Sunday, August 22, 2010

In The Way of Jehonadab

The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, saying, Go to the house of the Rechabites, and speak to them, and bring them into the house of the LORD, into one of the rooms, and give them wine to drink.

Then I took Jaazaniah the son of Jeremiah, the son of Habazziniah, and his brothers, and all his sons, and the whole house of the Rechabites; and I brought them into the house of the LORD, into the room of the sons of Hanan the son of Igdaliah, the man of God, which was by the room of the princes, which was above the room of Maaseiah the son of Shallum, the keeper of the threshold. I set before the sons of the house of the Rechabites bowls full of wine, and cups; and I said to them, Drink wine!

But they said, We will drink no wine; for Jonadab the son of Rechab, our father, commanded us, saying, You shall drink no wine, neither you, nor your sons, forever: neither shall you build house, nor sow seed, nor plant vineyard, nor have any; but all your days you shall dwell in tents; that you may live many days in the land in which you live. We have obeyed the voice of Jonadab the son of Rechab, our father, in all that he commanded us, to drink no wine all our days, we, our wives, our sons, or our daughters; nor to build houses for us to dwell in; neither have we vineyard, nor field, nor seed: but we have lived in tents, and have obeyed, and done according to all that Jonadab our father commanded us...

  • Jeremiah 35:1-10, World English Bible (a public domain translation)

I've been “out-of-pocket” for the last several weeks. This has been mainly due to taking on a part-time teaching position as an adjunct at a local college. But now that finals have been administered and grades have been given, I have a bit of time to breathe and to think. (These were two pastimes I was sorely missing.)

One of the themes that was in the back of my mind is the subject of people, families and communities whose choices have positioned them for maximum survivability in this present time of resource depletion and economic collapse – even though they made their choices for entirely different reasons at the time those choices were made. I've recently met or read about a few such people and families, and have noted those elements of survivability in their lives which they chose for cultural or religious reasons, without necessarily thinking beforehand of the application of those elements to hard times. One characteristic of all these people is their separateness from the prevailing American culture. I'd like to explore the spiritual, Christian side of that separateness in one or two posts of this blog. The purely secular side of this theme will be explored in my other blog, The Well Run Dry. Sometimes the thoughts from both blogs will overlap.

And so we come first to Jehonadab and the Rechabites, of whom we read a little in the passage from Jeremiah which I quoted above. Who were the Rechabites? According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, the Rechabites were “...members of a family descended from Hammath, the progenitor of the house of Rechab; otherwise known as the Kenites (I Chron. ii. 55), who were the descendants of Hobab (Jethro), the father-in-law of Moses (Judges iv. 11). In Jeremiah (xxxv.) it is recorded that the prophet took some Rechabites into the Temple and offered them wine to drink, and that they declined on the ground that Jehonadab, son of Rechab, their ancestor, had commanded them not to drink wine or other strong drink, or to live in houses, or to sow seed, or to plant vineyards, and had enjoined them to dwell in tents all their days. Jeremiah used this fidelity of the Rechabites to their principles as an object-lesson in his exhortations to his contemporaries...

...the Rechabites were a people who endeavored to resist the customs of settled life in Palestine by maintaining the nomadic ideal; that they existed at different times in both the Northern and Southern Kingdoms; that they were especially interested in the worship of Yahweh (the LORD); and that the Chronicler connects them with the Kenites...”

According to the Bible, the Rechabites got their start on the road of separateness via their father Jehonadab (as spelled in 2 Kings; in Jeremiah, his name is spelled “Jonadab”). Jehonadab was a contemporary and acquaintance of Jehu the son of Nimshi, who was anointed king of Israel by the prophet Elisha in order to assassinate the current king, Jehoram the son of Ahab, and to destroy those who worshipped idols in the northern kingdom of Israel. It was via Solomon that idol-worship gained a foothold in the kingdom of Israel, and by means of the rulers of the northern kingdom it had become firmly entrenched. Jehu asked for the allegiance of Jehonadab, which Jehonadab gave to him as they both helped to eradicate the worship of Baal from Israel. But Jehu insisted on maintaining the worship of two golden calves which an earlier Israelite king had made in order to keep his subjects from the true worship of God. (This was a political move, in order to secure his authority over his subjects.)

It is possible to speculate (and some have speculated) that when Jehonadab saw that there had been no real change in the direction of Israel, he became disillusioned with Jehu and chose to withdraw himself and his family from the prevailing culture. By the manner of his withdrawal he created a family structure and culture that was uniquely survivable, in that it had no stake in the established culture of the land, and therefore nothing to lose from the destruction of that culture. The alternative he created was a culture and structure uniquely suited to the preservation of spiritual truth in the midst of hard and uncertain times.

You might say that Jehonadab looked at the evils of his nation's culture, the likely Divine judgment they would receive, saw the “pages of their book on fire” and read “the writing on the wall”, to borrow from a song I listen to a lot.

Which brings us to the subject of how Christians should relate to the present culture of the United States of America. Modern American culture is a universal solvent, in that it dissolves and assimilates anything exposed to it. It should be fairly obvious that our culture is also extremely corrosive and toxic. There are abundant obvious signs that these statements are true, from the garbage broadcast via television and other media to the PG-13 language that has become common even on elementary school playgrounds, to the goo that resides in the flash memories of so many mp3 players, to the disappearance of decent behavior among many members of the broad public. (Speaking of American culture as a universal solvent, I remember a ride on the MAX a few weeks ago during which I observed four Asian teens getting on at one of the stops. Their accents were unmistakable, and marked them clearly as foreign-born, yet they were each wearing baggy shorts at least three sizes too big for them, along with oversized T-shirts that hadn't been washed in a few days and bling jewelry and sideways baseball hats with flat brims, and they were all cussing and swearing like homeboys – even down to the rhythm of the cuss words. Peculiar...)

The Pharisaical members of the American Religious Right are quick to point these things out as “Sinnnn-Fullll!!!” And they are right – much of what we see in American culture is a sinful, sensual, lustful contradiction of Biblical morality, modesty, decency and propriety. But the American Religious Right is just as bad as the things they criticize. And in criticizing the surface symptoms, they conveniently ignore one of the root issues of American culture, namely, its full-throttle, reckless, crass materialism and greed, a materialism and greed which the American Religious Right practices with reckless abandon. For American culture is a construct which has been created by its masters for the sole purpose of making people crave things, thus prompting them to spend money. Popular religion has been co-opted by the masters of our culture, who would have us believe that the blessing of God consists solely of having lots of stuff, and that God wants to “bless” America forever, no questions asked. Spokespersons for this point of view include such sharp-as-a-bowling-ball thinkers as Sarah Palin, Glen Beck, Pat Robertson, and the Tea Party.

Yet perceptive people can see that America's days of hedonism are numbered. They see the “pages of our book on fire” and “read the writing on the wall.” They don't even have to look as far as Divine judgment to see that this is true. Anyone who can do college level math and who is well-read and well-informed about present economic, environmental and resource trends can see that the global economy in general, and the American way of life in particular, are in deep – possibly mortal – trouble. Books such as Limits to Growth, Reinventing Collapse, and Eaarth, and reports like the 2007 Energy Watch Group Oil Report lay the case out very clearly. Where I think Divine judgment comes in is in seeing how this nation has both obtained and spent our abundance, and thinking that because of our choices and the kind of people we've become there will be no miracle forthcoming to rescue us out of the consequences of those choices.

I think the best thing any real Christian living here could do is prudently and wisely withdraw from the prevailing culture, in order to keep his hands clean and to preserve something of enduring value in the hard times now upon us. But here a question arises: is a healthy, Godly escape from this culture possible? I stress the word “healthy” here. For there are plenty of recent historical examples of unhealthy withdrawal – from Jonestown to David Koresh to wacko fundamentalist “Christian” dominionist/supremacist super-patriot nutcase groups like Vision Forum, Bill Gothard, and the Honor Academy of Dave Hasz and Ron Luce. Abusive churches like the Assemblies of George Geftakys and other nut-cases would all like to emphasize the message of “Be ye separate from all else...” with the corollary, “that you may be entirely OURS!”, spoken with a ravenous snarl just as soon as you have come between their jaws. Abusive religious parents (especially fathers) who have drunk the Kool-Aid of the Patriarchy and Quiverfull movements might look at the example of Jehonadab and say, “Cool! I get to be the absolute boss of my own new culture!” I am also aware that there may be survivors of such abusive churches, groups and families who cringe at reading this present post, who have flashbacks at the very thought of being “separate” from the prevailing culture, and for whom the discussion of “separation” brings up all sorts of unpleasant experiences of legalism.

Yet this present culture is going down. And God commands us to be separate from it. Though we are in the world, we are not to be of the world. “Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” - James 1:27, World English Bible.

Jehonadab was able to achieve this separation for himself and for his family, and to do so in a healthy way. What would modern-day Rechabites look like in these present-day United States of America? Can we American Christians achieve a state of healthy separation without totally screwing it up?