Mark Noll explains that his goal is not primarily to shed light on the causes or course of the war but rather “to show how and why the cultural conflict that led to such a crisis for the nation also constituted a crisis for theology.” That crisis centered on two questions: what the Bible had to say about slavery, and what the conflict seemed to suggest about God’s providential design for the country. Although “both read the same Bible,” as Lincoln famously observed in his second inaugural, Protestants North and South discovered that “the Bible they had relied on for building up America’s republican civilization was not nearly … as inherently unifying for an overwhelmingly Christian people as they once had thought.”
.. American Protestants were typically suspicious of religious authority and skeptical of intellectual élites, and they thought of the Bible as a “plain book” readily comprehensible to “anyone who simply opened the cover and read.” Many viewed God’s ongoing work in the affairs of men as just as easily apprehended;
Biblical injunctions regarding aliens in our midst
Thanks to my colleague and dean David Garland for compiling the following list of biblical injunctions regarding how God’s people are to treat aliens and strangers among them:
Exodus 22:21 (NRSV)
21 You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
Exodus 23:9 (NRSV)
9 You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
Leviticus 19:33 (NRSV)
33 When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien.
Leviticus 23:22 (NRSV)
22 When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and for the alien: I am the Lord your God.
Leviticus 24:22 (NRSV)
22 You shall have one law for the alien and for the citizen: for I am the Lord your God.
Numbers 15:16 (NRSV)
16 You and the alien who resides with you shall have the same law and the same ordinance.
Deuteronomy 1:16 (NRSV)
16 I charged your judges at that time: “Give the members of your community a fair hearing, and judge rightly between one person and another, whether citizen or resident alien.
Deuteronomy 24:20-21 (NRSV)
20 When you beat your olive trees, do not strip what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.
21 When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.
Deuteronomy 27:19 (NRSV)
19 “Cursed be anyone who deprives the alien, the orphan, and the widow of justice.” All the people shall say, “Amen!”
Jeremiah 7:4-12 (NRSV)
4 Do not trust in these deceptive words: “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.”
5 For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another,
6 if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt,
7 then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever.
Zechariah 7:10 (NRSV)
10 do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.
Malachi 3:5 (NRSV)
5 Then I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be swift to bear witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.
2. We are all aliens.
Psalm 39:12 (NRSV)
12 “Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; do not hold your peace at my tears. For I am your passing guest, an alien, like all my forebears.
Ephesians 2:12 (NRSV)
12 remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
Ephesians 2:19 (NRSV)
19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God,
1 Peter 1:1-2 (NRSV)
1 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To the exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, 2 who have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood: May grace and peace be yours in abundance.
1 Peter 2:11-12
11 Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul. 12 Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge.
3. Show hospitality to strangers (a command, not advice)
Romans 12:13 (NRSV)
13 Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.
Hebrews 13:2 (NRSV)
2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.
1 Peter 3:9 (NRSV)
Be hospitable to one another without complaining.
Richard Rohr: Universal Love
And I can’t deny there are numerous black and white, vengeful scriptures, which is precisely why we must recognize that all scriptures are not equally inspired or from the same level of consciousness. (This is why models of human development like Spiral Dynamics can be so helpful.)
.. Yes, you have to begin with dualistic thinking, just as you must first develop a healthy frame before you can move beyond it. Jesus often made strong binary statements, for example, “You cannot serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24); “The Son of Man will separate the sheep from the goats” (Matthew 25:32-33). We must first be capable of some basic distinctions between good and evil before we then move higher. Without basic honesty and clarity, nondual thinking becomes very naïve. We must first succeed at good dualistic thinking before we also discover its final inadequacy in terms of wisdom and compassion. Not surprisingly, Jesus exemplifies and teaches both dualistic clarity and then non-dual wisdom and compassion: “My Father’s sun shines on both the good and the bad; his rain falls on both the just and the unjust” (Matthew 5:45).
.. As long as your ego is in charge, you will demand a retributive God; you’ll insist that hell is necessary. But if you have been transformed by love, hell will no longer make sense to you because you know that God has always loved you in your sinfulness. Why would God change policies after death?
.. Could God’s love really be that great and universal? Love is the lesson, and God’s love is so great that God will finally teach it to all of us. Who would be able to resist it once they see it? We’ll finally surrender, and God—Love—will finally win. God never loses. That is what it means to be God. That will be God’s “justice,” which will swallow up our lesser versions of retributive justice.
Richard Rohr: One Great Act of Giving Birth
In his letter to the church in Rome, Paul writes: “From the beginning until now, the entire creation, as we know, has been groaning in one great act of giving birth” (Romans 8:22, JB)
.. Just that line should be enough to justify the theory of evolution for Christians. Wouldn’t it make sense that God would give such autonomy and freedom and grace to creation to continue self-creating, just as any mother or father desires for their children?
.. Creation did not happen once by a flick of the divine hand and now it’s slowly winding down toward Armageddon and tragic Apocalypse (which is the hopeless universe inside of which many fundamentalists live). Creation is in fact a life-generating process that’s still happening and winding up!
.. The common Christian understanding that Jesus came to save us by a cosmic evacuation plan is really very individualistic, petty, and even egocentric. It demands no solidarity with anything except oneself. We whittled the great Good News down into what Jesus could do for us personally and privately, rather than God inviting us to participate in God’s universal creative work.
.. Instead of believing that Jesus came to personally fulfill you privately, how about trusting that you are here to fulfill Christ?
.. You are a part of this movement of an ever-growing Cosmic Christ that is coming to be in this “one great act of giving birth.”