The Incredible Stories of the Bible

The Rape of Dinah by Sebastiano Ricci

Old Christian Reformed missionaries couldn't do Navajo mission work by ushering out their finest theological rambling. Trolling through the weeds of the consubstantiation/transubstantiation thing wasn't going to offer much reward and could well leave the lost more so. Same with, say, proof texting for the doctrine of common grace. Good luck with that.

According to the old missionary novels, the central mode of mission outreach was cold turkey camp visits: you walk up to a hogan and introduce yourself. If asked, you sit around the fire with other family members, shuffle through your best Bible stories, and pick one or two you hope will be stunners.

What follows, if the old novels tell the truth, is a spirited competition to determine who's got the best stories? If the missionary, via his translator, spins more compelling yarns than locals, well, then, maybe the locals will lend more than an ear to the song-and-dance the white man is slinging. 

In Beyond Words, Frederick Buechner's witty commentaries are presented by topics introduced alphabetically. So last night, on Elijah, for devotions, we read two substantial chapters from I Kings, 18 and 19, and sat spellbound once more by the awesome comedy. Elijah and the prophets of Baal pull on their battle uniforms and go into competition, each conjuring the best work they could from their respective gods. You know the story--three times Elijah tells his troops to soak the sacrifice. Three times. No matter. The Lord descends in all his might and puts a match to the mess that makes Baal's first team look like dried-up phlegm.

Now that is a campfire story. 

A week ago Buechner hauled out the Dinah story. I'd forgotten the prologue, the rape; but no boy can forget the massacre. When I was a kid, I went to a Christian school. I'm not bragging--I'm stating the truth: I know the best Bible stories better than most people; but Dinah's rape was a saga I'd lost or forgotten, not the aftermath.

The story begins with rape. In the chronicles of the Lord, that's not particularly unusual. In the Dinah story, this heathen guy named Shechem did evil in the eyes of the Lord when he took, without asking, Jacob's comely daughter Dinah. Just took her. Rape. 

The complication? He, well, fell in love, or so the story goes. At least, he decided he wanted Dinah's hand in marriage and told his father so. Dinah's brothers weren't thrilled with the idea, even though this Shechem of the infidels and his old man offered a package of goods only a fool could turn down. Jacob was, we know, a chiseler. You wouldn't expect moral outrage from him, even though he was the girl's father, not when there was some heavyweight dollar signs around.

It's not an easy story. Just imagine yourself around a fire, multiple generations of Navajo sit around you, but you've got the floor. It's your job to tell spin the yarn.

Buechner says Shechem and his old man simply won't take no for an answer. Apparently, no one asked Dinah, but Jacob's boys tell him that he should bargain thusly with Shechem: he can have Dinah on the condition that the heathen men, all of them, give themselves over to the knife--get circumcised.

You're in a contest, remember. You have the mike right now. You're telling the story, and right now you can bet they're all tuned in, men and women.

All of 'em? Yeah, all of 'em. They all get worked on and over, get snipped. The whole freakin' bunch, a surgery that lays the heathen up but good. None of their warriors are ready to fight with their goods bandaged and bloodied, so Dinah's brothers just take 'em at the moment of the misery, every last Hivite. Soon enough, they're history.

Revenge killing. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.

What an incredible story. The campfire might well be going out because it's been forgotten in the spell of the incredible saga. There's no internet, no TV, no computer games. There's only the stories you lug in your rucksack. 

But there's a problem. You've got to tell the men on the other side of the fire to stop holding the family jewels. It's just a story, after all.

If you can do that, I'm thinking you win, hands down. Seriously, the Bible has monstrously incredible stories.