Most of us have pondered the passages in the Bible where God is depicted as a warrior or when he orders the destruction of people and places. These episodes often push people away from God.
Atheist and anti-theist, Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, uses God’s destructive side as evidence against any divine being: “God’s monumental rage whenever his chosen people flirted with a rival god resembles nothing so much as sexual jealousy of the worst kind, and again it should strike the modern moralist as far from good role-model material” (p. 243).
Dawkins draws attention to God’s involvement in a host of violent episodes in the Bible. We cannot deny their presence. But we can ask why they are there and what they say about God.
In “God and Violence in the Old Testament” (Word and World, Winter 2004, page 21) Terence Fretheim delves into the theology behind this violence. He makes one especially critical point: “If there were no human violence, there would be no divine violence.”
God permits human violence. At times it grows so out of control that God counters that violence with violence. Proverbs 21:7 reflects on this point: “The violence of the wicked will sweep them away, because they refuse to do what is just.” When violence gets out of control it even comes back on those who started it. Someone has to stop what people start. Fortunately for the sake of humankind, God takes up that task.
One technique in stopping a wild fire is back burning. A small controlled fire is used to destroy an area in front of the wild fire. When the out of control wild fire reaches the back burned area, the fire goes out because its fuel is gone.
Fretheim points out that in Scripture God’s involvement in violence always occurs in response to human destructiveness. He responds in order to save people from the violence or to discipline those who use violence recklessly. More can be said about the violence of God, but a central point is we can be assured that there is a divine being who resists human evil. You can count on it.
If there really is a God, and there really is a choice to not accept his will or love, then unless we can by our own power create a third eternal reality – an option “C” on the “multiple choice final exam of life”, then the violence of the Old Testament is also the current reality we all face if we also reject God’s love.
Some want a final question with only one possible answer. The idea that everything that started good, like you and me, will return to God because a loving God could never reject one of his own. The problem of course is that means there really never was any real free will. I never did have a real choice. And since God seems to be fair and just – even Satan himself would join us eternally as he was once good before he fell. This doesn’t sound like an existence I would want for eternity – too much like what I have now.
While fear is not a motivator we currently use with much success, the fact that God involved Israel in the prosecution of these actions – against nations that had rejected God and embraced practices that would horrify even the most calloused atheist today tells us something interesting and loving about God.
God believes we have a right to know the realities of our existence, the consequence of our actions. God educates Israel. By having the Israelite’s participate in the inevitable destruction of these people he showed the whole nation (and us) the realities of the decision to follow God or to follow others. Unfortunately, many times Israel finds itself suffering the same fate as others who reject God. This should not have been a surprise. We all have the choice to live protected and loved inside God’s will, or to suffer the final fate of those who reject God and the realities of a question with only two possible answers.