CHRIST-APP by philtierneyblog

A Kingdom Divided

Let me explain how seeking to use force, whether by using violence or even power politics to impose faith, has worked out in the past. There are seven stories, true stories throughout history, that may help you understand the folly of using force to make people or nations become the way Christians think God wants them to be. Of course, the vast preponderance of American Christians thinks that history, even the history of the people of biblical faith has no relevance for them at all. Altogether too many have been taught to jump from 1^st century Christians in the New Testament writings to themselves in the 21^st century. Many have been led to believe that the only real Christians were the first ones and themselves. The rest may be suspect and not real Christians at all. Nonetheless, I ask you to try to hear what God has to say to you through people of faith in past history.

The First Story: A Kingdom Divided

Once the Hebrews occupied Canaan in about 1250 BC, they were a loosely confederated cluster of tribes. They shared a common ancestry, faith, language, rituals, customs and collective experiences. The land of Canaan was a vassal province of Egypt, at the time, and remained so for about 150 more years until about 1100 BC. Once Canaan was free from Egyptian control, the Jewish people were afraid that Egypt or some other kingdom would control them again. They wanted to become a nation with a king instead of vulnerable tribes. Saul became there first king about 1020 BC.

The Jewish kingdom went through civil conflicts until David became king and defeated his foes. His son, Solomon, ruled over a sovereign and prosperous united kingdom. A few years after King Solomon died, the Jewish kingdom divided into two kingdoms over the issues of taxes and who should rule. The kingdom of Israel was in the north and the kingdom of Judah was in the south.

Little more than 150 years after they divided Israel was conquered by the Assyrian Empire. From 721 BC until the Jewish people gain independence from the Seleucid Empire (Greeks), about 129 BC, they were controlled by foreign, pagan empires. For almost 600 years the Jewish people were subjects of a series of empires – Assyria, Babylon, Persia and Greece.

No matter how faithful a people hope and claim to be, divisions brought on by disagreements over power can be devastating to the very people claiming to be God’s people. Nothing divides people more than political and religious disagreements. Divided peoples are weakened by their divisions and often lose their autonomy to other powers. The more people of faith seek power the more likely they are to lose it altogether.

Nothing divides people as powerfully as religion and politics. That’s why people have been told not to talk about either in polite social settings. Opinions about them tend to be devoutly if not dogmatically held, and that can lead to unnecessarily unpleasant divisions. The use of power politics to promote personal religious convictions can divide people more than anything else. And as Jesus said, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.” (Matthew 12:25) Division destroys.

The Second Story: Divisions Destroy

The Jewish people gained independence from the Greeks (the Seleucid Empire) by 129 BC after a successful revolt led by the Maccabees. The Jewish Hasmonean dynasty began when the brother of Judas Maccabeus became the king of the Jews. The second king of that dynasty was Alexander Jannaeus.

Jannaeus served both as king of the Jewish people and high priest of the Jewish religion. As such, he was a member of the Sadducee party. The Sadducees were priests and nobles, and their followers lived mostly in the Jerusalem metropolitan area. The Pharisees were another Jewish religious party. The Pharisees were mostly rural rabbis. Their followers were largely rural laborers.

The Pharisees were fierce in their opposition to Jannaeus. They completely disagreed with him about their shared Jewish beliefs, customs, culture and politics. The Pharisees believed the most important part of their faith was knowledge of and obedience to the Hebrew Scriptures. They believed that the prophetic writings and other books were inspired by God as well as the books of the Law (Torah). The Sadducees believed that only the books of the Torah (Pentateuch) were revealed by God. The Pharisees emphasized teaching the Hebrew Scriptures. The Sadducees emphasized correct worship and sacrifices. The two Jewish parties followed different ways of performing religious rituals. Jannaeus was more Hellenistic in his cultural affinities, whereas the Pharisees thought Hellenism (Greek culture) was pagan. Jannaeus believed in expanding the Jewish kingdom to include other lands, like Gaza, that were populated by non-Jews. The Pharisees believed that inclusion of pagan peoples would pollute the Jewish people.

The Pharisees’ contempt for Jannaeus was so extreme that they paid local tribes to go to war with the king. Jannaeus left Jerusalem with his troops to do battle tribal terrorists. He survived the conflicts. Upon his safe return from battle the Pharisees publicly demonstrated against him.

This is what happened. Not long after his return from battle it was the Feast of Sukkot (Tabernacles) in the year 90 BC. At was the height of the Feast worshippers came to the temple in droves.  According to custom, they carried symbolic offerings of citrus fruits with them to give thanks for fruitful harvests.

In his capacity as High Priest Jannaeus performed the Thanksgiving ritual by pouring water onto the floor of the temple. The Pharisees believed the water should have been poured on the altar, instead. So outraged were they that they shouted curses, insults and fruit at the high priest during the ceremony. In his role as king, Jannaeus called in the troops to suppress the temple riot. 6,000 Jewish worshippers were killed that day.

Afterward, Jannaeus ordered his troops to arrest as many of the leaders of the Pharisees as they could. Almost all of them were rabbis. He tried them for sedition (for trying to overthrow his rule) and blasphemy (for cursing at him and throwing fruit at the high priest during worship). 800 Pharisees were found guilty.  They and were crucified outside the walls of Jerusalem and along the roads to the city. While they died on their crosses, the soldiers slaughtered the rabbis’ wives and children. That atrocity took place less than 90 years before the birth of Jesus.

Throughout history, when religion and politics merge, opponents become enemies. Disagreements easily become existential conflicts. And conflicts become holy wars. When religious beliefs and political hostilities have been fused, opponents have often easily been conceived of as enemies of God, even demons. And when that has happened normal the normal restraints of humane behavior have been discarded. Unrestrained barbarity has been rationalized as faithfulness. It has happened throughout history, over and over again. Deeply held biblical beliefs can lead some people to civil conflict, unrestrained violence and brutality.

Some American Christians, nowadays, will reply that “Jannaeus wasn’t Christian and so didn’t have the Holy Spirit in him.” “Real Christians, Bible believing and Spirit-filled Christians, would never do anything like that.” The stories to come will tell a different tale. Incidentally, in the Bible, kings and high priests were anointed with holy oil, which represented their anointing by God’s Spirit for their roles. Claiming God’s anointing doesn’t make it necessarily so. Was Jannaeus anointed with the Holy Spirit in his roles as high priest and king? He certainly didn’t act as if he were. But then there are Christians in America, these days, who claim that a lawless man of lies is anointed by God to be president, and he certainly doesn’t act as if he is. Who knows what atrocities he’s capable of.

People of devout faith in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures can and have appealed to the Bible for all sorts of organized heinous acts. Consider the biblical stories in which God commanded the slaughter of the worshippers of the golden calf during the exodus in the wilderness (Exodus 32), of the Canaanites (Joshua 6-13), and the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18). All of them were killed: men, women and children. It is written that God commanded it. The reasons given were their idolatry or simply that they were not God’s people and God had given their lands to the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Any devout people can cite such stories as these to justify whatever heinous acts they may feel inspired to perpetrate. Devoutly held beliefs and cultural or political convictions can plant the seeds of hatred toward those who are different, and those seeds can bear the fruit of horrific violence and brutality.

I felt a chill when I heard the devout American Christian Speaker of the House of Representatives say something. He claimed to feel that he was being called upon to lead the American people from bondage, as Moses led the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt to a promised land. I was reminded that the Exodus to which he referred led to widespread violence and death. About 3,000 Israelites were slain by the Levites for worshipping the golden calf. (Deuteronomy 9:20) And in the Book of Joshua 10: 20f it is written that the Israelites killed the Canaanites and “slayed them with a very great slaughter, until they were wiped out.” The thought crossed my mind that just such biblical precedents as that could easily be used to justify slaughtering those deemed unworthy to live in America.

The consequences of such religious-based havoc have been tragic. The Roman Empire used the previously mentioned Jewish Civil War as a pretext for invasion. They regarded it as chaos and a divergence from the Pax Romana. And so, they conquered the Jewish people, occupied Judea and imposed Roman laws and taxes on the Jewish people. In fact, the Roman domination of the Jewish people and their resistance to it, about 100 years later still, resulted in the Jewish Diaspora of almost 2,000 years.

Passions for purity of faith and practice, even in the name of God and in pursuit of God’s will, can have the opposite results. Perfection is impossible, and the more we are driven to achieve it the less likely it will be to attain. Forced faithfulness failed miserably for the 1^st century BC Jewish people.