Subversion

Imagine your a Jew in Babylon. You've grown up in a small tribal family, most likely with a rural upbringing. You're culture is one of the extremely few in the entire world that contends that there is only one God. The worst part about it is, the popular cultures surrounding you think that your belief system is just downright weird. It makes no sense. A God who doesn't even show his face to people, who declares that all the other gods that are obviously controlling the various systems of the world don't even exist. Not only are these claims crazy, they're dangerous. A Babylonian has little doubt that such claims could easily incite they're powerful gods to anger and bring down the whole society because of a few insubordinate, stubborn Jews.

If you're a Jew the sharp glances of your Babylonian superiors makes you question if your faith is really one that is in your best interest to hold to. It's never been easy to be a monotheist.

You ended up in Babylon most likely because your family was one of the more influential families of Judea. The Babylonians came into your country with 'shock and awe', and in order to keep the peace, took all the educated officials and influential people that could incite a rebellion and shipped them back to Babylon to live in a ghetto 'for Jews only'. There they were watched carefully. Now socially isolated in an alien land, it became increasingly hard to remember why you should remain a Jew. The Babylonian gods certainly appeared to have silenced YHWH, the omnipotent God of your family. For being omnipotent, he sure did seem powerless in the current situation. His people living in a Babylonian ghetto, eating the table-scraps of the Babylonians. Within thirty years, the kids raised in exile were assimilating into the dominant culture. The Jewish faith was powerless.

It was in this context that the Hebrew Oral Traditions became Hebrew Scriptures. There is no evidence that any of the OT was written before this time. Surely the stories had circulated for quite some time, but it wasn't until they found themselves a generation away from disappearing into Babylon's culture that monotheism became Holy Scripture. Brueggemann refers to it as Text (Babylon) vs. Countertext (Israel). There is a dominant paradigm that comprises the prevailing text, and the subversive paradigm that is the countertext.

The subversive paradigm though does not intend to go head to head with the dominant. It instead hopes to simply be the "pea between the mattresses" that disturbs the larger culture from lulling everyone (including the children of exile) from falling asleep. Or, it could be said, it seeks to be a shepherd boy who does not attempt to do battle on Babylon's terms with sword, shield and armor, but instead, uses a small rock and the grace of YHWH to bring down a nine foot tall warrior with gear weighing as much as a tank.

The OT is not history. It is code. It's a subversive language designed to offer an alternative. Yes I'm sure the traditions of that gave birth to OT Scripture are rooted distantly in some historical occurances, but when we turn our eyes to those we miss the entire point. What God did is secondary to what we need God to do. What he can do, should he choose. If all God offers is a convoluted book of historical facts saying 4,000 years ago he parted a sea and and collapsed some city walls, then the gods of Babylon are still more relevant. I'm glad the God of Israel can do magic tricks, I live in Babylon now, what's it got to do with me?? But. . . . if these writers are giving me examples of the kind of God he is, and the power he still has, and the superior character that he holds against the gods of Babylon . . . . maybe it's not yet time to just assimilate and get it over with? Maybe he's on the verge of doing something amazing. Maybe Persia is coming??

Christian faith is built on, and intended to simply offer an alternative. The alternative is not intended to blow the dominant paradigm out of the water. Rather, it is providing just enough irritation and awkwardness to the prevailing view that we all stand back for a minute and ask some questions. If God had intended to simply download us with a prepackaged paradigm, wouldn't it make sense to at least make the Bible a little more readable, and probably a heck of a lot longer. At least the Qur'an is unified in authorship and only requires me to learn one fifty year historical-political context! If the Christian/Judaic Bible is God's total self-revelation, meant for mass consumption as a coherent life guide, then I'll take Modernity any day.

In the fight against the Enlightenment/Modernity, Christianity attempted to suit up with sword and shield. Before long we ended up so messed up we fought for the Philistines in the name of YHWH against his own people. That's the best metaphor I could find for 500 years of church splits and complicity to colonial oppression. That's the best metaphor to explain the Religious Right and Capitalist Christianity.

As a Christian I have another proposition: There is one God. I can't explain him, so I won't. There is a Son. He gave no explanations, but did offer a better way. There is a Spirit that lives among this community. He gives us values that are totally different and often opposed to those of our world. There is Agape, it is nothing like love as we've heard it. There are Stories. I don't care how factual they are. Their truth has little to do with facts, and they will still cause Babylon to fall.