Without question, the Biblical God is depicted as violent and vengeful. Without question, the Biblical God is described as loving and merciful. The actions of the people in response to God, reflect that dual identity. Sometimes, Biblical leaders tell the people that in war God demands that every last person be killed, or sometimes “only” every male that resists them; and yet the prophets continually remind the people to be merciful and compassionate, just and righteous, because that’s how God is. Sometimes God commands people to do terrible things – like asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac or Jephthah to sacrifice his daughter. Isaac gets a reprieve; Jepthah’s daughter does not. One can see why so many people don’t know what to think, not knowing what to believe about God or even whether to believe in the Biblical God at all! How can we read the Bible and still be Christian?
In both Testaments of the Bible, as well as throughout Christian history there have been movements of radical openness followed by the reestablishment of a status quo that is narrower and harsher. The Bible says some radical things about the universality of God’s love –amid other voices who just can’t believe that that’s really who God is. The default for human history is violence. The challenge to the status quo presented by Biblical teaching can be overshadowed by the parts of the Bible that go along with that status quo. There’s this back and forth dialogue, sometimes between stories and sometimes within a story or chapter or book itself – between these different visions of how life should be and who God is.
The Bible was written among a people who began as migrants, got into inter-tribal conflicts or made covenants over who got to use the land, saw cooperation between empire and tribe, then enslavement by empire followed by liberation, then the people’s own attempts to dominate other peoples to get what they thought of as their land back – so more intertribal, intercity, and inter-nation battles, then more imperial domination…and so it goes, right through until the end of Biblical history.
The people known in the Bible as Hebrews, Israelites, or Jews have been conquerors and conquered at different times in history. Like many people of their time, they revered those who were victorious in battle, as victory meant the survival of their people. It’s not surprising really that they understood God to work within the same system – only bigger and more effective than their earthly leaders! Instead of down-playing or hiding from this violent God, let’s look at this idea head-on.
We’ll start with a passage that depicts the ancient Hebrew people as both conquered and conquerors. Here is the terrible tale of the Amalekites – those ruled by or descended from Amalek – who was supposedly descended from Jacob’s twin brother Esau. According to Exodus, King Amalek and his soldiers made an unprovoked attack on the Hebrews who were escaping from the Egyptian empire that enslaved them -and apparently they attacked the most vulnerable from behind. For that attack, the God who had just chosen the Hebrews as his own sent the Hebrews victory – and then again when Joshua led the tribes into the land, the Amalekite city of Jericho was razed to the ground. Centuries later, God orders the new king Saul to lead the Israelites against the Amalekites and slaughter every single one – right down to the last child, and even the cattle! Saul, in fact, gets in trouble with God for not following the instructions to the letter. He eventually loses the throne to David because he spared the king of Amalek and kept cattle, treasure, and possibly even slaves. There is no good Amalekite, and every single one of them is to be put to death, without mercy and without question, according to Samuel’s words as prophet of the Most High. That commandment became part of Hebrew law and the commentaries of the Rabbis reinforced it.
Now in 21st century Israel, a poll commissioned by Penn State University indicated In response to the question “should the IDF act in accordance with the biblical story of the Israelites and their eradication of all of Jericho’s inhabitants during the conquest of the city,” 47% out of 1,005 said yes. In response to the slightly less direct question of whether they believed there was a “contemporary incarnation of Amalek,” 67% said yes, and 95% of those said they agree with the statement “the commandment to wipe out the memory of Amalek is also relevant to that modern-day Amalek”.
The exact quote from the Bible is found in 1 Samuel 15:2-3, and reads “go and attack the Amalekites and devote to destruction all that belongs to them. Do not spare them, but put to death men and women, children and infants, oxen and sheep, camels and donkeys”. 65% of Israelis Agree that God’s Command to Exterminate Amalek Applies to Palestinians, 80% for Ethnic Cleansing Since 1948, Amalek has been invoked in the struggle with Palestine. In a recent article in The Times of Israel the Amalekites are called the “first terrorists” and the claim is made that like the Amalekites those resisting Israeli occupation have no legitimate territorial claim. The Blogs: Why We Must Remember Amalek Now More Than Ever | David Harbater | The Times of Israel
So when you hear an Israeli politician say in the Knesset or on TV, “Let them be as the Amalekites” that’s what they mean. Total destruction. Do they truly believe that’s what God wants? I don’t know. If they do, they have Scriptural precedent for it. Yet many other Israelis, both devout Jews and secularists, are protesting the genocide and putting their own well-being on the line to feed, protect and shelter Palestinians. They do not believe slaughtering a people is God’s command. Instead, they believe that it is their inner “Amalekite”, their inner unholy cynic, whom God commands them to fight. One group takes a literal reading and applies it to the 21st century, while the other has a non-literal reading. (Chabad.org) Would the real Biblical God please step forward?
Just so you know, no archaeological evidence has ever been found of the kind of violence described in the Biblical wars over the land of Canaan. Much of what we read is likely descriptions of the same kinds of tribal battles and territorial disputes that have happened in every land over the centuries – and I’m pretty sure it would be the norm to understand those conflicts to be divinely sanctioned. In fact it would be unusual for such wars not to be – as in the case of some of the prophets who told the Jews NOT to get involved in certain conflicts because it showed distrust in God!
Now lest you think violence only occurs in the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible let’s take a look at the Newer Testament: You heard Jesus quoted as saying, “I come to bring not peace, but a sword” – a probable reference to the divisions that would arise between those who followed him and those who did not. And in Revelation God’s wrath is poured out on those who are opposed to the Lamb. In the vision of John, Jesus is the first of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. He comes astride the stallion of a ruler with a sword in his hand as in the picture on the front of the bulletin– though that sword is the Word of God, so it’s clear even then that this is metaphor. It’s extremely violent metaphor! And then there is the crucifixion of Jesus himself, for which the Gospel of John blames “the Jews”, and the Gospel of Matthew has all the Jews taking on the responsibility for his death – on themselves and on their descendants! (Matthew 27:24)!
Christians have used these texts to literally “demonize” the people with whom they do not agree, or even people who are just different from the prevailing view of what is good or normal. So the Jews have literally been understood as “children of the Devil” (John 8)– have been driven out of their communities, forced into ghettos, kept out of most professions, been victims of persecution, heresy trials, forced conversions, and of course, as we know all too well, mass extermination – all with the New Testament as rationalization. Despite Jesus’ non-violent teaching, Christians have felt quite free to exercise violence on those thought to be outside the fold.
People with mental or physical disabilities or disfigurements were often also understood as being subject to demonic influence, and persecuted in a similar way – even though in the New Testament those believed to be possessed are to receive compassion and healing. Likewise women who dared to challenge areas of male dominance such as medicine or religion were tortured or executed – because “one must not permit a witch to live” and “ I do not permit a woman to teach” – and we all know the horrors done to 2SLGBTQiA+ because God supposedly hates gays….
I know you can come up with more examples – sadly, there are far too many. Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish New Testament scholar, talks about how certain New Testament readings affect her as a Jew. She talks about seeing her relationship with the difficult texts of Scripture as like that of a relationship with a beloved spouse. We can say, “That hurt me” or “I don’t understand” or “I don’t agree” or even “how dare you!” without abandoning the relationship altogether. The love holds the relationship together. (Amy-Jill Levine, The Difficult Words of Jesus, p.154) Just don’t let it become an abusive relationship!
Madeleine L’Engle is a writer whose work I read a lot as a teenager and young adult. Famous for her science fiction books, she also wrote books about Christianity. In one book she wrote how she had gone through the Scriptures and made note of all the passages that depicted a violent and vengeful God, and all the passages that depicted a compassionate and merciful God. In the end, the merciful God far outweighed the other. I’ve never done the same, but I’d like to believe she’s right.
In the book that provided the title of this sermon John Dominc Crossan calls our dilemma “The Vision of a Bipolar God”. (p16) The non-violent preacher and teacher Jesus in the Gospels seems to be cancelled out by the killer Christ on a white horse of Revelation, just as the warrior God of some texts is challenged by the depiction of the merciful and overwhelmingly loving God in others. “…one way or another (Crossan writes), Christianity’s Biblical Express Train…thunders along on twin and parallel rails – one of divine violence and the other of divine non-violence.
Crossan proposes that this dichotomy comes because the Bible contains both the divine dream of a just, peaceful and compassionate humanity and world, which he calls God’s “assertion” – what God is putting forward – and human civilization’s tendency to fall back on competition, greed and violence as the norm. He calls this humanity’s “repression” or “negation” of the divine dream. God’s radical justice which is redistributive – it shares resources equally – is replaced with human retributive – punishing – justice. In evolutionary terms, you might frame this as the contrast between cooperation and competition that are part of our DNA as a species. The Bible contains both the divine dream and the human tendency to subvert that dream – even going so far as to subvert the divine in order to prop up that vision of a “me and mine” against “you and yours” society.
One example of this he points to is the contrast between the non-violent Jesus of most of the Gospels and the violent Jesus of Revelation. One is the assertion, the other is the negation. Another is the example of how Paul refers to women. In the early Pauline letters, women have an equal place with men in the leadership of the churches. In the later letters attributed to Paul, which are likely from at least a generation later, women are told they must be silent and never teach men.
The most important issue around violence in the Bible for me is the myth of redemptive violence – that somehow violence can be healing or transformative. Specifically, I’m referring to theories of the cross that present The Father God saying in effect “Look what you made me do!” and pointing to the bleeding, tortured Son. I believe this is one of the most abusive and just plain WRONG readings of the cross in existence. The notion that God’s justice or God’s anger or God’s judgement requires a death, and that God chose his own child to take on that death so we wouldn’t have to? Nope – that is not the God I know – though it would have made perfect sense to those familiar with religious animal sacrifice as a substitute for sin.
Instead, I believe the cross is a rejection of violence, and especially the violence of scapegoating where an innocent individual takes on the sins of the society. “Really? You thought killing someone would make things better? So here I am, Emmanuel, God-with-you. I’m going to take on all your anger, all your vengefulness, all the things that tear you and your societies apart. I’m going to take them with me into death. Is this what you wanted?” In essence, the cross shows us the result of our vicious and violent impulses. In seeing this, we are changed. Our awareness and our remorse lead us into a better way. The Old Rugged Cross: Rene Girard and the Resurrection of Substitutionary Atonement – Hopping Hadrian’s Wall
Some understandings would say that the violence that provoked Jesus’ death ended when he died – but looking at the world right now, I don’t really think so. We continue to have to take a look at the violence around us, and see there the dying Christ – and know that there is a better way that leads to life.
However violent parts of the Bible may be, we may still find there that better way. The way of Jesus challenges us not to meet violence with more violence, but to stand our ground non-violently. You know the passages: turn the other cheek, love your enemies, do good to those who persecute you, put down your sword and gather with the redeemed at the river of God’s grace and love.
The radical vision we find in the Bible shows us the Way. The Bible is violent in places because humanity is violent – and to not reflect that as part of the human story would be to make the whole thing a pretty fairy story, less real than a Brothers’ Grimm tale. The fact the writers of the Bible imagine God as being just as violent is proof that we really have a hard time imagining anything or anyone who is not caught up in that status quo – even God! That’s one of the many reasons we need to remind ourselves that the Bible is a mix of the human and the divine.
Can one read the Bible and still be a Christian? Absolutely. We acknowledge the violence and commit ourselves to a different way. It’s as easy – and as hard – as that. So we pray, for ourselves, and for Christians all over the world – people arrested and jailed – sometimes even tortured or murdered – for trying to protect the environment, for sheltering the refugee who seeks sanctuary, for putting themselves between illegal police or military actions and the people being put down, for demonstrating for human rights – we pray for all of them and all of us that we may continue to act peacefully, non-violently, lovingly with the integrity of Jesus, who put his own life on the line to teach us another way. Pray for one another my friends, so that we have the courage to take the non-violent Jesus as our example. Amen.
