Well, here we are again, with another weekly assignment in OT503.  This time it's about the OT prophets and their messages of condemnation against various nations.  What does it mean to us today that Nahum was so critical of Nineveh, or that Obadiah lashed out at Edom?  Here's my reaction to the assignment.

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Q.  How do the "oracles against the nations" function as Scripture in the contemporary Christian church?  (How do they inhabit our imaginations and what witness do they urge?  What claim do they make on, against, or for us?)

A.  Again we must be careful to allow past nations, peoples and cultures to retain their historic uniqueness, and preserve their significance in God's economy by respecting their prophetic context.  We should not engage in wholesale appropriation of God's messages to (or for, or against) them for use in our own time and place, by simply assigning those nations new names more contemporary with and familiar to us.  To do so denigrates the cultures that came before us and steals from them the respect they are due, even if they did have significant moral failures.  So, of course, do we, but... our failings differ from theirs, and so will God's message to (or for, or against) us, when it comes.

That being said, there are things in Nahum and Obadiah and Amos that we can learn as Scripture, in a way that is living and active toward us.  One lesson easily learned is the error of American Exceptionalism.  One only has to read the oracles against the nations to see contained within them oracles against Israel and Judah as well.  If Israel and Judah were singled out for criticism and judgment, so too can America be.  After all, if God delights in us as a nation, isn't it still true that "the LORD disciplines those he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights"?  "My country right or wrong" has no Biblical basis, and is no more than school spirit (or even gang loyalty) writ large.  "My country, disciplined by a loving God" is much more apt.

God loves other nations, too.  The oracles make this clear.  In Amos 2, Moab is judged in part for how it treated Edom.  God must care about Edom if Moab's punishment was based on wrong treatment of Edom.  And yet Edom is also punished for its treatment of other communities.  And who can read the rest of Amos chapter 2 and say that the criticism directed at Israel & Judah was any less harsh?  Can we even bear to read Ezekiel 23?   I blush when I read how God describes Israel & Judah.  God is no respecter of nations - the standard is applied to all, and perhaps most stringently to God's own chosen.  So, America should not think itself immune from judgment, based both on how we treat other nations and cultures, as well as treatments of segments of our own population.

In addition, we can learn much about the things that matter to God by reading the criticisms God levels against the nations; the judgment being brought is not arbitrary & capricious, but rather in reaction to specific sins, to wit:  plotting evil, devising wicked plans, increasing merchants who then strip the land and leave it, being prideful of supposed invincibility, standing by and watching other nations being plundered, selling out whole communities and cultures to other governments, killing women & children during battle, taking advantage of the poor & denying them fairness, endorsing sexual immorality, etc.  It seems to me that I have seen behaviors like these in my own lifetime, covertly and overtly, at the hands of my own government, by big business, Wall Street, and even by non-profit organizations whose corrupt leaders line their own pockets or fatten their pension funds.

And yet, while I can recognize modern-day equivalents of these ancient cultural sins, what I cannot yet recognize are the specific and detailed judgments currently being pronounced on my country by individuals called by God to bring a contemporary message.  Nor can I recognize any consistent and unified voice spoken by the Church to the same effect.  How can we assume for the Church the role of the prophet when the Church does not speak in unity?  It is one "prophet's" voice versus another's, with the implication that they can't all be right (in fact most must be false, to have so many different opinions on who is ripe for judgment and for what sins).  No one today is speaking authoritatively on God's behalf - at least no one we can agree upon.  And until God definitively calls me and gives me a contemporary message, I have no business asserting that authority myself in how I interpret past "oracles against the nations" as applying to today's nations and cultures.  That would be arrogance in the extreme.  

Better that I should concentrate on who God is, and see what these angry Scriptures teach about the things God values and protects, so that I can value and protect them, too.