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Yesterday I presented a way of reading about the flood that was different than the traditional way the flood account is usually read.

Certainly, the way I have proposed is challenging, but let us think momentarily about what the traditional reading says. To reject the view I have presented in previous posts, you either have to go with the traditional reading which says God sent the flood and killed all humanity except for eight people, or you have to categorize the flood account as a historical or literary myth.

Frankly, if the choice is between a God who drowns millions of people and understanding the flood account as a myth, the second option is better by far. The traditional reading of this account says that because God saw how great the violence was upon the earth, He decided to bring even greater violence. The traditional reading argues that because the sin of violence had spread throughout the earth, God was going to trump all their violence with the greatest violence of all.

Can this be true of God?

Does God defeat violence with greater violence?

Can it be right that God’s response to violence is only greater violence?

Does it not seem strange that when God sees violence come upon the earth, His response is an act of supreme violence?

It is extremely strange that the primary sin mentioned in Genesis 6:13 is violence (cf. Genesis 6:11), and the most common way of reading Genesis 6 says that God responded to the sin of violence with greater violence.

How can this way of reading Genesis 6 be correct?

If God is actually trying to show the world a better way—a more loving way, a less violent way—the flood does not seem to be the best course of action. All it really shows is what the human race already believes: that might makes right.

The Flood Failed at Wiping Out Evil

Furthermore, aside from annihilating every living thing on earth except for the humans and creatures in the ark, the violent response of God toward evil didn’t really accomplish anything. Some seem to think that God intended to wipe out evil with the flood, but He knows that this is impossible, as He Himself states in Genesis 8:21.

The condition of humanity as having every inclination and imagination of their hearts only evil all the time didn’t change one bit as a result of the flood. It was this way before the flood, and it was this way afterwards as well (cf. Genesis 6:5 with Genesis 8:21). If God’s goal in the flood was to teach people not to be so evil, He failed miserably, and got a lot of human blood on His hands in the process (Fretheim, God and World, 81). This not only seems overly violent, but incredibly foolish of God.

If God knew beforehand that the flood wouldn’t “work,” why send it?

The Traditional Way of Understanding the Flood is Incorrect

This is why the text seems to hint that God didn’t send the flood.

It appears, based on several clues within the text itself, that the traditional way of reading the text is not correct.

Though the traditional reading is what the text seems to say on the surface, the revelation we have received in Jesus Christ challenges us to look beneath the surface of these deep and troubled waters to discern something else going on in the flood event than a violent God foolishly seeking the near-extermination of everything that breathes on earth.

The alternative perspective helps us understand that when worldwide destruction was coming up on the earth as a result of mankind becoming extremely evil and violent, God stepped in to save and rescue those who would follow Him. This truth is not only hinted at in Genesis 6–8 itself, but also in the parallel accounts in Job, Isaiah, Matthew, and 2 Peter, all of which we have looked at earlier (See the link list on this post: When God Pled Guilty)

Genesis 6-8 Summarized

When God saw that this destruction was inevitable, He set in motion a series of events to rescue and deliver as many people as He could from this great evil. He called out Noah to build the ark and proclaim deliverance from the destruction that was coming. When that destruction came, it was not by the hand of God, but He nevertheless took the blame for it by inspiring the biblical author of Genesis 6–8 to record that He was sending the flood.

In reality, far from sending the flood, God did all He could to rescue people from it. In the end, only eight people were delivered when the flood waters came upon the earth.

How can a God who says "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44) be the same God who instructs His people in the Old Testament to kill their enemies?

These are the sorts of questions we discuss and (try to) answer in my online discipleship group. Members of the group can also take ALL of my online courses (Valued at over $1000) at no charge. Learn more here: Join the RedeemingGod.com Discipleship Group I can't wait to hear what you have to say, and how we can help you better understand God and learn to live like Him in this world!

God Takes Responsibility for the Flood

By Jeremy Myers

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When bad things happen in this world, God often takes the responsibility for them because He is the one who created a universe where such evil things are possible.

When God created the world, He did not plan for sin to enter the world and for things to get so bad that eventually He would have to send a flood to wipe out every living thing on earth. No, what happened to creation was due to human activity; not divine.

Nevertheless, “God bears some responsibility for setting up the creation in such a way that it could go wrong and have such devastating effects” (Fretheim, God and World, 82).

The Flood Happened on God’s Watch

When the flood came, it is not something that God sent, but is something that happened under His rule, or “on His watch.”

When the flood came, the text only has the waters as the subject of the verbs; not God. It says the “waters of the flood came upon the earth” (Genesis 7:10, NAS) and “the fountains of the great deep burst open” (Genesis 7:11, NAS). The only verbs ascribed to God in the actual flood event are when He moves to restore, save, and deliver. It is God who shut Noah and his family into the ark (Genesis 7:16), and sent the wind over the earth (Genesis 8:1). “The flood is described in natural terms as the effects of sins (of violence in particular) with no divine act of intervention; only with the subsiding of the waters is God’s activity stated explicitly” (Fretheim, God and World, 80).

Why then did God state that He would send the flood?

God said He would send the flood because He was taking the blame for the way the world had gone.

God inspired the Biblical author to record that He sent the flood, not because He did send it, but because it was such a terrible thing that happened in His creation and as a good God who watches over His creation, He takes responsibility for things that happen in His world, even though He Himself did not “do” it.

Over and over in Genesis 7, the account says that the “water” killed every living thing (Genesis 7:17, 18, 19, 20, 24). The author of Genesis 7 is using the cosmic warfare motif to show that the waters are responsible for the death of everything that breaths; not God.

But what about Genesis 7:23?

Here is one place where alternative translations from the Hebrew are justified, as found in various English translations. Most English translations provide the word “He” (some even blatantly put in “God”) as the subject of the opening statement in Genesis 7:23. The New King James Version is one example (cf. also ESV, NAS, NET, NLT, RSV):

So He destroyed all living things which were on the face of the ground: both man and cattle, creeping thing and bird of the air. They were destroyed from the earth. Only Noah and those who were with him in the ark remained alive.

But the Hebrew is vague about God’s involvement in sending the flood and destroying everything on earth that breathes. The King James Version shows the lack of clarity in the verse (cf. also NIV, NJB):

And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.

This translation more closely resembles the surrounding context. The agent of the destruction is left unclear, though the immediately surrounding context indicates that the waters of the flood were responsible for taking the breath from every living thing.

In the end, the Genesis flood paints the portrait both ways. In some instances, God takes the blame for the death and destruction of all that breathes upon the earth, but in other verses, the guilty party is not so clear. It is my belief that the vagueness of the text is intentional. It is to show the reader—especially those who are aware of the cosmic warfare elements of this passage—that something might be going on behind the scenes which a quick surface-level reading of the text does not initially reveal.

Reading about the Flood through Christological Eyes

We now know, however, as we read about the flood through the lens of Jesus Christ, that God did not send the flood. The flood came as a result of humanity’s great evil upon the earth.

When we consider the various elements of the Chaos Theory, it seems that this particular event may have been a mixture of nature being out of control and the destroyer seeking to destroy God’s good creation. God, of course, since He has a policy of non-intervention, let nature run its course but used His wisdom and mercy to raise up Noah to build an ark and proclaim the coming flood to any and all who would listen, repent, and be saved. In the end, however, only eight were rescued through the flood. All the rest of mankind kept themselves cut off and separated from the protective hand of God.

This way of reading the text allows God to look more like Jesus Christ and less like the gods of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia (and even most gods of our own day) who hurl fire, lighting, drought, and flood upon those who displease them. Jesus is not like that.

He blesses His enemies and forgives those who persecute Him. He represents a God who is love, who sends rain the righteous and the unrighteous, and the sun on the evil and the good. God did not send the flood. It came as a natural consequence of the great evil that was upon the earth, and specifically in response to the evil of the sons of God having children with the daughters of men. Since there is a bond between mankind and creation, when humanity falls into evil, creation falls into chaos along with it.

How can a God who says "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44) be the same God who instructs His people in the Old Testament to kill their enemies?

Getting Up to Speed on my book, “When God Pled Guilty”

By Jeremy Myers

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If you have been reading this blog for the past eighteen months or so, you will know that I have been trying to write a book called When God Pled Guilty. The writing process of the book has been of twists and turns, stops and starts, but I finally feel that I am getting back on track, and so decided to write a post which kind of gets everyone up to speed and provides a bit of the back story. This is that post.

It all Began 15 Years Ago in Seminary

Though I did not initially set out to write a book on this subject, the idea for the book began about 15 years ago when I wrote a paper in Seminary about the origin of violence and evil. My proposal then was the same thing I am proposing now, that although God is not guilty for the sin and violence of the whole world, He takes the blame for it, that is, He bears responsibility for the sins of the world, because God knows that as the creator of all that is, the buck stops with Him! He is, in some sense, responsible! The primary place we see God taking responsibility in this way is in Jesus’ death on the cross.

That is what I argued 15 years ago, and have been trying to flesh out ever since. Much of this is seen in various sermons, books, articles, and writings from those fifteen years. Some of this is online; most of it is not.

A Commentary on Jonah

Two years ago I started writing a commentary on Jonah. I stalled out in chapter 1, however, because of the storm which God sent upon the sailors, and for which, there life was put in danger because of the disobedience of Jonah.

I wondered then, as many others have, “Did God really send this storm? If Jonah had not gotten thrown overboard, would God have seriously drowned these innocent sailors because of Jonah’s rebellion?” I decided then that I could not finish my life’s goal of writing commentary on the entire Bible (which seems impossible now) without fleshing out to a greater degree the proposal from 12 years earlier.

So I set the commentary aside to research and write a full-fledged explanation of how to understand the violence of God in Scripture in light of the crucifixion of Jesus.

When God Pled Guilty

As part of my research and writing for this book, I read well over 100 books, many of which were quite helpful. Somewhere along the way, someone Tweeted to me that Greg Boyd was writing something similar, and so I checked out some of his recent sermons online and found that he does indeed seem to have a similar idea, though I still am not sure that he is arguing the same thing I am. We will have to wait and see when his book comes out.

I will fully admit though, that some of the main points of my “Chaos Theory” were gleaned from Greg Boyd’s sermons and writings. His insights into the “whirlwind” of what is going on around us in the natural and spiritual realms were really helpful in explaining some of the violence we see in the world today.

I was making what I thought was pretty good progress. I had developed my theory to my satisfaction, and then turned to Scripture to try to see if my proposed way of reading Scripture could actually make sense of the biblical text.

I started with the Flood in Genesis 6-8. That’s when I hit the wall. My theory drowned in the flood. I did the dog paddle for a while, trying to find some drift wood of the wreckage of my theory on which to float, but pretty soon, I sunk too. I wrote a lot about the flood, but I couldn’t finish my study of these chapters because it seemed I was missing some pieces to my proposal.

I had written 100,000 words for my book, and ended up with nothing but words.

I gave up for several months. I talked with some people. I read some books. Actually, I read LOTS of books.

I Read, Thought, Talked, and Wrote

During this break, not only did I read a lot of books, but I thought a lot about the proposal, I talked with some people about it, and I wrote and wrote and wrote (Writing is how I learn and how I think).

I made some tweaks to the proposal and wording, and decided to try again. You have been seeing some of the recent developments in various posts over the past month.

By the way, even though I deleted quite a bit of my original 100,000 words, the manuscript now sits at 140,000 words. And I am only half done. Sigh. A normal book is about 50,000 words, so I don’t know what I am going to do…

Anyway, I am ready to go back and get beat over the head with the Bible. I am about to continue my wrestling match with Scripture.

Tomorrow, I am going to pick back up with the flood account and try to finish my explanation of what happened in that horrific event.

Here’s the thing though … What I write will probably make no sense to you unless you are somewhat familiar with the basic idea of my proposal, and have also read some of the background posts to the flood. So I invite you to go check some of them out. They are all listed on the When God Pled Guilty contents page.

After the flood, we will begin to work our way through some of the violent texts in Scripture, until we eventually arrive at the Book of Revelation, and then conclude with a study on Hell.

So … see you tomorrow in the flood! Hopefully I can finish the book this year!

God Asks for Our Forgiveness

By Jeremy Myers

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We often think that it is only we who must go to God for forgiveness, but there is a sense in which God asks us to forgive Him.

No, it is not that God has sinned, but that He knows how much pain and suffering have come upon the world because of how He set it up to run. There was, of course, no other way the world could function and still accomplish God’s goal of having genuine, free relationships with humanity, but still, God in a sense “feels bad” about the way things have turned out, and as part of accepting responsibility for all the evil and violence in the world, on the cross, God also asks us to forgive Him for what has happened.

Some might object that God does not need to say “I’m sorry” for what He does not actually do.

Yet as humans, we do this all the time. One way to empathize with others who are experiencing great loss and pain is to come along side them in their suffering and say, “I am sorry.” Is their pain your fault? No, of course not. But saying you are sorry for what they are experiencing helps them know that someone notices their pain, cares about what they are going through, and is with them in their suffering.

Nevertheless, saying “I am sorry” is not the same thing as asking “Will you forgive me?” Yet even here, we have all experienced time sin our lives where we have accidentally caused pain in someone else’s life, and though we did not do it intentionally, we nevertheless ask for their forgiveness.

I have three daughters, and my wife and I have taught them that if, in the process of playing with each other, one accidentally hurts another, they should say “I am sorry” and “Please forgive me” even if they did not intend to hurt or harm their sister. Such behavior is expected. Such behavior is godly.

I believe it is on the cross where God shows the entire world that He is sorry for the pain we are experiencing, and He asks forgiveness for His part in this pain. Though He did not cause the pain and suffering (nor was it an accident on His part), because He is the Creator God who made the universe as it is, He accepts responsibility for how things have turned out, says He is sorry for what we are going through, and begs our forgiveness.

Dare we discern anything so outrageous as the idea that here God is making an atonement toward man for all that his desired creation costs man in the making: that he was making love’s amends to all those who feel, and have felt, that they cannot forgive God for all the pains which life has foisted, unwanted, upon them?

… Love in God’s fashion is indeed outrageous and a scandal because it does stoop and condescend to what, by lesser standards, it need not. Perhaps God in his love stands, not only as the bestower of forgiveness, but as the Father who, for the sake of the created who glory is his desire, even stoops to invite the forgiveness he cannot deserve in order to make it one degree easier for man to be drawn into the orbit of love (Elphinstone, Freedom, Suffering, and Love, 147).

God stooped to become one of us, and took our sin upon Himself, so that He might be both the forgiver and the forgiven.

In Jesus, God asks us for forgiveness, so that we, in Jesus, might both bestow forgiveness to God and receive forgiveness from God.

The God who in Christ was reconciling the alienated uncomprehending world to himself is perhaps more ready than his defense counsel to admit responsibility and show that he is sharing the consequences.

… God does know more intimately than any the price his creatures have been paying for his huge adventure of making this universe of accident and freedom and pain as the only environment in which love could one day emerge to receive and delight in and respond to his joyous love. He still believes the outcome will outweigh the immense waste and agony, not least the agony of his seeming indifference and inaction. So, knowing we cannot understand, cannot forgive, what he is doing, God [in Christ] has come among us a fellow-being and fellow-sufferer to make amends and to win back trust (Taylor, The Christlike God, 204-205).

In Christ, God came to say, “I am sorry.”

Do you forgive God?

Do you forgive God for the pain you have experienced?

For the heartache of broken relationships?

For the suffering of sickness and death?

For the sin that rages all around us unchecked and unpunished?

For the loss, the fear, and the anguish of life?

For “not making a better world” (though none better was possible, See Kushner, When Bad Things Happen, 161)?

God has said, “I am sorry. Will you forgive me?” How will you respond?

How can a God who says "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44) be the same God who instructs His people in the Old Testament to kill their enemies?

God Takes on Our Violence

By Jeremy Myers

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If it is on the cross that Jesus most fully reveals God, and it is on the cross that Jesus became sin for the world, then this means that in the Old Testament, God also was becoming sin for the world.

Just as Jesus became repulsive on the cross by taking on the sin of the world, the proper response to reading about the violence of God in the Old Testament is to be repulsed. We are repulsed by the violence of God in the Old Testament because we are supposed to be repulsed.

God Takes on the Violence of Israel

The violence of God in the Old Testament is exactly the violence of God, but is God taking on the violence of Israel. Israel, much like any other nation in history, was a child of its times, and set about living and functioning in a way that resembled the surrounding nations. Often this led to acts of war and violence against other people.

And though this was not the way God wanted them to behave, when they set out in these violent and warlike directions, God took their actions upon Himself.

He took responsibility for their behavior. He did not condone or command their actions, but when they set out to live in a way that was contrary to His will and ways, He inspired the biblical authors to put the violent actions of Israel upon Himself, so that He could take the blame and the shame for their sin.

God fights against violence by recognizing it for the evil that it is, and by taking the pain and suffering caused by evil upon Himself, thus emptying it of its power. God defeats violence by absorbing the violence on Himself. By not responding to violence with more violence, but simply taking the violence onto Himself, the infinite spiral of violence unravels itself upon the scarred and bloodstained back of God.

If he can manage to absorb the violence onto himself rather than either responding with new violence of his own or hardening himself in a way that deflects the original violence back onto the world, he has a means of dampening the reaction and winding down the conflict.

… Evil is stymied because it simply cannot get the usual chain reaction as much as started. It punches itself out against the defenselessness of the [suffering] servant (Eller, King Jesus’ Manual, 161.

The Bible Says What God Wants

Look at it another way: If the Bible is inspired and inerrant, then it records exactly what God wanted recorded. And if we read the Bible backward, then we read Jesus back into those violent portrayals of God in the Old Testament rather than read those depictions of God forward onto Jesus.

When we do this, we can assume that whatever appears inconsistent with the nature and character of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Gospels, comes not from God but from agents who oppose the will and ways of God, or from those who simply do not understand what God is truly like.

But often these passages in the Old Testament will state that the instructions were given by God, and if we read these texts in the light of Jesus, then we understand that although God was not telling them to do such things, He nevertheless inspired them to write what they did so that He could take the blame for their sinful actions. Just as Jesus came to destroy the devil’s work, to become sin for us, and to reveal God to us through His entire life and ministry and especially on the cross, then this also is what God was doing in the Old Testament.

God inspired the Old Testament authors to write about Him in a violent way so that He could do the same thing for Israel that Jesus did on the cross. Just as Jesus became sin for us, God became sin for Israel, and in this way, hopefully, stops the cycle of violence from continuing.

God Takes on the Violence of All Humanity

Of course, God’s action of taking the blame for the sin of His people does not begin with Israel, but with the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. From the very first sin, God takes the blame and violence upon Himself.

He does this in at least two ways.

First, He does not argue with Adam, Eve, and the serpent all implicate Him in their shame. Satan blames God for putting the tree in the garden and for wanting to keep the knowledge of good and evil to Himself (Genesis 3:5). Eve blames God by saying that she was tricked by the serpent (Genesis 3:13), who was in God’s garden. Adam blames God for giving the woman to him (Genesis 3:12).

God, like Jesus after Him, never utters a word in His defense.

But even in Genesis 3:14-19, God takes the blame for the evil that comes upon the world as a result of Adam and Eve’s sin. Many interpret these verses as God cursing the serpent, the man, the woman, and the ground.

And while a surface reading of the text does seem to indicate that this is what happens (although the word “curse” is never used in connection with Adam and Eve themselves), a more careful reading of the text reveals that God is more likely just describing the natural consequence of their decision to rebel against Him and hand dominion of the earth over to Satan.

Yet by pronouncing what will happen as a result of sin, God takes the blame for it.

t appears as if He is the one actively causing enmity, strife, sorrow, pain, thorns, thistles, and death.

People Sin. Bad Things Happen. God Takes the Blame.

This sort of pattern is followed throughout the rest of Scripture. People sin, bad things happen, and God takes the blame.

When people see God taking the blame for the violence and evil of His people (sometimes by “commanding” them to do it), they feel that they must somehow justify the violence and explain how it is really “good.” But this is the wrong approach. God is repulsed and saddened by the destructive violence, which is why He takes the blame for it. But He knows that by taking the blame upon Himself, He will hopefully stop the cycle of violence from continuing, for while a person might retaliate in violence against a violent neighbor, how does one retaliate against a violent God?

When we look at what Israel does in the Old Testament and are repulsed by it, we can know that we are feeling the right thing, for this is what Jesus did on the cross.

He became repulsive. He became despised, rejected, forsaken, and shamed (Isa 53:3).

So also with God in the Old Testament.

If we despise what He is described as doing and are tempted to reject and forsake those shameful depictions of God, then we are feeling exactly what God wants us to feel.

Rejection of the violent portrayals of God is good and godly because God is not violent.

How can a God who says "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44) be the same God who instructs His people in the Old Testament to kill their enemies?

We are of our father, the Devil

By Jeremy Myers

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Yesterday we learned that if we had lived in the days of Jesus, we probably would have been among those calling for His death. The reason we do this is because we use violence to cover up violence, and we use God’s name to defend and justify our own violence.

Such murderous, deceitful, lying violence is proof that when we behave this way, we are of our father the Devil. The devil was a liar and a murder from the beginning, meaning that he not only leads people murder and commit violence, but then loves to get people to lie about it as well, especially lie about the source of the violence.

There is no greater lie than when we commit violence and blame it on God.

Yet, most shockingly of all, when our actions follow the footsteps of our “father the devil” (John 8:44) in murdering and lying about it, God, out of His infinite love for us, stoops down into our deceit and death, and covers our tracks with His blood.

Though Satan delighted in murdering and framing God for it, he did not know that this would be his undoing. When Satan led humanity to cover God’s hands with the blood we ourselves had shed, he thought he was both destroying God’s good creation and ruining God’s righteous name in one stroke.

Little did he know that God’s hands were bloody long before we attributed any blood to His name, but they were covered in His own blood, which He shed for us before the foundation of the world. Jesus is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. God takes our violence onto Himself because He alone is able to soak it up into His being without it destroying Him forever.

Understanding the Violence of God in the Old Testament

It is in this light that we can read the Old Testament texts. When we look at the violent portrayals of God in the Bible, we should expect to see people laying blame at God’s feet for what obviously seems to be their own evil intents. Based on what we have seen, it should not surprise us that people want to blame others for their own evil, for that is what the devil has been doing from the very beginning, and what we ourselves do as well. We kill others and blame God for it. When bad things happen, we blame God.

What does surprise us, however, is that when we look back through the pages of inspired Scripture, we see that God accepts the blame. He allows people to attribute violence to His name. God takes their murderous violence upon Himself.

Why?

For the same reason Jesus went to the cross.

When Jesus goes to the cross, while it is true that men put Him there, they could not have done so had Jesus not gone to the cross willingly. Jesus allowed Himself to be numbered among the criminals and the transgressors.

Why?

So that God could raise Him up, and in so doing, take away the mask and the lies about the source of our own violence, and in the process, deliver, rescue, and redeem us from ourselves.

This is exactly what God was going in the Old Testament.

When God allows—even inspires—people to write about Him as if He were a mass murderer who slaughters women and children, He is doing this for the same reason Jesus willingly went to the cross.

Every time God looks like a lying, murderous, baby-killing, woman-raping bastard, it is because God has taken the burden of human sin upon His shoulders, and borne it away upon His body into death.

How can a God who says "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44) be the same God who instructs His people in the Old Testament to kill their enemies?

Why I Would Have Killed Jesus

By Jeremy Myers

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One of the truths about ourselves that we learn from Jesus is that the violent portrayals of God in the Old Testament are really the reflections of violence that resides in our own hearts.

Through Jesus, our depravity is laid bare and uncovered.

Through Jesus, the veil is pulled back, not just so that we can see God more clearly, but so that we can peer into our own hearts as well.

Just as the revelation of a loving Father is central to all of what Jesus said and did, so also, this truth about the violence that resides in the hearts of mankind also lurks beneath the surface in much of what Jesus teaches. Jesus came, not just to reveal God to us, but to show us our own hearts as well.

If I had lived in the days of Jesus…

Most of us Christians believe that if we had lived in the time of Jesus, we would have been one of His disciples.

Realistically, however, it is much more likely that we would have been numbered among those who called for His death. If we had been in Israel during the ministry of Jesus, it is quite likely that we would have killed Him too.

…I would have killed Jesus

Maybe I will just speak for myself: If I had been in Israel during the ministry of Jesus, it is quite likely that I would have been among those calling for the death of Jesus.

I can only say this because Jesus said it first.

He didn’t say it to me, but He said to the people of His day, which means that if I had been living at that time, He would have spoken to me as well. In all likelihood, if He appeared today, He would say much the same thing. What is it that He said? In Matthew 23:34-36 Jesus tells the Jewish people that they murdered all the prophets, wise men, and scribes whom God had sent. From Abel to Zechariah, the blood was on their hands (cf. Luke 11:50-51).

Clearly, the people alive at the time of Jesus had not actually committed these murders. But Jesus is telling them that their actions and behavior reveal the same mindset and perspective which led their ancestors to kill those whom God had sent. It was this same mindset and perspective that would lead these very people to kill Jesus.

And it is this exact same mindset and perspective today which leads Christians today to call for the death of others.

What is this mindset and perspective which pervades human history?

It is the mindset that some people must be killed because God commands it. It is the perspective which says that because of something someone does, they are under the judgment of God, and must therefore be killed.

The mindset and perspective which killed all the prophets, wise men, and scribes from Abel to Zachariah (and everybody in between), is the same mindset and perspective which killed Jesus, and the same mindset and perspective by which we call for the death of people today. It is the mindset which blames our own violence tendencies on God by saying that our enemies deserve to die, that God has commanded their death.

We “fail to understand that in the murder of the Prophets people refused to acknowledge their own violence and cast it off from themselves” (Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, 159-160), which is exactly what the people did when they crucified Jesus, and exactly what we do today when we seek violence against anyone else.

We Use Violence Against Those who Call Us to Account for our Violence

We do not wish to see that the reason we seek violence toward others is not because God wants us to kill or destroy them, but because these others have called us to account for the violence we ourselves have committed.

We engage in violence to cover up the violence we have already committed. If someone calls us to account for our violence, we deny their accusations by calling for their death, and in the process, attach God’s name to our violence to help us justify it further. This is the terrible truth of the tragic lie which has existed from the very beginning. “People do not wish to know that the whole human culture is based on the mythic process of conjuring away man’s violence by endlessly projecting it upon new victims” (Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, 164).

Religion Uses Violence in God’s Name to Cover Up our Own Violence

It gets even worse in religious circles, because religion loves nothing more than to use violence to disavow human violence, and when we lash out against others in violent ways, we lay the blame on God for our violent behavior.

All of this is why I say that if I had lived in the days of Jesus, I probably would have been among those calling for His death.

Why? Because Jesus had the audacity to point out that violence comes not from God, but from our own evil hearts.

This is too much for us to bear. This is too much for me to bear.

“We have the Scriptures!” I would cry. “We have the truth! The violence we perform in the name of God is because God has commanded us to commit the violence! It is not we who want to kill people, but God! And anybody who challenges the actions and behavior of God is clearly under the judgment of God, and must therefore die!”

These are the sorts of accusations the Jewish forefathers used to condemn to death the prophets, wise men, and scribes, and the same sort of accusations the Jewish people used to condemn Jesus to death, and the same sort of accusations we Christians use today to condemn others to death. And if you say we would not fall into the same trap as they did, then we have fallen into the same trap, for they said the same thing about their forefathers.

The simple act of condemning those who went before us for their violent actions is in itself the violent mindset that Jesus is trying to point out to us. The sin of feeling morally superior to others is the sin that leads us to do violence in the name of God toward others (Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, 20).

So when we feel morally superior to our forefathers, this reveals the same mindset that condemns contemporary people to death out of a sense of moral superiority to them.

We are violent and we justify our violence by attaching God’s name and God’s cause to our violence. But if Jesus tells us anything about God and about ourselves, the time has come for us to recognize that violence comes not from God, but from ourselves.

We are the murderers and the liars, and although God has willingly taken the blame and borne the responsibility for our actions, He is now, in Jesus Christ, calling us to recognize what is in our own hearts.

God Wants to Rescue us From Ourselves

We are the violent ones, and God wants to rescue and redeem us from ourselves.

As it happens, when we ask about God’s role in violence, later revelation in Scripture makes it pretty clear that God’s only activity was to rescue us from our own violence, redeem us from the consequences of violence, and reconcile us to Himself and to one another from the schisms caused by violence. The early church understood this quite well. Look at this sampling of quotes from the book of Acts:

… Him … you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; whom God raised up … (Acts 2:23-24).
… [you] killed the prince of Life, whom God raised from the dead … (Acts 3:15).
… Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead … (Acts 4:10).
The God of our fathers raised up Jesus whom you murdered … (Acts 5:30).
… whom they killed by hanging on a tree, Him God raised up on the third day … (Acts 10:39-40).

Do you see? This small representation of verses shows a pattern which was revealed in Jesus Christ.

We humans are the violent ones; God is the one who rescues, redeems, restores, reconciles, and reverses the violence we commit, even when it is committed in His name.

How can a God who says "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44) be the same God who instructs His people in the Old Testament to kill their enemies?

God is Not Angry With You

By Jeremy Myers

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One of the reasons Jesus came was to reveal God to us.

Among all the truths that Jesus revealed to us about God, one of the most critical truths in connection to the violence of God in the Old Testament is that God is not angry.

The violence of God in the Bible makes it appear that God is angry with us, and one way He deals with His anger is by slaughtering people through flood, earthquakes, pestilences, diseases, and enemy armies.

God is Not Angry with the World

When people believe that God is angry with the world, and is actively punishing us for the sins we have committed by sending us diseases, famines, earthquakes, storms, terror, and death, we malign the character of God. God does not torture, rape, kill, and murder in order to teach us to love and obey Him. While there is indeed blood on God’s hands, this blood is His own. God does not force us to bleed for Him so that we might learn some sort of lesson about obedience.

[God does not bring] about suffering in order to discipline a person. …This presumption morphs to cruel absurdity when we are speaking of horrors like a man mourning his murdered wife or a mother grieving over her stillborn child.

This way of thinking takes the cruel arbitrariness of life and deifies it by projecting it onto God. When this is done, the beautiful clarity of God’s loving will revealed in Christ and centered on the cross is obscured by a nonbiblical picture of a God of power. And Jesus’ simple words “If you see me, you see the Father” are qualified by every terror-stricken scream of torture throughout history (Greg Boyd, Is God to Blame? 82).

But God is not angry.

God is not out for bloody revenge.

God does not punish, kill, torture, or maim so that by some inscrutable aspect of His mysterious will, He might teach us a lesson.

Quite to the contrary, as I reveal in my book, (#AmazonAdLink) The Atonement of God, God’s nature and character is revealed in Jesus Christ.

How Jesus Reveals God is Not Angry

When Jesus began to minister in Galilee, one of the common threads of His miracles and message was that God is not angry at us. Instead, God loves us, and wants to redeem, deliver, and rescue us from the clutches of Satan, the bondage of sin, and the sting of death.

I wish we had space and time to go miracle by miracle and parable by parable through the Gospel accounts to see how Jesus reveals the love and forgiveness of God through everything He says and does.

Such a study would reveal that the consistent message of Jesus is not that God is angry with us and has departed from us, but that we have misunderstood God and have departed from Him, and now, finally, God is bridging that divide by drawing near to us and reconciling us to Himself once and for all in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

The Parable of the Prodigal Son Reveals that God is Not Angry

Take one of the more popular parables as an example: the parable of the Prodigal Son. We all know the story. A man has two sons. The younger asks for his portion of the inheritance, and when he has received it, travels to a far country where he squanders his inheritance on parties. He eventually finds himself living and eating with the swine, and so decided to return home to his father, in the hopes that he might be taken on as a servant. But when he is a long way off, the father sees him coming and runs to him. Then the father throws a party for his long-lost son, which leads to a teachable moment for the older son.

There are multiple levels of interpretation to this parable, but one is sufficient for our purposes here.

The prodigal son is not just a story about a wayward Christian, but is a story of cosmic proportions. It is about a father who loved his son so much, he let the son think the worst of him, insult him, slap in the face, treat him as if he were dead, and then on top of it all, depart into a foreign land. Note that the father goes nowhere. The son has done all the leaving while the father stays right where he was.

When the son returns, the father has clearly been watching for his return, for when the son is still a long way off, the father sees him coming, and runs to meet him on the road. For a wealthy middle-eastern man, any sort of running was considered shameful, but to run to meet a son who had betrayed you was extremely shameful. Nevertheless, due to the father’s great love for his son, he runs to meet him, and not only that, but gives him a warm welcome and throws a party for him.

The only thing that is really different about this parable and how God behaves toward prodigal humanity is that God came Himself into the far country to seek and save the lost. Then, when God found His lost child, the child killed Him.

But other parables represent this aspect of what God has done for humanity in Jesus Christ. The point of this parable, as well as many of the other parables by Jesus, is to show humanity how badly we have misunderstood God and what God is doing in this world, and that God is not out to destroy us, slaughter us, or punish us, but is seeking to bring us back into His family, to rescue us from the pigsty we find ourselves living in, and to throw us a party when we are reconciled to Him.

This sort of message is found, not just in the parables of Jesus, but in all the other teachings and miracles of Jesus as well. By the love of God, those who were once far off have been brought near and have been accepted once again into God’s family.

God is Not Angry; God is Love

God is not angry with us; He loves us! And since the first sin of Adam, God has been doing everything He can to rescue and deliver us from sin, death, and devil.

The violent portrayals of God in the Bible are actually part of this rescue operation of God. He is not the one commanding or performing these violent actions, but is instead, taking the blame for them. Just like the father of the prodigal son, out of His great love for us, God is shaming Himself for our sake.

How can a God who says "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44) be the same God who instructs His people in the Old Testament to kill their enemies?

When the Fullness of Time Had Come

By Jeremy Myers

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Some people wonder why Jesus came when He did. Why not earlier … or later? I have tackled this question in previous posts, but as I continue to research and write my book When God Pled Guilty, I came across an interesting observation and idea about the timing of Jesus’ incarnation.

I believe God’s timing in sending Jesus has something to do with God’s ultimate plan of redemption for the world.

Just as there is progressive revelation in history, so also, it seems that there is progressive redemption. In the beginning, God did not reveal everything there is to know about Himself or His plan for the world. With each successive generation, He revealed more and more of Himself, so that over time, a broader and more accurate understanding about God’s character and nature was revealed.

So also with God’s plan of redemption.

In fact, progressive revelation and God’s plan of redemption are intricately connected. Progressive revelation leads to a new stage in redemption, and once this stage of redemption had gained a foothold in the lives of mankind, this paved the way for further revelation. We can only believe that when Jesus came, it was because the timing was right, and the revelation of God was ready for a more perfect explanation of Who He was and what He was like.

The Old Testament saints knew very little (if anything) about how God planned to send His Son to die on a cross for the sins of the whole world, but when the right time had come, this further revelation and further act of redemption is exactly what God did in Jesus Christ.

Though it may be true that in times past God bore the violence of His people upon Himself, the fullness of time had come for God to reveal that this was not the ideal situation—either for Himself or for us. Though God is happy to bear our sin and shame, His ultimate goal is to deliver us from evil completely, and for that to happen, we must understand where the evil and violence comes from—not from God, but from our own hearts. “Without ever seeking to limit human freedom, and without ever allowing revelation to become constraining or coercive Christ guides humanity toward divine truth” (Girard, The One By Whom Scandal Comes, 44).

Jesus did not come to lay another plank on the deck of religion. No, Jesus came to do away with religion, and especially, the religion of violence which is at the core of all world religions.

Jesus is not there in order to stress once again in his own person the unified violence of the sacred; he is not there to ordain and govern like Moses; he is not there to unite a people around him, to forge its unity in the crucible of rites and prohibitions, but on the contrary, to turn the long page of human history once and for all (Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, 204).

When Christ is revealed in the flesh, it is because the fullness of time had come for Him to be revealed to the world, not just as true God, but also as true man. Jesus came, not just to reveal God to us, but also to reveal us to us. It is in the revelation of Jesus that we learn some critical truths about God and about ourselves.

So the timing of the incarnation of Jesus had something to do with the development of God’s plan of redemption, along with the development of humanity as a whole. The time was right for God to reveal more about Himself to us, and reveal more about us to us as well.

How can a God who says "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44) be the same God who instructs His people in the Old Testament to kill their enemies?

The Dream of the Homeless

By Sam Riviera

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Who are the homeless? What are they thinking as we walk by without looking them in the eye? What do they want from us as they hold their sign at the stoplight while we fiddle with the radio knobs on our car dashboard?

Do the homeless have dreams? Desires? Wishes? Hopes?

What circumstances in life led them to this spot on the cold, wet pavement under the bridge?

If we want to help the homeless, the very first step is seeking to understand who they are and how they think. The best way to do this is by listening to their stories.

Here are a few of the stories I have heard from homeless people in my town as I spent Easter Sunday among them:

The Innocents

“I have a dream,” said the homeless woman sitting on the sidewalk. “I have a dream that I will have a large house that I can fill with children, the unwanted, unloved, and abused children of the world.

“There’s a little five year old girl I know. She gets passed around and used by men.

“There’s also a baby. He can sit up, so someone sets him out on the front steps of the apartment building where he lives. Sometimes people give him something to eat or drink. He’s in the sun when it’s hot. Sometimes he falls over and falls down the steps and gets hurt and cries. If he’s lucky, someone sets him up again.”

“Where’s his mother?” I ask.

“I don’t know. I’ve asked people who she is and no one knows. They say he’s just out there when they come out the door and they never see anyone take care of him. I want to give him a home.

“The innocents. The Lord gave me the word innocents. I asked him who the innocents are. He told me they are the children no one wants. I pray for them. Will you pray for them?”

We assure her we will.

The Pink Cross

We walk around the corner to a group of homeless women sitting under tarps. “Melinda” was busy working on something on the sidewalk.

“I saw you coming down the street and I’m making this for you.” Somewhere Melinda had come up with a small pink foam cross and foam stickers in the shape of hearts, churches, and the words “Joy”, “Pray,” and “Love God.”

“Jesus rose up from the dead on Easter,” Melinda told us. “Here, this is for you to remind you of that. Would you like some tickets to a movie? It’s about a girl that got hurt, but God helped her in all her trouble. I have two extra tickets.”

We accept the tickets and thank her, and give her and her friends water, food, and shirts.

“Happy Easter!” they shout as we walk on to another group of homeless people.

Yes, the risen Lord walks among the homeless, not only on Easter, but also on every day of the week. He is there, among the beauty of those who know and love him, but also in the middle of incredible darkness.

Murder Walks These Streets

“Six homeless men have been murdered down here lately,” said our friend “Arthur”. We’ve known Arthur for several years. He dreams of starting a business and getting off the street.

So far it hasn’t happened.

“One night I was coming back to my cart and there was a dead man laying right there,” Arthur said, pointing to a small patch of ground planted with bushes. “Someone had bashed in his head and his brains were all over the place.”

“Are you afraid?” I ask.

“Sure, but this is all I got. So far I’ve been lucky, I guess.”

“Drug deal gone bad?” I ask.

“Maybe. I dunno. I was walkin’ around for a couple of hours. It was late and there he was when I came back.”

“Why doesn’t this stuff get in the paper, Arthur?”

“Nobody cares when one of us gets murdered. It’s bad publicity for the city.”

“We care, Arthur.”

“We know. You show it.”

Incredible beauty walks among the homeless, but incredible evil also is their constant companion.

Get the Cop

With my little pink cross held in my hand, we round the corner a couple of hundred feet from where the man had been murdered a few weeks before.

“Them damn cops won’t let us play football there in the street,” a couple of them tell me.

“Why not?” I ask.

“We don’t know, but they’re gonna pay for it.”

A group of about twenty angry homeless men are milling around. One police cruiser with one policeman inside backed into place in the middle of the street in front of them. The policeman rolled down his window, then opened his door, got out and stood there, facing off with the men.

“Friends, we have sweet grapes, water, and buffalo-wing flavored goldfish crackers for you” we announce as we purposely walk between the policeman and the group of angry men. “Who needs a fresh, clean shirt? I have a bag of them here. My wife even ironed them for you.”

Soon we are handing out food, water, and shirts and the mood of the crowd changes. Only one man continues to taunt and curse the policeman. The policeman tells him to calm down, then returns to the safety of his cruiser while the crowd sat, eating grapes and crackers. Some tried on their new shirts.

“This is Easter,” we proclaim. “Have a good Easter, guys.”

“Happy Easter!” several tell us.

None of these men mentioned Jesus rising from the dead and no one gave us an Easter cross. But no one jumped the policeman and no one got shot, either.

Jesus Walks These Streets

Jesus walks the streets. He’s on the corner with the prostitutes. He’s in the alley with the addicts. He walks the streets on Easter morning and on every other morning.

People are murdered there on the street, but others are safe. Jesus is with them both.

Some mothers set their babies on the front steps of their apartment buildings and leave them alone. Other mothers make plans to get off the streets and make a home for the unwanted and unloved children. Jesus cries with and comforts both.

The homeless have dreams … and Jesus dreams along with them.

We see Jesus walking these streets. Have you seen him there? We see him every week walking these streets. He’s not hard to find if you know how to look.

There is so much need in the world!

And YOU can help.

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Understanding the Violence of God in the Old Testament

If I had lived in the days of Jesus…

…I would have killed Jesus

We Use Violence Against Those who Call Us to Account for our Violence

Religion Uses Violence in God’s Name to Cover Up our Own Violence

God Wants to Rescue us From Ourselves

God is Not Angry with the World

How Jesus Reveals God is Not Angry

The Parable of the Prodigal Son Reveals that God is Not Angry

God is Not Angry; God is Love

The Innocents

The Pink Cross

Murder Walks These Streets

Get the Cop

Jesus Walks These Streets

There is so much need in the world!

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