As I continue to write on how to understand the violence of God in the Old Testament, I am always shocked whenever I run into a Christian who thinks the Bible isn’t violent. I want to ask them if they have read anything outside of the New Testament (Even then, you have the book of Revelation and various teachings on hell).
One of the reasons is it is so critical to not only own up to the violence of Scripture, but also to have an answer for it, is because the violence of God in the Bible is one of the main reasons people today are rejecting Christianity and denying the existence of a good and loving God.
So if you happen to be a Christian who doesn’t know the Bible is violent, OR if you happen to think the violence of God in the Bible is “no big deal,” let me invite you to read Drunk With Blood by Steve Wells. If you are a fundamentalist Christian, you will probably be offended at the humorous approach Steve Wells takes in his book, Drunk With Blood, by pointing out all the violence of Scripture, but I think that humor is the only way to write a 300-page book detailing all the violence in the Christian Scriptures. If the book didn’t contain humor, by the time we were done reading about all the killings in the Bible, most of us would want to kill ourselves as well. Without the humor, it’s depressing reading.
As for myself, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I have read lists of the violence in Scripture before, but never one so detailed, so thorough, and so entertaining.
I personally don’t think Steve was “fair” with all of the biblical accounts of violence, since he often cuts off quotations in mid-sentence, but with all the clear “unfairness” in Scripture where actual human lives are getting “cut off” by God, it’s hard to quibble over minor details like that.
Look, if you want to know how the Bible looks to someone who doesn’t read the Bible through “Christian-colored” glasses, you must read this book. And if you want to know why Christians are often seen as hypocritical and violent, it is because we defend the actions in the Bible as “holy and just” while condemning identical behavior in people of other religions.
As a Christian myself, I believe Drunk With Blood should be mandatory reading for all Christians.
And hey! Bill Maher recommends it too:
Drunk With Blood shows us what we Christians don’t want to admit, that God is violent! The sooner we own up to this fact, the sooner we can start dealing with it honestly, and trying to understand the Old Testament violence of God in light of Jesus Christ dying on the cross.
I’ve always said God was a violent God but that doesn’t mean He isn’t a loving God as well.
I thin k you’re lost with this!
Lost? As in unsaved? Or lost as in wrong?
I Can tell you that everything you can ever know about God is displayed on the cross. That thought should carry your contemplations until you leave this planet.
It was a hard world back then, and it is now too! Face it, the world IS violent, thats just a fact of fallen man, And as far as the OT violence goes, there were very evil people with very evil practices surrounding The Israelites.
Michael…right…do a little digging into history 101 of the surrounding cultures and you may be shocked as to what you find. Canaan, Philistia and others were complete and utter barbarians. Their war and religious rituals were just as brutal and disturbing as some of what we can find in Africa today. They made Hitler look like a boyscout in some regards.
Ransom Backus, you got it. It was a hard world. Lots of violence. People committed violence in the name of God, just as people do today.
I confess, I always find it a bit baffling, if not amusing, when the charge is thrown out that God has killed lots of people…. I mean, yeah, it’s been classical judeo-Christian teaching for millennia that God is the giver and taker of life, he ‘kills’ everyone!
The real problem is that values which found their foundation in the fact that we aren’t God, have been divorced from this basis and are being applied to God. It’s like not just cutting off the branch we”re sitting on, but then complaining that the trunk goes up and not out like the branch does.
I am not sure what you are saying, but I actually don’t think God kills anyone. Death kills people, and part of the reason Jesus came was to defeat death.
then why do we have 54 million people die worldwide yearly
and 84 million born with a death sentence?
Prove to me theirs life after death because a book has many titles and stories but that does mean it happens unless you have proof.
Im not investing into a company whos founder refuses to show himself in person. Tells me in a book he was here thousands of years ago and has not returned.
Thanks for abandoning me God. Thanks for the endless torture you gave me without reason and unjustly deserved.
Thanks for death because of the law of Empathy can I apply this to you so that we can be saved by other Gods who do not require us to Die to Gain Immortatility because they Empatheticly would not want that on themselves.
Empathy is the law here.
Very interesting that you hold your God to absolutely no ethical obligation to his creation.
Interesting and creepy,on both counts. I’ll read that book when I can. Also, in the New Testament,Christians are forbidden to be violent,to kill anyone, to enslave anyone, steal land or people, like kids- and then they’re forced into residential schools. How come the Puritans and Pilgrims thought they could get away with these acts of violence and immorality listed above ? Why are they held up even today,as role models for Americans, as touted in churches and public schools ? What makes the UK and America exempt from obeying commands in the New Testament ? The rules still apply to all believers,right ? How do Christian leaders plan to answer these points ? Enquiring minds want to know !
I take it those Christians never watched Mel Gibson’s _The Passion of Christ_. The movie that Roger Ebert called the most violent he has ever seen. Also, one of the few movies he said should have been NC-17, rather than R.
Yes. Of course, while the Bible does contain the crucifixion of Jesus, it does not contain all the gory detail that Gibson’s movie did… I’m not saying he was wrong to make it, of course. It is good to know the pain that Jesus went through.
The reason the bible leaves out what suffering can actually look like is because its been philtered as to not scare people or wake them up to the harsh reality of life. Its a cookie thats only slightly sour to eat and scape goat to settle that life is really “not that bad”
When you can empathize with someone who has been brutally raped, tortured, stolen from, beaten, blinded and molested for 80 years straight, all the while praising god, you begin to think that God made them a sadomasochist from birth, much like how cat scans and CT scans prove murderers are missing parts of their prefrontal cortex which causes low impulse control.
Jesus hardly had any pain and was perfect, we are not, we are born sinners and with a death consequence, did we choose that from a perfect standpoint? NO. can a perfect God still be a criminal? Yes, thats called a perfect crime.
My suffering compared to Jesus is Jesus got a small slap on the wrist and I got tortured for my whole entire life endlessly in the worst ways. Jesus suffering is a cake walk compared. He doesnt know what its like to get 24 stomach influenzas, 34 ear infections, 2 brutal violent rapings, eating dog and cat feces because of people torturing me. yeah man, you dont know suffering either and i would warrant that is a lack of empathy on you and Jesus and God.
It is not logical that any good act can cancel out or rectify a bad act. The endorsing of genocide, rape, torture, slavery, misogyny, infanticide, etc. is not erased by the crucifixion.
This is like a murderer saying, “Yeah, I murdered but I give money to charity.” It does not rectify it.
If I read through the comments, I can’t loose the feeling, that a lot of christians don’t get, where you are pointing at, Jeremy. And that’s why the teaching that looks at the cross as a penal substitution is so wrong (or should I say evil?), because it binds christianity to a god of violence, who at the bottom IS so violent that he has to get his bloodthirst taken care of, before he can forgive. And that not only contradicts everything Jesus was teaching about god, but what the cross is really all about. But with a cristianity which believes in such a bloodthirsty god it is no wonder, that we have such a problem to live the life of nonviolence Jesus came to invite us into. If god is not better than we are, why should we bother?
Thar’s why I’m totaly with you, Jeremy. The Question of the violence of god is one of THE most importend questions christianity has to answer.
Greetings from germany
Jay
You nailed it, Jay. If God is violent, the cross make no sense, and there is no real basis for forgiveness, grace, or mercy because God has been “pain off” with the blood of Jesus.
No, You can have forgiveness grace and mercy without needing Jesus to die or anyone for that matter, why is it necessary to die and what does that prove? We should all go to hell for millions of years to really prove forgiveness and grace and mercy following that same logic no?
Ill go to hell for your crime God? making me a sinner with a death sentence and asking me to love you?
way to make a friend huh, try that here on earth as a human. Hold a gun to someones head and say they are rags before how awesome you are and to try and make them your friend yeah?
they will have arrested and jailed for attempted murder yeah?
Its called life with forgiveness not death with forgiveness.
Wow, so obsessed with death as the only way to make forgiveness work? Just what crime needs that to happen?
O wait its called being born as a helpless baby. Thats what needs to die because that is a crime worthy of the electric chair god says? ha. wow.
You said
“But with a cristianity which believes in such a bloodthirsty god it is no wonder, that we have such a problem to live the life of nonviolence Jesus came to invite us into. If god is not better than we are, why should we bother?”
Why should we bother if God is not better than we are HA!
Because WE CAN BE BETTER THAN GOD! and god deserves the same punishment as we would had we been as bad, God would still in jail and getting some massive punishment, if there is a hell. I would put god in it for quite a while.
Until you understand Gods holiness, you will never see how truly amazing His grace is.
God is not violent.
I typed that sentence, it must be almost an hour ago, and since then I have stared at the screen wondering how to proceed. I want to write in a way that can be received, to share, not to contend. But I can’t see how.
I can say that God has no need for violence. Not for self-defence, not to release anger, not to punish, and not to demonstrate to humans how they should live. And God doesn’t need his followers to commit violence for him: not one punch, not one genocide. But I am confident that you have thought this already and dismissed it.
I can reason with you, that God, infinitely wise, wouldn’t be so foolish as to sanction religious slaughter. But you may reply, “The foolishness of God is wiser than man.” True, but do you not see that your argument is the opposite, that the wisdom of God is no wiser than the foolishness of man.
I can tell you, bluntly, that you only believe God is violent because you believe in the Bible. Not one of you has experienced violence at the hand of God, nor knows anyone who has. War criminals live lavishly, serial killers roam wild, sometimes for decades. God is patient: there is his foolishness beyond your wisdom.
God commands no violence, justifies no violence, approves no violence. You find a violent god only in scriptures. And you believe despite confusion, despite reason, despite evidence, despite the ache in your heart. Because you must believe the book. The book is not your God. How can you find the infinite between the covers of a book?
I completely agree that God is not violent. I have been arguing as much on this blog for the last two years. The reason I invite people to read this book is because many Christian deny that there is divine violence in the Bible. This book pretty well shows that there is, and shows how many non-Christians read the Bible. If we want to show that God is not violent then we need to have a good way to answer those who point to the Bible and say, “But look at all the violence!”
i appreciate that. May God grant you more wisdom to comprehensive such puzzle question. Shalom.
“With all the clear “unfairness” in Scripture where actual human lives are getting “cut off” by God” this doesn’t make any sense really. God sees our days and numbers our days. He sees each of us die at some point. Tell me what the approved method of dying is? Only when you’re 90 and you die in your sleep? No matter how someone dies and at what age, someone will be upset. Someone will say it’s not fair. People will blame God for taking their loved ones too soon. This is because we lose the connection that is so important to us, it’s natural. So, do we take a vote and decide what the best age and method is and beg God to do it our way? And then count down to the end of someone’s life?
And talking about the violence, well what about all the violence the Allies perpetrated towards the Germans and Japanese? Oh, we know they deserved it. Well, maybe the Israelites knew the peoples around them deserved it. How about the women and children? Women and children were killed in our wars. Unless you’re a total pacifist (and would be fine if we’d lost those wars), it’s pretty hypocritical to have an issue with it. But “God told them to wipe them out”. Did He? Were they all really wiped out? Seems that God saved some of them (rather like Sodom and Noah).
Patricia,
I am not sure what you are arguing. And I think anyone would agree that there is a huge difference between dying in your sleep at 90 and having someone shoot you to death when you’re 9.
Either way, God has nothing to do with it. Sin and death kills people; not God.
Evil people? I suggest you read you Bible, while there are evil people doing evil things, often at the behest of God, but more importantly, if you believe the Bible much of the evil comes from God himself.
See Isaiah 45:7… “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.”
You are reading from the King James Bible, which has a number of flaws in translation. In other translations that have a better understanding of the ancient Hebrew language, the word evil is more closely tied to the understanding of “disaster” or “calamity”–and in this understanding there is potentially a bigger understanding in the ancient Hebrew world as to what those meant–see John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament.
Yeah, Sin and death kill people not god ha!
Thats how politicians work. Its not My fault its someone else fault.
Thats how you dodge responsibility for your actions.
It does not work here without consequence.
God is not omitted from consequence of action. to believe anyone can allows them to do whatever they want good or bad without fear of repercussion.
Well said Melting Ice. Your last two paragraphs in particular resonate strongly.
Yeah, I agree it’s a bit hard to understand. It’s a lot harder to try to explain…
Hello, an ex-Muslim atheist here; would like to reply to this concluding argument:
“…and trying to understand the Old Testament violence of God in light of Jesus Christ dying on the cross.”
1. Was Jesus supposed to be a ^more-loving^ replacement for Jehovah/ Elohim? The Bible says no; because He & the Daddy “are always in perfect agreement” & that God “does not change”. Anyone wants to contradict these Biblical claims by quoting verses where Jesus regretted & rebuked the “past acts” of his Dad; by all means, please, be my guest : – )
2. Jesus died only in human terms, leaving a biological body which was aging anyway. All humans will eventually also die. Thus why should there be anything special on the matter; especially noting that:
3. In redeeming all the supposed-sins of humanity; Jesus only died to leave a biological body which was aging anyway; making the price of this alleged-redemption to be “cheap” after all. If the sins of all humanity is really big deal, isn’t Jesus supposed to be baked in hell for the rest of eternity –with Satan– for paying for its price? But hey, in your own wordgame; who can protest your dishonest twisting of logic to get yourself winning with the unfair argument?
4. Since this Jesus was later resurrected, the “death” part of the story really needs some honest disclaimer. Yet again, you can, & will, of course, always win in your own logic-twisting wordgame.
5. The pre-death torture endured by Jesus was very much nothing compared to the horrendous cruelties suffered by “heathens” whose lands were about to be robbed, pillaged & plundered by people self-claiming to be His followers during the Inquisitions of & in Africa, India & Latin America. They died as unbelievers, slaughtered by Christians, & now they will be spending the rest of eternity in hell because according to, again, the ^logic of justice^ of the deity of Christianity; “They died as unbelievers”? Hopefully after this, any human being watching the scenic re-enactment of the pre-death suffering of Jesus will feel it as… well, judge for your kind self:
https://www.atheistrepublic.com/blog/michaelsherlock/forgotten-inquisition-psychopathic-saint-part-1
6. You can’t have your cake & eat it too; there can be no ^free^-will when (you believe that) everything comes from an all-knowing & eternally-unchanging creator of all. How can “all things” in Romans 8:28 does not include bad ones? For Christians to brag their joy of being ^saved^ by Christ; the scenarist prerequisites they conveniently ignore & happy not to be aware of
a) Satan needed to disobey Jehovah/ Elohim;
b) Adam needed to eat the damn fruit (Islamic teaching even goes so far as to claim he had been predestined for that action some 40 years before his creation);
c) Judas needed to betray Jesus; etc.
But no worries; Christianism is not the only ideology struggling with the ultimate Q on freewill & predestiantion; all communistic (forced-uniforming of humanity) ideologies claiming that God “can only exist” as a personalized entity are equally unable to provide a clear & coherent answer –except Buddhism.
“Christianity did not become a major religion by the quality of its truth but by the quantity of its violence” –Michael Sherlock
“It’s like this: I created man and woman with original sin. Then I destroyed most of them for sinning. Then I impregnated a woman with myself as her child, so that I could be born. Later, I will kill myself as a sacrifice to myself to save all of you from the sin I gave you in the first place” –atheistrepublic.com
“The entire basis of Christianity is God impregnating a teenage girl without her consent with the actual purpose of killing his own child” –Dan Barker: Losing Faith in Faith
“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived” –Isaac Asimov
“Instead of being born again, why don’t you just grow up?” –atheistrepublic.com
“Thou shalt not own another person as a property!” –(the atheist) Matt Dillahunty; not the Bible
“So according to the religions, you can only be good if you’re scared of the consequences of being bad?” –atheistsinkenya.org
“Many Christians believe that a stick that Moses held was turned into a snake by God yet completely deny that climate change or even evolution is real thing” –atheistsinkenya.org
“If you have a few hundred followers and some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If you have a billion they call you Pope” –Bill Maher
“Homosexuals don’t have an ‘agenda’ that involves brainwashing or converting children to their ways. That’s religion you’re thinking of” –@atheistmel
“We must question the story logic of having an all-all-knowing and all-powerful God who creates faulty humans and then blames them for his own mistakes” –Gene Roddenberry
“If an ideology is peaceful, we will see its extremists and literalists as the most peaceful people on Earth; that’s called common sense” –Faisal Saeed Al Mutar
“If a religious moderate believes the proposition that the Bible or the Quran is the inspired or quoted words of God, who is he to fault a religious extremist for actually doing what it says to do? –Dave Muscato
“Religious morality doesn’t exist, They’re just following orders, and it is called, instead: obedience” –Ray Spurril
“You don’t need religion to have morals. If you can’t determine right from wrong then you lack empathy, nor religion” –atheistrepublic.com
”You either have a God who sends child rapists to rape children or you have a God who simply watches it and says: ‘When you’re done I’m going to punish you’. If I could stop a person from raping a child I would; that’s the difference between me and your God” –former Christian fundamentalist Tracie Harris
“Religion is regarded b the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful” –adapted from Seneca
“If logic is a test of faith, then is the ideology that is called religion, a test of logic?” –Philosopraptor
Faresalis in Indonesia.