A Home-made Theology of the Judgment of the Nations

A HOME-MADE THEOLOGY OF THE JUDGMENT OF THE NATIONS

Sat. June 23rd, 2018

Tex Sample’s article "Teaching Biblical Patriotism as Pastoral Care: God, Country, and Stories of Working Class Pain" is dated June 13th of this year and can be read at https://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/8958/teaching-biblical-patriotism-as-pastoral-care-god-country-and-stories-of-working-class-pain.  It is a many-faceted essay on working class pain, and what our country needs to do to address this problem.  The article begins:

“Patriotism is an important part of traditional conservatism, a cultural resource for most working-class white Americans. Without question, love of country can be both a motivation for the good and a problem. Love of country can become idolatry. Such patriotism can be an inordinate love that leads to excesses and extremes, to militarism, to an ethos of violence, and to a regimented mindset.

“At the same time, love of country can also be valuable. To love this land, to love its people, does not require that it be idolized. Love of country does not have to be . . . white supremacist. It depends on how wide the reach is of those to whom we belong.”

The problem of working class pain is one of the biggest problems facing the United States today, and I want to write about it.  But not until I have read more about it.  Tex Sample is writing a book about it; his article is a shorter version of the book and what you might call a "down pay­ment" on the book.  The book has been entitled Working Class Rage: A Field Guide to White Anger and Pain, and it is due to be published by Abingdon Press in September 2018.  I aim to read it.

But in the meantime, I am going to address another aspect of Sample's outstanding article, the question of what the Bible, especially the Old Testament, has to say about patriotism.  What Christians need, and what I find lacking, is a theology of the judgment of the nations.

There's a lot of ground to be cleared, but I am going to start by explaining why I use the term Old Testament, and why I like it.  In the wake of Hitler, many liberal Christians have taken to using the term Hebrew Bible instead of the term Old Testament.  This trend is closely tied in with the post-Hitler need to respect Jewish things -- Jewish beliefs, Jewish books, Jewish people, Jewish cemeteries, and all things Jewish.  I do respect them.  But a disagreement about Jesus remains.  The turning point for me -- the "hinge" on which the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament turns -- my proof text -- is at Luke 24:13-27, the passage which we Christians call the road to Emmaus.  Jesus has a certain tendency -- completely out of fashion among teachers in my time -- to call His followers stupid -- or maybe was Jesus's Aramaic more slangy, like saying dumb instead of saying stupid? -- when they don't catch on to things He says.  Verses 25 to 27 tie up the story of the road to Emmaus:

" 'How dull you are!' he answered [Jesus answered his two followers who were walking to Emmaus].  26  'Was not the Messiah bound to suffer in this way before entering upon his glory?'  27  Then, starting from Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them in the whole of scripture the things that referred to himself."  [It does not matter which translation I quoted, but it is the Revised English Bible.]

The question is, where did I get the idea that the Old Testament prophesies the coming of Jesus, the Messiah?  The answer is, I got that idea from Jesus himself.  He said it at Luke 24:26-27.  That is why I refer to the Hebrew Bible as the Old Testament.  The Old Testament -- the English word testament used to mean covenant or legal document -- is the left wing of revelation, the New Testament is the right wing of revelation, Jesus is the heart of revelation, and Luke 24:25-27 is the muscle that connects the two wings of revelation to the heart.  That's why I call the Hebrew Scripture the Old Testament.  But saying "Old Testament" changes absolutely nothing about my duty to protect Jews from people like Hitler.

With that said, the Old Testament speaks often of the nations, but when it speaks so, it does not include Israel (or Judah).  The nations is a translation of a Hebrew term which means, in its usage if not in its literalness, foreign countries.  To opine for a moment about the English language, "foreign countries" is a tremendously useful term which means "all countries but our own."

The God I believe in is a God of all nations.  When the God I believe in judges the nations, he judges my country along with the other countries.  I follow Jesus, and that means I believe whatever is said about Yahweh in the Old Testament is said about my God.  Yahweh judges the nations = My God judges the nations.  But -- important point which I am saying a second time and emphasizing here -- when God judges the nations, he judges my country along with, and at the same time as, the others.

Sample's article addresses what the Bible has to say about the judgment of the nations.  He writes:

"the nations of the world will be judged ultimately by how they meet raw human need (as with the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31), even as they march in that final eschatological parade (Revelation 21). And yet, in the midst of all these teachings, we are called to be subordinate to the ruling authorities (Romans 13), albeit in a biblical context."

(We have expanded Sample's abbreviations for the books of the Bible.  Our gut feeling, evidently not shared by tons of people, is that writing down the extra letters, so that the whole word of the name of the book of the Bible is written down, is a sign of respect.)

So next, I look at these Bible passages that Sample refers to.  I read Revelation chapter 21 looking for the nations.  I find Revelation 21:24: "By its light [Jerusalem's light] shall the nations walk, and to it the kings of the earth shall bring their splendour."  Sample calls that the "final eschatological parade" -- but those Bible words really fail to say anything at all to me about the judgment of the nations. 

Matthew 25:32 (Jesus speaking) tells me a little bit more:

31  'When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne,  32  with all the nations gathered before him.  He will separate people into two groups, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats;  33  he will place the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left.  34  Then the king will say to those on his right, 'You have my Father's blessing . . .  35  For when I was hungry, you gave me food; when thirsty, you gave me drink; when I was a stranger, you took me into your home;  36  when naked, you clothed me; when I was ill, you came to my help; when in prison, you visited me.'  . . .  41  Then he will say to those on his left, 'A curse is on you; go from my sight to the eternal fire that is ready for the devil and his angels.  41  For when I was hungry, you gave me nothing to eat; when thirsty, nothing to drink;  . . . '

Here Jesus teaches important things about heaven, about being a Christian -- and particularly about the commonality of goals between people who focus on salvation, and people who focus on the social gospel.  But I do not learn much about the judgment of the nations.  I have specific beliefs about things my country has done which were wicked.  You have specific beliefs about things your country has done which were wicked.  We all have specific beliefs about things other countries have done which were wicked.  Where is the judgment of the nations?  When is the judgment of the nations?  Where in the housekeeping of heaven are nations punished for their wicked deeds?  Because "the nations" in Matthew 25:32 in Jesus' narration dissolves into a reference to God's judgment of individual human beings.

Now the Old Testament is filled with references to the earthly punishments of nations.  But nations share many moral properties with individual human beings, and one of the most important of these shared properties is that nations, like individual human beings, often get away with stuff on earth.  Evil stuff.  Nations are punished over and over on earth, but these punishments are crummier and more soiled than the justice any jury has ever given to any one human being.  On our earth, nations are repeatedly punished when they have done nothing wrong, and repeatedly not punished when they have done very wrong.  Heavenly justice is the vision of the just man and the just woman.  But if there is no heavenly judgment of nations, a heavenly justice to satisfy "those who hunger and thirst to see right prevail" (the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:6) will be totally impossible.

Ministers of the Gospel have invited me to agree with the prophet Jeremiah, when he condemns King Zedekiah of Judah for rebelling against the Babylonian Empire.  But I cannot agree with the prophet Jeremiah in this matter.  King Zedekiah's rebellion was a disastrous error of judgment.  I am suspicious of rebellions in general -- I am always suspicious of their chances of success -- and people who consider revolution to be romantic are stark raving lunatics in my opinion.  Furthermore, the atheists are totally correct when they call a thing like King Zedekiah's rebellion "a disaster of Biblical proportions."  But our God, I say to you, does not punish human beings for being stupid; neither does He punish nations for behaving stupidly, and against their own best interests.  Every punishment which has ever come upon human beings for being stupid, or against nations for being stupid, has been a human punishment which has come from human sources.  Our God punishes people, and nations, for being wicked.  I can find a lot of bad judgment in King Zedekiah's rebellion against Babylon; but I cannot find any wickedness. 

At the end of the Concord Hymn, the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson speaks to a spirit:

Spirit, that made those heroes dare,
To die, and leave their children free . . .

Emerson was talking about the spirit which possessed the embattled farmers at the battles of Concord and Bunker Hill.  Adult patriotism makes a person pause and reflect, that all human beings long to be the citizens of a country, some of whose people have died, in order to set their children free.  If there is an American who believes, dying to leave your children free is for the citizens of large countries; it is not an ideal for the citizens of small countries, like King Zedekiah's Judah; then I have to disagree with that American.  Is there such an American?  I don't know; but if there is such an American, then that American is completely comfortable with what the Romans did to Jesus.  The thrust of the Church as a whole, over the last two thousand years, has been to lay the entire blame of the crucifixion on the Jews, excusing the crucifiers themselves, who were Romans executing a Roman command.  And what is the outcome of that?  A small country is blamed, a large empire is excused.  Matthew has Pontius Pilate wash his hands of Jesus' blood, and if there is an American who believes that rebellions are only for large countries like the United States, then I say to you, that American is ripe to believe that the crucifiers did nothing against God's law, and any cruelty committed by the United States of America against the people of any small country in the future is similarly excused before God's throne.  But I disagree.  I say to you, King Zedekiah made a disastrous error of judgment, but he wanted to leave his children free, and I can find no fault in that.  I must disagree with the prophet Jeremiah in this matter.  Jerusalem and Zedekiah were terrifyingly punished by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon; but this punishment did not come from God.  It was a human punishment.  It was a punishment for being stupid, and any punishment for being stupid is not from God, because our God is a God of both stupid and smart.  Our God punishes for wickedness, not for stupidity. 

Jeremiah, no.  I foresee a judgment of the nations by God, a judgment in which the nations will be judged on the same basis which Jesus declares to us, in Matthew chapter 25, saying, this is the basis, on which the individual human being will be punished.

Now if after the judgment of the nations, the nations will burn, then who will feel the heat of that burning?  An unknown ancient Greek poet said the mills of God grind slow.  Who will feel the heat from the judgment of the nations?  I can only understand it in this way: that when the individual human being stands before God, God will bring up the wickedness done by the individual's country, in the adulthood of that human being, listing those things mingled with the wickedness done by that individual.

If I may use commas unconventionally: The individual human being, is well advised, to tremble at the thought of the punishment God reserves for wicked deeds.  The nations of this world are similarly well advised, to tremble at the thought of the punishment God reserves for their wicked deeds.  This is the theology of the judgment of the nations.  Loving your country is a good thing.  Sample's description of patriotism as a cultural resource is a weighty description, and it has the ring of truth!  But trembling at the thought of the punishment that waits for your country's wicked deeds is also a good thing.

Frank Newton

Crash Course in Southern Pronunciation and Grammar

CRASH COURSE IN SOUTHERN PRONUNCIATION AND GRAMMAR

Sat. June 16th, 2018 (with a correction Sun. Sept. 2nd, 2018)

Perhaps you are not a native of Dixie, but you have a sudden need to pass as a person born and bred in the South of the U.S.  This little essay will put you on the right path.  In a linguistic outburst or moment, Monty Python once observed that "Isoglosses were erected to repel invaders."  "Isoglosses" are the dotted lines that separate the dialect peculiarities of each small town from the dialect peculiarities of the next small town over, as illustrated in Leonard Bloomfield's book Language on page 326.  Monty Python were probably thinking of the small towns of England and Scotland, but something similar applies in the Southern U.S.  Nonetheless, there are three general characteristics, and they will be explained here.

(1) The Beautiful Pronoun.  Talking to more than one person?  In some parts of the English-speaking world, you will say, "you lot."  In the vast majority of the United States, you will say, "you guys."  But if you were born in the South, if your parents were born in the South, and if you haven't traded in your tongue for a more worldly model, you will say, "y'all" or its grander uncontracted form "you all" (which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Mark Antony when he says "You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown" -- sounds very Southern if you glide over the Roman holiday, and pretend not to notice "thrice").  The apostrophe in y'all marks the exact spot where the "ou" of "you" disappeared.  If you write ya'll, you are very likely to be a Southerner, but nevertheless, your apostrophe has slipped a gear, because y'all does not have the same background as I'll, you'll, we'll, they'll, in which the apostrophe marks the spot where the "wi" of "will" disappeared.  I once saw a bumper sticker in Chapel Hill, one of the many intellectual capitals of the South.  The bumper sticker maker had printed "NO NUKES YA'LL," but the bumper sticker owner had taken scissors to the bumper sticker and rearranged it to say "NO NUKES Y'ALL."  Quite rightly!

To borrow an idea from southern France, Dixie could be poetically called the Langue de Y'all.

There is a small portion of the South where people say "y'uns" instead (derived seemingly from "you ones", but it doesn't sound right unless contracted).  My friend Harrison has been known to say y'uns.  There's an isogloss waiting to be figured out -- the exact geographical home and haunt (or distribution) of "y'uns" is unclear to me.

Back to y'all.  There's an idea that's gained traction, that Southerners sometimes say y'all to one person.  In my view, that can happen, but it has the exact same meaning as saying "you guys" to one person.  If a Southerner says y'all to one person, the Southerner probably means "your group, including you who are here, plus your significant other or your family and friends who are not here."

Basically, if you know how to use "you guys" or "you lot" or "you people," then you know how to use "y'all."  I had a linguistic professor (Robert Rodman) who came into class one day and pointed out that Americans don't say "You guys eat you guys' spinach."  Instead they say, "You guys eat your spinach."  At the beginning of the sentence, you have established that you are talking to several people.  When it comes time to use the possessive form of the pronoun, you insert the simpler form "your," usually singular nowadays -- but after all, "you" and "your" continue the old plural pronoun of Old English.  Arriving at the punchline, Southerners say "Y'all eat your spinach."  We don't say "Y'all eat y'all's spinach."  Different pronoun.  Same grammar.  In the song Ode to Billie Joe, Bobbie Gentry has the narrator's mother say "Y'all remember to wipe your feet."  That's good grammar y'all -- Southern on the ground, on the farm and in the town.

In the movie Rush Hour, Chris Tucker corrects Jackie Chan's pronunciation of y'all several times.  To tell you the truth, I thought Jackie Chan pronounced it pretty well.

(2) The Beautiful Vowel.  The South has its own sounds (see #3 below).  But first, we will mention a conservative tendency in Southern pronunciation.  Southerners, like Northeasterners, will use one vowel sound in the woman's name Dawn, and a different vowel sound in the man's name Don.  The American's "Don" sounds close to the Englishman's "darn," inasmuch as the Englishman is not pronouncing the R in darn; and the American's Don is the same from Carolina to California (with a possible exception for New York City).  The linguistic letter for the American's Don is simply /a/.  A as in Spanish.  The Southerner's Dawn has a different vowel sound, which linguists call an "open O" and write with a backwards c -- a little O with a hole punched on the left side of the circle.  It will be too hard to try to write that symbol in my blog, but you can picture what it looks like.  I call the sound of it the beautiful vowel.  It sounds halfway over to the "oh" in "oh yeah," but people in the Western United States do not use this vowel sound at all.  They pronounce Dawn the same as Don.  In the South, they sound different.  At least, with the same disclaimer: if you were born in the South, if your parents were born in the South, and if you haven't traded in your tongue for a more worldly model.  In the South, "caller" sounds different from "collar," and "caught" sounds different from "cot."  Caller and caught have the open O like Dawn -- halfway over to the OH sound.  Collar and cot have the ah-sound like Don.  Generally the AU and AW and ALL words have the open O vowel.  But then so do "dog" and "broad" and "gone."  To do this right, you have to memorize how some words sound (dog, broad, gone).  But if you are following me thus far with your tongue, you are on the right track.

To wrap up on point #2, the beautiful pronoun (y'all) contains the beautiful vowel (open O).

(3) The Rebel I.  "The rebel I" is a nickname for a vowel sound which Southerners use in the words that teachers call the words with Long I.  You can hear the alternative to the rebel I, when the Beatles sing (in "I Saw Her Standing There") "And I held her hand in mine."  "Mine" sounds like "mah-een" which is called a diphthong, meaning that one vowel sound glides over to another.  There is only one pronounced vowel letter in "mine."  But when you hear the Beatles sing "mah-een" you hear two vowel sounds.  A little exaggerated -- but still, that's how it's said every day in most of the English-speaking world.  Not in the South.  When you get to the end of the vowel sound in "mine" in the South, you are making exactly the same sound you were making when the vowel sound began.  That's not a diphthong -- it's a monophthong (mun-AHF-thong).  Our rebel I is halfway between the short A of Dan and the American short O of Don -- the latter being ah, as we've already noted.  It's not a long way from Dan to Don -- but somehow, Southerners manage to fit "dine" halfway in between.

There's an isogloss that goes with the rebel I -- an elusive dotted line, I don't know exactly where, but somewhere between North Carolina and Alabama.  In the deep South -- in Alabama, for example -- all long I's have the rebel I sound, and "right" has the same vowel sound as "ride."  But the shallow South, including North Carolina, is way trickier.  In the shallow South, you only hear the rebel I at the end of a syllable, as in "my," and before the voiced consonants B, D, G, J, L, M, N, V, Z.  If the long I is before one of the voiceless consonants F, K, P, S, T, the shallow Southerner will not pronounce the rebel I:  he or she will use the diphthong, just like a Northerner.  The shallow Southerner has the rebel I sound in "ride," but the diphthong in "right"; the rebel I sound in "rival," but the diphthong in "rifle"; the rebel I sound in "tidal," but the diphthong in "title."  Except for the T as in "title" (which has gone over to a D sound in the South as in most of the rest of the U.S.), this voiceless consonant thing goes according to the sound -- not according to the spelling.  The C in "rice" is pronounced like an S -- so the shallow Southerner gives the I the diphthong sound.  Rice.  But the S in "rise" is pronounced like a Z -- so the shallow Southerner gives the I the rebel I sound, just like the deep Southerner.  Rise.

In Ken Burns' movie of the Civil War, the Tennessean who has become a prisoner of war says "We're fighting for our rights."  For a split second, the Northerner thinks he said "We're fighting for our rats."  But then he catches on.  Like a deep Southerner, the Tennessean used the rebel I in "rights" (as well as "fighting").

It is unclear to me if Roy Orbison put into his song "Blue Bayou" the line that says "With that girl of mine by my side, the silver moon and the evening tide."  But later singers have sung it like that.  Here, all Southerners agree -- "mine by my side" and "tide" have the rebel I.  Practice will make perfect!

You may have thought dialects were easy.  Not really.  But if you have followed me this far, you can pass.  There is more, but now you have the big points.

This is my way.  James Thurber sketched another way.  If you have a pressing need to sound like a Southerner, you could try saying "Are you sitting in the catbird seat?"  But, my way is more reliable.

Frank Newton

Protection Failures as a Cause of Oppression

PROTECTION FAILURES AS A CAUSE OF OPPRESSION

Wed. June 13th, 2018

If you are supposed to protect somebody, and you try to protect them and fail, it makes you ornery.  That is why women's rights tend to decay after a war, especially after a losing war.  A war heightens men's perception that they are supposed to protect women.  But a war also heightens men's awareness of how difficult it is to protect people.  One response of people who are tasked with protecting others, and feeling that they are having a hard time protecting them, is to reduce the liberty of the people being protected, in order to make it easier to protect them.  So, when it is difficult to protect women, and men believe that it is important to women that men protect them, the men tend to take away some of the rights of women, or at least try to take away some of their rights.  To take a non-feminist example, if a successful surprise attack is conducted against a nation, and the people complain that their government failed to protect them from the attackers, the natural reaction of the government will be to take away some of the rights of the people, in order to make them easier to protect.

An extreme case of this problem with our world -- this evil state of affairs, if you will -- is described and analyzed in Lu Xùn's essay "My Views on Chastity" which Gladys Yang translated into English, along with selected other writings by Lu Xùn, in Silent China.  In "My Views on Chastity" Lu describes and critiques a civilization in which women who were raped were expected and encouraged to commit suicide (it was the civilization he grew up in).

This line of thought suggests that you should be cautious about complaining that some group of people are supposed to protect you and they did a lousy job, because that group of people might respond by reducing your rights.

Frank Newton