Baldilocks and the she bears: is the cross non-violent?

In my initial response to David Ker’s bad boy Bible meme, I mainly asked questions, noting that my most fundamental answer was that I wouldn’t preach on this passage. At least, not in isolation, since its themes need refracting, and of course, in the Anglican tradition one would always have at least two, if not three readings from Scripture in any main act of worship, so either the avoidance or reframing of this story would be possible.

However, since this is a blog, and not a sermon, I want to take this question of interpretation a bit further. I am afraid that this is (no doubt to John Hobbins’ frustration – see his comments on my post) going to end with a question. So let me make up for that with some statements about the story, not least because several other bloggers IMO misunderstood some of what I was saying. First, here’s the story again, this time from the REB (the RefTagger reference at the end will also give you TNIV)

From there Elisha went up to Bethel and, as he was on his way, some small boys came out of the town and jeered at him, saying, ‘Get along with you, bald head, get along.’ He turned round, looked at them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord; and two she-bears came out of a wood and mauled forty-two of them. 2 Kings 2:23-24.

I fundamentally treat this as story, and have no idea what if any connection the Elijah and Elisha cycle has with history, nor indeed how connected or disconnected the various stories within what is now a continuous narrative once were. I don’t think the narrator believes in coincidence, but intends us to see the bears as God’s doing in response to the prophet’s curse. Unlike John Hobbins I think it more likely that the narrator approves of Elisha’s (and the Lord’s) behaviour. I see this as one of several deeds emphasising that Luke Skywalker Elisha is no longer Obi-wan Kenobi’s Elijah’s helpless padawan apprentice, but is now a Jedi Master man of God in his own right. The Force Lord is with him. He is, as I said before, ready to kick the Canaanites in their Baals. Okay, disagree, but that’s what I think.

Now John, in two strong and quite helpful posts, articulates the way in which this story confronts us, on his reading, with the need to accept the power of death as well as life as intrinsic to doing God’s work.

Prophets not only have the power to heal; they also have the power to kill. If they didn’t, it could not be said that God endowed them with his power, because God, notoriously, has the power to kill, not only the power to bring to life.

The fighting of war has been taken away from Spirit-filled men willing to die in order to kill others. No more Samsons, no more minutemen, no more young boys with slingshots. The prosecution of war has been delegated to entities like command centrals of the US Armed Forces and the equivalent of the People’s Republic of China.

Not that anyone except a fool would claim to be morally superior to Elisha or Peter. We live in a different world, but there is more killing, not less, for which we are co-responsible. It’s just that we don’t wait for the Spirit of God to come upon us to do it. That’s too hit-and-miss. That’s hardly efficient.

I hope those excerpts do some justice to John’s chain of thought as he wrestles with the Elisha story. I’m not sure it acknowledges the difference between the search for justice for others, and Elisha’s wounded amour propre. However, John confronts the ways in which the text seems to justify violence as part of doing God’s work, and takes a rather different tack from other bloggers in almost glorying in the violence of the text.

I don’t mean that negatively. For it seems also to be the case – at least on the surface, for I know others have offered more complex readings – that the Book of Revelation glorifies the violence of God’s judgement on all things. One of the most popular views of the Cross today is a kind of cross between Girard and Moltmann, that God suffers rather than exercise his power, and so frees us from the myth of redemptive violence, as well as the cycle of actually reciprocal revenge. There is a lot of power in that model and there are a number of texts that can be called in its support. There are an equal number of texts, not least the Apocalypse, which suggest rather that, if anything the Cross has merely put God’s violence on hold, and when push comes to last shove, Jesus will put God’s cosmic boot in with a vengeance.

The question – and it is perhaps the most important question when it comes to interpret the violent texts of scripture – is this. Should we insist on the action of the Cross understood as God choosing suffering over action, insult over revenge, forgiveness over condemnation as determinative, and thus make this the interpretative key for reading the violent texts as human misunderstandings of God’s love and person? Or should we continue to hold to the violent texts and see the Cross as one way in which God exercises a unified power to give life and bring death, a postponement of a wrathful judgement, but not a cancellation of it? And in making up our minds whether we plump for one of those two or reject them as a false opposition, what do we do about all the ways in which Jesus’ non-violent acceptance of the Cross is portrayed in the language of violence: displaying the forces of evil as captive and subjugated in his imperial triumph? It seems to me that those (which I intend to be illustrative rather than exhaustive) questions, and others like them, will say far more about how we read the story of Elisha and the bears than any specific response to just this one story.

Tagged as: Cross, Elisha, Old Testament, violence