Bad Theology

Text for today: I Kings 17

God sends a drought and orders his henchman Elijah to live by a brook east of the Jordan; but although God dispatches ravens with bread and meat, the brook dries up. God then sends Elijah to a safe house where a widow will feed him. The widow and her son are on the point of starvation; God magically replenishes their supplies of oil and flour, but slaughters the boy in a moment of inattention and has to be reminded that the woman is serving His own interests.

Several Old Testament patriarchs and prophets are on record as disputing with God. Abraham bargained with Him over Sodom and Gomorrah, although since God must have known all along what would happen in the end, it is arguable that Abraham, as with Isaac and the ram, was simply the butt of another sadistic practical joke. On another occasion, Moses set an example for priestly castes everywhere by dissuading God from breaking His covenant with the Hebrews and destroying them over the golden calf. In this case Elijah rebukes God for His impoliteness in killing off the son of the woman who has shown him hospitality, and God relents after being asked only three times. Elijah also stretches himself over the child: a custom which persists in slightly different form among certain clergymen today, though not always as a means of re-animating the dead.

It cannot be denied that God emerges from the episode looking buffoonishly inefficient and absent-minded: He can replenish supplies and marshal ravens as waiters, but cannot keep a brook running or prevent His servant's child dropping dead. When the boy is restored to life, his mother says that the word of the Lord in Elijah's mouth is truth: a shrewd and telling formulation, as it implies that words in other mouths may be no less the Lord's for being false.