How Dangerous Can "Being Right In Our Own Eyes" Be? | Humble Hermeneutic (Episode 7)

[Music] yo what's good y'all welcome to humble hermeneutics um so thankful um to have you all with us today um i am one-third of the conversation um today um my name is yana janay connor and then we have dr cynthia james with us say hello to people dr cynthia hello thank you and then we have a founder and president of the ju-3 project uh lisa fields and um lisa we are so thankful for uh the opportunity that you've given us to host this podcast and we are also just so thankful for all the things that you are doing for the kingdom to ensure that people know that christianity is not a white man's religion but that it is one um for all people um specifically um black people and so i'm just so thankful um for you and the work that you're doing and so glad to have you on with us today thank you for letting me be on y'all's podcast i appreciate it [Laughter] you know it's you know it's it's nothing you know really it's nothing to do but no so um glad to have you with us today lisa uh because dr cynthia james and i um wanted to have a conversation about judges 19. um and this is probably one of the heaviest passages in scripture so i just want to let everybody know just right up front this is going to be a hard conversation today and if you have any sort of trauma in your background um you you may want to not listen um to this but maybe you will um because i hope that in in our conversation that you would be able to see um how god can work in all things um even the bad things even the evil things that happen in our lives to bring about a particular good um a greater good and so no you normally do this but i'm just gonna pray i'm just gonna pray uh open up our time with prayer and then um we'll we'll jump into um god's word um tyler thank you so much for your revealed word lord we thank you um that this book isn't just sunshine and rainbows um but what that it really gets to the nitty-gritty uh of life um and that it it shows us uh how uh to engage with moments like these and how to still hold on to a firm view and understanding of you um even in the midst of of hard things so thank you in jesus name i be praying amen so we're looking at the book of judges today and uh if you are familiar with this book you may know that one of the phrases uh that continues over and over in this book is that uh the people did what they thought was right in their own eyes and that there was no king in israel um and so we come to judges 19 and it starts off once again reminding us that there is no king in israel but there is this levite right and we know that levites are of the the priestly heritage of of israel and there's a levite he's staying in a remote place um in in ephraim and he acquires a woman now i know we already are like we don't like the way that that sounds but he he acquires a woman and she becomes his concubine well his concubine is unfaithful to him and in that she leaves him and goes back to her father's house um and then it says you know that he she was at her father's house for about four months and i guess that was enough time for this levite to say you know i'm gonna go get my woman because i miss her and so he decides in his heart that he's gonna go and and and speak kindly to her to win her back um to to himself so he goes to her father's house and he stays for about three days and um he's doing what he needs to do to get his woman back and um then the father you know uh tries to get him to stay longer uh by you know feeding them well and getting them drunk you know and all this other kind of stuff um and the first time he's able to get him to stay an extra night but then eventually the levite is like yo we gotta go home we just gotta go home so it's it's it's it's it's approaching nighttime um and so his servant says to him hey i think that we um should should go and stay over into this town uh this just just just visit the city and spend some time there uh but the levi says like yo i'm not staying in no foreign city i'm not staying with some wicked people you know i i'ma stay with my own people and so they decide to go to another place called uh jabel um and this is where the benjamites um live and so they go and they encounter this older man and he says hey where are you guys from and where are you going um and he says well why don't y'all come stay at my house um for the night so they go and stay at his house you know this is wonderful hospitality uh but then in verse 20 um we see that this man invites them into his home um gives them everything that they need um he washes their feet they eat and they drink but then uh the house becomes surrounded by wicked men wicked men surround the house i mean just think about your house being surrounded by a group of men trying to get into your home banging on your windows banging on your doors you know uh and so there's there's fear in the house right and what these men want is for for the old man to give them the levite so that they can have sex with him and so of course the man is like hey this is a great injustice for you to do um this man is a levite he is of the priestly order um why we can't let you do that but then he reasons in his mind that the best alternative is for him to offer over his virgin daughter um and then also this man's concubine um because in his mind he's like hey if you do this to this priest that is an outrageous thing but i guess he felt like it would it wouldn't be so bad if they had sex with these women instead but in verse 25 it says but the men would not listen to him so the man sees the concubine and took her outside to them this is the the the [Music] i don't well i don't know this is the old man and it says and they raped her and abused her all night until morning at daybreak they let her go and early that morning the woman made her way back uh and it was getting light she collapsed at the doorway of the man's house where her master was and when our master got up in the morning opened the doors of the home and went out to leave on his journey there was the woman his cocky mind collapsed near the doorway and he tells her to get up how dare you sir he tells her to get up um and let's go um but there was no response because she was indeed dead and so this man puts her on his donkey and then he goes home and he does this really peculiar and heinous thing uh he picks up a knife he takes his concubine cuts her into 12 pieces limb by limb and then sent her throughout the territory of israel and it says he does this so that uh well we know that he does this to kind of have some sort of judgment against the 12 tribes of israel to essentially say like look look how bad it's gotten uh among us that we've allowed something like this to happen and in this story in verse 30 um it says everyone who saw it said nothing like this has ever happened or has been seen since the day the israelites came out of the land of egypt up until now and then it says think about it discuss it and speak up all right right um what are some of the initial things that stand out to you about this chapter who who are you who are you even what either lisa you're our guest so we'll let you go first so this is one of my uh i feel like this is one of the most interesting passages in the scripture um and i've wrestled with it quite a bit um and this is the past one of the the past one of the passages is that phyllis phyllis tribble calls the text of terror one of the texts of terror and uh one of the reasons is a terrible text is because what happens to the woman in this passage um but i loved how you mentioned that there's this recurring phrase in the book of judges that everyone did what was right in their own eyes and i see the book of ju this book and this verse this chapter as a culmination of everyone doing what's right in their own eyes that when we pursue uh our own truths and our own quote-unquote righteousness outside of what god's standard is and we try to find our own righteousness a right way or truth that we end up pursuing a justice that is distorted um and i see that the levite goes and says you know to the at the end you know cut cuts her up into 12 pieces and says look what y'all done as if he wasn't a part of the problem and i think one of the themes that comes out of this text for me is that when you pursue what's right in your own eyes that you can all uh you can be a part of the problem but excuse yourself from the problem or the consequences of the problem and impose those consequences on others without taking uh responsibility yourself him his his way of justice is is totally distorted he cuts her up first of all first of all he throws her out and then he cuts her up and then said look what y'all done and my thought is no look what you've done and uh so i think that's one of the things i'll save uh some of the others for later but i think that's the the first glaring thing that stands out uh for me in that in that text yeah that he doesn't see his own his own wrong um and that's so true you know we even see things happen around us that are unjust it's very easy for us to point fingers at other people and not consider how we we partner with those things you know um yeah no that's good that's the american story but though isn't it where you're describing for us that he is challenging them to say look what you've done is that in uh that's why i was pulling my bible again because i missed so much in this text is that in his actions he's saying that or is there phrasing um where he's saying that yeah he tosses the responsibility to those around him yeah and so that's inferred through like his actions and then as i've just consulted like other commentaries about this that is like the leading interpretation that this is he's doing this as an act of judgment which is why he spreads it out amongst the 12 um um uh 10 are the 12 tribes um limbaugh limb throughout the territory of israel and we see in the people's response right that they they get it they understand what he's trying to communicate like yo how did we get here to a point where uh a concubine would be raped all night long and then like literally like thrown away and left in the field um and it's just something about that event that causes israel to sort of have a prodigal son moment you know where it's like hey how did we get so far from god um what what happened um to us and so his his his tactics in a sense um work we're doing that i see it's been a while since i looked at the uh text of terror but i i have utmost respect for that so it wasn't fresh in my mind what what that analysis is going back to you're talking about people doing what's right in their own eyes and you analogized it to our own country um the one that we share though others that may be viewing this or from other places but everywhere there's a necessity for a rule of law and so this is basically saying there is no rule of law and we see constantly the attacks to overthrow what has been presidents what has been legislated what has been institutionalized uh kind of a free-for-all and i think we find ourselves in a time where so much is up in the air there's not much we can do about the fact it's already up in the air now things are destabilized but i think it puts a real burden on us to take onus and responsibility of how things are going to settle back down when i think about rule of law i think about again we talked about we hinted at it last session formation where in spiritual formation we say it's imperative to have a rule of life so not just as a communal rule of law but as a personal and individual commitment to have a a rule of life but i'm challenged to do and i'm hesitant now because i've not consulted what the scholars say and i have great regard for what multiple minds arrive at and especially in this kind of a text i'm trying to see and i've didn't just start i made one venture to try to write about this text and never touched it again but some say that often in scripture women are given not just to speak broadly to what's happening to women but to the body of christ and we can certainly see where the body of christ is severed whether it's in terms of denomination things that are not the basic tenets of the faith more more uh i don't want to say fringe ideas because they're still important but where they're severing among evangelicals where there's great political division um where there's arguments against what is public and private territory what is sacred and secular so i wonder to some extent have we displayed to the world a severing of the faith which should be a rally call to the benjamites to the least of the tribes to the smallest of the tribes to say listen let's let's consider it let's talk about it let's do something about it let's take some responsibility so i'm looking at it both in terms of feminine issues as well as in terms of body of christ issues and as women it is a call to the to us as women as well um i don't want to go further than uh lisa is taking us at this point but but it does say something to us about the need for unity the need for support we see we don't hear from the women but we see them as key characters we see them as mercenaries we see them as give and take exchange we see them as being chattel numbered right along with the two donkeys he takes and the concubine so in that list of possessions um but i think there is some hope and maybe we'll get to that later on uh despite all that yeah i think there is some hope and i know for me i um i had i had a friend uh who uh had a sister who experienced something similar to the concubine um and i remember when she called and shared with me what had happened like just complete and utter devastation you know it's like in my mind i was like i don't even have a category for for what you're sharing um with me and like literally just being like sick to my stomach and heaving and crying and just not just disoriented you know this is a very disorienting um thing and even you know i'm not even in close proximity to it as she and her sister um were um but i remember being brought to this text um because for me i'm always like okay lord like help me like i need you to give me something you know um and where are where are these experiences in the bible and how how do we how do we respond to them you know and so reading this text and being really grieved over what happened to the the concubine woman um but finding finding some hope in these last three these instructions that that that are given um one to think think it over think about what just happened you know uh discuss it try to figure out you know why it happened you know have a conversation about it and then thirdly to speak up you know so this wasn't just supposed to be something that had just happened and everybody just kind of brushes it under the rug and goes on about their day but there was this expectation that there would be a response and we see in chapter 20 that there was a response there was there was war against the vegemites because they had allowed this to happen in their town you know this house wasn't just you know like it was in proximity to other homes you know like and so not not only were those men uh held accountable but the whole community was being held accountable for what had happened so for me it just to see that kind of accountability in the bible right to see justice enacted in the bible um gave me hope because it gives me a picture of the kind of god that we serve that he doesn't just brush these incidents under the rug you know i stand corrected because i had the benjamites in the wrong role so thank you for getting me back into the text because i was seeing that differently um i don't want to cut off the rest of your statement i just want to make sure i corrected what i was saying it's in your face domestic violence it's in your face abuse it's in your face in our faces emotional uh dismissal and denigration but it's it's more than it's the physical it's the emotional is the social it's the institutional it's beyond marginalization um it is a total dehumanization of uh partially i think we can't ignore the gender issue and then we can subsequently so we don't over spiritualize see it is god's bride as the church not having the voice but i find hope in another place i don't know if this is the point uh miss lisa you want me to put that in or or someplace else go for it no you're fine my the hope i see is yes at the end um but also you know people we've heard whether it was slavery or individual sex trafficking or whatever we've heard people say oh they like it they prefer this as though there's a contentment with their condition this woman seeks to exert some human agency she leaves and we didn't see the insights of the home she left or the house she left but she left and given his personality it couldn't have been too good the fact that she leaves or his ways his mannerisms uh was an effort i don't think so much to get to daddy's house but to get away from what she so she doesn't just accept it i'm stuck here i can't do anything about it from the little bit i do remember this might have came from phyllis tribble she was considered a secondary wife a shifla which meant she had she was above a slave she had some options and many times in that culture and correct my history again the schifflers weren't expected to leave their father's house in the beginning so since everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes she had left the place where we think automatically the wife is going to go to be with the husband but i do recall there's some writings that suggest she was supposed to stay there but he was allowed to take her away maybe because of his status or whatever but she tries to get away from him and when she gets there then then there's this this thing about no one ever says it's not right to do this to her it's not right to do this to the levite but you brought out ms janna he's not the one going out being subjected to gang rape um but somehow what happens to her is impacting his influence his image and his status with little or no regard to her human her self-agency i think the fact that after all the abuse we assume she suffered all night long whether that's ages eons decades or whatever she tries to make it back she tries to get in out of the street that is the most touching part to me on top of the abuse that she has in my mind she is in she is crawled scarred beaten broken and she's trying to get back and somewhere in my mind um he's getting ready to leave he knows she's not in the house it doesn't look like he's going out to look for her it's like as he goes she's then she's on the doorstep as a reminder that i'm the one you threw away i picture and i don't know if it was in some translation i read a long time ago or what but the image in my mind is that she's there um reaching for the door for the doorknob that she's stretched out and there's this play on words in this text between house and home she leaves this house trying to get home she is brought back to a house that's not a home he takes her and says we want habitat here for the night we're gonna go there somebody says come into my home she's put out of the home into the street so she's homeless she tries to get back and it's looking for a place to land a place to settle a place of recognition not even honor not even privilege but just a place um this is the ultimate of displaced physically um and i i see this happening on levels that we don't call abuse but women in ministry that can't find an opening can't find a footing um women that have been divorced that are somehow ostracized or stigmatized women that are professional and not married and stigmatized for not being married uh any anyway you have too many children you don't have enough children you have too much education you didn't get any um it's like where where is that place where our efforts because she she's trying to make it the woman's done what she can to to do something so that's enough uh for me but um break it break it out for us no this is great he's so great thank you yeah he's a great great obsession i love that when i think about uh how the levite and the um guy whose house they were staying at pushed her out it makes me think of noah and when the uh the angels came and they tried to get um get the the two angels to come outside so they could basically gang rape them that noah is like no take my daughters and it seems that there is there is this uh idea in the old testament that it's okay to to rape a woman um but this is a gross evil to rape a man and so uh the ways in which they kind of put one one uh sin over the other is uh you know what we deal with in our culture where people see this uh this particular sin as greater than the other and they'll sacrifice other things for that i remember um roland martin talked about ken starr ken starr was the prosecutor in bill clinton's uh trial for um when he was impeached and he was really hard on you know bill clinton being immoral ken starr also was big a big um proponent of um traditional marriage however when he went to baylor some years later he covered up the fact that some football players were raping women were raping some of the women the students and um roland martin called doubt his hypocrisy because he's like you didn't stand up and have the same energy when when these young girls were being sexually assaulted by football players you covered that up but you had such a public proclamation um for these other things and so we see that same inconsistency in the text and i think we see that in just american culture in general and i think that's something that we have to wrestle with when we come to this text and when we go to the passage around noah as well yeah and man you saying that lisa it's just it it brings this thought to mind that you know that is a distorted understanding of humanity that is that is rooted in distorted understanding of uh you know what you know the doctrine of mother day you know uh that male and female are created in the image of god and that there has there has been this hierarchy we keep coming back to this word this hierarchy uh um that we create um that around people right and because we create this hierarchy around people it puts people in in danger you know uh puts them at risk for oppression and puts them at risk to being gang-raped um and this is so contra like how god intended the world to be like this is not what he intended like in the beginning heaven and earth male is female created in the image of god like uh honor respect harmony man and female standing before one another unashamed you know like um and and so all of this like literally is rooted in the curse of of sin the curse of of the fall and i think when i come to text like this it just it it helps me to understand what god meant when he said you know um if you eat from the fruit of this tree like that um you will surely die you know um and i even think about how the name of the tree is a tree of of good and evil right god didn't want us to eat from that tree because he didn't want us to know what evilness was you know like like but but because because adam and eve ate from that tree now we know like the depths of evilness you know um and we we experienced that in this text we experienced this with george floyd like we experienced this with rihanna taylor we experienced this with people at the border still people at the border you know there's still children in camps separated from their their families like it's just it's pervasive um and and it's it all comes back to us having a distorted view of humanity a distorted view of what it means um to be human and creating these unnecessary hierarchies that that god never intended us to to live by and so i don't know i just got real emotional and mad um we do feel like picking up a brick right but throwing some kerosene or gasoline somewhere like the magic but we keep pointing to that hope that in this woman after all she had undergone there was still something in her trying to reach out and still trying to still trying to travel still trying to make some movement trying to make some progress and we've seen that in our four parents our grandparents our their grandparents they made they it was inch by inch or foot by foot but they they moved they they had progress they pressed their way and there's that that pressing who is it that calls uh black women in particular the mule of the world uh i think whose writing that was uh and at first that feels very adverse but there is that i'm gonna bear this burden and get somewhere with it i'm i know what was done maybe i wasn't born in the best circumstances didn't live in the but but i'm i'm gonna find a place i'm gonna keep pressing the the other thing that grieves me in this text there's so much that grieves me is um the hierarchies exist and there's an imposed hierarchy on the women there is this virgin woman as opposed to this other woman who's out in the street and uh none of the none of them have voice but this one woman has had protection to this point she's been in the house to this point she's not been exposed if she was deluded or had illusions that that protection would endure that she'd stay there and always be safety she saw how fragile and how thin the membrane was between her being in the house in any moment she could be out of the house and it reminds those uh among us who may believe our pretenses of education or or economic status or whatever dimension that there's a thin membrane and while one moment we think we're in the house it's not our house and at any moment we may be the one that's out of the house so it keeps us from um settling back i i feel comfortable using my old-fashioned terms because we've said that part of this is to highlight the uh you i say intergenerational you say multi-generational dialogue but the old phrase of resting on our laurels i haven't figured out what laurels are yet but it challenges us not to find comfort and to think that we of all like esther have found a place to stay because we can easily be called when the sister is out in the street getting gang rape i'm out all right so when she's out there i'm out there and there there is a a connection as demented and sick as it is in the mind of the men between the women you know you're expendable and you're expendable but i i pray that we take a hint from that and recognize that there ought to be more than a connection uh among the sisterhood not one that's rallying against maleness but one that is pro-agency for women to support women uh in health care uh single mothers frail women older women uh abandoned women even women who are seemingly successful they have the support um i won't go into one of my stories but um i might later on but so let's let's keep bringing the hope up to the surface because she is not entirely passive and we must not assume passivity uh on her part yeah uh lisa i wanna i wanna uh ask you a question because i know that we've talked about this um is that you know sometimes when people are reading the bible and they encounter a text like this um they they they throw the baby out with the bathwater right like they uh come to a place where uh they uh question uh god uh question you know his existence question like how could he allow something like this to happen um how how do you respond to folks like that because i know that you've interacted with that question um quite a bit yeah i think uh one of the things is to for people when they think of the scripture especially the old testament is to think through what's prescriptive and descriptive and this is not god saying this is what my way is it's just this is what happens when people have their own way and a part of being human is having free will and the consequence of free will is is evil human actions um and so i think that's one of the ways to think through it uh but i think also dr joe vitale talks about this the fact that god doesn't forget about what happens to the woman that it was so important that people see like i'm not going to cover this up god is like this is going to be a part of the canon so people will know even if we don't know the concubine's name we know the injustice that happened to her and that is that should be encouraging to to people that god sees even the most horrendous evils that had happens to us and he's not trying to cover it up but it's that exposure in which we could be healed um to know that these are things that happen to us in the common experience it doesn't mean god uh is is uh commissioning them it doesn't mean that he desires them but this is a part of the human experience and the bible is such a relatable book we can find our human struggles in it that we don't look at the bible and see a fairy tale and if we looked at the bible and saw a fairy tale as joe vitale says we wouldn't be able we wouldn't we wouldn't we wouldn't be able to relate to it because none of our lives are a fairy tale and we need to have a book and a scripture to guide us that looks at the complexities of life the ugliness of life and then points us to that hope that comes uh and that we could be encouraged and that we could be comforted and and with that comfort we could like paul says comfort others um so that's a little bit of my compliment i love that i love that and you're bringing us back to that hope you know of uh god sees the concubine he doesn't forget the concubine he sees her and makes make sure that that her her story the injustice that happened against her is recorded in his book um and so i love that it reminds me of the story of hagar you know where she she proclaims god to be the god who sees and so um you know if if if trauma sexual trauma abuse is is a part of any of our listeners story i pray that they would know like that that god god didn't look away you know but that he he he sees them and that he remembers them and that justice will shine like the noonday sun you know um it will that's that's the word um and uh we may not know when the noonday sun is coming but it will but it will come it will come and so um we are you got something to say yeah go ahead dr simply always and not only will god not look away but we will not look away amen there's um this this severing limb to limb this dismemberment this fragmentation of the body um i don't know for fun do either of you have vocal abilities no i don't okay so well everybody knows i don't so in your mind remember um whether it may have been in some baptist congregations or maybe some holiness sets but where they would sing that remember me do you remember can you hear that moan in your in that re you know just i don't want to try to do it because that would just tear up the podcast but it's a long dragged out [Music] you remember that and so i've heard the analogy and and i've used it in pulpits it was coming back to me as you were both talking that that's not just we god won't look away and we won't look away we will cognitively remember but our prayer is that as each that each member of the body be remembered that we will be put back together in other words the lost arm be brought back to the body the lost kneecap be remembered something that is the opposite the antithesis of dismemberment would be rememberment i know there's no such word but i think you get the concept and so the prayer that comes out of this is a prayer to be remembered whether it's the the african diaspora um what whether whatever the dimension is remember us whether it is uh my ancestors wisdom and knowledge and fortitude that i've lost uh remember me remember put all the pieces that go into who i am the divine investments the historical investments the gender investments all the pieces that go into who i am put it back together remember me lest i be fragmented and pieces of me be scattered and this one lays claim to my mind and this one links claims to my this and this one they claim to that aspect but i am a creation of god whole and entire and unified um and that sense i'm sitting up taller in my chair that sense of coming together of being prime and primary and predominant on the in the heart and the mind of god so the prayer i think is one of remember me amen amen never seen that song the same again um thank you for that you do sing you could have sang that for us well you know i just i decided to keep that one because i knew what was coming [Laughter] oh man lisa thank you so much uh for being with us today um it really means a lot to have you on um the podcast you know me you know how you know how i feel about you you a real one you i know you don't like this but you are the the p diddy of of kingdom work visionary um and i'm just so thankful to the lord um not not only just for the partnership that we've been able to share um in the gospel but really for the friendship you know that that you call and check on me and uh make sure i'm doing well and that you spurred me on you know and so thank you so much um just for being with us today and um just for being obedient to what the lord has called you um to do thank you thank you for having me it's been a joy yeah yeah dr cindy do you have any closing words for us um i do and i want to say that it's been a privilege to sit with both of you i may not have the familiar exchange that the two of you have an ongoing basis but let me say about uh miss yana that i found her to be astute to be uh things that i don't that we assume are there but i want to underscore her articulateness but most of all her searching uh in terms of her mind searching of the text and her openness uh to sit with me and to include me in her generational voice um i wanted to underscore what many know who follow uh uh this project the ju3 project and that is miss lisa fields uh is not only a promoter and a producer but she has created a platform many of us speak but she has created a platform for others which goes beyond the normal expectation and it's and when one does that one takes both the kudos and the applause but also the hits and the knocks that are not always visible because we don't see her scars if she has any but i know that in this competitive world it means that inviting comment means one invites positive and criticism and i've seen her handle that with tremendous grace and still keep going it means that and and to my amazement and no doubt probably the amazement of others she's been able to garner different voices of different opinions and bring them to her table and it's nice to see a woman with the table and and not always agree when they leave and some possibly feeling like they didn't have the seat they should have had at the table but it is her table and god gave it to her and so i'm delighted um to be among those who are in the folds of your skirts and i applaud you for being a woman of god a woman who is inebriated with scripture and a woman who has arms big enough to embrace multiple generations thank you thank you so much dr james i appreciate it yeah oh that was great that was so great and dr cynthia james i have loved getting to know you it has been such a treat at the beginning yeah um it's been such a treat i know uh i just you know have admired you from afar and it's always so sweet and beautiful when you can get up close to people and to see that they're really made of the stuff that you thought they were made of and so thank you for just being um a woman of humility and grace and of truth and sass and fun um yeah i really wish people could see some of the the the off-camera stuff that that we no no no no no thank you thank you you

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Length: 45min 51sec (2751 seconds)

Published: Mon May 31 2021