For many, there is violence and marginalization baked into our systems. What's one commitment you can make today to not let these systems go unchecked?
And at the seventh time, when the priests had blown the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, “Shout! For the Lord has given you the city. The city and all that is in it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall live because she hid the messengers we sent.”
I am very uncomfortable with the stories like this one from the Hebrew Bible and how they describe what feels like God-ordained colonization.
This passage illustrates the mentality that religions have embraced for too long. Christians went from being the underdogs and the oppressed to overtaking cultures and lands, looting and destroying their people and practices, only marginally “sparing” the people who agree to assimilate.
It makes my stomach churn as I witness the horrifying scenes of colonization in my own life and work but also what is happening in the larger world today.
I work within systems and witness our harm on youth and families. I constantly vacillate between an urge to burn everything down and the despair that I cannot.
Huh. In light of this passage, maybe my “burn everything down” inclination isn’t so new and radical after all. I'd really like a better mentality, a Jesus-like approach that I could seek instead. That impulse to takeover is too much like our history.
How do we read and interpret these passages today? How do we reconcile this colonization mentality and seek to address it in the world around us?
That’s a fantastic point about the “burn it down” mentality; I’ll be pondering that this week.
On another note, two books that have helped me read these extremely troubling conquest stories in context are Inspired by Rachel Held Evans, and Decolonizing Palestine by Mitri Raheb.
That’s a fantastic point about the “burn it down” mentality; I’ll be pondering that this week.
On another note, two books that have helped me read these extremely troubling conquest stories in context are Inspired by Rachel Held Evans, and Decolonizing Palestine by Mitri Raheb.