Disassociating God from Biblical Violence
Getting God Off the Hook for Genocide
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 goodness of Yahweh. Lewis defends issues such as Yahweh and the moral authority of the bible, Yahweh’s jealousy, biblically sanctioned slavery, but (as we discussed in the previous blog) 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)
I was curious what christians (other than Lewis) had to say about this topic, so I went to the internet. Turns out, this is indeed a hot topic. Scores of books and ten times that many online articles have been written about divine violence as found in the Old Testament. Some of what I learned was good news, some of it was bad news and a large portion of what has been written in defense of divine violence is downright shocking. Let’s start with the “good news”.
The Good News
Turns out that many “good christians” are rightly disturbed and embarrassed by divine violence.
Many faithful believers are simply puzzled and embarrassed. (1)
A majority of the books and articles I found on this topic began with sentiments like these.
- That there was violence in the Old Testament is indisputable. Is the God of the Old Testament a “moral monster” who arbitrarily commands genocide against innocent men, women, and children? (2)
- Most Christians are at least a little bothered by this, and various solutions are regularly put forward to reconcile a good and loving God with the idea of God as a killing machine in the OT. (3)
- How could a loving God do such a horrible thing? (7)
- We seemingly have God commanding genocides, and we all feel genocide is wrong, and God is loving and kind so that can’t be right. What’s going on here? (8)
- When the Israelites entered the land of Canaan, was it not God who commanded them to wipe out all the indigenous people? Is God not guilty of genocide? Admittedly, this is a difficult and complex issue. (9)
- We feel obligated, understandably, to get God “off the hook” for the deaths of so many people. (9)
The Bad News
The bad news is that christian gatekeepers go to great lengths and perform mental and moral gymnastics to protect God and to mollify the discomfort felt by good christians. We’ll see in this and future blogs just how these christian gatekeepers attempt to “get God off the hook” for genocide. Their arguments run the gamut from “It never really happened – the stories are only hyperbole” to “the Canaanites were evil and deserved destruction”, and just about everything in between.
Justifications for divine genocidal commands fall into several different categories.
- It never happened – it’s hyperbole.
- It wasn’t as bad as it seemed. No women and children were killed.
- If children were killed, they went straight to heaven.
- The Canaanites were warned to leave but when they didn’t, they had to be killed.
- God’s command was to drive out the Canaanites, but the Israelites misunderstood the command and killed them instead. (oops!)
- The Canaanites were evil and deserved it.
- God can kill whoever he wants, whenever he wants.
- God was protecting the Hebrew people from temptation.
In future blogs we’ll take a deeper look at the reasoning behind each one of these justifications. Suffice to say now, that for christians, the inconvenient truth is that every one of these justifications comes with a built-in downside, much like the side effects one might experience when taking medicine. Each justification should come with a warning label like these.
Warning!! If you swallow the bitter pill that the bible is full of hyperbole and is not inerrant, you might experience social ostracism or removal from fellowship at church.
Warning!! If you swallow the bitter pill that God indeed commanded genocide you might experience a moral crisis and will need to find new grounds for morality because you can’t use religion anymore.
Warning!! If you swallow the bitter pill that your life means nothing to God, and he can kill you whenever he wants, (because you deserve it) you might experience a disillusionment that can cause you to question your faith.
While researching this topic I discovered a book by Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan entitled “Did God Really Command Genocide?” As mentioned before, Copan and Flannagan perform some pretty impressive mental and moral gymnastics in their attempt to get God off the hook. They write,
And we should be distressed by professing Christians’ abuse of Scripture, using such texts to justify the subjugation of women, the horror of the slave trade, and the oppression of people groups. Yet despite the Christian distortion of Scripture across the centuries, let us not forget about the moral gains brought about by, yes, Bible-reading Christians in Western civilization and Western (especially Protestant) missionaries who brought many democratizing gains, moral reforms, and protection of indigenous peoples from colonial powers. Other gains include democracy, literacy, human rights, women’s rights, civil rights, abolition of slavery and so on.” p.41
I just had to chuckle at this piece of revisionism. We’ve already discussed the role christians played in the Antebellum South regarding slavery. In addition, the authors failed to mention what “people groups” were oppressed. The list of persons “oppressed” by christians could be quite long so, it would be helpful to know exactly who the authors think were being oppressed.
You have to love the phrase, “Yet despite the Christian distortion of Scripture across the centuries“. Are we supposed to believe that suddenly Christians have stopped distorting scripture and stopped oppressing people? I’m not buying it, and neither should you. But it gets better as the authors write, “let us not forget about the moral gains brought about by, yes, Bible reading christians.” So, let’s look at the list of benefits the authors believe have been given to us by Bible-reading christians.
- democratizing gains (whatever that means)
- moral reforms,
- protection of indigenous peoples (How about the Trail of Tears? oops!)
- democracy, (from a group of people who would prefer a theocracy?)
- literacy, (See my blog about a christian writer who advocates for the bible as your only reading material.)
- human rights,
- women’s rights, (ha ha!!)
- civil rights,
- abolition of slavery. (See my blog about how Antebellum pastors used scripture to justify slavery.)
I read this list to my wife, and we both had a good laugh. Christians can’t all of a sudden claim responsibility for these moral gains. The truth is that many of these moral gains were realized in spite of christian opposition. It never ceases to amaze me how christians, who claim to be the standard-bearer of objective truth, actually have (at best) a causal relationship with truth and often times use deception and dishonesty to support their truth. It’s something we will see repeatedly in their attempts to get God off the hook for genocide. It’s gonna get interesting.
From Where I Stand
Dale Crum
mt.toll@comcast.net
References:
(2) Why did God condone such terrible violence in the Old Testament? | GotQuestions.org
(4) https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/the-slaughter-of-the-canaanites-re-visited
(5) https://www.str.org/w/the-canaanites-genocide-or-judgment-
(7) Is God a Genocidal Maniac? – Bible Apologetics – A DAILY DEVOTIONAL
(8) God, Genocide and Biblical Interpretation – Think Biblically – Biola University
(9) https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/god-guilty-genocide/ Kurger
(10) 2belike christ