Reevaluating Biblical Violence
Getting God off the hook for genocide.
We’ve been exploring the topic of Yahweh and biblical stories that look suspiciously like genocide. This is a hot topic within christian circles and the main objective is getting Yahweh off the hook for violence in the OT. In my previous blog we discussed a book by Dr. Charlie Trimm of Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. His book, entitled, “The Destruction of the Canaanites.” tackles this difficult issue differently than most christian writers. He proposes four possible views of the problematic verses as represented by these four statements.
- God is good and compassionate.
- The Old Testament is a faithful record of God’s dealings with humanity and favorably portrays YAHWEH’s actions.
- The Old Testament describes events that are similar to genocide.
- Mass killings are always evil.
Trimm states that all of these four statements can’t be true at the same time. Therefore, he says, “scholars tend to reject any one of them so that the other statements can cohere.” He arranges his arguments based on which one of these four statement people choose to reject. In the previous blog we explored the reasons for rejecting any one of the first three statements and the consequences that might occur by doing so.
- Reevaluating God
- Reevaluating the Old Testament
- Reevaluating Genocide in the OT
In this blog we are going to explore a school of christian thought that agrees with the first three statements but rejects statement number 4, (i.e. that mass killings are always evil.) How is that even possible, you might be asking yourself, but unfortunately, it’s a reality that must be reckoned with. We’ll take a deeper dive into this reasoning and perhaps we’ll see how christians are able to sanctimoniously justify biblical violence while at the same time claiming the moral higher ground.
The Nature of Evangelicals
Anyone who is familiar with evangelical christianity will know that rejecting statements 1, 2 or 3 is absolutely out of the question. It is verboten to question the nature of Yahweh or the inerrancy of the bible. Therefore statements 1 & 2 cannot be reevaluated as some writers have suggested. In addition, since the bible is inerrant, the descriptions of genocide in the OT could not have been hyperbole, but really did occur. If the bible says that Joshua’s armies “put all inhabitants to the sword, killed everything that breathed, and left no survivors,” then it must be taken literally. This leaves evangelicals with limited options. They must protect Yahweh (at all cost) and at the same time justify the stories of mass killings that are found in their bible. They accomplish this miraculous feat by rejecting the statement that “mass killings are always evil.” One christian author writes,
“The issue, then, cannot be whether or not genocide is intrinsically good or evil- (if) it is sanctioned by a Holy God that settles the question.”
Well, there you have it. If God commands mass killings, then it’s okay. Christians who accept this reasoning, are released from having to think deeply about this topic and perhaps even growing a conscience. There’s no need to wrestle with the idea of a good God commanding the slaughter of men, women, and innocent children. God must have had reasons.
And here’s where it gets a bit twisted and disturbing. Their reasoning falls into several schools of thought.
- God was protecting the Hebrew people from temptation,
- The Canaanites were sinners deserving a death sentence,
- The Canaanites were trespassing on Hebrew land.
- God is sovereign and can do whatever he wants (i.e. kill whoever he wants, whenever he wants.)
We’ll explore the first two justifications for biblical violence in this blog and cover the rest in next week’s blog.
God was protecting the Hebrew people from temptation
- God wanted the land cleared of all temptations to His people to turn from Him, His worship, and His law. The Canaanites were a threat to the purity of God’s people. He had set them apart, consecrated them, adopted them. In giving this order, He was protecting them. (1)
- Because of all of these abominable practices the Canaanites had become a dangerous threat to the Israelites. (7)
- In the process of executing His sentence against the Canaanites, God would be cleansing the land of every vestige of their debased religion to establish a land of spiritual purity and religious truth. (5)
Is clearing away all temptations what it takes to achieve “spiritual purity”? If that’s the case then there could be serious ramifications for today’s society. It’s not all that farfetched that fundamentalist groups would see the LGBTQ community as a threat to the purity and sanctity of christian family values and call for members of the LGBTQ community to be “cleansed from the land”. The seeds for such a movement have already been sown. The following is an excerpt from a Washington University publication.
Cultural backlash: Is LGBTQ progress an attack on Christianity?
White Christians are concerned recent social changes threaten their social influence, namely their ability to instill and enforce their notions of Christian values upon broader society — not realistic threats, such as loss of livelihood. Simply reminding white Christians about a changing cultural climate in which their influence is waning was sufficient to increase their perception of Christians’ victimization and perceived conflict with LGBTQ people.
Protecting the Purity of God’s People
So, how did God’s protection work out for the Israelites? Did killing the Canaanites actually create a land of “spiritual purity and religious truth”? It appears not. Yahweh might have been protecting his people from being corrupted by the Canaanites, but who could protect them from God?
- The Old Testament clearly details that because Israel chose to intermarry with the Canaanites, they also adopted many of their evil practices. (7)
- Unfortunately, instead of completing the conquest of Canaan and driving its people out as commanded, the Jews capitulated. Blending in with their enemy’s godless culture, they quickly were corrupted by it. Eventually, the same judgment that fell on the debauched Canaanites, fell upon the corrupted Jews for the very same reasons. (5)
- God didn’t show any favoritism toward the people of Israel. When they subsequently committed many of the same sins as the Canaanites they too suffered the death penalty for their sinfulness. (5)
The Canaanites were sinners deserving a death sentence
This is undoubtedly the most widely used justification for killing the Canaanites. It should be noted that throughout the entire history of war, people have always vilified their enemies. When you have to kill them, it helps to think of them not as real people with real families but as “a hideously nasty bunch” worthy of death. The more we can dehumanize them the easier it will be to kill them, as we shall see in the following excerpts from online articles.
- A basic knowledge of Canaanite culture reveals its inherent moral wickedness. The Canaanites were a brutal, aggressive people who engaged in bestiality, incest, and even child sacrifice. Deviant sexual acts were the norm. The Canaanites’ sin was so repellent that God said, “The land vomited out its inhabitants” (2)
- God was angry. Indeed, He was furious. And with good reason. Even by ancient standards, the Canaanites were a hideously nasty bunch. Their culture was, decadent to its roots. Its debauchery was dictated primarily by its fertility religion that tied eroticism of all varieties to the successful agrarian cycles of planting and harvest. (5)
So, God was furious? And for good reason? Not surprisingly, I found another christian author who argued that “God acted with a heavy heart, saddened at what had to be done.” First off, how do these guys know that God was either furious or saddened? And second, it’s curious that when someone claims to speak for God, God always seems to have the same opinion they do.
Some christians love an angry god. He’s still angry and they can’t wait to see what will happen to non-believers like me when an angry Jesus finally decides to come back.
Other christians, however, believe in a kinder, gentler god that would be saddened by the necessity of wiping out an entire tribe of people. Perhaps they envision Yahweh saying something like this to Moses, “Verily, it shall sadden me to doeth this but I guess it must be done. 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.”
Article 5 continues with the list of the Canaanites’ morally disgusting practices.
- In addition to divination, witchcraft, and female and male temple sex, Canaanite idolatry encompassed a host of morally disgusting practices that mimicked the sexually perverse conduct of their Canaanite fertility gods: adultery, homosexuality, transvestitism, pederasty (men sexually abusing boys), sex with all sorts of beasts, and incest. (5)
Pederasty? Wow, that sounds a bit like the Catholic church or perhaps the Boy Scouts. One has to wonder if these “morally disgusting practices” would justify the destruction of these institutions. Maybe priests and scout leaders abusing boys by the thousands hasn’t made God furious enough yet, like it has the rest of us.
It wasn’t genocide, it was divine capital punishment
- The conquest was an exercise of capital punishment on a national scale. Indeed, God brought the same sentence of destruction on His own people when they sinned in like manner. (5)
- I believe that God was justified to destroy the Canaanites. It wasn’t genocide but capital punishment. The Lord tells us that He ordered the Canaanite destruction because of their sinfulness. Many of the Canaanite sins were death penalty sins in the Old Testament and since Israel was a theocracy God could enact the death penalty back then for these sins. (7)
Here’s a new one for me. “It’s wasn’t genocide it was capital punishment on a national scale.” You just gotta love the audacity of the line, “…since Israel was a theocracy God could enact the death penalty back then for these sins.” First, it appears that the writer of article 7 overlooked the fact that the Canaanites were not under a covenant with Yahweh and had no obligation to follow Jewish law. Therefore, Israel’s enacting capital punishment on a national scale based entirely on Jewish laws (which did not apply to the Canaanites) would be a complete moral violation. And second, the Israelites hadn’t even entered the “promised land”, so even they weren’t under Jewish law yet.
On another note, undoubtedly some fundamentalists would love to return to the good old days of a theocracy. It would make things so much simpler if they could enact the death penalty against people they just don’t like. Here’s a short list of capital offenses that could be punishable under a modern-day theocracy using their holy book as precedent.
- cursing or striking one’s parents
- worshiping other gods or no god
- heresy
- violating the Sabbath
- maliciously giving false testimony
- adultery
- homosexuality
- fornication
In his conclusion regarding the option of rejecting the idea that mass killings are evil, Trimm writes this,
“Obviously, the main problem with this argument is that it associates YHWH with violence, which will be appalling to many. Additionally, this position leaves open the possibility of using the events in Joshua as a justification for modern genocide.”
This may seem by some as a bit of paranoia on my part, but I have also found this sentiment in other christian articles. It would seem that even christians are concerned by militant fundamentalists in their ranks. If they are, then we should definitely be also.
Coming Next
We will explore how some christians use the “kinder, gentler” New Testament to justify Old Testament violence. But it gets worse, some christians also believe that God can kill whoever he wants, whenever he wants. So, you better watch out, you’re living on borrowed time. Christian writer Peter Enns asks, “Is this really the kind of God we believe in?” We’ll answer that question in the next blog.
From Where I Stand
Dale Crum
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