Monday, March 16

Numbers 21: 4-6

“Snakes; why did it have to be snakes?” Indiana Jones probably captured the sentiment of the Israelites when a plague of venomous snakes struck many people while on their journey to the Promised Land. If we read verses 7 and 8 we find the people attributed the plague to their complaints about the competence of God and Moses. Why did God lead them into this desert of scarcity and danger? God directs Moses to cast a bronze snake and mount it on a pole. Anyone who is struck by a venomous snake who looks at the bronze snake does not die.

So, what do I make of this story? Is the bronze snake the first recorded instance of the use of a placebo? The more serious question is “does God bring suffering to humankind?” Of course, this question is an extension of “what is the nature of God?”

Don Cupitt wrote in The Great Questions of Life “While the opening chapters of Genesis were a major influence upon the common worldview, the question about the nature and origin of evil and suffering remained an obvious big question. But with the rise of our modern historical sciences of nature, and the consequent shift to a much more life-centered worldview, evil, suffering, conflict, and death have been naturalized. They are all part of life, part of the struggle for existence, part of the whole package. We can scarcely imagine life without contingency (risk), hardship, competition, struggle for survival, and so on. If we observe other living things closely we cannot fail to be impressed by their extraordinarily intense relish for life, and their matter-of-fact acceptance of the dark side of life when it finally hits them – as it always does. And doesn’t that suggest a moral for us?”

For me, it is in just and caring communities that we find the strength and joy to accept the “whole package”.