Stern Discipline, Perhaps Not Eternal Discipline

            Total destruction of Jericho . . . OK, we’ve been down this road before.  For the sake of the promise that they carried, God’s people need to purge the land of the people who would tempt them to idolatry.  It might seem harsh, but we’ve been here before.  (See my posting from March 8.)

            But, really, what about poor Achan.  Isn’t the Lord a God of mercy?  How come this fellow, who sinned, who got caught, and who owned up to it, gets stoned?  Shouldn’t there be forgiveness for that?

            Two things stand out for me.  First, we have to take into account where we are:  in the story of Israel, the carrier of God’s promise.  Just as they were to purge the Canaanite influence from their midst for the sake of the promise, so they had to purge the temptations from within them, too.  The sternness is in service of the Lord’s greater project of mercy and restoration.

            A second thing that stands out for me is that we contemporary Christians too often jump a bunch of lines and end up at places that the Scriptures don’t necessarily end up.  So, for instance, the story says that Achan was stoned.  He died.  News flash:  everyone in the Bible (except for possibly Enoch and Elijah) dies.  The fact that Achan is stoned to death does not mean that he is unforgiven and damned for what strikes us as a relatively minor crime.  It means that he bore a stern, maybe even severe, punishment for endangering God’s project.