Longing for home leads to a desire for safety, security, and power.
The wandering people of Israel conquer the land they believe they were promised (perhaps blaming God in their holy texts for their own horrendous choice of genocide.) They take land for a home, and one distinct thread of the bible seems to say that God desired to remain their royal ruler, while the people increasingly demanded a human king “like the other nations”—a king to keep them safe from those other nations, a king with the power to maintain their secure home.
The desire for safety and a home is directly connected to distancing from God’s direction. And when home is established with their king, it isn’t long before a replacement for the tabernacle tent comes to be.
While its shape and structure look very similar to the tabernacle tent, Solomon’s temple is different in dramatic ways. Not temporary, but rooted. Not fabric, but timber and stone. Not the moving God who leads, but the stationary God who blesses royal power—royal power that keeps the people safe and secure and gives them a home.
The temple now sits right next to the palace—built by political power, through slave labor. Religious symbol becomes entwined with political symbol.
Who is God in this story? One can make the case that God becomes domesticated. God becomes commodity, becomes object instead of subject. Solomon’s prayer dedicating the temple sound quite a bit like turning God into Santa Claus: “May you always hear the prayers I make toward this place.” (2 Chron. 6:20)
When God’s role is defined as the one who defends our security and our home, when God’s very presence becomes mediated through institutional structures, through political structures, through power structures—well, then the oppression cycle starts again, throwing us back to needing a God who will rescue. In the very building of the temple, the exploitation and oppression begins.
When God becomes our object to be wielded, rather than the subject who leads us, we defend the power structures, we defend the institutions at all costs—because we can’t give up the safety and sense of home those power structures and institutions bring us. Maintaining our comfort becomes our aim. We’ve no longer allowed God to be God, and we join and create the structures that oppress.
Longing for security brings us back full circle to oppression, and to the need for rescue.
I am late to the game reading these. I have found so much peace reading your story, and the questions you pose towards faith and God. Coming from a religion where we claim we have a prophet that speaks for God, and seems very much like Solomon in the state I live in a lot of feelings come up. When the God is speaking to me, and guiding me I am not always hearing the same message spoken over the pulpit or through the prayers of those who are spokesmen for God. To allow God to be God. To know Him and the Son. What a journey. As I read the scriptures I also keep asking myself the question, was God allowed to be God in the stories I read? Is that an opptomistic view or pessimistic view? Lots of thoughts and questions, and so thankful you have started the conversation.
I love your thoughts! “Allow God to be God”…and that wrestling when what we are sensing from God is not being matched by those in power around us. Thanks for reading and adding to the conversation. It’s always welcome!