“The Hedge of Protection Removed!”

Since the attacks of 9/11/2001 it is not uncommon to hear Christian groups asserting that those attacks were revelatory in terms of God’s relationship with the United States. There are numerous variants of the argument but this link gives an idea of the general position.

1. America was dedicated to God by the founding fathers.
2. America lived out this dedication through moral superiority over the other nations.
3. Because America was dedicated and righteous God built a hedge of protection around her.
4. In recent times leaders and groups of people have left the path of righteousness.
5. In response to America abandoning God’s way God has removed the hedge of protection as witnessed in the 9/11 attacks.
6. American must turn back toward the previously departed righteousness in order for God to restore the hedge and allow her to enjoy peace and prosperity once more.

Pushing Back on the Points

1. It is common in the argument to associate America with the Old Testament state of Israel easily applying Old Testament promises and warnings to us as they were addressed to Israel. This is of course a tradition that goes back to the days of the Puritans and has been picked up by many groups especially the Mormons. Does it have theological merit especially given the New Testament for Christians?
2. The Christian founding fathers argument is another common one. Of course one might ask which founding father are being referred to, pioneers like the Pilgrims or settlers at Jamestown or the leaders of the American Revolution? One might also as how America would be regarded as explicitly Christian when compared to numerous European countries who had established state churches where the princes and kings were sworn to uphold and protect the church. American of course expressed the Enlightenment ideal of refusing to establish a state church or religion.
3. America’s “hedge” requires a bit of historical selectivity. America was of course ravaged by wars with indigenous peoples (French and Indian War). Two Civil Wars, the War of Independence being a successful war of secession from England, and the failed war of secession waged by the south that we call THE Civil War both killed huge numbers of soldiers and civilians and destroyed cities and farms. There was of course the War of 1812 where the US was thoroughly thrashed by the British and Canadian forces resulting in the burning of Washington DC. There was the bombing of Pearl Harbor and stalemated or lost wars of Korea and Vietnam. We should also note that “America” in this definition does not include Native Americans who lost their long war with European colonists and Mexicans who lost the west to the United States. To me “The Hedge” can only be imagined if defined selectively.
4. The argument of past moral performance outshining present moral performance depends on one’s list of moral qualities. American slavery involving widespread accepted racism, theft, violence, murder and rape is an obvious difficulty. Also the treatment of Native Americans can’t be viewed as our most moral moment. Levels of alcohol and opium consumption prior to the 20th century far outweigh current consumption levels and abortion was a quiet but common practice until the AMA got congress to outlaw it both for professional and public health reasons. Prostitution was commonly allowed and accepted in many places on the frontier. Most Christians today would hardly bless the moral performance of much of what went on in the US in the 18th and 19th centuries.
5. The list of contemporary moral failures tends to mostly align with the political agenda of the group doing the spotting.
6. Turning back also usually aligns with the political agenda of the group making the list.

Common Karma

At this point some of you are cheering me and some of you are getting upset. Why? Because the “hedge of protection” meme has a decidedly American political quality about it and maybe I shouldn’t be talking politics. Maybe I’ll give the other side something to curse about.

While one side wishes to love the “hedge of protection” meme about in their culture war, other more lefty Americans like to quietly embrace borrowed, watered down notions of Karma. We all enjoy pointing out the hypocrisies of our political adversaries and even more enjoy watching them lose. People commonly indulge in the idea that if you do bad things, bad things will find you.

What I’d like to point out is that in fact both sides are appealing to the same, underlying notion, that God, or the universe, or fate blesses the moral and curses the immoral. They may not agree on who is moral, who is immoral, or who is more moral, but the do agree that somehow good is rewarded by fortune, fate or God and evil is punished by fortune, fate, karma or God.

Common Wisdom

Before I proceed I surely must endorse this idea with the qualification of its limitation. Immoral and unwise living can indeed bring you grief. We all know this. Reckless driving and reckless living can certainly bring disaster to your door. This is part of wisdom.

Wisdom, however, is not the whole of theology. If you read the book of Job you will discover that this particular karmic view of the universe, that when you do good God will somehow bless you, but if you are receiving trouble in your life it must be because you have done something wrong, is not necessarily the final word on God’s work in this world. The most obvious example of this is in fact Jesus, who according to Christian doctrine was without sin, yet he lived his life without a place to lay his head, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and finally unjustly tried and executed as a political enemy of the state. Being sinless didn’t seem to “work” for Jesus is comfort, prosperity and security are the goals of the formula.

Is it often, even generally true that moral living yields happier results than immoral or reckless living? Yes. Is moral living a way of securing happiness, prosperity and security on an individual or national level? No. Examples of course abound.

What About Blessing?

In the book of Genesis we learn that God saves Noah because of his moral performance, but Noah’s moral performance was unable to stem the tide of human rebellion and wickedness that the flood was sent to address. God needed to come in far closer to us and address our bent hearts in a much more subtle, enduring and powerful way.

God selects Abraham for blessing for no reason discernible to us. He doesn’t appear especially moral or faithful, in fact the book of Genesis reveals a string of failures on Abraham’s part. What we begin to see, however, is that God’s selection of Abraham and relationship with Abraham and blessing of Abraham begins in fact to address his character and his heart, but not always in the facile and obvious manner that our simple moral formulas desire.

Last week we saw how Jacob bargains Esau out of his birthright, the position of privilege Esau had claim to because he was first born. This week we consider one of the most famous stories of the book of Genesis, where Rebekah and Jacob swindle Isaac and Esau out of his blessing. 

Deeply Secular, Stubbornly Superstitious

Most of us who have grown in up in “the west” where we have, from a very young age been enculturated into a system that keeps us publicly secular but privately superstitious need to own up to our moralisms (the hedge folks) and our deep longings for karma. We deeply hope that the assertions of the materialists are not true and that there us a god or a force in the universe that will one day even the scales. We want to know that genocidal dictators can’t just escape justice in cushy exiles and quick deaths. We want to believe that the universe is just.

We also want preferential treatment. We imagine ourselves like the children of Lake Wobegon “better than average” and our secret child of entitlement imagines that we deserve good things, at least things that are a cut above those less moral, sincere or well-intentioned.

What strikes us when we consider the battle over Isaac’s blessing is how foreign it is to us. Words to us are movements of air that only bear consequence if they are backed by movements of bodies, movements of money or movements of war. In the mind of Isaac and family words create, words make the future, words open doors and close them. Blessing is not simply signaled by words, it is initiated by words.

Walter Brueggemann makes the observation “Even thought the blessing has such power, it is given in fragile ways. In this narrative, the blessing is at the behest of intrigue and deception.

Blessing in the Age of Decay

As Christians we rightly assume our blessing is held securely in heaven, awaiting the return of Christ who brings it back down to terra firma. This is of course the reason Jesus admonishes his disciples to not store up their treasure on earth, where moth and rust consume.

In this story blessing has no such safe haven. Blessing here suffers from incarnation. It is fragile, it is subject to a dysfunctional family’s civil war. It is at play and we are watching, waffling between hope and despair that it will land justly and rightly.

Election disrupts our cheering for justice. The oracle of Genesis 25 establishes the injustice that will take place. Is Rebekah’s betrayal of wifely loyalty justified by oracular insider-hood or is she simply a manipulative mother who has her favorite? Election does not explain itself. The blessing will be given. Isaac’s lips, lungs and tongue will move the air and move the future and once air and future are set in motion he is powerless to stop them.

Is blessing like karma? Is blessing like the unsovereign god of moralism? The manner of Jacob’s future blessing will speak into that question.

Not A “Good Person” In the House

Isaac is a man of his appetites. He loves one son over another for the food he gives. After lying about the status of his wife he lets down his guard and fondles her where Abimelech’s servants can see. Now as he’s ready to release the blessing, the one given him by his father given to his father by the Almighty, he too wishes to exchange it for a good meal just as Esau exchanged his birthright for that bowl of “red stuff”.

Isaac’s appetites, combined with the family tradition of eavesdropping opens the door for Rebekah to steal the blessing and make it her own through her favorite son.

Jacob here is the apprentice, and Rebekah the master. She leads him every step of the way and sets readies him to secure the blessing through deception.

Esau is eager to receive what is his by tradition but not by the electing author of the blessing. Esau’s secondary status is inescapable. The LORD who elects is also the LORD of game. He who can place a ram in the thicket can manage the timing of the hunt.

Isaac knows the voice to be Jacob but won’t believe his ears. He trusts his senses of touch and taste that have led him astray before.

The blessing is given. The future is set. The eldest is demoted and the thieves get what they came for.

Whispers of Hell

Esau returns and the theft is discovered. The often subtle text of the book turns to alarm. Isaac is consumed by shaking, Esau shouts in cries of anguish and despair. “Bless me too!”

Esau doesn’t understand that the blessing is more real than the game he capture. The same deer cannot be killed twice.

Isaac and Esau, family of the elect feel the weight of divine choice. Thieves have taken stolen the blessing and their consolation, like that of Hagar is significant by most standards but not pinnacle that early in the day seemed to be in reach.

Election, Exile and Death

Rebekah knows that Esau is consoling himself for his loss of his blessing with the thought of the murder of his brother. She did not secure his future only to have Esau take it from him by force so she shrewdly plays Isaac one more time to send Jacob to Rebekah’s brother Laban. The son who stole the promise must now become an exile because of that promise and in that exile the full weight of the blessing he earnestly sought will become very real to him.

Isaac perhaps should have know the weight of being the chosen one. He, the son of laughter would be bound by the command of God and laid upon an altar only to be given a reprieve in the final moment. Election works this way. Out of everyone in the family Isaac should have known.

Would the familial “my wellbeing at your expense” scramble for the blessing have been any different if they knew what anointing really involves in this world? To be chosen for blessing by the electing love of God means to be chosen to BE A blessing and that usually comes at significant cost.

We will not read that Esau’s sons will sell his favorite into slavery. We will not read of Esau holding the special robe of a favorite son covered with deceiving goat blood. We will not read that Esau’s descendants will be slaves in Egypt. We will not read that Esau’s heir will hang naked on a cross wearing the spittle of his sons of the covenant. All of this will come to Jacob. This will be his blessing.

Revealing Moralism and Karma

Freud and others complain that religion is the projection of peoples wishes for security and prosperity and he of course is onto something. Moralism is an implicit protest against the sovereignty of God. It conveniently justifies its own sins while demanding that God make its adherent’s dreams come true.

Karma is more honest yet binding. Karma suggests that Isaac and Esau’s misfortune is directly related to their moral failings in this life or a past one. How can it then make sense of Jacob and Rebekah’s immoral success?

Election Brings Blessing to the World At the Expense of the Anointed

Blessing for the morally undeserving is called grace. As Bono suggests, Grace travels outside of karma. 

How can the immorality of Jacob and Rebekah be good news to us? It is good news because it means that election brings blessing to us even while we are immoral. As we will see in the coming weeks it graciously won’t leave us in our immorality. The dysfunction of Isaac and Rebekah’s family is no fun indeed.

What this is is good news for broken, fallen people. Jacob will become Israel and Israel will become Jesus and that election to suffering will eventually become election to resurrection and election to joy.

If you put your faith in religions of hedges and karma you are bound to the natural consequences of your own moral performance. You are also bound to the natural bias of your own inability to actually evaluate the quality of your own morality. I bet your neighbor doesn’t think as highly of yourself as you do. My guess is that you can’t even stand the scrutiny of the value systems that you use to judge others, never mind the exacting God of moralism or the binding minutia of karma.

If you place your hope in your moral performance and you fail it will crush you.

If you place your hope in your moral performance and you succeed, it will probably make you self-righteous (like Esau in his wrath) and make you look down on those who fail in moral performance.

The only way out of the trap is to accept the reality of your condition (you are not as good as you think you are) but the grace of one who was chosen for suffering on your behalf.

If this happens, then you can embrace both your election, the suffering that it entails, and the resurrection that is promised.

Forget the Hedge, Abandon Karma, Embrace Electing Grace 

Christians who try to motivate moral behavior or advance a political agenda from “hedge” theology are inviting their followers either into failure or the trap of self-righteousness. If America really were a chosen people like Israel it would suffer the cruciform fate of the one who hung between two thieves. The way of Jesus is seen as “your wellbeing at my expense.” A truly Christian America becomes the servant of all, not a master by wealth and power for its own prosperity and security.

The story of Jacob’s stolen blessing is the story of the mystery of election and the cruciform blessing of grace.