chosen people

• prime factor in nation building

71:3.2Much as it is to be re­gret­ted, na­tional ego­tism has been es­sen­tial to so­cial sur­vival. The cho­sen peo­ple doc­trine has been a prime fac­tor in tribal weld­ing and na­tion build­ing right on down to mod­ern times. But no state can at­tain ideal lev­els of func­tion­ing un­til ev­ery form of in­tol­er­ance is mas­tered; it is ev­er­last­ingly in­im­i­cal to hu­man prog­ress. And in­tol­er­ance is best com­bated by the co-or­di­na­tion of sci­ence, com­merce, play, and re­li­gion.

• persistently mischief-making error

92:3.2Re­li­gion has al­ways been largely a mat­ter of rites, rit­u­als, ob­ser­vances, cer­e­monies, and dog­mas. It has usu­ally be­come tainted with that per­sis­tently mis­chief-mak­ing er­ror, the cho­sen-peo­ple delu­sion. The car­di­nal re­li­gious ideas of in­can­ta­tion, in­spi­ra­tion, rev­e­la­tion, pro­pi­ti­a­tion, re­pen­tance, atone­ment, in­ter­ces­sion, sac­ri­fice, prayer, con­fes­sion, wor­ship, sur­vival af­ter death, sacra­ment, rit­ual, ran­som, sal­va­tion, re­demp­tion, covenant, un­clean­ness, pu­rifi­ca­tion, prophecy, orig­i­nal sin—they all go back to the early times of pri­mor­dial ghost fear.

• Jews’ reaction against national inferiority

93:9.9The na­tional ego of the Jews was tremen­dously de­pressed by the Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity. In their re­ac­tion against na­tional in­fe­ri­or­ity they swung to the other ex­treme of na­tional and racial ego­tism, in which they dis­torted and per­verted their tra­di­tions with the view of ex­alt­ing them­selves above all races as the cho­sen peo­ple of God; and hence they care­fully edited all their rec­ords for the pur­pose of rais­ing Abra­ham and their other na­tional lead­ers high up above all other per­sons, not ex­cept­ing Mel­chiz­e­dek him­self. The He­brew scribes there­fore de­stroyed ev­ery rec­ord of these mo­men­tous times which they could find, pre­serv­ing only the nar­ra­tive of the meet­ing of Abra­ham and Mel­chiz­e­dek af­ter the bat­tle of Sid­dim, which they deemed re­flected great honor upon Abra­ham.

• Amos, Hosea attacked egoistic doctrine

97:4.2Amos was not merely a re­storer or re­former; he was a dis­cov­erer of new con­cepts of De­ity. He pro­claimed much about God that had been an­nounced by his pre­de­ces­sors and coura­geously at­tacked the be­lief in a Di­vine Be­ing who would coun­te­nance sin among his so-called cho­sen peo­ple. For the first time since the days of Mel­chiz­e­dek the ears of man heard the de­nun­ci­a­tion of the dou­ble stan­dard of na­tional jus­tice and moral­ity. For the first time in their his­tory He­brew ears heard that their own God, Yah­weh, would no more tol­er­ate crime and sin in their lives than he would among any other peo­ple. Amos en­vi­sioned the stern and just God of Samuel and Eli­jah, but he also saw a God who thought no dif­fer­ently of the He­brews than of any other na­tion when it came to the pun­ish­ment of wrong­do­ing. This was a di­rect at­tack on the ego­is­tic doc­trine of the “cho­sen peo­ple,” and many He­brews of those days bit­terly re­sented it.

97:4.3Said Amos: “He who formed the moun­tains and cre­ated the wind, seek him who formed the seven stars and Orion, who turns the shadow of death into the morn­ing and makes the day dark as night.” And in de­nounc­ing his half-re­li­gious, time­serv­ing, and some­times im­moral fel­lows, he sought to por­tray the in­ex­orable jus­tice of an un­chang­ing Yah­weh when he said of the evil­do­ers: “Though they dig into hell, thence shall I take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down.” “And though they go into cap­tiv­ity be­fore their en­e­mies, thence will I di­rect the sword of jus­tice, and it shall slay them.” Amos fur­ther star­tled his hear­ers when, point­ing a re­prov­ing and ac­cus­ing fin­ger at them, he de­clared in the name of Yah­weh: “Surely I will never for­get any of your works.” “And I will sift the house of Is­rael among all na­tions as wheat is sifted in a sieve.”

97:4.4Amos pro­claimed Yah­weh the “God of all na­tions” and warned the Is­raelites that rit­ual must not take the place of righ­teous­ness. And be­fore this coura­geous teacher was stoned to death, he had spread enough leaven of truth to save the doc­trine of the su­preme Yah­weh; he had in­sured the fur­ther evo­lu­tion of the Mel­chiz­e­dek rev­e­la­tion.

97:4.5Hosea fol­lowed Amos and his doc­trine of a uni­ver­sal God of jus­tice by the res­ur­rec­tion of the Mo­saic con­cept of a God of love. Hosea preached for­give­ness through re­pen­tance, not by sac­ri­fice. He pro­claimed a gospel of lov­ing-kind­ness and di­vine mercy, say­ing: “I will be­troth you to me for­ever; yes, I will be­troth you to me in righ­teous­ness and judg­ment and in lov­ing-kind­ness and in mer­cies. I will even be­troth you to me in faith­ful­ness.” “I will love them freely, for my anger is turned away.”

97:4.6Hosea faith­fully con­tin­ued the moral warn­ings of Amos, say­ing of God, “It is my de­sire that I chas­tise them.” But the Is­raelites re­garded it as cru­elty bor­der­ing on trea­son when he said: “I will say to those who were not my peo­ple, ‘you are my peo­ple’; and they will say, ‘you are our God.’” He con­tin­ued to preach re­pen­tance and for­give­ness, say­ing, “I will heal their back­slid­ing; I will love them freely, for my anger is turned away.” Al­ways Hosea pro­claimed hope and for­give­ness. The bur­den of his mes­sage ever was: “I will have mercy upon my peo­ple. They shall know no God but me, for there is no sav­ior be­side me.”

• priests invented fables of

97:7.1The de­struc­tion of the He­brew na­tion and their cap­tiv­ity in Mes­o­po­ta­mia would have proved of great ben­e­fit to their ex­pand­ing the­ol­ogy had it not been for the de­ter­mined ac­tion of their priest­hood. Their na­tion had fallen be­fore the armies of Baby­lon, and their na­tion­al­is­tic Yah­weh had suf­fered from the in­ter­na­tional preach­ments of the spir­i­tual lead­ers. It was re­sent­ment of the loss of their na­tional god that led the Jew­ish priests to go to such lengths in the in­ven­tion of fa­bles and the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of mirac­u­lous ap­pear­ing events in He­brew his­tory in an ef­fort to re­store the Jews as the cho­sen peo­ple of even the new and ex­panded idea of an in­ter­na­tion­al­ized God of all na­tions.

• danger of institutional religion

99:6.3But as re­li­gion be­comes in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized, its power for good is cur­tailed, while the pos­si­bil­i­ties for evil are greatly mul­ti­plied. The dan­gers of for­mal­ized re­li­gion are: fix­a­tion of be­liefs and crys­tal­liza­tion of sen­ti­ments; ac­cu­mu­la­tion of vested in­ter­ests with in­crease of sec­u­lar­iza­tion; ten­dency to stan­dard­ize and fos­silize truth; di­ver­sion of re­li­gion from the ser­vice of God to the ser­vice of the church; in­cli­na­tion of lead­ers to be­come ad­min­is­tra­tors in­stead of min­is­ters; ten­dency to form sects and com­pet­i­tive di­vi­sions; es­tab­lish­ment of op­pres­sive ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal au­thor­ity; cre­ation of the aris­to­cratic “cho­sen-peo­ple” at­ti­tude; fos­ter­ing of false and ex­ag­ger­ated ideas of sa­cred­ness; the rou­tiniz­ing of re­li­gion and the pet­ri­fi­ca­tion of wor­ship; ten­dency to ven­er­ate the past while ig­nor­ing pres­ent de­mands; fail­ure to make up-to-date in­ter­pre­ta­tions of re­li­gion; en­tan­gle­ment with func­tions of sec­u­lar in­sti­tu­tions; it cre­ates the evil dis­crim­i­na­tion of re­li­gious castes; it be­comes an in­tol­er­ant judge of or­tho­doxy; it fails to hold the in­ter­est of ad­ven­tur­ous youth and grad­u­ally loses the sav­ing mes­sage of the gospel of eter­nal sal­va­tion.

97:9.27In Baby­lon the Jews ar­rived at the con­clu­sion that they could not ex­ist as a small group in Pales­tine, hav­ing their own pe­cu­liar so­cial and eco­nomic cus­toms, and that, if their ide­olo­gies were to pre­vail, they must con­vert the gen­tiles. Thus orig­i­nated their new con­cept of des­tiny—the idea that the Jews must be­come the cho­sen ser­vants of Yah­weh. The Jew­ish re­li­gion of the Old Tes­ta­ment re­ally evolved in Baby­lon dur­ing the cap­tiv­ity.

97:10.1Their lead­ers had taught the Is­raelites that they were a cho­sen peo­ple, not for spe­cial in­dul­gence and monopoly of di­vine fa­vor, but for the spe­cial ser­vice of car­ry­ing the truth of the one God over all to ev­ery na­tion. And they had prom­ised the Jews that, if they would ful­fill this des­tiny, they would be­come the spir­i­tual lead­ers of all peo­ples, and that the com­ing Mes­siah would reign over them and all the world as the Prince of Peace.

121:2.8The se­cret of the sur­vival of Pales­tine, the king­dom of the Jews, as a semi-in­de­pen­dent state was wrapped up in the for­eign pol­icy of the Ro­man gov­ern­ment, which de­sired to main­tain con­trol of the Pales­tinian high­way of travel be­tween Syria and Egypt as well as the west­ern ter­mi­nals of the car­a­van routes be­tween the Ori­ent and the Oc­ci­dent. Rome did not wish any power to arise in the Lev­ant which might curb her fu­ture ex­pan­sion in these re­gions. The pol­icy of in­trigue which had for its ob­ject the pit­ting of Se­leu­cid Syria and Ptole­maic Egypt against each other ne­ces­si­tated fos­ter­ing Pales­tine as a sep­a­rate and in­de­pen­dent state. Ro­man pol­icy, the de­gen­er­a­tion of Egypt, and the pro­gres­sive weak­en­ing of the Se­leu­cids be­fore the ris­ing power of Parthia, ex­plain why it was that for sev­eral gen­er­a­tions a small and un­pow­er­ful group of Jews was able to main­tain its in­de­pen­dence against both Se­leu­ci­dae to the north and Ptolemies to the south. This for­tu­itous lib­erty and in­de­pen­dence of the po­lit­i­cal rule of sur­round­ing and more pow­er­ful peo­ples the Jews at­tributed to the fact that they were the “cho­sen peo­ple,” to the di­rect in­ter­po­si­tion of Yah­weh. Such an at­ti­tude of racial su­pe­ri­or­ity made it all the harder for them to en­dure Ro­man su­zer­ainty when it fi­nally fell upon their land. But even in that sad hour the Jews re­fused to learn that their world mis­sion was spir­i­tual, not po­lit­i­cal.

97:8.3But five hun­dred years of the over­lord­ship of alien rulers was too much for even the pa­tient and long-suf­fer­ing Jews. The proph­ets and priests be­gan to cry: “How long, O Lord, how long?” As the hon­est Jew searched the Scrip­tures, his con­fu­sion be­came worse con­founded. An olden seer prom­ised that God would pro­tect and de­liver his “cho­sen peo­ple.” Amos had threat­ened that God would aban­don Is­rael un­less they re-es­tab­lished their stan­dards of na­tional righ­teous­ness. The scribe of Deuteron­omy had por­trayed the Great Choice—as be­tween the good and the evil, the bless­ing and the curse. Isa­iah the first had preached a benef­i­cent king-de­liv­erer. Jeremiah had pro­claimed an era of in­ner righ­teous­ness—the covenant writ­ten on the tablets of the heart. The sec­ond Isa­iah talked about sal­va­tion by sac­ri­fice and re­demp­tion. Eze­kiel pro­claimed de­liv­er­ance through the ser­vice of de­vo­tion, and Ezra prom­ised pros­per­ity by ad­her­ence to the law. But in spite of all this they lin­gered on in bond­age, and de­liv­er­ance was de­ferred. Then Daniel pre­sented the drama of the im­pend­ing “cri­sis”—the smit­ing of the great im­age and the im­me­di­ate es­tab­lish­ment of the ev­er­last­ing reign of righ­teous­ness, the Mes­sianic king­dom.

96:4.6Moses pro­claimed that Yah­weh was the Lord God of Is­rael, who had sin­gled out the He­brews as his cho­sen peo­ple; he was build­ing a new na­tion, and he wisely na­tion­al­ized his re­li­gious teach­ings, telling his fol­low­ers that Yah­weh was a hard taskmas­ter, a “jeal­ous God.” But nonethe­less he sought to en­large their con­cept of di­vin­ity when he taught them that Yah­weh was the “God of the spir­its of all flesh,” and when he said, “The eter­nal God is your refuge, and un­der­neath are the ev­er­last­ing arms.” Moses taught that Yah­weh was a covenant-keep­ing God; that he “will not for­sake you, nei­ther de­stroy you, nor for­get the covenant of your fa­thers be­cause the Lord loves you and will not for­get the oath by which he swore to your fa­thers.”

134:5.4This rule of the Most Highs in the king­doms of men is not for the es­pe­cial ben­e­fit of any es­pe­cially fa­vored group of mor­tals. There is no such thing as a “cho­sen peo­ple.” The rule of the Most Highs, the over­con­trollers of po­lit­i­cal evo­lu­tion, is a rule de­signed to fos­ter the great­est good to the great­est num­ber of all men and for the great­est length of time.

96:5.6Moses feared to pro­claim the mercy of Yah­weh, pre­fer­ring to awe his peo­ple with the fear of the jus­tice of God, say­ing: “The Lord your God is God of Gods, and Lord of Lords, a great God, a mighty and ter­ri­ble God, who re­gards not man.” Again he sought to con­trol the tur­bu­lent clans when he de­clared that “your God kills when you dis­obey him; he heals and gives life when you obey him.” But Moses taught these tribes that they would be­come the cho­sen peo­ple of God only on con­di­tion that they “kept all his com­mand­ments and obeyed all his statutes.”

97:1.7But Samuel did not pro­gress very far be­yond the con­cept of a tribal god. He pro­claimed a Yah­weh who made all men but was oc­cu­pied chiefly with the He­brews, his cho­sen peo­ple. Even so, as in the days of Moses, once more the God con­cept por­trayed a De­ity who is holy and up­right. “There is none as holy as the Lord. Who can be com­pared to this holy Lord God?”