The Sins of Scripture (16 page)

The women’s liberation movement declared that women are not children, that women are not dependent or subservient and that women are not designed to be submissive to men or to anyone else. The power to define oneself as adult, competent and independent became the ticket out of a world where discipline and physical abuse were considered to be appropriate patterns of interpersonal behavior.

The final category of adults who were subjected to corporal punishment during the earlier days of our Western and Christian history were members of religious orders. This violence was seen as appropriate inside the vows of the religious life, in which obedience joined poverty and chastity as sacred obligations. Obedience again and again lends itself to the creation of a childlike and dependent person, one who is subject to the discipline of his or her superiors (or God). It is that understanding of human life which has, time after time, led to the abuse of the bodies of those in religious orders in some form of corporal punishment.

In the fourteenth century, in response to the bubonic plague, a movement arose among Christians who called themselves “the flagellants.” They walked through the streets of the cities of Europe, sometimes in numbers ten thousand strong, lashing themselves with whips in an act of public penitence. It was an age in which people knew nothing about viruses, germs or bacteria bringing sickness. They knew only that they were living through a fearful period of history in which massive numbers of the adult population were succumbing to this epidemic. The common religious explanation for this devastation was that God was angry with the people for some real or imagined sin. The hope of the flagellants was that by brutally lashing their own bodies with whips they could punish themselves so severely that God would withdraw the divine punishment of the plague that was decimating their families. It was a strange practice based on a faulty, but deeply believed, premise; namely, that punishing their bodies would somehow win for them divine approval. The idea was that if they punished themselves, God would not have to do it. Yet this practice grew out of and reflected that belief held so deeply in the Western Christian world, that God was a punishing deity and those who were disciplined by God deserved it because of their sinfulness. Beating the body as an act designed to please God was never far from the religious consciousness of the Western world.

When that understanding is combined with the religious sense of universal human sinfulness, then physical discipline is thought to offer a “therapy” for an evil situation. If God’s revealed Word in the Bible called for such discipline to be administered to children and to those under authority as an act of love, and if this discipline was regarded both as a virtue and as a sacred obligation owed to one’s religious superior, then all arguments against it were stifled. So corporal punishment has not infrequently marked the relationship of the religious superior to the monk, the nun or the penitent. Sometimes this punishment of the body was ordered by the superior but was inflicted by another, from time to time even by the penitent person himself or herself in an act designed to enhance contrition.

That was long ago, we think, until we read a more contemporary writer like Karen Armstrong.
¹⁴
This brilliant woman, who has authored such bestselling titles as
A History of God, One City, Three Faiths
and
The Battle for God,
spent the first years of her adulthood in a convent in England, leaving as recently as the late 1960s. In her autobiography she describes her experience as a sister. Confession and penance were a regular part of her life. On occasions as her penance she would be given a small whip and told to go to a private place and there to lash herself for her sins, if she deemed that appropriate. There is ample reason to suggest that corporal punishment was practiced in the religious life and that disciplining the body physically was taught by the church to be an act pleasing to God, since the body had been judged from the early years of Christianity to be carnal and sinful.

The path followed in our religious history started with a definition of human life as fallen or sinful. Step two involved developing the practice of combining that definition with the appropriateness of punishing the sinful body physically. Step three was to validate the practice by pointing to a text in a book called the “Word of God,” demonstrating God’s approval of these tactics. At least in the rearing of children, that grounding would make it an adult’s solemn obligation to steer the sinful and wayward child from the paths of evil to which, because of the child’s very distorted, sinful nature, the child was predisposed. Physical punishment thus even came to be seen as virtuous. Step four was to expand the definition of the child to include all the powerless and thus childlike adults: prisoners, whose behavior had caused society to strip from them adult rights and to relate to them as those in need of punishment; slaves, who had no rights at all and who by law and custom were required to be obedient to their masters; women, regarded as inferior, not fully human adults, who were so childlike and dependent and incapable of maturity that they had to pledge to be obedient to their husbands; and finally religious figures who lived under the authority of their superiors and who believed themselves deserving of physical discipline because of their own sins or in order to force God to withdraw the divine wrath that was believed to be causing their suffering.

So physical abuse was part of the story of the Christian West. God approved it and the church administered it. The then-current understanding of God required it. After all, the portrait of God as a punishing judge ready to discipline deserving sinners was deep in the Christian tradition.

It is a portrait of God that must now be lifted into full consciousness so that it can be banished along with those texts from the “Word of God” that have been used to justify abusive behavior for far too long.

SEARCHING FOR THE SOURCE OF THE HUMAN NEED TO SUFFER

I
s it an accident, a coincidence or just fate that Christianity has managed to preside over centuries of Western history in which physical punishment has been the primary means of discipline in so many parts of our society, from children to prisoners to slaves to women and to those in religious orders? Or is there something within the Christian story itself that pushes us toward abusive behavior? These are the questions to which our study of biblically justified corporal punishment now drives us.

The idea of God as a punishing heavenly parent figure is certainly present in the heart of the Christian story, though originally it was not nearly so prevalent or rampant as church history and practice might lead us to believe. The picture of God as judge assigning people to the eternity of hell with its ever-burning flames is surely found in the gospels, but it was never a major theme. Mark, the earliest gospel writer, introduces this idea with one single reference by having Jesus say that if any part of one’s body—the hand, the foot or the eye—causes that person to sin, then that body part must be removed lest the whole body go to the unquenchable fires of Gehenna, or hell (Mark 9:43–48). Paul, who wrote before Mark, is often quoted as having said that it is better to marry than to burn, but when the text is read in its entirety, it is clear that this warning had nothing to do with the fires of hell, a concept that Paul never mentions. What Paul says in this text is, “It is better to marry than to be aflame [or to burn] with passion” (1 Cor. 7:9). Mark’s reference is therefore the first written reference to the flames of hell to appear in the Christian story. The gospel of Mark enters the Christian tradition in the eighth decade of the Common Era, more than forty years after the earthly life of Jesus came to an end. On the basis of this data it would be hard to maintain that punishment in eternal flames was an idea important to or perhaps ever even mentioned by Jesus.

The underlying assumption in Mark’s reference is really strange. Mark is saying that some punishment is always deserved by fallen, sinful people, so self-inflicted punishment can serve to make it less necessary for God to mete out an even worse punishment later, a punishment that would last through all eternity. Maiming the body as the way to gain salvation is hardly a healthy message, as history has revealed. It is easy to understand, though, why literal-minded believers who see this injunction as coming directly from God have used this verse to do great harm to themselves or to encourage great harm in others. In the third century, a Christian theologian of enormous influence, a man named Origen, had himself castrated as a direct response to this text. Origen never revealed just how it was that his male organ caused him to sin. What we need to understand is that this is yet another rather extreme form of corporal punishment—one that Origen clearly believed he deserved. The fallen evil body must be disciplined.

Matthew’s gospel (ca. 82–85 CE) contains more specific references to the fires of hell than the contributions of all of the other gospel writers combined. Matthew is also the author who gives us the very familiar story of the final judgment that is to come at the last day, when the Son of Man arrives in his glory to judge the nations by separating the sheep from the goats (25:31–46). The sheep are rewarded by this judge with entry into the kingdom of God, which was “prepared for you from the foundation of the world”(v. 34). The goats, on the other hand, are condemned to the eternal flames. It is interesting to note that the standard by which both are judged has nothing to do with proper believing or creedal orthodoxy. It has to do rather with how well or how poorly each nation, and by implication each person within that nation, perceives the presence of the “Son of Man” in the faces of the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the dispossessed and the imprisoned.

Luke, the third of the gospel writers (ca. 88–92 CE), has only a single reference to hell or Gehenna (12:5). It was included in a text warning his readers not to fear those who can kill only the body. The real one to fear is presumably God, who has the power to send a person, once deceased, to hell. John, the final gospel writer (ca. 95–100 CE), never refers to hell in his entire work and includes only one reference to fire, naming it as the fate for unproductive branches of the vine (15:6). Outside of Matthew, the fires of hell are a very minor note in the gospels.

Yet the uncontested idea that permeates the Christian story as it develops its creeds and doctrines and most especially its understanding of Jesus’ role in the drama of salvation is that human beings are fallen, baseborn and in need of rescue. If there is no rescue, then they are doomed. How these doomed humans are to be properly punished in order to be saved becomes a major theme, perhaps
the
major theme, in Christian theology.

If one begins a faith journey with the definition of a human as a fallen creature who is deserving of punishment, then the faith system that grows out of that journey will surely develop a cure for the accepted diagnosis. That is what has happened in the way the Christian story has been told historically. That is also the doorway through which the human sense of guilt and its corresponding need for punishment entered the tradition and found therein a compatible dwelling place.

The way the Hebrew myth of creation with which the Bible opens was interpreted in early Christian history served to place this definition of human evil squarely in the Christian arena. That story was traditionally understood to say that we human beings are not what God intended us to be. We are fallen sinners, willfully disobedient creatures who have been banished from God’s presence and who deserve thereby the divine wrath.

Human life, says the myth of the fall, had been endowed with the uniquely human qualities of freedom of choice and self-consciousness. Our original ancestors, using those gifts, disobeyed God and plunged God’s perfect world into sin and evil. In the process of that fall, a definition of human life as distorted and depraved developed. Not only were we fallen, but we had no power to rescue ourselves from our self-inflicted wounds. Even when we tried very hard to be good, we only became self-righteous and thus judgmental of others. Attempts at virtue only served to exacerbate our sense of being separated. Angels with drawn swords, the legend said, guarded the gates of Eden so that we could never go back. As direct descendants of Adam and Eve, we would bear as our birthright the marks of that disobedience.

The sin of the fall was said to show up in the biblical narrative time after time. It was seen when Cain killed Abel (Gen. 4:8) and when sinful, prideful people decided to build a tower so high it could reach into heaven, where they might be restored to God (Gen. 11:1–9). It was acted out in the story of the flood in which God’s punishing wrath was said to have destroyed every living creature on the earth except for the righteous Noah and his righteous family (Gen. 7–8). Presumably, given the sense that God is just, human beings must have merited that destruction. Yet even that divine effort to eradicate the evil so endemic to human life failed. The Bible suggests that the mark of sin was still manifested in Noah, for after he disembarked from his boat he became intoxicated (Gen. 9:21). Next the Bible says that God intervened to give people the law (Exod. 20ff.), a guide to lead them back to God. That also failed. Then God raised up prophets to recall these people to their original covenant, but the prophets were banished or killed. Finally, this storyline continues, God decided to enter human history in the person of Jesus, who was understood to be the divine life in whom the rescue from sin was finally accomplished. The price of salvation was, however, the death of the divine Son on the cross of Calvary. That is the way Christians have told their faith story. The operative assumption has been that human life is flawed; that this flaw is the source of evil; that only God can save so evil a creature; and that this salvation is costly indeed to God. Salvation always involves punishment, even if that punishment is accomplished vicariously. To know oneself, according to the way the Bible has generally been read, is to know one’s own evil, to experience guilt and finally to stand in need of punishment.

Founding myths are always human attempts to provide answers for human questions and yearnings. Why am I not content to be who I am? Why do I seek more? Why am I inadequate? Why do I experience guilt and jealousy? Why am I separated from God? Why am I victimized by sickness and pain? Why am I mortal? Why do I die? Starting with the unchallenged assumption that human life was corrupted and has fallen from God’s grace, religious leaders began to organize the world so that human beings would recognize the necessity for our punishment and the human need constantly to implore God to save us, to rescue and redeem us. The stated goal of the Christian life was to live forever in that divine presence from which our ancestors had been banished in the Garden of Eden. Proper punishment for our sins thus became the prerogative of the heavenly parent and was necessary if we hoped to achieve our goal. Moderate suffering here and now was a blessing to be endured as necessary, if sinful people wished to avoid eternal suffering in the world to come. To state it bluntly, human beings were taught to understand themselves as the children of God who deserved God’s punishment. That is the diagnosis of the human situation against which the story of Jesus was destined to be told.

Though most educated people in the world today dismiss this biblical story of Adam, Eve and the Garden of Eden, with its interpretation of human origins, as a myth not to be literalized, that story has nonetheless continued to set the tone for the way our religious systems relate to human life in our world. Christianity, in both its Catholic and Protestant forms, was constructed around its presumed unique ability to deliver forgiveness and thus to rescue hopeless, lost sinners. Enhancing guilt therefore became a necessary prerequisite for the maintenance of institutional power. Once people accepted the diagnosis of themselves as fallen sinners, the church set about the task of convincing them that only through the channels of grace that the church controlled was forgiveness available. It served the church’s power needs well. In the Catholic Church oral confession, required as one of the seven sacraments, kept guilt ever visible in each human life. An endless list of ecclesiastical rules, with their emphasis on such things as days of solemn obligation and a prescribed set of inescapable religious duties, made guilt inevitable and thus proper punishment from God, mediated through the church as penance, became necessary for salvation. The reenactment of the vicarious death of Jesus in the sacrifice of the Mass reminded sinners weekly of the price Jesus had to pay because of their sins. The Catholic Church’s use of manipulative guilt is hard to overestimate.

In Protestant Christianity the sense of human depravity was portrayed perhaps even more graphically. Human life was denigrated by the revival preachers as wretched, miserable, wormlike and hopeless in order that the glorious grace of the rescuing deity could be more fully appreciated. The eighteenth-century Protestant revival known as the “Great Awakening,” which swept across this continent led by the noted Massachusetts evangelist Jonathan Edwards, was ignited by Edwards’ frightening portrait of God dangling sinners by the singed hairs of their heads over the fiery pits of hell. It was preaching designed to elicit a proper confession and to win a full pardon. It focused on human depravity.

That focus still characterizes much of evangelical Protestantism. The head of the evangelical Moody Bible Institute in Chicago repeated the mantra of his religious conversion in a radio broadcast with me some years ago, as he stated this theme of depravity over and over again: “The one thing I know is that I stand condemned before the throne of grace.” The power found in the phrase “Jesus died for my sins” cannot be overestimated. It is used in some form almost every Sunday in evangelical circles. It elicits guilt and gratitude in its message that we, though the children of God, are disobedient beings who deserve to be punished and Jesus’ death was the rescuing moment, since he is portrayed as absorbing our punishment for us. We are evil indeed if our sinfulness cost God the life of the divine Son as the price that had to be paid! That amount of guilt is unlimited. Yet this became the word that people heard coming from the church through the centuries.

In both Catholic and Protestant Christianity the picture was clear. Human beings were fallen sinners standing in need of punishment. A righteous heavenly parent figure called God was presented as the judge prepared to be the disciplinarian. That was the message at the heart of Christianity, which makes it easy to understand why the image of the disobedient child standing before the parent prepared to apply corporal punishment fits so neatly into Christian history. We were
all
adult children standing before our heavenly parent, who was also prepared to punish us. We raised our children with a style modeled after our understanding of how God was relating to us. That is also how violence and an unconscious sadomasochism entered the Christian story. That is why so much of our faith tradition borders on the neurotic need to suffer. If the portrait of human life that we paint is unhealthy, then the portrait of the God that this human life envisions will also be unhealthy. To that portrait of God we now turn.