Is God Really Violent?

In Retrospect, I Am Surprised

For many years, I was able, somehow, to read the Old Testament, without noticing the violence, genocide, racism, infanticide, the contrast between free men and dehumanised slaves, and the tolerance of polygamy. For over 50 years, I've sat in churches, while preachers have been highly selective about the Old Testament passages they read.

Whenever passages involving violence have occurred, they have always been 'spiritualised'. So the account of Joshua razing Jericho would become an object lesson about faith (he trusted God would deliver them), or praise (they played trumpets), or how the battle belongs to the Lord.

Then one day, I realised that the people in Jericho were real people; that the Israelites must have chased screaming children out of their homes and skewered them from behind; that they must have beaten to death old people cowering in the dark corners of their huts. They must have walked among the ruins of the shaken city, seeking out survivors and killing them.

And my Bible readings came alive! In the most disturbing way.

The fire that Elijah called down from heaven didn't instantly consume insensate sub-humans. The hapless foot soldiers sent to apprehend Elijah were regular blokes, with homes, wives, children and with hopes, hobbies and wondering minds. They were burned alive.

The only way I had been able to feel comfortable about God's apparent propensity for violence in the Old Testament, was to not think of them as people, but as a kind of disease that had to be eradicated to keep Israel pure.

I know! It's horrible, isn't it?

Which Brings Me To My Second Problem

As a technique, it didn't work. The genocidal taking of territory, the violent defence of God's honour and worship, did not result in a community of purity, compassion, success, praise. The hope of a place of shalom in the midst of a violent world remained just that - a hope.

The vision of a worshipping people welcoming the alien, releasing captives and restoring property at every jubilee year never happened. Instead, it was the usual story of rich and powerful interests trampling down the poor. It was corrupt judges, grasping priests, power-crazed kings, and the poor and weak crying out for relief.

Our recent history tells us that there is rarely a just war, and even when the moral high ground is occupied by just one side, even when the cause is just, the process of violence still brutalises the victor, and breeds hatred and resentment in the vanquished.

The retrieval of peace in Angola, in South Africa, as in Europe, has been one of rediscovering the enemy's humanity.

When Jesus Christ came, his radical redefinition of God's way was so shocking that it was rejected by the nation of Israel. They could not reconcile their understanding of God, with this man's teaching and behaviour. He shared meals with thieves and prostitutes. He refused to follow the Old Testament law and stone an adulterous woman.

Interestingly, when James and John wanted to call down fire from heaven, Jesus rejected the course of action, indicating that his disciples were being influenced and led to that suggestion.

By a spirit.

But not the Holy Spirit

(The text "and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of" is a disputed inclusion - Present in KJV, in early Syriac manuscripts, in Textus Receptus, not in NIV, not in Vulgate)

Jesus quoted scripture on many occasions - when tempted by Satan, when teaching the crowd, when training his disciples. But he wasn't averse to cutting across people's understanding about the authority of the words!

He justified the actions of his disciples in collecting and eating grain on the Sabbath, which was against the Pharisees tradition. The law precluded boiling and baking on the Sabbath, and when the Israelites collected manna on the Sabbath, God confronted Moses with the question,

Moreover, scripture in Numbers 15:32–36 records how someone collecting firewood on the Sabbath had to be stoned to death.

Jesus simply referred to a special dispensation that King David obtained from the priest in his own day. His point was that the need to eat overcomes the restrictions of the law. One can imagine what the Pharisees muttered!

"Sounds like a very slippery slope!"

Back In The Old Days...

...before Jesus came, the scriptures (the Law and Prophets), were the best thing they had. But it wasn't the 'real deal'! As the book of Hebrews says,

I don't want to push the writer's analogy too far, but a shadow is shaped not only by the light that is cast, but also by the surface onto which it falls. And the truth about God was inadequately expressed within that ancient Iron Age culture.

His moral perfection was only expressible in a form which included ritual physical cleanliness. His perfect holiness and justice was understood to necessarily require the death penalty for children who dishonour their parents. And the spiritual warfare was translated into a physical war against the neighbouring nations.

But now things are different ...

And the understanding we now have of God is totally different. There was plenty of violence in Jesus experience, but only that done to him, and his followers. And even as he was bleeding out from his wounds, he prayed:

"Forgive them, Father, they don't know what they are doing."

Jesus Was Shocking And Offensive...

...to the zealous Jews of his time. Not only did he claim to be the "I Am", and by implication, the maker of heaven and earth, altogether holy, but he was also so horrifyingly liberal!

He seemed to disregard impurity so casually. When he put his arm around the diseased skin of a man with leprosy, he capsized the assumption that the man is under God's curse. And he was clearly not too bothered about becoming ritually unclean himself.

But they had been warned!

That sermon on the mountainside right at the start of his ministry was nothing short of explosive. As 21st century Christians, we don't realise that. It appears to us to be a very challenging encouragement to be more holy, more like Jesus himself. And we completely miss the painful shock experienced by his listeners.

So before we can look again at the sermon on the mount, I want to give you something.

A first century Jewish mindset!

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