Read: Question #20, p. 82-85, in Banned Questions about the Bible by Christian Piatt.
Scripture Passages: Genesis 6:5-7; Deuteronomy 7:1-2 and 20:16-18; Joshua 8 and 10; Exodus 21:12-27; Leviticus 24:10-23; Isaiah 11; Micah 6:8
We’ve seen violence erupting in the Middle East over a movie made by Coptic Christians in the U.S. that Muslims find offensive and blasphemous and most of us haven’t seen. Anti-US groups in the Middle East are taking advantage to fuel even more rage and violence while some in the US think we need to return a measured response for the deaths in the American Embassy. I don’t want to turn this into a political debate. However, people of faith struggle with the issue of how to respond to violence. With this struggle playing out before us, I’d like to explore whether the Bible justifies violence and retaliation (Question #20 in Banned Questions…) and how we reconcile Old Testament laws with Jesus’ teachings to turn the other cheek and love your enemies (Question #15, which we will discuss later this week).
Does God justify violence in the Bible? At the top I’ve linked to some scripture passages from Genesis, Deuteronomy, and Joshua that suggest it. In Genesis, God is fed up enough with the evil in humans to wipe out all but a handful and start over:
So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” [Genesis 6:7]
I’ve struggled more with the WHY behind the flood story than with the HOW it was possible. Sometimes we can let the animals on the ark distract us from the deeper question. Much later, after leading the Israelites into the Promised Land, God instructs them to completely destroy the inhabitants there to avoid being led astray:
In the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them… as the Lord your God has commanded you. Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God. [Deuteronomy 20:16-18]
Joshua even suggests that God participated in the violence:
There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the Lord listened to a human being. Surely the Lord was fighting for Israel! [Joshua 10:14]
There are other stories of violence in the Bible. There’s not a whole lot of air-brushing or spin control with these stories either. Even some of the laws seem to call for violent responses to violent acts. The Exodus and Leviticus links above proscribe death for certain sins that range from murder to cursing your parents or blaspheming God.
I find it hard to reconcile that the God I’ve encountered in Jesus – a God of love, mercy, and grace – would condone these violent acts. Why would God, who so loved the world, command the Israelites to completely destroy some cities? Why those people? Were they beyond redemption? And, if so, are there some today who would be similarly beyond redemption?
The common thread in the three responses to this question in Banned Questions… is that the Bible does not justify violence or genocide. They believe that, while the Bible was inspired by God, God did not dictate it word for word but worked with fallible humans (much like us) to write the Bible. The result is a collection of books written by different people over thousands of years, each reflecting different perspectives. Brandon Gilvin recommends reading the Bible “with the knowledge that those who came before us struggled with the way to find God in every detail of their lives and histories and sometimes got it wrong.” [p. 83]
Some say that the God we see in the Old Testament seems to be vengeful while the God we see in the New Testament is loving. But did God’s nature change or did the perspectives of those who wrote the Bible change over time? We see signs of God’s love, mercy, and grace in the words of the prophets (such as the passages in Isaiah and Micah referenced above). And we see the full embodiment of God’s love for the world in Jesus. Maybe it took that long for humans to be ready to grasp God’s intent to transform creation through Jesus. Well, looking at the events in the world since Jesus walked on earth, maybe we’re still not ready to grasp it.
Later this week, we’ll explore how or if Jesus changed the Biblical perspective on violence and what that means to us today. But first I want to spend some time wrestling with these OT passages.
How do we make sense of these violent accounts? How do you resolve it with the loving God we see through Jesus? Do you believe what we read in those OT accounts reflects more the perspectives of the people who wrote them than the nature of God? Or do you believe that God’s nature has changed between OT times and Jesus’ time? If so, what do you see of God today? Is it loving or is there still justification for violent responses in some cases?
Please click on “Comments” below to share your thoughts and to read what others are saying. Come back often to continue the conversation!
It helps me to think of the Bible as being written at specific points in history by people who were reacting to events in their lives. Predominant cause and effect experience added to an intense desire to understand and explain could easily lead to assertions of supernatural/trans-physical causes where natural/physical explanations could not be found
ReplyDeleteDo you believe, then, that in some of the passages that attribute God's hand in some of the destruction - I'm thinking of the accounts in Joshua in this case, or perhaps the fall of the walls of Jericho - are attempts to see God at work in their efforts to move into the Promised Land? I can attribute a number of instances in the Old Testament to that kind of thinking (I believe that's what Brandon Gilvin is saying in his response to that question in the book).
DeleteBut what about the commands in Deuteronomy in which seems to be telling the Israelites through Moses to completely destroy the towns God is giving them? Does that represent God's word or have some of the laws been interjected by humans to rationalize their actions? That, to me, is a harder issue to resolve. If that's true, then how do we know which laws truly came from God and which ones are from human perspective?
The message I get from the Old Testament is that God chose a people, Israel, to demonstrate to the rest of the world that there is only one all-powerful God, namely Yahweh. I think that in order to do that, his people needed a place, which unfortunately had some other people on it. I don’t know enough about ancient geography and demographics to say that there was a place that would have been better in terms of sustainability or caused less conflict than where Israel went, but I can’t name a better alternative. It seems to me God had to direct the violence for a higher purpose. I don’t recall any evidence in the Bible that the Canaanites, etc. were especially bad people who just needed killing or that God delighted in their demise. I just don’t see an angry or vengeful God there despite the ample record of God-directed violence.
DeleteAnother overarching theme I see in the O.T. is that when there is violence, it is only successful when God directs it. If it’s just Israel’s or others’ good idea to go kill someone, they usually lose; they are only successful when God tells them to do it, even if it is against impossible odds. For instance, Joshua 10 has two or three places where God tells them to go ahead and attack; He has already arranged that their enemy will fall before them. In fact, I don’t understand v.14 where it says that God listened to them; it appears to me that God was telling them what to do. It’s clear to me that there is no larger message for us to go out and kill someone in the name of religion or because God told us to. It's just what Israel had to do at the time. In fact I think it’s very dangerous to mix religion and politics.
If you think of God as a father, it makes sense that a father allows or even directs some suffering to teach children a lesson or bring about a greater good. Perhaps that’s the reason the Bible refers to God as the Father so frequently.
If God hadn’t given Moses all those stringent laws to help Israel survive the exodus through the desert, hadn’t given them a place to live together as a homogenous nation, the O.T. couldn’t record that when they obeyed God’s laws they prospered and when they didn’t, stuff happened to them like captivity in Babylon. Then there wouldn’t have been a stage for everything in the New Testament and all the events leading to the restoration of the Kingdom.
I'm still wrestling with the idea of God-directed violence. That's not to say it didn't occur. In fact, Dave, you're right in noting that the passages do distinguish between human-initiated violence and that directed by God. But throughout history and even into today we see people of different religions (including, unfortunately, Christians at times)carrying out acts of violence purportedly in the name of God and sometimes with the claim that God told them to do it.
DeleteThere are skeptics who will read these passages in Joshua and ask: How do we know if it was God who led them or if they later justified it by saying it was God's plan? Perhaps they believed that they really were following God's will but does that mean God really did it? And if it really was directed by God, why? What does that say about the nature of God? I'd argue that it says that there are things about God that are beyond our comprehension. But I could also argue that we're reading what God's people perceived at the time and that is not necessarily a complete picture.
I appreciate your response because it's given me more to wrestle with (really, I do appreciate it because I find that my ideas are most likely to be off when they fit neatly within my comfort zone). I agree that, overall, the God we encounter in the OT is not angry or vengeful, but shows the same signs of fatherly love and mercy we see in Jesus. It's just that passages like these challenge me to consider there's more than my mind wants to wrap around.
The message I get from the Old Testament is that God chose a people, Israel, to demonstrate to the rest of the world that there is only one all-powerful God, namely Yahweh. I think that in order to do that, his people needed a place, which unfortunately had some other people on it. I don’t know enough about ancient geography and demographics to say that there was a place that would have been better in terms of sustainability or caused less conflict than where Israel went, but I can’t name a better alternative. It seems to me God had to direct the violence for a higher purpose. I don’t recall any evidence in the Bible that the Canaanites, etc. were especially bad people who just needed killing or that God delighted in their demise. I just don’t see an angry or vengeful God there despite the ample record of God-directed violence.
ReplyDeleteAnother overarching theme I see in the O.T. is that when there is violence, it is only successful when God directs it. If it’s just Israel’s or others’ good idea to go kill someone, they usually lose; they are only successful when God tells them to do it, even if it is against impossible odds. For instance, Joshua 10 has two or three places where God tells them to go ahead and attack; He has already arranged that their enemy will fall before them. In fact, I don’t understand v.14 where it says that God listened to them; it appears to me that God was telling them what to do. It’s clear to me that there is no larger message for us to go out and kill a commie for Christ or to be a sapper for the Savior (sorry, those were terms from my younger years). It's just what Israel had to do at the time. In fact I think it’s very dangerous to mix religion and politics.
If you think of God as a father, it makes sense that a father allows or even directs some suffering to teach children a lesson or bring about a greater good. Perhaps that’s the reason the Bible refers to God as the Father so frequently.
If God hadn’t given Moses all those stringent laws to help Israel survive the exodus through the desert, hadn’t given them a place to live together as a homogenous nation, the O.T. couldn’t record that when they obeyed God’s laws they prospered and when they didn’t, stuff happened to them like captivity in Babylon. Then there wouldn’t have been a stage for everything in the New Testament and all the events leading to the restoration of the Kingdom.