What about Old Testament Violence? Part 2 - Some attempts at reconciliation

Are you inspired by Jesus but disturbed by the violent portraits of God recorded in the Old Testament?

Many attempts have been made to reconcile these very different, often contradictory pictures of God and we'll look at some of those here.

Last time, we started with the question 'Is God Schizophrenic?' and ended with the statement that 'What we see is what we become.' If you see God as unpredictable, never knowing if you're going to get the Yahweh version or the Jesus version, it's harder to behave consistently yourself.

Do believers act more aggressively when they believe that God sanctions violence?

A study done at the University of Michigan by social psychologist Brad Bushman and his colleagues suggests they do - read it here.

History provides substantial evidence of its own though. The church has used the image of the war-mongering God of the Old Testament to justify all sorts of atrocities. They felt justified in committing acts of horrific violence because they believed it was the moral thing to do. God, who set the standard of morality, modelled violence as a solution to situations of conflict. (A fascinating article on how people resort to violence because they believe their moral codes require it can be found here.)

Divinely sanctioned acts of atrocious violence, seemingly contradicted by Jesus' instruction to love and bless our enemies, can be confusing. How should we respond to situations of conflict?

I know enough of God to know that there must be an explanation. How do I know that? Here's a clue:

Whenever we see something about God that doesn’t match the character of Jesus, no matter how bad it looks, we can trust that there is an explanation.

But I must be clear: platitudes like: 'One day all will be made known,' and 'Each to their own,' and 'God's ways are higher than our ways,' are not, to my mind, satisfactory explanations.

So how do we explain it then? Some people simply dismiss the Old Testament picture of God by ignoring it. They just never read that section of the Bible. If it's not in their ‘Live your best life’ devotional they pretend it's not there.

On the other hand, some will take those revelations as equal in authority to our revelation of God in Jesus, often thereby justifying atrocious acts of violence in God's name. - they get to choose which aspect of God they want to demonstrate in any given situation.

The difficulty with this view is that Jesus himself directly contradicts God’s words in the Old Testament. Which do we take as our example?

Even others find a way to show how justified the violence was in each situation; spin it one way or the other to make it more palatable.

Some will blame a translation error - that's a common one. Maybe there was some kind of mixup and 'slaughter' doesn't really mean 'slaughter'.

Maybe I'm just hard to please, but none of these approaches solves the glaring contradictions to my satisfaction.

We can't ignore chunks of the Bible - every word has to be taken seriously and acknowledged as inspired of the Holy Spirit, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us. Why do I believe that so emphatically? For starters, Paul, referring to our current Old Testament, described it as 'God Breathed'.

We have the added complication that Jesus believed the Old Testament. Nuts! Just when you thought you get away with leaving it on the shelf we see that Jesus directly quotes 24 of the 39 books in the Old Testament. Only 4 books in the Old Testament are not quoted by all the New Testament authors combined.

But what do we do now? Jesus is the peace-loving hippy and Yahweh is the warmongering despot, ready to chop everyone's heads off and Holy Spirit wafts about making windy noises.  With Jesus and Yahweh making up 2/3 of the Trinity - How can they be so at odds with each other? How do we reconcile these pictures of the persons within the Godhead? These are not just different behaviours as expressions of the same character - this looks like completely different characters. Is there disunity in the Trinity?

Which one are we going to get in any given moment? We'd never be sure what to expect. It's a bit like growing up with an unstable parent - you never know if you'll get furious mom or patient mom or withdrawn mom or sweet mom - and that makes it harder to know how to behave because like all kids, you blame yourself for triggering the behaviour changes.

That's just exhausting, feeling like it all depends on you and your behaviour. You stop taking risks - even good ones - especially good ones - because you're never sure how mom / God is going to respond. And so you try to make yourself smaller and as invisible as you possibly can so maybe you won't be noticed and so no one can blame you for the inevitable outburst.

As usual, I've got myself in a bit of a hole - one I'm going to have to wrestle my way out of. Fortunately, I have a pretty good precedent in the Old Testament when it comes to wrestling with God.

Of the great patriarchs mentioned in Hebrews 11 as champions of faith, Jacob wrestled with God through the night, Moses repeatedly objected to God's intended course of action and had the audacity to suggest an alternative, as did Abraham. Usually, they were questioning the consistency of his actions with his character... which is precisely what we are doing here.

Even crazier than the thought that they could question God, is the thought that he changed his way that he was going to do because of them. On that precedent, I feel confident in asking God what he's up to.

I mentioned the clue to all of this earlier: If we see a portrait of God in scripture that doesn't match how he has revealed himself in Jesus, we can trust there is some explanation because Jesus is the standard by which we measure all revelation. How can I be so sure of that?
You'll have to wait for part 3 to find out... Or you could read ahead, but just know that if you do end up buying from one of the links below, I'll get a small commission at no extra cost to you. (Full Disclosure)

 Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence is the popular version of the more academic The Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Volumes 1 & 2 which Greg Boyd spent around 10 years writing in his quest to find out how to reconcile the troubling pictures of Old Testament violence with the self-sacrificial love of God revealed in Jesus' work on the cross. With the heart of a pastor and the skill of a theologian, he forges a path that shows how even the most horrific episodes in the Old Testament testify to a God of peace and love. Sound too good to be true? It's not, He really is that good! Get the book if you don't believe me.


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And, if you'd like to hear a recording of me sharing this in person at Dwell Church in Durban, in May 2017, complete with South African accent, weird belly chuckle-laughs and a couple of family anecdotes, click on the Soundcloud link below.

What about Old Testament Violence? Part 1 - Is God schizophrenic?

I am convinced that God is good, but I'll admit there are times when I wonder, "What about the time when?..."

I've realised I spend quite a large portion of my thought life asking, 'Yes, but what about...?" I test my opinions and observations by trying to find exceptions.

If you've spent any significant amount of time reading the Bible, especially the Old Testament, you'll have a lot of those, "Yes, but what about...?" questions, I'm sure!
Moments where God does something that doesn't look 'good', things that I wouldn't consider morally good, or things that don't seem to match up with God's own definitions of what is 'good'.

Many people reject Christianity outright because they don't feel they can serve or worship or love God as he is represented in the Old Testament. To be honest, I've had my moments where I've wondered aloud how on earth (or in heaven!) this all fits together.

A. A. Milne, the author of the Winnie the Pooh books wrote:

'The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief, call it what you will, than any other book ever written.'

It’s a strong statement but frankly, I can see where he is coming from. What makes it more complex is that we can’t dismiss the Old Testament by saying, 'It’s just not like anymore.'Yes, we are in a new dispensation, but our new dispensation is on the foundation of the Old Testament - we can’t dismiss that foundation. But then again, these Old Testament portraits are so very different from the portrait of God we find in Jesus.

These differences can seem quite stark. There were times when Yahweh, I’ll refer to him as Yahweh as distinct from Jesus even though we know they are God, where Yahweh commands his followers to slaughter every man, woman, child and animal as they were entering regions of Canaan - their Promised Land, where Jesus comes and says, 'If someone strikes you, turn the other cheek.'

Yahweh threatened curses on those who showed mercy to their enemies, Jesus comes and says we are to forgive our enemies - and when his disciples ask how many times - he says seventy times seven times. Jesus also prayed for those who persecuted them and taught forgiveness.

Yahweh even brought judgment on a group of people by causing them to cannibalise their children. Yes, that's in the Bible. But Jesus praised the faith of children and said that for anyone who harms children 'it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.' (Matthew 18:6)

These are very different pictures of God we're getting from the Old and New Testaments - I trust I can bring some clarity to this seeming contradiction.

Those of us who have known God's love, we have enough experience of him to say, 'I know there's an explanation for this.' If you are not yet in that place - please don't panic - there is an explanation.
For those who haven't ever met Jesus, who haven't experienced his presence, often there isn't enough for them to go on to trust that there is an explanation for the contradictions they find - and so they reject Christianity outright.

I'd love for this post, and the posts following, to give you confidence that he is good, more good than you could ever imagine. You may have seen some ugly pictures of him, but he is good!

In case you're worried, I am absolutely not going to tell you that God is good in some creepy abusive partner kind of way. You’ve all heard of the guy who gives his wife a black eye and tells her it's for own good and he only hits her because he loves her. We’re not going down that road. Promise!

But why spend the energy on finding an explanation? Well, I agree with this guy called Aiden Wilson Tozer who stated that 'The Image that comes to mind when you think of God is the most important thing about you.'

It affects absolutely every moment of how we live our lives: what we think about ourselves, about other people, how we read the circumstances around us - they determine the direction we move in, who we become - what we believe about God really is the most important thing about us. How did the serpent get Eve to eat the fruit? He attacked her mental image of God.

Paul writes to the Corinthian church:

'And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image.' (2 Corinthians 3:18)

What we see is what we become.

So I'm trusting that as you join me in this journey of discovering how good God really is, your life would be transformed as have the lives of many believers before us.

If you'd like to 'read ahead' then I'd recommend one of the books linked below. They are two different versions of the same material written researched and written over the course of a decade by Pastor-Theologian Greg Boyd - a man I believe may go down in history as one of the most influential but underrated theologians of our time.

(Note: If you do end up buying from one of these links, I'll get a small commission at no extra cost to you. Full Disclosure)

The Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Volumes 1 & 2 is the more academic version, clocking in at over 1500 pages. Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence is written for a more general audience. Both are very readable and wonderfully unstuffy. (I have copies of both and have been reading them again in parallel. #theologynerd) I found myself in tears often as my understanding of the goodness of God was stretched in all directions.

So, how do you usually resolve your, 'Yes, but what about?' moments?

Share below!

Click on the Soundcloud link below to listen to an original recording of this post - recorded in May 2017 at Dwell Church in Durban, South Africa.

The most certain way to make sure you get the next post in the series is to subscribe via email, second best would be to follow us on Facebook, but if you missed either of those, here it is: Part 2: How do we reconcile contradictory pictures of God?