Jeremiah

I've been working my way through Jeremiah, lately.   It's a bit of a bear to get through.  Almost all Old Testament prophecy follows the same structure:

"God has sent me, his prophet, to warn you that your infidelity and disobedience have made him very jealous and angry.  He hates your cruelty to the weak and oppressed, and your neglect of those less fortunate.  He is outraged that, rather than deal with Him, you prefer to invent your own gods and have pretend dealings with them.  He hates the power-mad, corrupt, exploitative decadence of your leaders.  He is bringing swift judgment upon your people as a whole, unless you repent.  If you change your ways, though, he will spare you."

   But Jeremiah's message is consistently missing that last sentence.  Entirely.

   His only job is to list Judah's sins, express God's outrage, and announce that doom is coming and it's too late to repent. Even Jeremiah found this an extremely depressing job.  And it didn't make him popular.  He suffered a great deal.  No doubt people found him "negative" and didn't see exactly how his message was of benefit to building up the Lord's people.

   What strikes me in particular is what exactly it was about the foreign religions that God hated, and what in particular seems to have attracted the Jewish nations.  Starting with shaving patterns into their heads, poking holes in their skin, cutting themselves, putting ritualistic tattoos in their flesh, the appealing parts of the foreign religions involved then moving on to prostituting their daughters and sacrificing their infants in fires.  What seems to have simultaneously attracted the people, and upset God, what had never been part of Judaism, as given to the people by Jehovah, was the self-harm aspect.
   Even Job sitting on a heap of manure, scraping his oozing sores with a piece of broken pottery, with ashes on his head and his clothing torn, wasn't following God's instructions or Jewish tradition.  No, that was all his own idea.  Hurting himself more, as a protest.  Just like Ananias, the high priest, breaking Jewish law to rend his garments during the trial of Jesus, to express his apparent outrage and grief.

   When we want to change our world with religious effort, it seems we want some self-harm.  Christianity's darker corners have Christians who beat themselves, fast a bit too extensively, or even get crucified for fifteen or twenty minutes each Easter.  And everyone knows about Lent.  Everyone knows about vows of poverty, and tonsures and self-flagellation and so on, as part of our church history.  Even my church, with its focus on the internal and psychological over the outer and physical, expected a kind of "Lifelong Lent" as to all forms of entertainment and fun.

   All this adds up to trying to hold ourselves hostage to make God bless us.  And what is God saying when he substitutes a ram for Abraham's son Isaac, or His own son Jesus, for us?  When He instituted all of those sacrifices in the Old Testament, involving animals?

   It looks to me like the message is very clear:

1. You aren't perfect.  You do wrong things because you aren't quite right.  Inside.  Immaturity, oddity and self-indulgence are part of the life you live and have lived.  You have not always treated those less fortunate than yourself well, or looked after the weak. Everything out of your mouth has not made the world a better place.  Your flaws have contributed to the flawed state of the world around you.
2. There is a price to be paid for that, a consequence, as to living out all that in the world and affecting everyone in it with your flaws, your imperfection.  It has affected people, and it has caused an effect in response.  A price.
3. I insist upon paying that price for you, and do not accept your attempts to punish yourselves in my stead.  If you try to step in and punish yourselves "for" me, I will be forced to show you what my punishment actually looks like.  You do not want to experience perfect punishment.  You do not want to see me be perfectly fair.  I am offering to not be fair.  Do not reject my paying the price for you.  Do not turn your nose up at my intervention.  I will not accept this self-punishing behaviour. Do not try to "help."  What I insist upon is you letting me take care of it for you.  That's how it's got to be.  Here: let me.