The text of the post is as follows:
THE BIBLE IS CLEAR: Moabites are bad. They were not to be allowed to dwell among God's people. Deuteronomy 23
BUT THEN: comes the story or Ruth the Moabitess, which then challenges the prejudice against Moabites.
THE BIBLE IS CLEAR: People from Uz are evil. Jeremiah 25
BUT THEN: comes the story of Job, a man from Uz who was "the most blameless man on earth".
THE BIBLE IS CLEAR: No foreigners or eunuchs allowed. Deuteronomy 23
BUT THEN: comes the story of the African eunuch welcomed into the church. Acts 8.
THE BIBLE IS CLEAR: God's people HATED Samaritans.
BUT THEN: Jesus tells a story that shows not all Samaritans are bad.
THE STORY MAY BEGIN with prejudice, discrimination, and animosity, but the Spirit of God moves people toward openness, welcome, inclusion, and affirmation.
Now...if the source of this was about how we need to not judge everyone by the same brush because there ARE some good bikers out there, there ARE people with piercings, tattoos, and funky colored hair, that there ARE hipsters who are actually good people then I would be completely on board. However, this came from a denomination where they are debating whether or not to be inclusive of Homosexuals and Transgenders. Their balance of opinion is slanting toward full inclusion.
Quick thinking people who have studied there scriptures and/or have some experience in philosophy or rhetoric can see, in the current context, the inherent issue with the above statement from the graphic.
Firstly, there is a bit of manipulative information going on here. Time to get all Berean on it.
In Jeremiah 25 it does not actually say that people from Uz are evil. The Lord has Jeremiah take "the wine cup of fury" from His hand. This indicates (with surrounding context) that the Lord is going to send "the sword" among these people an destroy them. Uz is on the list....Edom...Moab...Ashkelon... Oh! Look who is at the top of the list. Verse 18 "Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, it's kings and its princes, to make them a desolation, an astonishment, a hissing, and a curse..." So, by their logic, Uz is evil and should be rejected by the people as well as...the majority...of...everyone...in...Israel...? But why let ill fitting facts get in the way of a good emotional appeal?
(It's amazing what happens when we actually look up the verses. Seriously, these days I have been taking the addition of Bible references in a piece of writint as a dare.)
Also I find it very interesting that they chose Jesus' story about Samaritans as opposed to His actual interaction with the Samaritan woman. If I were being suspicious about their motives I would say that it could be due to the fact that the Samaritan woman says, "We might be wrong about our whole reason for being separate. Are we wrong? How should we change?" That kind of makes the whole inclusion at all costs argument fall apart.
Yes, the rest are all examples of people from prohibited people groups, and those people groups (with the exception of of the general "foreigners and eunuchs") had a really bad reputation. Some of them were a terrible blood thirsty people. They worshiped idols, did not at all follow the commands of God and in many cases did the exact opposite of the Law.
Because God accepted these individuals then that means all of their people group are OK with God? Far from it.
It is not as though Ruth the Moabitess comes along and continues her Baal worship but isn't a horrible person so the Jews accept her, and Boaz kind of finds it hot and marries her.
It is not as though Job went around handing his children to be burned by Molech, but God was cool with that.
Ruth was the daughter-in-law of Naomi who was a Jew. With her husband gone and given the option to go back to her people or go with Naomi she chose to go among a people she didn't know. Ruth declares, "Your people will be my people and your God my God." She was accepted because she had a heart change, a life change, and a God change. She aligned herself with Yahweh, worshiped Him, and followed His commandments seeking to live by His law. Ruth changed everything about her life to follow after God.
Job...well, we've established that Uz was on the Naughty List with just as much intensity as as Jerusalem, the Holy City. Even then, he was blessed because he was A man of righteousness. Uz was not made righteous and therefore completely acceptable before God because of one man. Job wasn't a righteous man because he was righteous in his own eyes. No. He followed God's law and was righteous in God's eyes, by God's standards.
Interestingly, if we are doing a roll call of righteous people loved by God in cursed places and peoples then why not bring up Sodom and Gomorrah. And no, I am not even bringing up their special brand of unrighteousness as part of this argument. Lot was considered righteous and God destroyed everyone else in Sodom and Gomorrah. He didn't include them or affirm them because of Lot.
Yes, the Gospel is a gospel of inclusion, acceptance, and affirmation...but by God through Jesus. A lot of times we wish that it meant that God is A-OK with our sins and we can just believe in Jesus and "I'm okay, You're okay".
All that this graphic really proves is exactly the opposite of it's intent. God didn't just become OK with Baal worship because Ruth the Moabitess showed up. God became "OK" with Ruth because she rejected her past and came to Him honestly, openly, and fervently change her life. She abandoned her sin and followed God. It is not about the inclusion, acceptance, or affirmation of a whole group, but rather the individual who rejects their sin and accepts God. They change.
If you want an example of God accepting a whole group let's go to Jonah. The people of Nineveh were a nasty people and so Jonah was sent by God to proclaim that His judgement was buffering (loading...please wait). Every single one of them repented and changed their ways and so God did not destroy them. Now, if a sinner comes, repents of their sin, and walks in the way of Jesus and we stand there with our arms crossed and reject them...then we are guilty of Jonah's sin. But that change, that repentance is the pre-requisite.
To suggest that we as people of God can be inclusive, accepting, and affirming of people who refuse to see sin as sin is ridiculous. Many people in this day and age tend to say not, "Come as you are, and let Jesus change you into what He wants you to be" but rather, "Come as you are and feel comfortable enough to stay as you are."
We Protestants get all tied up by our deeply held belief in Justification by Faith which, don't get me wrong, is a good and just belief. However, in this day and age many of the adherents have slipped down the theological slip-and-slide to saying that we can come to Jesus and because we've come to Him we can remain in whatever sin we desire because He justifies us.
I was reading R. C. Sproul's little book "Can I Know God's Will" just this morning and he states, "We seek refuge in our precious doctrine of justification by faith alone, forgetting that the very doctrine is to be a catalyst for the pursuit of righteousness and obedience to the preceptive will of God".
When we come to Jesus we are to still pursue righteousness and obedience. Justification by Faith is all about reassuring us that when we fall we haven't failed. The idea is that we are running the race, pursuing the precepts of God's law in the first place, not wallowing in the mud. If we stumble over the hurdle it doesn't mean we lose the race. However we need to be running the race at all just the way each of the above "examples of people God's OK with despite their people group being horrible".
THE STORY MAY BEGIN with God's rejection but it can end with God's redemption.
Pax,
W
