Canaanism

I use "Canaanism" for an attitude and mindset (heart) that seems to have pervaded the cultures in the land of Canaan around the time the people of Israel entered the land, and is increasingly pervadiing our cultures today. It is the very opposite of the heart that God intended human beings to have towards all Creation, among themselves and towards God.

Summary:

Canaanism is an attitude of elitism, competitiveness, warfare, idolatry and what God described to the prophet Ezekiel [16:49] as the reason Sodom was destroyed: "overfed, arrogant and unconcerned". The reason it matters is that this attitude is immensely destructive of both people and the rest of Creation, and it is spreading today.

We address three questions here: What is a Canaanist Attitude and Mindset? Why does it matter? How is it relevant to us today, especially for Christians. [Note: Sources]

What is a Canaanist Attitude?

1.

Here we have attitude leading to action. Actions mentioned here are (not) helping the poor and needy and doing "detestable" things. Actions, it seems are results of, and evidence for, what God really condemns: attitude of heart, of which this passage gives us four:

• Overfed: wealthy and very comfortable in material things, more than was needed.
• Arrogant: taking it for granted that they were superior than others.
• Unconcerned: so comfortable in their prosperity that they did not even think of others who were destitute.
• Haughty: when challenged they would not only refuse to listen but would belittle those who challenged them.

Remember what Sodom was like: it was situated in the fertile valley of the Jordan, and thus it became prosperous and what we might call today "a great place to live and make a life for myself." It seems that was why Lot chose to live there. Canaanism is where selfishness and disregard for the less-fortunate become the very fabric of society.

2. Warfare was glorified. In Genesis 14, we read of life among the Canaanite tribes: they oppressed each other and went to war with each other. The kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Bela had been oppressed by Chedorlaomer of Elam and made war against him and his allies, the kings of Babylonia, Eliasar and Goiim. War was the solution to their problem. Not only that, but it seems that habitually, the kings of these nations would go to war with each other each year [II Sam 11:1], almost as sport. The destruction that war caused, especially for the ordinary people, was not considered. If a king wanted to go to war for any reason, they would do so. Often it was just for some seeming insult.

Of the list of 56 Canaanite deities given in Wikipedia, four were gods of war, with only storms and weather having more gods (five). What this suggests to me is that warfare was seen as an important part of Canaanite life and, since it had gods, it was seen as noble.

Fighting was seen as strong. By contrast, in God's way, giving-way, forgiveness and mercy are strong and more effective. In Genesis 14, the "priest of Most High God" is king of justice and peace; see below.

3. Excitement of heroes. In I Samuel 8:5,19-20 we read that the elders of Israel wanted "a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have" and the people reinforced this with "We want a king over us. Then we shall be like all the other nations, with a king ot lead us and go out before us and fight our battles."

This was understandable because Samuel had unwisely let leadership become corrupt, so they were fed up. However, they did not want a king to maintain justice, but to lead them into battle. Relying on God to give them victory in battles was rather nerve-wracking, because God was never predictable; it would be more comfortable to have a visible hero to lead them. As various ancient epics show, heroes are exciting and worthy of story and glory.

It is not wrong to have heroes; Sampson and other judges were heroes. What is wrong is to elevate the hero above the ordinary people. When Saul became king, he began well, being fairly modest, but after a time he was contaminated with the idea of his own glory. He erected a statue to himself. He also became jealous of David who was treated as more a hero than he was, and sought to kill him. This was the Canaanist attitude.

4. Elites and Oppression. Samuel (I amuel 8:11-18) warned the people what a king-hero would do. He would take the best of the people's land, livestock and other productive capacity for himself, he would take their employees for himself, he would take the people's daughters to satisfy his aesthetic tastes, and take the people's sons to not just cultivate his fields but also to waste their lives in wars and in their arms industry. In short, the king would treat the people he was supposed to serve as his personal chattels to expend on any venture he fancied. He would oppress the people so that they would cry out for relief.

This is what Viking culture was like: the glorious heroes were mollicoddled by their societies and spent their lives in war and conquest. It was almost a game to them. And the Canaanite kings did likewise. Chedorlaomer had for example conquered several other kings and oppressed them.

5. Empire. The mindset of conquering led to the idea of empire. The Bible records a sequence of empires, each bigger and more glorious than the last: Syrian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman. ===== today: massive corporate conglomerations.

(Note: the very possibility of kingship was not itself evil, if the king was a righeous judge rather than a mere war hero or emperor, as we shall see.)

Still the people wanted the excitement of having heroes.

===== treat people as chattels.

Why Canaanitish Attitude is Such a Problem

C.S. Lewis and the Philosophy of Hell

"The whole philosophy of Hell rests on recognition of the axiom that one thing is not another thing, and especially that one self is not another self. My good is my good and your good is yours. What one gains another loses. Even an inanimate object is what it is by excluding all other objects from the space it occupies; if it expands, it does so by thrusting other objects aside or by absorbing them. A self does the same. With beasts the absorption takes the form of eating; for us, it means the sucking of will and freedom out of a weaker self into a stronger. 'To be' means 'to be in competition.'"

The competitive attitude, in which we see others as rivals, is Hellish. It leads to many evils, by causal links that are often hidden and long-term. I see this as applying at several levels.

• At the individual level, we see ourselves in competition with others for status, love or wealth - whether siblings or those outside the family. This can lead to many evils, and stifles the life of both parties. We see the example in Saul, who saw David as a rival and ended up almost mad. Instead, Jesus told us to "take the lowest place" and "serve".

• At the family, group or business, we see immense rivalry, which is seen as 'natural'. Yet it too leads to evil. The Facebook company sees itself as in competition with others. That is why it bought up those it considered rivals (WhatsApp, Instagram), and that is why it, according to Frances Haugen, puts its own interests before that of users, especially younger users, who end up addicted and with their attitudes torn to shreds.

• At the international level of nations, we find that the effort to beat other 'rival' nations leads to expending and wasting massive resources of both human capital and money. This might be in military prowess, sporting prowess, economic prowess, academic prowess (- but sadly seldom prowess in self-giving generosity!) Much of this effort results indirectly in destroying nature (biodiversity loss) and indirectly damaging the climate.

The Canaanist attitude sees other people essentially as rivals to be bested or beaten.

Attitude of Workers in the Vineyard

A vineyard owner hired workers at 5.0 am in the morning to work his vineyard, agreeing the regular wage. He hired more at 9.0 am, then at noon, and then one hour before the end of the day. He gave them all the same regular wage. The ones who had worked all day felt it was unfair, but the owner reminded them that this is what they had agreed. If he wanted to have pity on those who had not found work, had he no right to do so?

For many long years I felt uncomfortable about the seeming unfairness of this, until I realised that I had a perspective very different from that of Jesus. I am contaminated with the 'modern' idea that my remuneration is according to the amount of work I do, rather than according to the need of my family. That may be a healthier perspective because, after all, Who gave us the ability to work? But also I realise that I see the other workers as my rivals. Especially in these days when employers plead limits on the amount they can pay workers. That rivalry is a Canaanist attitude.

Abraham, Sodom and Melchizedek

Genesis 12 tells us of God appearing to Abram, later renamed Abraham, to promise him,

"I will bless you ... through you I will bless all peoples."

But what did God mean by "blessing"? We can understand this if we look briefly at what happened after that; I believe God made that clear. It tells us something about what God intended for God's people - both Israel and the followers of Christ - and why people like Ruth became attracted to Israel's culture.

Abram seems to have been someone who took the True God, Yhwh, seriously ("believed God"), when most of the surrounding culture worshipped idols, seriously enough to obey God's injunction to leave the protection and comfort of his family, set out and end up wandering in Canaan. There seems to have been something about him that was open==== to the nature and character of Yhwh.

Genesis 13 tells us how Abram and his nephew Lot separate, with Lot going to live near, and then in, Sodom, because of there fertility of it surroundings and, presumably, its wealth. Abram had given Lot first choice (does this tell us something about Abram's character?), and so settled in the less productive and more challenging hill country.

Genesis 14 tells us of a war that arose from the Canaanitish politics of the area at that time. The king of Sodom along with four other kings rebelled against being ruled by Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, who seems to have been on a mission of conquest and empire building. Chedorlaomer and his three allies defeated to Sodomite allies, sacked the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah and took all its riches away, including Lot and his family. Abram then went after that group to rescue Lot and, with 400 men, defeated them, and recovered not only Lot but all the plundered loot and people.

Then Melchizedek, king of Salem, and priest of "the Most High God", met Abram and blessed him. Abram gave Melchizedek one tenth of all he had, this indicating that he treated Melchizedek as superior [Hebrews ===], especially in his relationship to God.

It is the letter to the Hebrews that tells us that, and it also points out the importance of what this priest of the True God was king of, not only Salem. which means "peace", Hebrew shalom, but also of zedek, Hebrew tsedeq, which is usually translated as justice and righteousness. According to Hebrew scholars, Tsedeq also includes mercy. So we may suppose that the culture that Melchizedek ruled over and established was one of tsedeq and shalom, of justice-righteousness-mercy and peace.

And, I infer, that this culture of tsedeq-shalom is what God wanted Abram's descendants to establish. I happen to believe that it was more than coincidence that Abram met Melchizedek. Is not the Law given through Moses shaped around this kind of culture: peace, righteousness-justice and mercy, and does it not encourage people to live that way? The culture that God wanted, and wants, among people is one of:

• Tsedeq; justice, righteousness with mercy, which Paul Marshall has usefully defined as "right relationships among all things in the Created order" - note, not only among humans; see Tsedeq;

• Shalom: peace, not just in the sense of absence of strife, but of harmony among all things and people so all work together well.

Now, let us contrast that with the Canaanitish culture around Israel at that time.

• In place of the tsedeq (justice-righteousness-mercy) that God wanted, Canaanitish culture believed in elitism and oppression. The kings could use their people as chattels, to die and suffer in their wars. Only the elite were important; the ordinary people did not matter and were oppressed. The poor and needy were not looked after.

• In place of shalom that God wanted, Canaanitish culture looked to competition and oneupmanship as a valid pastime and war as a means of achieving it.

Is this why Ruth was so attracted to what she saw in Israeli culture, recognising it was linked with Israel's God? See ====Ruth as Type of Christ.

"We want to be like the other nations"

Saul

Usually, we reflect on the people's disobedience and refusal to listen to God. But what about the reasons they gave for wanting a king, and what did they envisage a king would do for them? This reveals something of the people's heart, and also about the surrounding culture of Canaan. I believe we might learn something that is relevant today by doing so.

We can see the worldview of Canaanism in Saul. # Thought that God requires sacrifices in order to bless us. # (computer game: amount of prayer gets God onside) # Spared Agag and the best, but the deficient and despised they destroyed - Canaanite idea that the poor and deficient are worthless. But Bible: poor and decicient are valued

Nebuchadnezzar's Dream Statue

What God wants of God's People

Relevance Today

"Socialism and woke are what God intended, but grossly distorted by human sin, so are horrible, hypocritical and counterproductive. Capitalism and right-wing are the opposite of what God intended, divisive, domineering and destructive. Nevertheless, human beings still bear God's image.

===== more 13 November 2022

[scarp-221112 'intro'] God commanded to obliterate ... If you take the line about Israel obliterating the Canaanites as mere inter-tribal warfare / competition, and the command of God to obliterate them as merely making up stories to justify Israel's own interest, and keep your heart and mind closed on that, then you will resist and even hate what I am about to suggest. But if you open your mind and heart just a chink, you might find it interesting.

[shorter] God ordered the Canaanite peoples to be obliterated. Why? Was it mere hatred or inter-tribal conflict? Maybe. But if so, why did God give the reason to Abraham for waiting 400 years as that the sin of the Canaanites was not yet matured?

[longer] God ordered the Canaanite peoples to be obliterated. Today we would call that genocide, the most heinous of sins or evils. Why? Does this show that the Bible and Christianity (and maybe Orthodox Judaism) are evil? Does it show that the Biblical account is either a mere political fabrication? Was the account merely an expression of inter-tribal conflict of the time, written by the victors?

I am not going to try to answer those bullying yes-no questions. Instead, I am going to see if there might be any validity in God's order.

The first clue I find is that God was going to wait 400 years until "the sin of the Canaanites has reached its maturity" as told to Abraham. It was not to be a mere tribal conflict of the kind common then and since. It had a purpose, to deal with sin maturing.

It raises two related questions. What kind of sin requires genocide? What is meant by "mature"? Of course, we were not there, and the culture then was very different (including that the Canaanite nations seem to have been genociding each other), so we cannot say for sure. Nevertheless, there is something we might say that is both valid today and found in the accounts from that period.

# This is why pistic structures are so important. It might explain why God destroyed the Canaanite nations: their pistic structures were so damaging to the whole Creation, especially in the longer term, and they had refused to repent and change. God also wanted to tell the people of the world that this was the case and, in the absence of written media at the time, the message had to be via highly-visible action. c.f. Daniel's vision. The whole idea of glorious empire standing tall above others is Canaanite. Pistic structures is why worship of Yahweh is so important to the health of Creation. It is why idolatry is so important to us.

Themes: Look at Cain. Adam's sin. Israel wanting a king. Samuel's warning. Daniel statue interpretation. etc.

Notes

Note on Armed Forces. In the New Earth and Heavens there are no armed forces, suggesting that armed forces are not part of God's Good Plan for Creation. Though armed forces in the UK and other nations that adhere to Just War Theory tended largely to act with justice and honesty, much evil surrounds and stick to armed forces. One is the self-protective attitude of the huge, wasteful, arrogant, overfed arms industry. Another is injustice, including using rape as a weapon. Of course, evil contaminates all sectors, but does it not tend to be more at home in armed forces?

21 April 2024 rw intro. 13 May 2024 summary. 22 May 2024 king not to maintain justice.