Blessing And Cursing

 

           For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits. Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind.  Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark. (Genesis7: 17-23)

See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction.  For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. (Deuteronomy 30:15-16)

          Some folks think that I insist that everyone be like me. Nothing could be farther from the truth in most matters. I would far rather people be must better than I am, and that means I tend to treat them as though they are at least my equal in most regards and therefore fully capable of an interesting, intelligent discussion. The reason I’m mentioning this is because I think it’s human nature to think other people are like us. It’s absolutely true to some extent. We are all human beings, and we all have human natures. It’s not surprising that we would think of the people living just before the flood were like us. There are ways in which they were undoubtedly like us. We assume we a good, and therefore that they must have been good. I think that’s a dangerous assumption at both ends.

         People also tend to be irrational when it comes to what life was like back then. We tend to assume that we are smarter now, and that anyone living that long ago was some how a “noble savage.” The perception seems to be that God was oppressing innocent folks who weren’t doing anything we would consider wrong (as if we are the appropriate judges.)

          Think of how life has changed since 1900 AD. My grandmother was born in 1903. She probably didn’t have electricity in her home until after she was married. I remember a coal stove in her kitchen in the 60s. Planes didn’t exist. Radio and TV weren’t around yet. It had been less than 20 years earlier that scientists had really started investigating bacteria and viruses. If life can change so much in 120 years, imagine how it could have changed in 500-1500 years before the flood.

          There is no way to know, but there is no reason not to believe what Scripture tells us, that the people were evil. They abused one another, and there seems little reason not to speculate that they abused the environment. Those in the environmental movement tell us regularly that we are approaching a tipping point, and if we don’t so lots of drastic stuff now, we’ll wipe out all life on the planet. This is the image that goes through my mind with regard to the world before the flood.

          That’s a lot of thinking to do as an introduction to today’s topic, the counterpoint of blessing and curse, as mentioned in the second passage for the day. As with the time prior to the flood, we tend to think that the various people that God has judged or cursed didn’t really deserve it. God was just being nasty God. If you read through Deuteronomy 30, you’ll find that God tells them over and over that if they live this way, this will happen, and if they live that way, that will happen. The “this” we call blessings, and the “that” we call curses.

          But what if… When Israel lived in the “this” way, God stayed with them, protected them, and blessed them. When Israel lived in a way that kicked God to the curb, all those blessings disappeared. In other words, when God was welcome to protect the land of Israel, they were granted blessings. When God was not welcome to protect the land of Israel, the blessings were taken away. That means there was less reason for those from whom God would have been protecting Israel to oppress Israel. When God was cursing Israel, and not protecting Israel, God was at the same time blessing and protecting Israel to the extent that He could while “absent.” Blessing and cursing aren’t exactly counterpoint because they don’t play at the same time, but they’re the same motif, one played in a major key, the other in a minor as a sort of canon or round.