My wife and I decided that as part of our Easter celebration this year, we would begin watching the History Channel TV miniseries “The Bible” with our three daughters.
I am sure people have reviewed this miniseries to death on other blogs, so I will not say much about it.
The only thing I want to bring up is something that should not have surprised me at all … namely, the violence. I must confess that although I am currently up to my eyeballs in studying and thinking about all the violent passages in Scripture, it is quite another thing to see some of them on the screen, especially when, right in the midst of the violence, many of the people committing the violence scream something like “In the name of God!” or “For the glory of the Lord!”
And yes, I think the violence is gratuitous in this miniseries. There were numerous times where fight scenes were completely unnecessary, and other times where the fight scenes seems to drag on and on, but then, they delete entire portions out of the Bible (such as all of Jacob’s story, the 40 years of wilderness wanderings, etc.) Couldn’t they have cut out the fight scenes and included a scene or two from these other crucial events?
I am not trying to sweep the violence of Scripture under the rug and ignore it, but when God’s angels start pulling out their swords to hack people to pieces (as in the scene with Sodom and Gomorrah), it’s a little too much.
Anyway, as I was sitting there watching all the bloodshed while my wife tried to cover the eyes and ears of our three daughters at the especially gruesome parts (like when Samson slaughters Philistines), my youngest daughter blurted out, “Daddy, where is Jesus?”
Yes.
That is the question, isn’t it?
Where is Jesus?
I don’t know about you, but I find it impossible to take the Jesus I read about in the Gospels, and put Him back into almost any violence scene in the Old Testament.
The Jesus I read about in the Gospels has compassion on the multitudes when they are hungry. Would this same Jesus give praise to God if He were on the boat with Noah while mothers and babies screamed on the outside as they were dragged to a drowning death?
The Jesus I read about in the Gospels says “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” not “Because you have not let my people go, I will go through all of Egypt and strike down every firstborn son.”
Ultimately, then, it comes back around this question: Does Jesus fully reveal God to us or not?
If He does, then how do you make sense of the bloody and violent texts of the Old Testament, and the complete lack of such violence from Jesus in the Gospels?
This is why I am trying to forge an explanation with my “When God Pled Guilty” series. Frankly, I am quite excited about some recent developments in this series, but I know for a fact that when I am done, my proposal will not be fully satisfactory (even to me).
So how do you read the Old Testament violent texts? When you read them, ask yourself the same question my daughter did: “Where is Jesus?”
I was going to continue my series on the Violence of God anyway… mainly because I need to study it for myself, and writing is one way I force myself to study.
Also, some people pointed out that the questions were not well asked. Very true. For example, rather than ask, “Is it wrong for Christians…” I should have asked “Would it be wrong for you…” Though many Christians try to state universal rules for all Christians everywhere about these sorts of topics, many Christians realize that what is wrong for one Christian may be perfectly okay for someone else.
There has been a huge push toward unity in the church over the past 40 years or so. People are tired of the numerous divisions and splits that seem to occur with increasing frequency within the church. And while some of our divisions involve important issues, such as whether or not Jesus was truly divine (He is) and whether or not God loves gays (He does, of course), a lot of church division seems to occur over stupid stuff, like what kind of music to play on Sunday morning, whether or not there should be donuts in the foyer, and what color the new carpet should be.
I can be happy that that certain members of my Christian family like Southern Gospel music even though it makes me want to cut my ears off. I don’t think that they should like my kind of music (which is pretty much no music at all) to be real Christians, and I hope they can extend the same grace toward me despite our lack of uniformity.
My friend, Sam Riviera, wrote this about how he spent Easter:
I once preached a sermon on predestination and election, and there was a Calvinistic man in the church who, right in the middle of my sermon, stood up, and loudly said to his family, “Come on. We’re leaving!” He and his family filed out of their row, out the back of the church, and never returned. I later called him to find out why he left, and he accused me of being a heretic.
I believe that predestination does not refer to God’s choice of which people get to go to heaven, but refers instead to God’s determination to bring into glory all those who receive eternal life by faith in Jesus. In other words, predestination teaches us about who gets glorified, not who gets justified. 
This interpretation of the cross makes God once again the violent perpetrator of this most violent of crimes. According to this view, God ordained the death of His Son because God demands the blood sacrifice of an innocent victim to appease His anger toward sin.
On the cross, Jesus removed the veil from the power of sin.
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?
Throughout history and around the world, people have noticed that violence permeates everything. From birth to death, from galaxies down to sub-atomic particles, violence is omnipresent. Whenever people recognize this, they are left with only two basic options for the existence and origin of violence.
A reader recently sent in a question about whether or not she could lose her salvation. I searched my blog high and low for somewhere that I had answered this before, and much to my shock, could not find that I had previously written about this anywhere. I am certain I have written about it, but since I couldn’t find it, decided to write about it anyway. Here is the question she sent in:
Well, if you are asking, “Can a Christian lose eternal life?” the answer is no. If everlasting life can be lost, it has the wrong name. Besides, Jesus promises everlasting life to all who simply and only believe in Him for it (John 3:16; 5:24; 6:47), and if we believe that everlasting life is not everlasting, then we are doubting the words and promises of Jesus.