The Wednesday book group is currently reading The Harlot by the Side of the Road: Forbidden Tales of the Bible. It has been an interesting read of some less-than-savory stories not normally addressed in “good church company.” The book is divided up into seven stories. The format is that the author will retell the story he is addressing in a sort of contemporary midrash (we might call it 'historical fiction'), which is then followed by his critique-deconstruction-commentary on the story.
Last week we read and discussed the story of Jephthah's daughter. If you aren't familiar with that story, it can be found in Judges 11. But in short, Jephthah is a mercenary who gets hired for a particular battle. He prays to God, vowing to sacrifice to God the first person to come out of his tent to greet him. As it turns out, it's his only daughter who becomes the victim. As you would expect, we had an interesting time discussing this story and one of the questions asked of me was, “Why is this story even in the Bible? What can we possibly learn from it?”
My answer then was, “Because if anything, it makes the words of Jesus even more important – let your yes be yes and your no be no. By making over-the-top vows, you'll just get yourself in trouble.”
That answer is still valid; but I later read a blog post that put a new spin on this story and made it relevant for today.
On the blog FreedHearts, the author of this post was discussing the situation of a stereo-typical conservative Christian pastor in dealing with LGBT people. In this situation the only acceptable answer is, “Because the Bible says so,” and any open questions, or questions that challenge a particular understanding, are not allowed. The hypothetical question then became, “What if the pastor's child comes out as gay or trans?”
There are two possible answers. Either the pastor reevaluates his position regarding LGBT people, which will most likely result in his dismissal from the congregation, or the pastor “sacrifices his own child to preserve [his understanding of the Bible and the doctrine of his church].”
This is a modern-day example of the story of Jephthah's daughter. Jephthah's vow to sacrifice whoever came out of his tent put him in a terrible predicament. Jephthah's vow put him in a position of either sacrificing his daughter in blind obedience to that vow, or of ignoring that vow and running the risk of being damned for all eternity by a wrathful God. People in the pastor's position are faced with the same dilemma: they either sacrifice their own children in blind obedience to their vow of biblical inerrancy, or they face eternal damnation by a wrathful God because they ignored the “clear teaching of the Bible.”
What I see in the story of Jephthah's daughter and the story of so many LGBT people at the hands of the church are extremely similar: in both stories, the children who challenge the vows made to God are sacrificed on the altar of blind obedience; some tragically.
We can do better. We should do better.
And the only person we should be sacrificing is ourselves when we willingly step up and speak out in the name of love.
Amen.
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