The “Bright Path”

Indigenous Americans living on Turtle Island (USA) who are Christian have landed on a theory of revelation that, as I read this book, recognizes God speaking to all humans in ways that suggest religions, at various levels, probe very similar topics and thus can be revelatory. There is a greater emphasis in general revelation, then, than I find in most theology.

Chapter three in the book written by T. Christopher Hoklotubbe and H. Daniel Zacharias, Reading the Bible on Turtle Island: An Invitation to North American Indigenous Interpretation (IVP Academic, 2025), explores “reading along the bright path” and this chapter explores correlations between the Bible’s Jubilee and Indigenous beliefs and behaviors that orient life at its best around shalom and harmony in all relations, including non-human relations, that is, with all creation.

Some call this “the Harmony Way” while the authors orient the substance of the chp around “the Bright Path.” This is language about “what it means to live in a good way.” It includes respect and gratitude for all creation, the sacred roles each of us has in community, humor and play, consensus, the power of words and silence, being present, working in meaningful ways, and being generous. Hence, the Indigenous theology is shaped by wisdom, and wisdom shapes humans into shalom, which is both resolutions of conflicts as well as harmonious coexistence.

Shalom is not the idea in “Peace Like a River” but is “communal, holistic, tangible, dynamic, a constant journey, transformative, and worked out in our everyday relationships and activities with one another.”

The authors explore the evangelical sense of sin and how its presentations, not least in the Four Spiritual Laws and the boilerplate American version of gospel and personal salvation, as something that does not resonate with Indigenous beliefs. Their worldview is shaped “Around notions of coexistence, duality, and balance” and hence sin breaks shalom (C Plantinga is not cited), and they use two terms that I will turns into unmarked English: hozho and hochxo, the former is about balance for self, others, and creation, while the latter is about a life pursued at the expense of others and creation. Sin is closer to apostasy, I would say, that is abandoning the values of the community and creation.

Which leads them to explore theories of atonement without saying so. The issue here is that classic atonement is rooted in Anselm, which is rooted in medieval sense of honor, and that social context is not the same as the Indigenous culture. Metaphors of salvation in the Bible emerge from the concrete experiences of salvation and hence one’s condition shapes the metaphor with which one resonates. They ask why if that is the case the Indigenous cannot use their imagination to formulate a metaphor that fits them. They explore just that.

So they explore the Sun Dance and Corn Mother. “There is imaginative space within the Christian tradition for indigenous metaphors, stories, and ceremonies to think about the work of Christ” and they root this in the human experience. I could have seen more attention to the work of God in Christ in that context as norming the experience, but as I read them the Bible norms their metaphors. Their favored metaphor from Paul is adoption. It resonates with family, and furthermore in that adoption was of adults in the ancient world, the adopted son or daughter brought with them their previous primary education and culture. “For some native North Americans, Jesus’ suffering at the cross is not about what God needs in order to forgive but the ultimate display of Creator’s love for us and the tragic culmination of humanity being out of balance and out of line with the Original Instructions of Creator.”

Then they turn to Jubilee as a holistic redemption metaphor, and this is the highlight of the chapter. In the Bible’s vision of Jubilee, echoes of the practice of which are found in Jeremiah 34:8-20, Nehemiah 5:1-13, and 2 Chronicles 36:15-21, “Jesus works to restore our Shalom with both our human and other-than-human kin, and he calls us into this ongoing work.” Of course, Jubilee is socioecononmic redemption and liberation, as well as social restructuring. But Jubilee has a component of creation care as well in its Sabbaths. Both greed and poverty come to a stop.

Jesus is himself the Jubilee and he launches the Jubilee program of redemption. We are called then into a covenant with creation, which requires both recognition and behaviors and habits and rituals and practices that tie us to the spaces we inhabit. Most of us are not rooted but one or two generations in a place. Theology for the Indigenous is.