One of the greatest things about a faith with room to grow is that you get to bring up the scary, uncomfortable questions, at least for yourself. You know, the kinds of questions you\u2019ve spent so much time to forget. The ones everybody agrees to leave unasked. The ones you were warned about because they would undermine your faith…<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m sure you know what I\u2019m talking about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My spiritual journey eventually led me to a point where asking these questions no longer was an option, but a necessity for survival. Sure, I was scared of \u201closing my salvation\u201d by questioning certain foundations, but just beyond the fear I was also exhilarated at the thought of finding a God much bigger than what I had thought possible. In this blog, I want to tell you about one of the \u201cbig ones\u201d I finally dared to tackle: The violence of God in the Old Testament. Of course I will never be able to do justice to such a complex topic in one blog post, and I\u2019m not a theologian. However, I do want to invite and challenge you to study more on this subject for yourself, and to join the discussion of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like most people, I always felt uneasy about many Old Testament stories, even among fellow Christians. When pressed about them by Non-Christians, embarrassed joined the unease. I really wished those stories weren\u2019t there, but since they were written in the Bible, what was I to do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Brian Zahnd describes this dilemma in his book Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God<\/em>. He points to the stories of God telling Abraham to kill his son (even though he didn\u2019t have to go through with it in the end), and telling Joshua, King Saul and the Israelites to kill civilians, from women down to infants, as part of the ethnic cleansing of Canaan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How\u2019s that for a touchy subject?<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it gets even better. One of the cornerstones of Christian theology is that God is immutable. His nature and character do not change. But if God doesn\u2019t change and has in the past sanctioned the killing of children as part of a genocidal conquest, is it possible He would ever require you<\/em> to kill children?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Were we in the same room now, we would get the most interesting \u2013 and most telling \u2013 reactions to this question. Hopefully, most of us would say \u201cno way ever!\u201d,<\/em> even if it left us with a theological problem. Sadly, I have personally been in settings where a version of this question was asked and several people were not determined they would resist such a command if they believed it came from God. It is an example of why religious fervor can be so deadly; people are willing to do in the name of God what they would deeply resist and condemn in any social setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But if most of us would vehemently oppose to doing something God allegedly told his own people to do numerous times, we are left, as Zahnd points out, with three options:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first option creates a far bigger problem still. If God is not always good, He should not be worshipped wholeheartedly, but His evil traits should be resisted. The second option goes in a similar direction. If God changes, then how do I know He won\u2019t suddenly turn into an insane dictator who demands genocide? My worship of Him would be at best full of suspicion and caution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The third option, however, opens up new possibilities (and also new challenges!). To quote Zahnd:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf we don\u2019t want a monstrous God who occasionally commands genocide, and if we don\u2019t want a malleable God who is slowly mutating away from a violent past, how do we view the Old Testament? (\u2026) The Old Testament is the inspired telling of the story of Israel coming to know their God. It\u2019s a process. God doesn\u2019t evolve, but Israel\u2019s understanding of God obviously does. (\u2026) Even a casual reader of the Bible notices that between the alleged divine endorsement of genocide in the conquest of Canaan and Jesus\u2019s call for love of enemies in his Sermon on the Mount, something has clearly changed!<\/em> What has changed is not God but the degree to which humanity has attained an understanding of the true nature of God. The Bible is not the perfect revelation of God; Jesus is. Jesus is the only perfect theology<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n You might agree and ask where the problem is. But many Christians are afraid that if we agree to Israel\u2019s evolving understanding of God, we have to question the relevance and accuracy of the Old Testament. This goes further than what many are ready to go. And yet, it is evident that Old Testament heroes like Joshua and David, although having certain revelations of the grace of God, were also steeped in a culture of violence and retributive, power hungry gods. They were men of their time, in the middle of a story of a people getting to know God better. They interpreted visions, dreams and words from God according to the best of their understanding of Him, yet they didn\u2019t have a full revelation of His nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But then came Jesus. And his teachings were so surprisingly different, so void of vengeance, genocide and bloodshed that he constantly upset both Jewish leaders and his own disciples. He would say: \u201cyou have heard it said \u2026. But I say to you<\/em>\u2026\u201d and He would turn their world and religion upside down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Listening to Jesus, we can no longer just say \u201cThe Bible says it, that settles it\u201d; we have to start looking at the heart of God and come to our own, responsible conclusion. We have to ask, \u201cdoes this action or attitude match Jesus\u2019 command to love my neighbor, to forgive those who hate me and to turn the other cheek? Is it in agreement with his admonition that not the powerful nor the strong, but rather the meek, the merciful and the peacemakers represent him?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course this doesn\u2019t mean mankind has been following God in perfect harmony since the birth of Jesus. Knowing something doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re necessarily doing it. And needless to say, the understanding of God\u2019s character has kept growing since the time of Jesus, and will continue to grow. And again it is not Jesus who is changing, but the ability of his followers to embrace his message and understand his heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fact is, followers of Jesus are having an awful hard time embracing the Sermon on the Mount. Christians all across their 2000 years of history have misused Scripture as a divine license for violence, hatred and power trips. Of course, the crusades and inquisition come to mind quickly, but in more recent times the Bible was misused just as much by colonialists, missionary groups, white supremacists or proponents of the death penalty. To quote Zahnd one more time:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf you leave the door open to justify the Canaanite genocide, don\u2019t be surprised if modern crusaders try to push their way through that same door and then cite the Bible in their defense. (\u2026) We should acknowledge that in the late Bronze Age, Israel made certain assumptions about the nature of God, assumptions that now have to be abandoned in the light of Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words: Whenever we use the Bible to exclude, discriminate, withhold mercy from or otherwise violate another human being, we are going directly against what Jesus was teaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, what should we do with these many violent, retributive, sexist and merciless passages in the Old Testament? For too long, I didn\u2019t do anything with them for fear that if I questioned the inerrancy of the Bible, the whole thing would come crumbling down. But slowly, I dared to take my heart into the equation. If I felt God told me to sacrifice my own child, or to hate Muslims or gay people, or to believe that everybody that hasn\u2019t said the right prayer will be tortured for eternity (another topic) – would I do it because it\u2019s in the Bible? (Of course most of this isn\u2019t even in the Bible but only a product of wrong conclusions). Or would I try to pray: \u201cGod, somewhere in there we must have misunderstood you. My heart believes in a God more merciful, more beautiful than what comes across here, so I know you\u2019re infinitely more beautiful still, because you created my heart. Help me to see where the misunderstanding lies.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I might not get a nice, theologically wrapped answer. I might have no answer at all. But it is better to say: \u201cI don\u2019t know why these passages are in the Bible. But I will not follow them, because they don\u2019t represent Jesus,\u201d than to say: \u201cMy heart cries out against doing this – but it\u2019s in the Bible, so I will do it anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The decision at stake here makes all the difference. In the end, our conscience and desire to find the true heart of God will team up with the Holy Spirit \u2013 whose fruit is love, peace and joy \u2013 to help us to choose the right way. The way Jesus has taught us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we dare to embrace the scary questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Excerpts from : Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God<\/em> by Brian Zahnd, Waterbrook, 2017 <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Keywords: Old Testament violence – Biblical literalism – Brian Zahnd<\/p>\n One of the greatest things about a faith with room to grow is that you get to bring up the scary, uncomfortable questions, at least for yourself. You know, the kinds of questions you\u2019ve spent so much time to forget. The ones everybody agrees to leave unasked. 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