Bad Religion

Rev. Amanda Kemery

Inspired: War Stories

Scripture: Judges 11 (Jephthah and his daughter)

Based on the book Inspired, by Rachel Held Evans

War Stories

War stories... I can’t say I care for war stories. Never really have. Saving Private Ryan, for example—I can logically understand how and why it is widely considered one of the greatest movies ever made, but I can’t watch it . I’ve tried. At some point, peeking out from behind your own hands takes away from the cinematic experience .

I live with someone, however, that LOVES war stories . Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, We Were Soldiers, Band of Brothers—they are TJ’s go-to’s . Part of me wonders: are these the stories you really want to watch? Do you enjoy this? And then part of me understands. He’s served in the military for more than 20 years now. He’s spent years on active duty and fought in Iraq. These stories mirror part of his lived experience. They can be stories of bravery, camaraderie, and selflessness.

Rachel Held Evans reminds us that war stories, like them or not, tell us where we come from, what we value, who we fear, and even what we hate . They occupy enormous space in our literature, art, media, and our monument-dotted landscapes. Whether you like war stories or not, you almost can’t look away .

Sometimes our stories glorify war; sometimes they lament it. Historically, they have often been exaggerated and marked with propaganda. Some battles are meticulously detailed and preserved by journalists and historians, but more often than not, our war stories are motivated and marked by something else: the pride of victory, the shame of loss, the politics of a new age, or the warped lens of time .

This is the problem: war stories get shaped and distorted based on who is telling the story. You will get a very different story from the victors than from the conquered; from the one who lost their friend in battle than from the ones who made it out with their whole team; a different story from the soldiers than from the civilians; from the officers and political leaders calling the shots in the war room than from the men and women on the ground .

And the war stories in our scriptures are no different. They are shaped by who is telling the story.

Jephthah and the "Perfect Storm"

Our scripture reading from Judges 11 is a tough read, but it has all the elements of a good war story. It’s the story of a “mighty warrior,” Jephthah, who overcomes his own abuse and abandonment from his family to return home, rise to the top of the ranks, and lead his people to victory . He’s even listed in the book of Hebrews as one of the faithful—one of the storied ancestors that, through faith, conquered kingdoms, brought about justice, escaped from the edge of the sword, was mighty in war, and routed foreign armies .

Jephthah is lifted up as one of these faithful without a word about what happened when he got home from battle. You have a couple of options with this story, and stories like it:

1. Ignore it.

   
   

2. Justify it.

   
   

3. Look deeper and seek something more.

   
   

I have to admit my previous go-to was to ignore it. For me, these stories seem completely out of place in our scriptures; they feel irrelevant and incongruent with my faith in Christ, so why bother? Others may try to justify the bad behavior or call it divine will, where the end justifies the means . Some will say that scripture need not be questioned—that God’s Word is beyond our comprehension.

Now, I do fully believe that the vastness and mystery of God cannot be fully understood by our human minds. But I also believe we are called to wrestle with scripture: to question, to wonder, and to dig deeper than surface-level literalism .

Deconstruction and Motive

If you have a social media algorithm like mine, you’ll come across the word “deconstruction” a lot. It’s a term used, especially by former evangelical Christians, to describe a breaking-down of previously held beliefs and a relearning and re-exploration of their Christian faith . Sometimes the process leads to a reformed faith, and sometimes to an abandonment of faith. But at the core of the deconstruction process lies the question: Whose voice have I been listening to? Who is telling the stories? And what is their motive?

Some voices telling the story of Jephthah have tried to justify his behavior, lifting up his obedience and even arguing that his daughter’s obedience redeemed his behavior . I’m not buying it. If we are not going to ignore the story, and if we’re not going to fall into the trap of trying to justify his violent behavior, we have to acknowledge that Jephthah messed up—in more than one way .

His story, as theologian Lynn Japinga notes, is the perfect storm of bad parenting, bad judgment, and bad religion. When we dig deeper, we might notice that God never asked Jephthah to make a vow. God’s spirit had already descended upon him; God’s presence was palpable and God was with him. Instead of trusting in God’s presence, Jephthah tried to manipulate God into victory. And we know that desperate vows usually aren’t well thought out.

On top of that, when his daughter emerges from the house—the first out the door to welcome him home, as was customary—and she is now the one who he has promised to sacrifice, he blames her! "O daughter, look what you made me do!" Jephthah may have been a man of faith, but he was not faithful in this.

The Voice of the Daughters

Who tells this story makes a difference. Why you tell this story makes a difference. If you tell this story to lift up a very imperfect and violent man, you may be left with more questions than answers. But what if the daughters of Israel—the women who wept with Jephthah’s daughter—what if they told this story?

If we consider that possibility, what we find is a group of women that made time to grieve with a friend who was about to lose her life, her future, and the chance to leave a legacy of her own . What we find is a group of women who lamented the human cost of violence and patriarchy.

And after Jephthah's daughter was killed, they continued. While the men moved on to fight another battle, the women stopped to acknowledge that something terrible had happened. With the little social and political power they had, their grief became protest for four days every year . They refused to let the nation forget what it had done in God’s name.

Wrath vs. Love

Who we choose to listen to matters. Are we listening to voices motivated by power and control? Are we blindly following the loudest voices while squashing our inner conscience? Are we listening to the violent voices of this world or are we listening for God?

I was inspired this week by Reverend Lizzie MacManus Dail, author of God Didn’t Make Us to Hate Us . She made a connection regarding Christian nationalism and a specific way of thinking called the "penal substitutionary atonement theory" . This theory is rooted in a God of wrath, imagining that human sin was so great that God poured out wrath on the Son on the cross to pay the debt .

If this is the story you are listening to, you are hearing a story that equates God’s tremendous love with tremendous wrath . You are listening to a story that says God loves you by punishing you and others, and that punishment is the way to salvation .

That story—of a God of wrath—isn't the story of the God I know. The voice I choose to turn back to is the voice of Jesus:

• “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

  
  

• “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

  
  

• “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”

  
  

• “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

  
  

Choosing Jesus

I’ve never really liked war stories, but they’re part of who we are. If we just look away, we won’t learn anything. We have to ask: who is telling the story?

I choose Jesus. I choose to listen to the voices he lifted up: the poor in spirit, the mourners whose resistance is holy, and the merciful . I choose Jesus, who bore the brunt of human cruelty yet remained faithful to the nonviolence he taught and modeled .

If Jesus Christ is the revelation of God that culminates and supersedes all others, then we know a God that would rather die by violence than commit it. Christ won his kingdom without violence and without war. Maybe we could too