Faith in God provides with me security and a refuge

The most important message I picked up from today’s readings overall is faith in God provides with me security and a refuge.

My primary takeaway from each of the passages was this:

• Numbers 35 & 36:  The portion allotted to the Levites (priests), cities of refuge, and the inheritance of widows.
• John 8: Jesus forgives the adulterous woman, and then makes the bold proclamation that he is the Son of God.
• Psalms 76: A prayer of praise to the awe-inspiring God.
• Proverbs 14: “In the fear of Yahweh is powerful security; for his children he is a refuge.”

Here at the end of the book of Numbers, we learn about how the Levites (priests) are taken care of, since they do not receive land. We also learn about the inheritance of widows, set up so that the land they inherit from their husbands will not pass out of their husband’s clan.

We also learn about cities of refuge. In the world of the old testament, the rule of “an eye for an eye” was the prevailing law. If someone was killed, either intentionally or accidentally, it was the right of the family of the dead person to take revenge on those who killed him. The creation of cities of refuge and the laws surrounding them provided a safe place for someone who accidentally killed another person to live out their lives without interference. While in the cities of refuge, these people were safe from vendettas. All throughout the Psalms we see prayers and songs that refer literally and metaphorically to the cities of refuge. The creation of these cities was the beginning of the end of “an eye for an eye,” although it was a traditional practice that was so hard to kill that Jesus was still talking about it twelve hundred years later.

In John 8 we come to the story of the woman who is caught in the act of committing adultery. The punishment for that crime in that time was death by stoning. However, the men who have her in custody bring her to Jesus first because they are still trying to trap him into saying something that blatantly violates their laws. They ask him what he has to say. Without saying anything, he squats down to the floor and starts writing on the ground with his finger.

No one knows what he was writing. There have been great debates in the Christian community about what he was doing, but nothing has ever been determined to be definitive, and in fact it was never recorded. Some think he was using the time to think about what to say. Others think he was writing the names of the men in the group who had brought the woman in, who were also guilty of adultery. We don’t really have any idea what he was doing.

But we do know what he said: “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” This hearkens back to Matthew 7:5 when he says, “You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

One by one each of them leaves, leaving the woman there by herself. Jesus asks the woman who is there to accuse her now, and she says, “No one.” He tells her that neither does he accuse her, and to go and sin no more.

Jesus seemed particularly offended by hypocrites. For a woman to be caught in the act of adultery, there had to have been a man who was caught in the act with her. But where was the man? He wasn’t in danger of being stoned. They only took the woman; only accused the woman. That was an enormous double standard that persists to this day.

There is no criminal penalty for adultery in our society, but women pay the price regularly for the indiscretions of men. Women who are raped, or who get pregnant out of wedlock, or who are sexually harassed at work or elsewhere, regularly (and usually) suffer the indignity of being accused of having done something to deserve it. Even today, in the twenty-first century, men are not held accountable for their actions when it comes to sexual indiscretions. Jesus is right here among us saying the same thing to those men as he said to the ones we’re reading about today in John 8, two thousand years ago. This is one of the many ways in which Jesus was a great feminist. He advocated for women and sought to liberate them from the oppression and double standards that existed at that time, and he did it through scenes like this one. He didn’t work only to liberate women, but to liberate everyone who was experiencing this level of injustice or hypocrisy. It is one of the many ways in which he fulfilled the prophecy in Isaiah, when he said, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free.” (Luke 4:18)

After this, Jesus continues speaking, and enters into a dialogue with the Jews remaining in the temple after the woman had left. This may be one of the most difficult books in the Bible for many to read. There are a lot of people out there who think of Jesus as a prophet, or a revolutionary, or a holy man, or great philosopher, but not as the Son of God. Many of them actually say, “Jesus never claimed to be God.” However, here in John 8 we see that he clearly did make that claim, and in no uncertain terms.

Jesus also talks about the devil, which is another uncomfortable topic for many people who consider themselves to be rational, intelligent people (myself included). He not only acknowledges the existence of the devil, but he accuses the people he’s talking to (and those who identify with them, or resemble them) of being children of the devil. Oofda! He does not mince words. It’s difficult to impossible to misinterpret what he is saying, here.

In the twenty-first century, many people find it difficult to impossible to believe in the devil, even if they do believe in God; especially the way that some people teach about them. There are still people out there teaching about God and the devil as literal personifications that are embodied in an old man with a white beard sitting on a throne in an actual physical location in the heavens, and a red human figure with horns, hoofs, a forked tongue, and a tail with an arrow on the end of it.

I do not visualize either God or the devil in those ways. For me, those personifications don’t even work as metaphors, although they apparently did and do work for some, and for thousands of years as well as in the present day. If those personifications work for you, great–whatever works for you.

As for myself, I have too much education and scientific experience for those personifications to work for me. However, I also have too much life experience and personal experience of things that I cannot explain with pure science to deny the existence of something that is much greater than myself, and which has manifested itself physically in my life, and the lives of countless millions of others throughout history and in the present.

What I do visualize is two opposing forces much like the yin and yang, in which a great battle between good and evil is raging underneath our entire physical reality. Alan Watts called this the game of black and white. Occasionally, it breaks right into our physical reality. I believe Jesus was one of those incidences of it breaking into our physical reality. He actually existed, and this is documented in history. His time here on Earth, his teachings, and his influence changed the course of western history, and is so embedded in it that the way we divide historical time was affected by it.* It also changed the course of millions of lives in ways we can’t fully explain or understand. All we can do is try to do our best to live out that change and that reality in a way that helps others to experience the positively life-altering experience we’ve had, so that others can experience it also. If we do it the way Jesus taught us to do it, then it will only do good and no harm.

So, Jesus makes the bold claim that he is the Son of God, and he also makes the bold claim that those who refuse to recognize that he is the Son of God, or at least that he is here to do good in the name of God, are children of the devil. Before you dismiss that as nonsense, I would encourage you to read all four gospels. It’s worth knowing exactly what you’re dismissing before doing so. Make an informed decision.

Throughout the gospels, we see that Jesus is constantly provoking the Pharisees and Jews who cling to the law of Moses but don’t live it out in spirit. He actively works to prick their conscience so that it will convict them of their own hypocrisy. However, now we see that in the book of John, Jesus is not only provoking them, he is provoking US in the same way! How do we respond when we read this book? Do we agree with him? Do we recognize him for who he is? Do we see that there is a dark force that holds many people firmly in its grip, such that they betray themselves and those around them by calling evil good and good evil? Jesus talked about that in all three of the previous gospels, calling it the only unforgivable sin. Everything else we do is forgivable, no matter how bad; but failing to allow our eyes to be opened to what is truly good and what is truly evil, and–even worse–claiming evil is good and good is evil, is apparently something from which we can never recover.

In all of the previous Read the Bible in a Year blog posts, I’ve just given you my reflections on the reading and what I get out of it. Today I have a bigger question for you: Where do you stand on the issue of who Jesus was and is? Where do you stand on the issue of good versus evil? Can you recognize the difference when you see it? I think this is the most important issue you, or any of us, will ever be confronted with in our lives. Think about it. If you want to talk about it, you can post to our Private Facebook group, or you can just email me about it directly if you don’t want to have a group discussion. Or you can just pray about it. But don’t ignore it. The Holy Spirit has a way of chasing people down until they deal with this issue.

In Psalms 76 we find a prayer of praise to the awe-inspiring God.

In Proverbs 14 we make a full circle back to the last chapters in Numbers. In this set of proverbs, we find one that refers to God being a refuge for his children. We also find a full circle back to John 8, as there are several verses that talk about telling the truth, not telling lies, and recognizing the life-giving truth of God.

That’s what I got out of it. What did you get out of the readings today?

To participate in a discussion about the posts, please join us in our private Facebook group that I set up specifically for sharing what we take-away from the readings each day.

If you haven’t gotten the FREE “Read the Bible in a Year” worksheet yet, you can download it here. It is not necessary for you to start on January 1st–you can start from the beginning on whatever date you get the worksheet. Join us!

Learn more about why I read the Bible all the way through every year, and feel free to share with anyone you think could benefit. 

This post is part of the series, “Read the Bible in a Year.”

To see other posts in this series, go to the Chronological Index of Read the Bible in a Year Posts.

———————————————————

*BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini, which in Latin means “In the year of our Lord”). After two thousands years of this Christian bias in the world of history and historians, BC and AD were replaced by BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (the Common Era).