Pastor Ryan Gaffney

Let’s do another one to break up my shameless self promotion. Actual content that isn;t meta Whohoo.

Judges.

Less Whohoo.

Who likes the book of Judges

Nobody likes the book of Judges

I LOVE the book of Judges

It is so much fun, it is so interesting, it is so irreverently insightful, and absolutely never ever boring like “some” books I know of

But I get it, It gets a bad rap and I see why. It does not play nicely with others. It does not conform well to the filter we like to put most of the other books through in which everything becomes a morality story or an example of how to live. It’s violent and sexually explicit and we don’t expect that from the bible.

But we should

After all, we live violent and sexually explicit lives don’t we? Most of us"? Unless we are very very insulated from that stuff. How much of your life would you have to hide from God if God could not bear the sight of blood or urine, or stand hearing about the means of reproduction God himself invented?

The key to making judges delicious, I’ll submit to you, is in allowing it to be what it is and not asking it to be something else. It’s not Mr. Rogers Puppet Time. I like that trolley as much as anyone else, but it’s not the gold standard for everything that’s good. Instead Judges is something very much the opposite. Consider this.

If Joshua is a WWII era film. Judges is a Vietnam movie.

What is Joshua like? The national hero, with the cause that is wholly just and right, marches onto the scene. He is faces with danger, with difficult choices but we, the audience know that whatever he does is going to be right, because he is our man and we trust him implicitly. In the end the heroes reign victorious over the forces of evil. That’s WWII.

Judges comes in after that and says “Sooo, that war we won?” We actually made some compromises we shouldn’t have in order to win it, and now skirmishes are continuing and the next generation is ready to be a lot more honest about the reality of the situation. Particularly: war is ugly, bloody, and often morally grey. A lot of us wonder if we should be involved with it in the first place, but it never seems to go away. Here is the reality. Here are the heroes and the villains, they are mostly the same people. But while you are here let me tell you some incredible stories.

Ehud and the locked door murder mystery.
Deborah and Yael, in the world turned upside down.
Gideon who was like Joshua except in the ways he wasn’t
Jephthah the pirate king
Samson the superhero

Fun adventure stories. Written for adults. With meaning and insight, but not with a neat little moral at the end.

Judges.

Read it.

I want to talk a bit about some f***ing profanity.

I feel strange doing it. I find myself asking “Really? This is the most important thing to talk about right now?” But I honestly think it is. Not as an end in and of itself, but as a means to an end. There are some topics I really feel aught to be talked about, and I feel that I can not do them justice without using words which may not be appropriate for children.

(incidentally if you are a child reading this please go read something else, and if you are easily offended by profanity please grow up, get a pair, and keep reading because this S*-t is biblical)

There is of course no list of “Bad words” in scripture. If there were, they would be words like “Mamzer” and”Raca” not “bastard” as the bible was not written in 21st century English. The Recourse our Sunday School teachers take then is to argue that we shouldn’t use any words that are considered offensive, in whatever society we happen to be living in.

But the Bible doesn’t follow that rule! Both the Hebrew “Mamzer” and the Greek “Raca” can be found in scripture^[1]. both words refer to illegitimate children, both are more offensive to their cultures than the word “bastard” is to ours. Matthew 5:22 says:

But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

Here Jesus clearly speaks against filippant profanity. But not so much that he feels compelled to refer to the “R-Word”. Instead he essentially says “You’re right you probably shouldn’t say “bastard”. You shouldn’t call people morons^[2] either” the irony though. Is that no translator I’ve found has been so bold as to translate it that way, so we censor it by leaving an untranslated Greek word in our English bibles. I daresay if Jesus wanted the blow softened he could have done that himself.

So do we stop there? Should we take Jesus word on the subject as final and literal?

Maybe we shouldn’t say bastard or moron because those are bad words, Jesus just said them each once so that we wouldn’t have any doubt which words were the bad ones.

But if that’s the case Jesus must have changed his mind because later in Matthew he does refer to people as Morons (6 times^[3])

If we look holistically at scripture we can see a clear pattern emerging. biblical authors (Jesus included) are not afraid to use harsh language and profanity to get a point across, they do not pepper their speech with expletives, but neither do they censor themselves. The prophet Isiah said in 64:6:

But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteous acts are dirty tampons ; We all fade as a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, Have taken us away.

The Hebrew reads “‘iddah beged” literally meaning “menstruation cloth”

In Galations 5:12 Paul wishes the Judiazers would cut their dicks off

In Mark 7:27 Jesus appears to use an ethnic slur

In 1 Kings 18:27 Elijah taunts the worshipers of Baal that perhaps their god won’t answer because he’s taking a dump

And Ezekiel 23:20… Well… Even I won’t say that one. you can look it up…

Perhaps the most impressive instance of biblical profanity though is Philipians 3:8

Yea doubtless, and I count all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and consider it a pile of shit, that I may win Christ,

The Greek word being “skubalon” which is refers literally to excrement, particularly that of animals. Josephus used the word this way, along with Strabo and Aretaeus. Philipians however is the first instance on file of it being used metaphorically to refer to a worthless and profane experience, Implying that Paul not only approves of this kind of swearing, he actually invented it!

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1. Deuteronomy 23:2 contains “Mamzer”, Matthew 5:22 contains “Raca”
2. Literaly. “Morons” from the greek μωρός (Moros)
3. Matt 7:26, 23:17, 23:19, 25:2, 25:3, and 25:8