Wherever I banish them, all the survivors of this evil nation will prefer death to life, declares the Lord Almighty. (Jeremiah 8:3)Prefer death to life...
I don't really expect things like this to come up in the Bible.
Did God make this happen, an intended part of the exile, or is it merely an observation of what would occur? Does God want people to be suicidal?
Is God different now than in the Old Testament? Don't we say that the Old Testament has enduring value because it shows us God's character?
We talk about how God would never do awful things to us, but the exile was pretty awful. Possibly deserved, but horrible nonetheless. Sometimes God doesn't save.
I was thinking about this as I drove to work, and suddenly I realized that this hits me in more than one way. Many years ago I had the sense that this time of darkness was an exile, was Babylon. It is an imperfect analogy, but it is one picture interpreting my circumstances. I am in exile in Babylon, where I relate to preferring death to life.
I think that doing good things should make me feel good. Reading the Bible in the morning when I wake up should increase my wellbeing, not my despair.
By the waters of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion. (Psalm 137:1)
i'm reading jeremiah too. interesting and hard. i love all the word pictures though, they are stunning!
ReplyDeleteIt's a hard question to ask and even harder because there's no satisfying answer here on earth. We won't know until we die what God is really like. It's good to contemplate things like this though cause it really helps you understand it when you come out the other side.
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