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Barack Obama's "Joshua Generation" project ran into an embarrassing snag when it turned out that an existing group owns the name. This is an embarrassing mistake, but no more than that.
But his choosing the name in the first place, honoring the Biblical Joshua, is more troubling. Obama said:
As great as Moses was, despite all that he did, leading a people out of bondage, he didn't cross over the river to see the Promised Land. God told him your job is done. You'll see it. You'll be at the mountain top and you can see what I've promised. What I've promised to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. You will see that I've fulfilled that promise but you won't go there. We're going to leave it to the Joshua generation to make sure it happens. There are still battles that need to be fought; some rivers that need to be crossed.
The "battles" to which he alludes included the massacre of the entire population of Jericho and Ai by Joshua's army. His forces, allegedly operating on God's orders, killed all the men. All the women. All the children. Even all the livestock. (Chances are this never happened, but it's the Biblical story, not the historical fact, which is important for this purpose.)
Why did he name a campaign for a brutal killer?
Joshua said, you know, I'm scared. I'm not sure that I am up to the challenge, the Lord said to him, every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon, I have given you. Be strong and have courage, for I am with you wherever you go. Be strong and have courage. It's a prayer for a journey. A prayer that kept a woman in her seat when the bus driver told her to get up, a prayer that led nine children through the doors of the little rock school, a prayer that carried our brothers and sisters over a bridge right here in Selma, Alabama. Be strong and have courage.
Obama compared Rosa Parks to a perpetrator of genocide. That is sickening.
2 comments:
If you're going to criticize Obama for honoring a brutal biblical figure, then you might as well criticize most of western civilization for the past several thousand years, and the Hebrews before that.
The language the Obama was using is very common church talk, using cultural symbols and narratives that are familiar to his audience. Genesis and other biblical books have historically been mined for their symbolism.
Note also that Joshua has been one of the most popular baby names for several decades. That's a lot of honor for a mass murderer.
Well, yes, much of western civilization is guilty of honoring that child-killer. It's also guilty of much worse things, such as torturing and killing people for having the wrong set of religious beliefs. The Hebrews had a death penalty for those who tried to convert them to other religions. Should these things not be criticized?
However, most people who name their kids Joshua do so innocently. Most Americans, Christian or not, have only a vague knowledge of the Bible. They probably have a notion from old songs that he made the "walls come tumbling down," and perhaps that he stopped the rotation of the earth for a day. Most of them have no notion that he (according to the Bible) ordered the murder of whole cities.
But I can't grant that excuse to Obama. If he doesn't know that Joshua killed so many innocent people, then he's egregiously guilty of talking without research. If he does know, then there's no excuse. Given the existing levels of hostility between Israel and its neighbors, it's grotesque for someone who might be the next US President to invoke the legendary founding of Israel by massacring the natives as a symbol to emulate.
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