The Cruelty Quotient

Exodus 3:1-12
Matthew 7:12

Moses at the Burning Bush
(Ex 6.2—7.7; 11.1—4; 12.35—36)

3 Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. ² There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. ³ Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” ⁴ When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” ⁵ Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” ⁶ He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

⁷ Then the LORD said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, ⁸ and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. ⁹ The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. ¹⁰ So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” ¹1 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” ¹² He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.”

The Golden Rule
(Lk 6.31)

¹² “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.

“The Cruelty Quotient”--In my head and heart I have been working on today's sermon since May 21st 2006, which is the Sunday that I preached on the Bible and Anti-Semitism, about 9 months ago. In that sermon I tried to make some sense out of the fact that throughout the past 2000 years of history Christians have used the Bible to justify hatred for and violence against the Jews. Even then I knew that sermon needed a follow-up.

Now, 9 months is a long time for a sermon to incubate, a lot of time for inspiration to peculate. For heaven's sake, you can grow a baby in 9 months. Exactly. This baby is about to be delivered. It needs a life of its own outside of me. Like all babies I believe it was conceived in heaven.

“The Cruelty Quotient” is the title of today’s sermon. The subject is that we need a way of understanding the Bible, maybe even a new principle of Biblical interpretation, that will significantly decrease the chance that the Bible will be used again to justify prejudice, oppression and violence that are grounded in human sin and culture and not in the will of God. We have to learn to read and interpret the Bible in a way that will stop hatred and violence and oppression, like:

The hatred that led to the slaughter, by Christians, of Moslems during the crusades.
The horrors of slavery.
The torture of women accused of witchcraft.
The evils of the Spanish Inquisition.
The centuries of religiously motivated wars in Europe.
Genocide against American Indians.

Having been gestating this sermon for 9 months, I was surprised when early this past week I was given by God, and it seemed to be a clear and strong word of God, a new, at least for me, principle of Biblical interpretation to be used when deciding what the Bible has to say about difficult issues, especially those “Battles Over the Bible” that have threatened to divide the church; like war, abortion, divorce, the status of women and homosexuality.

When the church is reading and interpreting the Bible during times of conflict and the members of the church have different opinions on what the Bible requires of them, what principles of Biblical interpretation do we use to guide our reading to maximize the chance that we will “rightly discern a word of truth?”

What do I mean when I say, “principles of interpretation?” Let me give you a couple of examples:

The pre-imminent principle for interpreting scripture that grows out of the Protestant Reformation is Jesus Over Scripture. If our best understanding is that Jesus guides us one way on an issue and that Paul takes us another, we take our stand with Jesus.

Another core principle of Biblical interpretation is Every Text Has a Context. Context helps to determine meaning. Another principle is that some times you have to look at the Original Languages in order to interpret the Bible.

So, I must say this humbly and cautiously yet confidently. I believe that I was given by God, not by my own figuring, a new principle of Biblical interpretation that I am calling “The Cruelty Quotient.” But, let me remind you. You are “The Priesthood of All Believers,” and it is your opportunity and responsibility to decide for yourself what you think about the way I am interpreting the Bible.

It is so terribly easy to read the Bible wrongly. Christian history is literally littered with gross examples of how Christians and Churches that have read the Bible wrongly and have allowed human sin and prejudice and hatred and violence to be defended as the will of God. The examples are legion and the results are devastating. How do we read and interpret scripture in times of conflict, especially when the conflict is over what God requires of Christians and the Church and this conflict threatens to destroy the unity of the body of Christ.

I'm going to ask you today to consider the Cruelty Quotient as an interpretive key to reading the Bible rightly.

Monday evening, when I began working on this sermon, I went to the computer to do some reading on the subject of slavery. I opened up the on-line Encyclopedia, Wikipedia; On their first page Wikipedia always features an article about something that generally I know nothing about, and the feature article on Monday night was the story of William Hogarth, an engraver in England, born in 1687 and died in 1764.

In 1751 William Hogarth, decided to create a series of 4 engravings entitled, “The Four Stages of Cruelty.” Hogarth saw cruelty as a rampant evil throughout English culture, but especially on the streets, in lower income neighborhoods. Cruelty was so widespread and widely accepted that people hardly noticed. He created his four part engraving to stir the conscience of a nation.

And in the first engraving we meet the protagonist, a young boy named Tom Nero. Tom goes about, with his cohorts, on the streets of London in 1751, torturing dogs. And in this first engraving you'll see all kinds of other examples of cruelty. There's a little boy on the street and a drunk old man is running his wagon over the little boy, and there's two cats that are being hung by their tails. It is a gruesome, even shocking, picture.

And in the second engraving on cruelty you find Tom Nero as a young man working as the driver of a horse and carriage. The horse is old and tired and stumbles and falls and the carriage falls on the horse and Tom's jumps off the carriage and he's beating the horse. The engraving is extremely detailed and all the scenes of cruelty are hauntingly graphic.

The story told by the engravings moves along and one terrible deed leads to another. As an older man in engraving 3, Tom has murdered a young woman and people are pulling him off her body.

And then in engraving 4, you see a dead body lying on a slab in an amphitheater, and an autopsy is being performed. It is a frightening scene and if I was to rate this part of my sermon, I think it would be PG-13. It's so ugly. You can see the noose still wrapped around Tom’s neck from his execution and his heart has fallen on the floor and the dog is eating it, a kind of retribution against Tom’s torture of a dog in the first engraving.

And the reason I'm telling you this story about William Hogarth and the four stages of cruelty and the reason I am passing copies of the engravings among you at this moment is that I want to be crystal clear. You know cruelty when you see it. And you are justly horrified by it. You have a conscience and you can tell with absolute certainty when the behavior of human beings, toward others, is wrong—just plain wrong.

You're conscience is intact. If you see an animal being hurt, you feel the creature’s pain and want to do something about it. If you see people treating each other with cruelty, you know how to name it and identify it as wrong. If the result of a Christian’s reading of the Bible is that they are doing acts of cruelty to another, you can call those acts of cruelty by their right name, evil. You know how to do that. You can measure The Cruelty Quotient.

A few months ago, as part of the preparation of today's sermon, I began reading a book by Walter Mosley, simply entitled "47". It's one of the most painful stories about slavery that I've ever read. “47” is the name of a 14 year old boy. It is also the brand on his shoulder. 47 has decided that it doesn't matter if he's dies trying. He is going to rescue his friend, Tall John, who has been taken to the killing shack.

The slaves have heard of the killing shack, but no slave has ever returned. So he heads down the path where he thinks the killing shack is, and he meets on the path a young woman named 84. 84 is also a good friend of Tall John, and 84 has also decided that she must save her friend, Tall John. They are going to go to the killing shack and they're going to save Tall John, somehow, some way. It is a staggering thing that these two slaves, 47 and 84, who have been taught nothing but fear their whole lives are now finding courage. The whole scene is reminiscent of David and the stones that he took out of a brook on his way to kill the Giant Goliath. From along the path, 47 takes a single stone that's got rugged edges. He tells 84 to grab a branch that looks like a club and he's going to go in to the killing shack and he's going to throw that stone at Master Stewart, and Master Stewart's going to come running after him, and when he comes outside, 84 is going to bash him on the head.

And it happens.

47 walks in and sees Tall John lying on this slab being tortured by Master Stewart, and he throws the stone and Master Stewart hears something and turns, and the stone hits his left eye. Master Stewart falls down, but then he gets up and he starts chasing 47 out of the killing shack and 47 gets away. As Master Stewart comes out of the killing shack, 84 clobbers him with that club and knocks him down and kills him. Tall John and 84 and 47 run for their lives.

And that's just one fragment of a centuries long story about the horrors and cruelty of slavery. Still, throughout those hundreds of years, and despite thousands upon thousands of acts of mind numbing cruelty, the Christians and the churches at that time in history, throughout the 1700 and 1800’s, up to and including the Civil War, the churches almost unanimously, did not measure the cruelty and the oppression and the horrors of slavery as of any consequence. If they had measured The Cruelty Quotient unleashed by their interpretations of the Bible they would have know that the hatred and violence and cruelty were not birthed in the heart of God but were rather another terrifying example of the power of sin to destroy the lives of God’s children.

For the most part, Christians of the 17th and 18th centuries knew nothing of The Cruelty Quotient as a principle of Biblical Interpretation. Rather they were guided by these three principles. Almost every Christian believed these:

1) From its first mention in scripture through the entirety of scripture, the Bible records God's judgment against the sins of all the people of African descent. I could go into all the details of how they concluded that, but that was an almost universally held conviction of Christians.

2) People of African descent are inferior in a myriad of ways and are morally and intellectually incapable of rising to the level of white civilization.

3) People of African descent are willfully sinful, almost always sexually promiscuous, and deserve to be punished for their own acts.

The Christian interpreters of scripture did not see the torture and the cruelty or they believed it was justified. Renowned theologian, James Henley, Professor of Didactic Theology at Columbia Seminary wrote:

That's what almost all Christians believed.

I’ve read that there are 170 specific passages of scripture that condone, accept, support slavery in the Old and New Testament.; 170 specific occurrences in scripture where slavery is said to be under the will of God. And the people who have said that did not count wrong and they did not figure wrong. There are 170 or so specific passages in the Bible that condone, support slavery. And anybody can find them with a little effort.

How can this be? How to you argue with 170 verses? I mean, we've been fighting since my Dad's days in pastoral ministry in the '60s a battle in the church about abortion, and another one about women in ministry, and another about divorce and a whole lot of others battles. The sum and total of the number of specific verses that are used to say woman can't be pastors is maybe two or three. And maybe there are four passages in the Bible used to prove that a divorced man can't be a pastor.

And they fight this to the living end, even if it splits the church. They are fighting about just a few verses. What do you do with 170 verses that justify slavery? I am suggesting today that you measure The Cruelty Quotient. Measure the cruelty that the interpretation of these verses leads to when they were used to justify slavery in the 17th and 18th centuries. And if The Cruelty Quotient is high, ask yourself if there might be a different way God wants you to interpret and apply the Bible. And if you decide that The Cruelty Quotient is so high that you must find a different way to read and interpret the Bible, consider this.

Take those 170 verses used to justify slavery and put them on one side of a scale. And on the other side of the scale place this:

“In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 7:12)

One verse compared to 170. From God’s point of view, which weighs more? Remember, if you are having trouble understanding how 170 verses can weigh less than one, remember that Jesus says that the one, The Golden Rule, contains all of the law and the prophets. The Golden Rule is heavier than…gold.

And remember also that throughout the history of the Protestant Reformation we Protestants have been convinced that when interpreting the Bible we have to attach more importance to the great themes of scripture than to any particular verse or collection of verses. Every specific verse is read in the context of the major themes. Those major themes include: the redemption of a fallen creation, the journey from slavery in Egypt to escape in the wilderness to abundance in the promised land, God's longing to bless and prosper God's people, the salvation of broken and lost lives, compassion and justice and peace as God's way for all of God's children, unity amidst diversity in a new heaven and a new earth, and finally in a word, freedom.

In Galatians 5: 1, Paul wrote, “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

God created us for freedom. You may be familiar with a movie called "Amistad.” In the movie there is a battle between one way of seeing slavery and another way of seeing slavery. This battle is being fought over the lives of some Africans who've been brought to the new world on slave ships. They want to be free and an argument is taking place over the essential nature of humanity. What is at the core of who we are? Former Vice President John Calhoun and others are arguing that humanity is all about violence and humanity, from the beginning of time, is all about slavery. Then former President John Quincy Adams has his say in front of the Supreme Court of the United States.

“Now, this is a publication of the office of the President and its called The Executive Review, and I'm sure you all read it. At least I'm sure the President hopes you all read it. This is a recent issue and there’s an article in here written by a keen mind of the South, who’s my former vice-president, John Calhoun. He says that there has never existed a civilized society in which one segment did not thrive upon the labor of another. As far back as one chooses to look, to ancient times, Biblical times, history bears this out. In Eden where only two were created, even there one was pronounced submissive to the other. Slavery has always been with us and is neither sinful nor immoral. Rather as war and antagonism are natural sates of man so too is slavery, as natural as it is inevitable.

“Now, gentlemen, I must say I differ with the keen minds of the South and with our President who apparently shares their view offering that the natural state of mankind is instead, and I know this is a controversial idea, is freedom, is freedom. And the proof is the length to which man, woman or child will go to regain it once it’s lost. He will break loose his chains, he will decimate his enemies, he will try and try against all odds, against all prejudices to get home. “

The longing of the human heart is for freedom, that’s who we are, that’s who God made us to be. Wherever one group determines to oppress another, you will always find a terrible Cruelty Quotient because this barbarism is always necessary to suppress freedom.

Now we arrive at the conclusion of this sermon and this is the one part of today’s message that I don't really think I've prepared well. This part is so much more difficult than everything else. If you were to travel around to churches and listen to folks across the country, you would find a variety of issues being debated by churches and all kinds of positions being taken. Some of these debates are over things that most American Baptists have put to rest, like woman in ministry and accepting divorced people in the life of the church. Elsewhere these issues are still dividing congregations that are more conservative than we are. And people are being wounded by the position of their church. You really could measure The Cruelty Quotient of a church and determine how much pain is being caused by harsh interpretations of the Bible.

Over the course of church history, The Cruelty Quotient that measures the way Christians and Churches have mocked, despised, persecuted, tortured, murdered homosexuals—all the while defending this hate by reference to scripture--is a thunderous cacophony of horrors. You hear a lot of talk about loving the sinner and hating the sin, but the collective roar of historical testimony cries out that interpretations of scripture that condemn homosexuals seldom, if ever, end in expressions of love. Collectively we have hated the sin and hated the sinner. We, we Christians, have persecuted and tormented the sinner and humiliated the sinner and killed the sinner. The gas chambers of the Third Reich also consumed 250,000 homosexuals.

I absolutely do not expect you to have the same opinion on the issues related to homosexuality as I do. My viewpoint has been emerging and changing over the past 35 years—and continues to do so. However, I do expect you to exercise your conscience, your capacity to know cruelty when you see it. I do hope that in your own way you will measure The Cruelty Quotient against the benchmark of The Golden Rule. I hope you will allow your conscience to be moved, wherever you see cruelty.

Conclusion: If I had been a pastor during the era of slavery there are very few churches I could have served which would not have fired me for asking them to measure The Cruelty Quotient related to the institution of slavery. What do you want from your pastor today? Do you want your pastor to challenge your interpretation of scripture when he feels that he must and do you want your pastor to teach you ways of interpreting the Bible that could cause you to change your mind on difficult issues? And, even more important, what do you want from yourself? Do you want to learn to read the Bible in ways that could upset long cherished opinions and every transform your long settled life?

My counsel is to learn to measure The Cruelty Quotient and be open to the changing of your opinions and the recreation of your life.

So Be It.

Amen.