Have you understood nothing?
There is an article in New Scientist by a couple of eminent professors, one of Hebrew Bible and one of New Testament, dealing with a variety of leaders of Christian groups who ascribe the Ebola epidemic to a divine punishment.
I have absolutely no time for people who do this, and still less for people who do it and then fail to render assistance to those who are suffering because “it is God’s will”. I agree with everything the writers say, in fact.
But I am surprised that neither of them marshals specific arguments from the traditions they teach. Where, for instance, is the reference to the book of Job (by either of them) in which, inter alia, Job is afflicted with a number of diseases through absolutely no fault of his own, and his “friends” who suggest that this is divine punishment for him secretly having been a bad lad are roundly criticised by God? Where is the reference by Candida Moss to John 9:3, in which Jesus says “neither this man nor his parents sinned” in response to his disciples asking why a man had been born blind?
I rather suspect the authors of the Fourth Gospel of having minimised the acerbity of Jesus’ comment here; this was, after all, someone who consorted with all the kinds of people whom the ilk of leaders who make these remarks regard as “undeserving”, i.e. with agents of a foreign invader, members of despised religions, extorters of taxes, prostitutes and other sinners, and who healed profligately and in circumstances distinctly frowned on by the religious authorities of the day. He was quite commonly acerbic with those religious leaders, and (particularly in Mark) not terribly polite to his disciples when they failed to understand things (Peter being told “get thee behind me, Satan” springs to mind).
I can easily insert words which the Jesus of my understanding may have said and which have been left out here, such as “have you understood NOTHING?”
And that is pretty much my response to any leader describing himself as Christian who makes such crass remarks.
August 23rd, 2014 at 9:58 am
I should perhaps point out that I do not include the authors of the article I link to in the targets of “have you understood nothing?”. I’m quite confident from the tenor of their writing that they do understand; my surprise is that they don’t include specific material from within their fields of study to back up their argument, which they could trivially have done.
I speculate on their motives, which may be that they want to speak to a non-Jewish non-Christian liberal audience. If so, I think it’s a pity; the stories work whether or not you subscribe to the theology.