerusalem. The king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones, and cedar as plentiful as sycamore-fig trees in the foothills. Solomon's horses were imported from Egypt and from Kue-the royal merchants purchased them from Kue. They imported a chariot from Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver, and a horse for a hundred and fifty. They also exported them to all the kings of the Hittites and the Arameans (1 Kings 10:26-29). Even Solomon's throne was an example of conspicuous consumption: Then the king made a great throne inlaid with ivory and overlaid with fine gold. The throne had six steps, and its back had a rounded top. On both sides of the seat were armrests, with a lion standing beside each of them. Twelve lions1itood on the six steps, one at either end of each step. Nothing like it had ever been made for any other kingdom (1 Kings 10:18-20). Far worse than such conspicuous wealth was the price being paid for it. Israel was rapidly becoming a nation with radical class distinctions. The king and the royal court along with landowners were accruing increasing power and wealth, at least partly because they were exploiting the people of the land, both foreigners and Israelites. Consider these terrible words of condemnation: Here is the account of the forced labor King Solomon conscripted to build the Lord's temple, his own palace, the supporting terraces, the wall of Jerusalem, and {his treasure cities] Razor, Megiddo and Gezer. . . . All the people left from the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites (these peoples were not Israelites), that is, their descendants remaining in the land, whom the Israelites could not exterminate-these Solomon conscripted for his slave labor force. . . . But Solomon did not make slaves of any of the Israelites (1 Kings 9:15, 20-22). Solomon's resolve not to use Israelites as slaves did not last long. The demands of this economic machine were such that, in his latter days, the king resorted to the conscription of his fellow Israelites: King Solomon conscripted laborers from all Israel-thirty thousand men. He sent them off to Lebanon in shifts of ten thousand a month, so that they spent one month in Lebanon and two months at home. Adoniram was in charge of the forced labor. Solomon had seventy thousand carriers and eighty thousand stonecutters in the hills, as well as thirty-three hundred foremen who supervised the project and directed the workmen. At the king's command they removed from the quarry large blocks of quality stone to provide a foundation of dressed stone for the temple. The craftsmen of Solomon and Hiram and the men of Gebal cut and prepared the timber and stone for the building of the temple (1 Kings 5:13-18). Here, then, was the spectacle of an Israelite king, seated on the throne to maintain Israel as a nation of economic equality and political justice in a world of exploitation and oppression, but now so involved in "public works" that he had created virtual armies both of conquered peoples and of his fellow Israelites to undertake forced labor. For what cause were these people of God enslaved? The building of a temple for the worship of God! Somehow Israel could be taken out of Egypt, but Egypt had not been taken out of the king of Israel! Solomon had become a painful contrast to Deuteronomy's instructions regarding the suitable king for Israel. Knowing the great dangers involved in a monarchy, God had warned: When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, "Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us," be sure to appoint over you the king the LORD your God chooses. He must be from among your own brothers. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not a brother Israelite. The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the Lord has told you, "You are not to go back that way again." He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold. When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the priests, who are Levites. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the LORD his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left (Deut. 17:14-20). Solomon-the king who had asked for wisdom and had used that GOd-given intelligence to gather to himself wealth and power, women, and a potentate's court-had become everything the prophets of Israel tin d warned the people against for centuries. Solomon practiced unremitingly an economics of privilege and exploitation. And the result was an empire of such repression that it exploded in rebellion under the reign of his successor, Rehoboam (1 Kings 12). Because of Solomon's greed and lust, Israel's most powerful king sacrificed the heritage of his father. Ahab: The Politics of Oppression Economics that promote the exploitation of the poor and unfortunate as a means to accrue power and wealth for the privileged will inevitably lead to a politics of oppression. Wealth so gained must be protected, either by law or by violence, from those from whom it has been wrested. Thus politics is inevitably enlisted to secure that protection. It is that dynamic most clearly at work in the story of King Ahab of Israel. Solomon's economics of privilege led, soon after his death, to revolution. The resulting explosion was the collapse of the Israelite empire and the creation of two rival Israelite states. In the north was "Israel," the larger of the two nations, ruled by the revolutionaries. In the south was "Judah," loyal to the descendants of Solomon and David. As is so often the case, those revolting against oppression eventually became the new oppressors. Formerly the revolutionaries, the kings of Israel's northern kingdom became far more cruel than the wealthy potentate they replaced. And the cruelest of the lot was Ahab. King Ahab came to the throne forty-three years after Solomon's death. His rule, from its beginning in 879 B.C.E. to its end over twenty years later, was one of continuing religious and political oppression. His advocacy of the worship of Baal was a political move on Ahab's part, a strategy designed to weaken Israel's commitment to a constitutional and limited monarchy (because Yahweh was seen as Israel's ultimate monarch). Unlike Solomon, Ahab realized that the source of Israel's commitment to political justice lay in its basic commitment to Yahweh. If he were to become absolute dictator of Israel and rebuild Solomon's lost empire, Ahab would have to destroy Israel's faith in Yahweh. Ahab was a strong leader and was feared by the Assyrians as a military genius. He led a coalition army that so badly defeated the Assyrian army that they were unable to invade Israel for sixteen years after his death.2 Yet what would have been Ahab's greatest moment of glory as a king is not even mentioned in the Bible. Instead, the Bible gives an amazing amount of space to two events that would be considered historically small moments in the king's twenty-one-year reign. Those two events were the battle between Yahweh and Baal and the incident at Naboth's vineyard. Elijah the prophet arose as the one man in opposition to King Ahab. To make Ahab's real intentions plain to Israel, Elijah's first task was to discredit Baal. He did so by challenging the priests of Baal to a battle between the two gods (1 Kings 18:16-46), the winner being recognized as the legitimate god. The people of Israel gathered at Mount Carmel with Elijah and 450 priests of Baal. There both Elijah and the priests built altars and placed bulls upon them for sacrifice-one altar to Baal, the other to Yahweh. Elijah threw down the challenge: "You call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the LORD. The god who answers by fire-he is God" (1 Kings 18:24). The priests of Baal began to cry to their god, begging him to send down fire. But nothing happened. Elijah mocked and ridiculed the harried priests; they prayed all the harder. For the half-day during which they cried to Baal, the god of fire did not answer with fire. Elijah arose and commanded that twelve jars of water be thrown on the altar of Yahweh. He then offered one short prayer to God. Then the fire of the LORD fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, "The lord-he is God! The LORD-he is God!" (1 Kings 18:38-39). "The LORD-he is God!" As this cry rose from the people, Ahab's hope for winning Israel to Baal was crushed. Although he had earlier succeeded in getting most of Israel to consider Baal, Yahweh's discrediting of the Canaanite god left no room for doubt in the Israelites' minds. The issue here was not really religion; it was power. If Ahab could not undermine the Israelite commitment to law through discrediting their god, he could do so by direct force. In a show of strength Ahab broke the laws by seizing the vineyard of Naboth, a citizen of Israel (1 Kings 21:1- 29), after Ahab's wife conspired to have Naboth killed. Elijah confronted Ahab with the fact that the king had sinned against Israel, against God, and against his own vows of kingship. But whereas Ahab did not succeed in turning the hearts of Israel from Yahweh to Baal, he did get away with his blatant exercise of power in Naboth's vineyard (despite his temporary penitence [1 Kings 21:28-29]). In spite of Elijah's public accusation, no charge was ever brought against Ahab and he defied the nation to keep him from illegally seizing property and committing murder. 'In the incident at Naboth's vineyard the real issue was laid bare. Who ruled Israel, and who held the king to accountability? Before Ahab assumed the throne, Israel would have answered the question, "Yahweh rules Israel, and the king is God's servant; consequently, the king is accountable to the law of Moses and is responsible for its just and equitable adjudication." After Ahab's reign, many Israelites would have answered, "The king rules Israel and is accountable to no one.." Was the king above the law? The law of Moses called for the king of Israel to protect the law and thus protect the rights of the people. In the incident of the vineyard, Ahab proved that he could disregard the law and get away with it. He could exploit the law by disregarding it and thus oppress the people. It is noteworthy that Naboth was not one of the "ordinary people"; he was a part of the wealthy and ruling class. Yet because of Ahab's successful action, even the powerful had no guarantee under the law that their property-or even their lives-belonged to them. Josiah: The Religion of Control Have you ever started something with the very best of intentions and then found the action turning against you? I think that is what happened to Josiah, the boy king of Judah. Solomon and Ahab both seemed quite clear about what they were doing. Solomon was committed to the creation of a privileged class, and if that meant economic exploitation of ordinary Israelites and foreigners alike, so be it! Ahab meant to possess full power and therefore relished the political oppression of Israel's powerful and powerless alike. I do not think Josiah, however, meant to develop a religion that would seek to control the people. I believe he simply wanted to be a good and godly king; he responded with good intentions to the newfound law code. But lithe best-laid schemes of mice and men" often go astray. They did for Josiah. He soon found himself trapped in a web of religious ritual and control from which he Could not break free. Josiah (640-609 B.C.E.) became king of the southern nation of Judah after it had had fifty-seven years of misrule. The northern kingdom of Israel had finally fallen to the Assyrian threat in 721 B.C.E. Although Judah initially sought safety in relationship with Yahweh under King Hezekiah, this commitment did not endure even to the end of his reign. With the Assyrian threat slowly crumbling, the two subsequent kings of Judah, Manasseh and Amon, led the nation into increasing economic and political exploitation, diverted by a Baal-centered religion of extreme sexual license and greed. When Amon's eight-year-old son, Josiah, ascended the throne, the country was ready for a change. Josiah began by cleaning up Solomon's temple. Eugene Peterson graphically describes what happened: As the temple was being renovated and repaired, Hilkiah the priest found an old book there. The book was brought to Josiah and read aloud to him. It was the book of Deuteronomy. Imagine the impact of that reading. Here is Josiah, disgusted with the evil of his father and grandfather and determined to do something about it, but not knowing quite how. He had no blueprint, no direction, no counsel. The only thing he had inherited from his father and grandfather was fifty-seven years of evil. Now he had this powerful document about the love of God and our worship of him, clear definitions of what is right and wrong, and explicit directions on how to make moral decisions and conduct intelligent worship.3 The message of the scroll was simply that God could not bless or protect Israel if she did not follow the Mosaic covenant. Obedience to the Sinai covenant was interpreted by Josiah and the priests of Israel in terms of liturgical reform, orthodox theology, a refusal to ally with heathen nations, and strict adherence to liturgical, dietetic, and health laws. In compliance with the portions of Deuteronomy he and the priests chose to stress, Josiah launched a radical reform of Judah. He broke off all relations with Assyria and declared complete independence. He had all the altars and high places of Baal in the countryside destroyed, and all cult prostitutes were turned out. Worship was reformed; all shrines to Yahweh outside Jerusalem were demolished to compel centralization of worship at the temple. Everyone was expected strictly to obey the liturgical portions of the Deuteronomic law. The king himself became a chief participant in the worship at the temple and in liturgical reform. But such reforms were only skin-deep. Jeremiah the prophet challenged Josiah's reform effort. He thought it shallow and boldly told Josiah so Ger. 6:16-21). The prophet felt that the court's interpretation of Deuteronomy was dangerous because it held that Yahweh's demands were satisfied by liturgical reform and external compliance to ritual and regulations. True reform, Jeremiah pointed out, required social justice and personal repentance. His basic message was that Israel's commitment to Yahweh was superficial and that the supposed repentance of the people was no repentance at all, for they were not living by the economic, political, and social obligations of the Mosaic covenant. Particularly disturbing to Jeremiah was the trap of logic into which the nation had fallen. Because the newfound scroll implied that God could not bless Israel unless the nation obeyed the ritualistic laws, the people and religious leaders believed that obedience to the law ensured God's protection. Remembering how God had earlier saved Jerusalem from the Assyrians (2 Kings 18:13-19:37), the people believed that God would preserve their country against all aggression. In his famous "Temple Sermon" Ger. 7:1-34), Jeremiah proclaimed that Israel was resorting to folly by believing that God would keep his city and temple from destruction simply because the people were practicing liturgical reform. The only basis for God's protection, the prophet declared, was that "If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the Widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm" (vv. 5-6). The battle that Jeremiah faced had as its real issue the future of the national faith of Israel. Since the construction of the temple by Solomon three hundred years earlier, Israel had time and again proved unfaithful to the covenant. There was a continuing battle between prophet and priest, between covenant keeping and self-serving national religion. At the heart of the debate was the question of the nature of the Sinai covenant. The priests and the kings for more than three hundred years had insisted that both the Sinai and Davidic covenants were essentially liturgical and worship-oriented and had to do with the "religious" or "sacred" part of life. The prophets, by contrast, had maintained that the covenants were essentially life-oriented and thus were concerned with political justice, economic equality, and individual responsibility. This difference in understanding was the foundation for the struggles between Solomon and Israel, the battle between Elijah and Ahab, and now the conflict between Jeremiah and Josiah. The self-interested interpretation that King Josiah and the priests of Judah gave to the rediscovered scroll of the law added a new dimension to this struggle, however. The Sinai and Davidic covenants were in danger of becoming the handmaid of official religion-a major step in turning the Hebrew faith from a servant-oriented religion to a religion of written law. A religion based on written law would increasingly tend to concentrate on obedience to that law rather than on a personal response to God. Jeremiah sensed this potential danger and battled to keep Judah faithful to the covenants. Of course, the question must be asked, "Why would a king want a religion of liturgy, orthodox theology, and strict obedience in which he could participate?" Was Josiah drawn to a liturgical and legalistic interpretation because it would promote order and direction in his chaotic land? Was it that he saw religion as bringing stability to his nation, only to discover as time went on that such a formalized faith actually brought religious tyranny? Religion can both be seduced by and seduce a nation's economic and political forces. It can be used to endorse or legitimize government and economic forces in any city or nation and thereby become a major means for controlling that society and its people. The history of Christianity is replete with examples of such mutual legitimization, where the official religion has blessed the political and economic orders and has been handsomely rewarded and protected by these forces. The recognition that this happens is expressed in the statement, "The church came to do good and ended up doing right well!"
A Scriptural Synopsis of systemic Sin |
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© Viv Grigg
and the Encarnação Alliance Training Commission |
