violence of God Archives - Page 13 of 14

Okay … after a nearly six month break, I am finally starting back up on my series about the violence of God in the Old Testament. Although, … it wasn’t really a break. I was madly reading, writing, and researching that whole time … and now I think I am ready to begin again.

Ultimately, I’m trying to solve the problem illustrated here:

(Note: These number above don’t count the flood. Some estimate this might add anywhere between 20 million to 6 billion people to that tally.)

Since there are many new readers on this blog, and since probably everyone who has been here longer than a year has forgotten the basic argument I am trying to present, I figured I would spend one post summarizing my view and inviting people to go back and read some of what I have written previously only this topic.

Eventually, of course, these posts will make it into a book, although at this time, it looks like it will more likely be books. A normal 200 page book has about 60,000 words. So far, I have written 120,000 words on this book, and I figure I am about half-way done. Sigh.

So, either I need to cut out about 75% of what I will finally end up with, or I will have to turn this one project into three or four books. Maybe I can get it down to two.

Anyway, here is a brief introduction/summary to what I am trying to show from Scripture:

A Modest Proposal about the Violence of God in the Old Testament

If Jesus truly and fully reveals God to us, and there is no violence in Jesus, then neither is there any violence in God.

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.

Why?

For the same reason Jesus went to the cross: to rescue humanity from the devastating consequences of their actions.

Just as Jesus took sin upon Himself on the cross so that He might rescue and deliver all mankind from sin, so also God took violence upon Himself in the Old Testament so that He might rescue and deliver all mankind from violence.

Such an idea might seem scandalous to most Christians today, but this idea is no more scandalous to us than the idea to the first century Jewish person of the Messiah dying on a cross.

Is God a Psychotic Mass Murderer who Drowns Babies?

By Jeremy Myers

40 Comments

Bill Maher is back at it…

Late night comedian Bill Maher told his HBO “Real Time” audience on Friday that God was a “psychotic mass murderer.” He made the comments during a conversation on the biblical story of Noah and the upcoming Hollywood version of it that’s about to hit the big screen.

“But the thing that’s really disturbing about Noah isn’t that it’s silly, it’s that it’s immoral. It’s about a psychotic mass murderer who gets away with it, and his name is God,” Mr. Maher said, adding, “What kind of tyrant punishes everyone just to get back at the few he’s mad at? I mean, besides Chris Christie.”

Mr. Maher continued: “Hey God, you know you’re kind of a [expletive] when you’re in a movie with Russell Crowe and you’re the one with anger issues. … Conservatives are always going on about how Americans are losing their values and their morality, well maybe it’s because you worship a guy who drowns babies.” [Source]

This is exactly why I am trying to write my book on the violence of God in the Bible. Christians have never had a good answer to the sorts of criticisms raised by Bill Maher.

It is NOT good enough to say, “Well, you don’t understand how evil the people were …” or “We may not understand why God did it, but we know that since God is just and righteous, even things that appear evil are actually good.”

I was recently talking with someone about the violence of God in the Bible and I pointed out that we Christians have no problem condemning the violence that Allah commands Muslims to carry out in his name … why is it okay for God to tell His people to carry out that same sort of violence?

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.”

I didn’t say it then, but this is what I thought: “If that is so, the Muslims are more righteous than we are. Which is worse? To blame a false god for the evil in your heart, or to actually worship and follow the evil instructions of God and call it good?”

Please do not misunderstand! I am NOT saying God is evil! No! Far from it!

I am saying God is good. Perfectly good. God is holy, loving, merciful, and kind.

I am saying that God looks like Jesus, and the God that Jesus reveals to us would NEVER drown babies or command people to slaughter women and children.

I am saying that Christians have never had a good answer to the sort of accusation the Bill Maher levels against Christianity. And no, this is not just Bill Maher vying for attention. Bill Maher puts into words (as only Bill Maher can) what countless millions of people actually think: They may say that they don’t want to be a Christian because they don’t want to follow all the rules, or have been burned by the church, or it would ruin all their “fun.” But these are all lame excuses.

The deep truth, the hidden secret, the thing that most people are too kind to say out loud, is that many people don’t want to become Christians because they do not want to worship the Christian God. Why not? Because according to Scripture (and according to the teaching of many who bear His name), God is the greatest villain in the universe and the only reason He gets away with it is because He is also the most powerful being in the universe.

If God did the things Scripture says He did, but as a mere human, He would be the most hated person in all of history. Are we going to give Him a pass simply because He’s “God”?

Bill Maher says “No.” God doesn’t get a pass.

I agree with Maher.

But I don’t follow Maher in condemning God. No, there is another way of seeing God in the light of Jesus which helps us read the violent depictions of God in a whole new light.

I have been studying and thinking about this subject for fifteen years so far, and have been working on a book for over a year which explains my proposal, but I am facing problems with putting it into words.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that more is coming … and soon …

Warfare in the Old Testament

By Jeremy Myers

11 Comments

For the past year I have been reading everything I can get my hands on about the violence of God in the Bible, and especially in the Old Testament. The reason is that I am trying to figure out how to reconcile Jesus’ command to love our enemies with all the commands of God in the Old Testament to slaughter them.

So it was with interest that I recently read the new book by Boyd Seevers, Warfare in the Old Testament. Though the book provided very little in the way of trying to justify or explain why God sent His people into war, it was an enlightening and helpful book explaining how those wars were carried out.

The book essentially looks at the warfare tactics and military weapons used by various cultures in the Old Testament era. It surveyed the methods used by Israel, Persia, Egypt, Philistia, Assyria, and Babylon.

You might think that such a book would be boring to all but those who were interested in warfare tactics and weaponry, but I found the book to be enjoyable to read and helpful in understanding what people in the Old Testament thought about war and how it was to be carried out. Each section began with a fictionalized story about a person, soldier, or commander within the ranks of these armies, and showed what they thought about their actions and why they were going to war. This helps the reader identify with the soldiers and descriptions that follow regarding the weapons and tactics that were used by the various cultures.

Two things stood out for me from this book.

First, every culture tied warfare to worship. To go to war against others was always considered to be an act of obedience to the command and instructions of their god. People went to war because they believed their god was telling them to do so and would protect them in their efforts. Though I already knew this to be the case, this book really impressed upon me how central worship was to warfare in the Old Testament era.

But more than that, it made me wonder: Did I really believe that the Egyptians, Persians, or Babylonians were commanded by their gods to go attack other nations? I do not believe that. I believe that this is how they justified their own decisions to go to war. Since that is so, why then do I believe that God actually commanded Israel to go to war? Could it not be that they also were simply using God to justify their own decisions to go to war? Such a thought has numerous theological ramifications for how we understand God and how we read the Old Testament, which I am not sure I have the courage to follow.

The second element of this book which stood out for me is that one of the longest descriptions in the book about how an army followed Yahweh’s instructions to go to war was in the chapter about how Babylon went to war against Israel. Seevers writes this:

Nebuzaradan then looked at the despondent, confused Judeans preparing for their journey into exile, a journey from which most would never return. Nebuzaradan shook his head. He had grown up in a culture that worshiped other gods, but he served Yahweh better than most of these Judeans had done. He understood well that Yahweh expected real loyalty from his people,which they hadn’t displayed (p. 260).

Isn’t that interesting? The Babylonians followed Yahweh into battle against Yahweh’s people. I knew the truth of this from the Old Testament passages that talk about this, bu it was interesting read it from the perspective of the Babylonian commander.

Anyway, if you are interested in Old Testament backgrounds, this book would be a good addition to your library since warfare plays a huge role in nearly all the Old Testament books. If you want to learn about how war was carried out in Israel and the surrounding nations from about 1500-400 B.C., Warfare in the Old Testament by Boyd Seevers will be extremely helpful.

FTC Disclaimer: This book was sent to me by Kregel for review on this blog.

Waving the White Flag Before the Onslought of God’s Violence

By Jeremy Myers

58 Comments

RETREAT!!!!!

I give up.

I wave the white flag.

I surrender.

I hang my head in defeat.

I slink off into the woods with my tail between my legs.

Over a year ago I set out to put a theory of mine down on paper about how to reconcile the violence of God with the self-sacrificial non-violence of Jesus Christ. The theory had been percolating in my mind for over a decade, and I finally decided to tackle the issue head on.

After 100,000 words, I give up.

If you read this blog much last year, it is almost the only thing I posted on… up until October 13. Then the posts stopped.

Why?

Because I hit a road block. A pot hole. A speed bump. A dead end.

What was the road block?

Only one little thing called…

…Scripture.

Most of what I had written was a hypothesis, a theory, about how to reconcile the violence of God in the Old Testament with the sacrificial love of Jesus in the New. My book was called When God Pled Guilty, and I was basically arguing that just as Jesus took the sins of the world upon Himself on the cross, so also, somehow, the violent portrayals of God in the Old Testament is God taking the sins of Israel upon Himself through the testimony of inspired Scripture.

In other words, to the outside observer, Jesus hanging on a cross looks guilty (even though He wasn’t). So also, a casual reading of the Old Testament makes God look guilty (even though He isn’t).

I thought that there were enough hints and clues scattered through the Bible to show that the violent portrayals of God in the Old Testament are really just Him taking the blame and shouldering the responsibility for the bad things that happen in this world which He does not prevent from happening.

I thought I had a pretty good theory going…. until I tried to get the theory to match with the violent portrayals of God in Scripture. I soon found that all my theorizing hadn’t gotten me past the 1 yard line… of my own side of the field. I still had 99 yards to go, and the defense was shutting me down faster than the Seahawks shut down Peyton Manning…. (sorry Bronco fans…. I wanted Manning to win too).

Sigh.

Honestly, I should have seen it coming. Want to know why?

My wife was never convinced.

My wife is the greatest theologian and Bible scholar I know.

She has what I call “intuitive theology.” She doesn’t read a lot of books or spend dozens of hours each week studying… but she always knows more theology than I do, and always asks penetrating questions which shoot holes through all my acadamagician ideas (Yes, I just coined that term… it’s a cross between academic and magician… because that’s what most theology is. We throw some verses in a pot, mix in some fancy Greek and Hebrew and a quote from Barth, mix it up, blow smoke in people’s faces, and then Voila! — A book that everyone must buy!)

Anyway, my wife was never convinced of my theory, and so I should have known it was doomed from the start.

Another nail in the coffin though, was when I was recently interviewed by Drew Marshall (listen to the audio) and when I briefly mentioned this idea to him, he asked if I had been smoking marijuana. Ha!

But aside from my wife and Drew, there are a few other reasons I am abandoning this theory.

1. Occam’s Razor

No, this is not a new razor put out by Gillette (Now with 8 Blades!!!).

Occam’s razor is a principle used in science and other problem-solving fields which states the simplest solution is often right. Specifically (according to Wikipedia), Occam’s razor states that among competing hypotheses, the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions should be selected.

If you did any reading of my hypothesis, you know that it was not simple. It is not a hypothesis with the fewest assumptions. To the contrary, my hypothesis was so complex, so difficult to grasp, and so full of details, I myself had trouble keeping it all straight in my own head!

Heck, I had already written 100,000 words on the topic, and was only about half-way done. (A typical 200 page book is about 60,000 words.)

2. Modern Disasters

A second reason I am giving up is because ultimately, I had no good explanation for the most difficult question of all… which is why bad things happen today. My hypothesis did very little to provide an explanation for this.

In my (abandoned) theory, I argued that the Old Testament portrays God holding back disasters upon people until, as a result of their great evil, they departed from God’s protective hand. I think that this can actually be seen time and time again in Scripture.

But then, what does this mean for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, or the December 26, 2004 tsunami that killed almost 250,000 people? How does my theory explain people like Hitler and Mussolini getting to live so long while they brought incredible amounts of evil upon the world? How comes they seemingly hadn’t departed from God’s protective hand?

What did my theory have to say to the millions and millions of little girls who are sold into sex slavery to be raped by as many as 40 or 50 men every single day?

Nothing.

Other than that “God didn’t do it,” my hypothesis could say nothing helpful, loving, kind, or hopeful to such situations or such people caught in a living hell.

3. Couldn’t Even Refute the Calvinists

I am actually not that interested in “refuting” Calvinists, but one area of Calvinistic theology which has always troubled me is the insistence by some that since God is sovereign, He is the cause of everything. If you press them, some will say that while God is not the “author” of evil, He is the primary cause behind all evil, sin, and suffering in the world. (For examples, see John Piper’s quotes here and here.)

Calvinists say that everything that happens in the world is because God’s wills it to happen.

So when a family gets in a car accident and the husband and wife escape, but their children die in a ball of flame when the car explodes, their Calvinistic pastor says that while we don’t understand why such things are God’s will, we must trust that God knows what He is doing because everything happens is according to His will. (This really happened, by the way).

The same argument is applied to Katrina, tsunamis, Hitler, and the raping of little girls.

In my opinion, such a god is monstrous, and is not worthy of worship.

But in the hypothesis I was presenting, I was saying that God “inspired” human authors to write negatively about Him in Scripture so that He could take responsibility for the bad things which happened on earth which He did not prevent from happening.

If that is true, then why I am upset at Calvinists for saying that God caused the bad things that they were ascribing to Him? If my hypothesis is true, isn’t saying “God willed your children to die in a burning car while you watched” the same thing as saying, “God sent a flood upon the earth so that everything which had breath died a horrible death by drowning”?

In my view, of course, God didn’t actually do either thing, but also in my view, God is willing to take the blame for that which He does not prevent, so I shouldn’t get too upset when people blame God for the evil things that happen in the world. After all, God apparently inspired some biblical authors to say the very same things about Him!

If God takes the blame for that which He does not prevent, then it is not wrong to blame God for the horrible events which happen in the world which He does not prevent.

This I could not accept.

4. Back to Ignorance

Last month I spent several days reading, editing, revising, and arguing with myself about the 100,000 words I had written.

I got the end (which was actually the middle, because the second half hadn’t been written yet), I realized I could have saved myself 99,997 words, and just written, “I don’t know.”

My fancy 100,000 word answer turned out to be little more than a long way of saying, “I have no idea how to reconcile the violence of God in the Old Testament with the self-sacrificial love of Jesus Christ in the New while still maintaining a conservative view of inspiration and inerrancy.”

Yes, I know. Many of you think I should just abandon inerrancy.

I would really hate to do that.

Pray for Me, Please?

Believe it nor not, this is a crisis of faith for me.

I cannot, CANNOT believe that the God revealed in Jesus Christ is the same God who drowns millions, burns cities, and commands His people to slaughter women, children, and animals.

Something else is going on in the text, but I just cannot figure out what.

My wife, with her intuitive theology, says it is something that cannot ever be figured out.

But my brain, which God gave me, cannot live with the tension. Something must give.

I seem to be left with only two options: Either Jesus truly is violent like God and He was hiding this dark side from us during His ministry, or Jesus truly revealed God to us and the violent portrayals of God in the Old Testament are in error.

The day after writing that post, when I was at work, a new thought occurred to me. A key, I’ll call it. It allowed much of the original hypothesis to remain intact, but organized it all around a central thesis which simplified and clarified the entire idea.

Although… just as I am writing this paragraph… a new thought has occurred to me…. what if? No. It can’t be.

Hmmm….

A brand new theory has just presented itself…

It seems simple…

Memorable…

Elegant…

…Heretical.

Hmm. I better run it by my wife…

If I decide to share it, you’ll be the first to know!

As a side note, many who read my blog tell me that Greg Boyd is coming out with a book later this year that sounds similar to what I was arguing. When I first heard this, I read some of his blog posts and listened to some of his sermons, and honestly, I cannot tell if he is arguing the same thing or not. I guess we will see. Apparently, if the ideas are similar, he has not hit the same road blocks I have… I look forward to reading his book… I think it is called The Crucifixion of the Warrior God.

Note: I wrote the preceding post last Saturday. As you see at the end, in the process of writing the post, a new idea occurred to me. I thought more about it on Sunday, prayed about it, looked at some key biblical texts, and (maybe most important of all – ha!) talked to my wife. She is still not convinced, but she sees promise in the idea. So, I’m back in the saddle again. Hopefully some new posts on understanding the violence of God will be published soon… I am still not sure my new approach has adequate answers to the four problems I stated above, but I think it is a move in the right direction.

Comparing God with Hitler

By Jeremy Myers

58 Comments

I talk weekly with people who are pretty antagonistic toward Christianity. One of them recently sent me this picture:

It is interesting because I am still in the middle of a long series on how to understand the flood in light of Jesus Christ, and the flood is exactly what this image talks about when comparing God with Hitler.

So how would you respond to this image?

Most Christians would say something like this: “Well, God is God and so He can do what He wants. Hitler wasn’t God, and so it was wrong for him.”

I reject that answer. If God can behave like Hitler, but it’s okay because He’s God, I don’t think God deserves our worship.

My conviction, however, is that God is not like Hitler; God is like Jesus Christ. We must read the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus, and see that Jesus shows us what God is truly like, even though much of the Old Testament portrays something quite different. When God looks violent in the Old Testament, it is not because He is violent, but because He is taking the sins of the world upon Himself, just as Jesus did on the cross.

This is a challenging proposal, and I am trying to write a book to defend it (When God Pled Guilty). But the further I go, the harder the book becomes. That is why you have been seeing fewer and fewer posts on it. I cannot decide whether to push ahead or just give up in defeat.

Any thoughts on what I should do? How do you understand the violence of God in the Bible? Also, how would you respond to that image above?

A Proposal about the Violence of God in the Old Testament

A Modest Proposal about the Violence of God in the Old Testament

Read More …

Is God a Psychotic Mass Murderer who Drowns Babies?

Warfare in the Old Testament

FTC Disclaimer: This book was sent to me by Kregel for review on this blog.

Waving the White Flag Before the Onslought of God’s Violence

…Scripture.

My wife was never convinced.

1. Occam’s Razor

2. Modern Disasters

3. Couldn’t Even Refute the Calvinists

4. Back to Ignorance

Pray for Me, Please?

Comparing God with Hitler

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