In the daily Catholic Mass readings, I frequently come upon an Old Testament story that scrambles my brain. Fortunately, I can almost always find a New Testament story to straighten it all out. Thank God for Jesus.
This week, I was presented with a gem from Genesis about our illustrious patriarch, Abraham (aka Abrahm). Here’s a quick and brutal summary of the story:
Abram wants a son, but his wife Sarah (aka Sarai) is unable to get pregnant. Sarai feels so bad about her infertility that she tells her husband to have sex with her servant, Hagar, hoping he can get a male heir that way. Unsurprisingly, Abram swiftly agrees to this proposition, has sex with the servant and gets her pregnant. Nowhere in the story does it say whether Hagar consented to sex with her boss, but Abrahm was reportedly 86 at the time, so my guess is no.
As soon as she conceives, the lowly Hagar erroneously assumes that carrying her master’s child has elevated her status and she starts acting all uppity and disrespectful toward Sarai. Well now Sarai is pissed! She blames Abram for the situation even though she was the one who suggested he have sex with the maid in the first place. Abrahm throws up his hands and gives his wife permission to deal with her pregnant servant however she deems best.
Sarai then abuses Hagar to the point where Hagar can’t take it anymore and runs away into the wilderness. Near a spring in the wilderness, Hagar meets up with a “Messenger of God” who orders her to go back to her abuser. He promises her that if she submits to Sarai’s abuse, God will reward her with descendants too numerous to count. (In the Old Testament, God loves to reward people with many descendants and then regularly wipes them out with floods, plagues and the like.)
God’s Messenger also tells Hagar that her baby will be a boy (whew!). Unfortunately, he goes on to inform her that her son will grow up to be, and I quote, “a wild ass of a man” who will antagonize a lot of people and make a lot of enemies.
Hagar decides that a lifetime of oppression and abuse sounds more promising than a life in the wild unknown which is still a common ideation for domestic abuse victims. She goes back to her abuser and eventually gives birth to a baby boy. Abram names the child “Ishmael”.
At first, second and third glance, this story seems to justify the oppression of vulnerable people and to indicate that abuse is sometimes the will of God. It brings to my mind the story of a friend of my mother’s, who was told by a messenger of God (a priest) to stay with her alcoholic husband who regularly beat her because it was God’s will for her. He advised her to deal with the black eyes and broken ribs by taking comfort in prayer.
All the people in the above stories are now dead, but one doesn’t have to look far to find people today who still use the Old Testament to justify oppression and abuse, claiming that it is the will of God. I wish these folks would read on a little further to where God shows up in the world in person and clarifies what His will is.
In Luke 4:18-16, for example, Jesus says,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set those who are oppressed free, and to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”
Freeing the oppressed, uplifting the poor and releasing people from all kinds of personal and public prisons was the core of Jesus’ mission, and story after story in the New Testament clearly illustrates this. He feeds the hungry, heals the sick, stands up for the weak and vulnerable, includes the outcasts, and educates the ignorant. He was, on different occasions, a social worker, a healthcare worker, a counselor, a therapist and a teacher. He was also the greatest liberator of all time in my opinion (which is no more important than anyone else’s).
I am tragically familiar with the Old Testament, having read it cover to cover more than once. I know where to find justification for just about anything within its pages. Intolerance, oppression, abuse, violence, misogyny, homophobia and racism can all be excused away as “the will of God”. Many politicians, judges, lawmakers and other powerful people today use it ad nauseam to try to create the kind of society they want based on their personal preferences. They often suit themselves up as messengers of God, just like the one Hagar met up with in the wilderness back in the day.
My advice to any Christian who wants to receive a message from God is to skip the messenger bullshit altogether and go straight to the source. There are many priests and pastors out there today who are devoted to the teachings of Jesus and can help people navigate and understand the New Testament. If they can’t find the answers they’re looking for in the words and actions of Jesus, then I would advise people to seek out those who are still doing his work today - social workers, healthcare workers, counselors, therapists and teachers.
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