One of the great lies of Satan is in how he uses human institutions such as religion and politics to make it look like God uses violence to defeat violence. This is the great myth of redemptive violence, which is seen in almost every movie, story, and legend of history, as well as within every daily newspaper and every nightly news broadcast.
We have been taught that violence is the best way to defeat violence. This is the myth of redemptive violence.
But more than that, divinely sanctioned violence is the most successful, and can even be carried out in the name of God. But Jesus reveals in His life and ministry, and especially through His death and resurrection, the true emptiness of redemptive violence. He unmasks Satan’s lie of redemptive violence for all the world to see.
Although really, as it turned out, it was Satan himself who, in crucifying Jesus, unwittingly revealed his lie to the world. The trap that Satan had set for Jesus turned out to be a trap that Jesus had laid for Satan. This is why Paul says that if Satan had known that the death of Jesus would be his undoing, he never would have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor 2:8). In blaming God and finally crucifying God, Satan thought he was winning; but the death blow he dealt upon Jesus turned out to be his own. By using the power of Satan, Jesus defeated Satan, which in reality, turned out to be Satan causing his own defeat.
Satan Stole Dominion Over the Earth
It all began in the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve were created by God, they were given dominion over the earth. But when they sinned in the Garden, they effectively handed this dominion over to Satan. He did not steal the dominion; it was freely given to him. As a result, he now became the ruler of this age, the god of this world (John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11; 2 Cor 4:4).
Due to the nature of the dominion which God had given to Adam, God could not simply take back the dominion now that it had been handed over to Satan. God had freely given it to Adam, and Adam had freely given to Satan. The only way for God (or mankind) to get the dominion back from Satan was if Satan freely gave it back, which he was never going to do. Satan had wanted to be like God, and in gaining dominion over the earth, he became a god. Satan had an iron grip on this world, and he ruled it ruthlessly and with all dominion, power, and authority.
Under Satan’s rule, darkness, terror, death, and chaos reigned. If you have read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy (or seen the movies), imagine what life would be like in Middle Earth if Sauron had been able to obtain the One Ring, the ring of power. The reason that Gandalf and the races of Middle Earth sought to stop Sauron from regaining the ring is because they did not want their world to plunge into eternal death and chaos. But in the biblical account, this is exactly what happened when Adam handed dominion over to Satan.
Satan Blamed God for Satanic Violence
But Satan was not content just to rule by spreading darkness and terror. He wanted to get humanity to blame God for all the evil that happened in this world, and in so doing, solidify his own power even more. How did Satan do this? He used the myth of redemptive violence. He got people to believe that when evil people rose to power, whether their power was over a single person or an entire country, violence was required to overthrow that evil. And yet almost without fail, when the new rulers rose to power, they became more oppressive than the oppressors they overthrew.
In this way, the cycle continued endlessly.
Satan raised up oppressive and tyrannical individuals, governments, and religious institutions so that he might later raise up “righteous liberators” who would violently overthrow the oppressive regimes, but in so doing, become more oppressive and tyrannical than those who preceded them. Those who had power reigned with violent methods and those who came into power did so with violence. Almost always in human history, when the persecuted rise up in violence to overthrow the persecutors, it did not take long before the persecuted become the persecutors.
In this way, Satan “casts out Satan,” and thus endlessly consolidated and amplified his own power.
We will look more at this idea tomorrow. Until then, what do you think of the idea laid out above? Do you think that Satan uses violence to make it look like God is defeating Satan, when in reality, it is Satan “casting out Satan” so that it appears that God is defeating him?
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!
A reader recently sent in this astute question:
The religious leaders are about to stone her to death when Jesus shows up, scribbles in the sand, and when no one is left to condemn her, tells her to “Go and sin no more.”
Basically, Jesus is saying, “My beautiful lady, I am sorry you got caught up in this. They were after me; not you. They framed you to get at me. I want to protect you from them, so please, consider leaving your current profession. They are likely going to seek to frame you again, and the next time, they won’t bring you to me. They’ll just kill you. Neither one of us want that, so go … do something different with your life.”
This was the lie of the serpent to Eve when the serpent asked her why God would put a tree in the garden from which she could not eat, or even touch. Aside from misquoting what God had said and raising doubt in Eve’s mind about the Word of God, the serpent was implying that whatever Eve did about the fruit, it was God’s fault for putting the tree there in the first place.
This blame game is something we learned from the devil since the very first human sin. The devil carries out the murders and lies about it, and as subjects to the god of this world, we follow in Adam’s footsteps and learn to blame God as well for the evil we do. Jesus shows this in numerous places in the Gospels, but one of the clearest is in John 8:44 where Jesus explains that the devil “was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him … he is a liar and the father of lies” (NIV).
In fact, other than some recent wars produced by atheistic som, most wars throughout history have been fought in the name of god. When men march off to war, it is with prayers on their lips that their god will see the righteousness of their cause against the unrighteousness of the evil enemies.
In the New Testament, the Greek word telos is often translated “end,” but it could also be translated as “goal, purpose, or culmination.” So while the word can refer to the end of something chronologically, as in “then the end will come” (e.g., Matt 24:6, 14), it can also refer to the goal, purpose, or outcome of a series of events (cf. Rom 6:21-22).
This does not mean that Jesus was going to sin or become a sinner, but that it was necessary for Him to identify with us in our sin. His goal was to be counted among the lawless, the godless, and the transgressors. One translation of Luke 22:37 even states that Jesus’ goal was “let himself be taken for a criminal” (JB).
At times God appears violent, not because He is violent, but because, just as Jesus on the cross took the sin of the world upon Himself, so also God in human history, took the violence of humanity upon Himself.
I say no.
Here is how he answered: “Because our God is the one true God. The Muslims carry out their violence because they want to, and then they attach Allah’s name to their violence to justify their behavior. It’s different for people in the Bible because God truly commanded them to do what they did.”