Collateral Damage of "Faith"

             After battling chronic depression and serious neurological pain for years, with his business failing and seeing no livable future, our youngest son took his life last August. The grief remains demanding for our family.

It flared up again this morning when I ran across one of the most difficult passages in the entire Bible. It’s the story of Jephthah (Judges 11:1-39). Jephthah is called by the people of Gilead to lead a fight against the Ammonites. Verses 30-31: “And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord: ‘If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.’”

Jephthah went to battle, he was victorious, and when he returned home his daughter came out to greet him.

Jephthah is devastated. The text won’t allow us to pretend otherwise. He cries out; he tears his clothes; he names his grief and he says, “Oh no, my daughter! You have brought me down and I am devastated. I have made a vow to the Lord that I cannot break.” (verse 35)

I was guided through an interpretation of the story by a favorite vlogger, Episcopal Priest Joseph Yoo.[1] I’m paraphrasing him and adding my own perspective in what follows.

We can’t say Jephthah didn’t love his daughter. We can’t say he felt nothing or that he’s indifferent. His mental and emotional state is something even more unsettling because even in his grief he accepts his own values that his vow is unbreakable.

But see, here’s the thing: God never asked for that vow! God never responded to it; never demanded any kind of sacrifice. Hebrew prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Amos declare that God never asked Israel for sacrifice. But Israel was new at this God thing and, given the Middle Eastern religious environment of that day—the pagan religions that surrounded them, Jephthah and all of Israel did what they knew.

And in the story, no one in Jephthah’s family or community intervenes—no prophet, no priest, no elder, no voice saying this is not what faith demands.

Even the daughter doesn’t protest or curse God. She asks for time to grieve the life she won’t have and to say goodbye to everyone she loves. She fully understands what’s happening and she participates. But her faithfulness unfolds within a world and a faith system that defines what obedience looks like and never offers her another option. So, she doesn’t challenge the vow, which means faithfulness becomes compliance even when it costs the faithful one everything.

And God is still silent.

The story doesn’t ask us to decide whether Jephthah was evil or sincere. I think it shows us something even more difficult; namely, what can happen when faith can name grief but will not stop the action that brings harm; what happens when obedience has no exit ramp; what happens when vows matter more than people.

I’m not saying that’s the only way to read the story. But after reading the story and given my own journey of grief, I refuse to call tragedy holy or to pretend that harm can be righteous just because someone does it in God’s name.

Scripture isn’t fragile. It doesn’t need us to rescue it or to rationalize it.

And faith that never questions itself often ends up costing someone else. Call it collateral damage of misplaced faith.

That’s the way it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

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