God and Genocide

“If you claim to be a good person, then this book (the bible)

should embarrass you and disgust you.” Dan Barker

Steven Lewis’s chapter in Answering the Music Man entitled “Dan Barker and the Immoral God of the Bible” deals with a myriad of issues that question the moral character of Yahweh. Lewis defends issues such as the moral authority of the bible, Yahweh’s jealousy, biblically sanctioned slavery, but the most disturbing of all is Lewis’s defense of divine violence and acts of genocide that are recorded in the Old Testament.

“Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” (1 Sam 15: 3).

“Now therefore, kill every male among them, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves.” (Num 31:17-18)

Take a minute to ponder about this divine command to spare the virgin girls. Was it an act of compassion? Obviously not! Knowing what we know about what fate awaited them, the compassionate thing to do would have been to slay them with their families.

That being said, I have decided for this blog to limit my comments and allow Lewis his rope. My comments won’t matter anyway. If you are an evangelical, your allegiance requires you to defend your god (at all costs). If you are not an evangelical, Lewis’s defense of the indefensible will most likely be as shocking to you, as it was to me. However, if you’re questioning what you’re being taught from the pulpit or what you’re reading in the bible, then please keep questioning. The truth is out there, but you won’t find it by listening to the likes of Lewis and other religious leaders. So, let’s see how Lewis defends the indefensible issue of divine violence. (Underlining is mine.)

Lewis’s defense of Divine Violence

Here we must return once again to the nature of God as a guide for understanding these genocidal commands. Assuming that God exists, and the Bible is his authorized word to humanity, it is clear that these instances of killing were special cases given in specific contexts and authorized by the only one who is truly sovereign over all life and death-—God himself.

(Assuming that God exists, and that the Bible is his authorized word to humanity is quite an assumption to make in defense of genocide.)

If anyone has the right to end a life, then it is the one who created life in the first place. Thus, God has not broken any laws or stepped outside his moral nature in order to command the killing of the Canaanites.

Furthermore, if God commanded these acts as the Bible reports, then the Israelites acted merely as agents under God’s authority, not their own. This is a stark distinction between these acts of killing and every modern example of genocide.

Nonetheless, the atheist may yet argue that the question is not whether God or the Israelites had a right (or responsibility) to kill the Canaanites, but rather how such an act or command could be morally justified, considering its brutality if God is truly good.

Considering once more the nature of the God of the Bible as understood from classical theism, God is simply “good” in his essence by necessity in that his being is perfect, complete, and lacking nothing. God is only “morally good” in the sense that he always acts in perfect harmony with his essentially good nature.

Hence God’s command to kill the Canaanites, for example, cannot be considered a “moral evil” in any reasonable sense of the term if the God of the Bible truly exists.

Finite humans can safely assume that God, if he exists as the Bible asserts, is acting according to his perfect nature while giving such a command, and that any seeming contradiction must exist only in the imperfect mind of the human.

Whatever God’s reasons for such a command, he certainly has them, and they are fully consistent with his infinitely good act of being.

Even though God has no need to reveal the reasons for his actions… it is nevertheless helpful to see what possible reasons or motives may lay behind God’s genocidal commands.

(But here’s where Lewis’s argument goes from bad to worse. When he is done relieving Yahweh of an any wrongdoing, he turns the blame onto the victims of Yahweh’s genocidal commands. “They deserved it!”)

First, unlike most modern examples of genocide, these commands have nothing to do with race or nationality and everything to do with sin.

Second, the Canaanites are eliminated to spare the Israelites from falling prey to the Canaanites’ sinful corruption and idolatry.

In fact, God even promises to destroy the Israelites themselves if they follow in the footsteps of the idolatrous Canaanites. Thus, these killings are motivated solely by the unrepentant sin of the heathens in the land—something only God himself is fit to judge. They were not killed because of their nationality or race.

Third, it is important to note a distinction in the text that the overarching command in the conquest of Canaan is to “drive out” the inhabitants and clear the land—not necessarily to kill everyone from the start. The text therefore continually and repeatedly states that the Canaanites will not be exterminated in the sense that the Israelites are to kill every single man, woman, and child in Canaan. Rather, it states they are to be “driven out.”

Hence, it is possible that the commands to kill the inhabitants who, though warned, refused to leave.

(This has a very familiar ring to it. Haven’t we seen something similar to this in the news lately? Hmmmm!)

Admittedly, this is a complex and difficult issue given the horrors of genocide enacted against entire nations and people groups in the modern world. But once again, it is important to remember the distinctions that set these biblical commands apart from modern acts of genocide.

If the God of the Bible exists, then God alone has the authority to issue these specific, limited commands for humans to act as agents of his judgment against sinful, deserving peoples.

Because God alone has this authority, then it is reasonable to conclude that any genocidal commands do not violate any sense of goodness or moral perfection attributable to God.

 

From Where I Stand

If the purpose of Lewis’s chapter was to discredit atheist Dan Barker, then he has failed miserably.

“If you claim to be a good person, then this book (the bible) should embarrass you and disgust you.” Dan Barker

Lewis’s shameless attempt to let Yahweh off the hook for genocide also fails. It’s important to note here, that if people start with the belief that God is perfectly good then any evidence to the contrary must to be ignored or justified so the belief can be maintained. If their belief in a perfectly good god is questioned or shown to not be true or, better yet, points to the reality that Yahweh doesn’t actually exist, then christians find themselves on sinking ground.

So, if Barker’s statement is correct, what are the ramifications? Are christians not good people? Certainly, that can’t be true. Churches are mostly filled with good people who are deeply troubled by the divine violence found in the bible. So, how do good christians (who are not theologians) reconcile their belief on one hand that God is good with the incidents of divine violence on the other? While researching this project I discovered many christian websites that address these concerns. Let’s call them the “gatekeepers” whose job it is to defend the character of God and mollify the discomfort of believers. How they attempt to accomplish this task will be the topic of the next blog. Suffice to say here that their arguments range from “genocide never actually happened” to “the Canaanites deserved to be destroyed.” It promises to be interesting!

 

From Where I Stand

Dale Crum