Violence in the Old Testament

There are a lot of really disturbing things in the Old Testament. Genocide, infanticide, slavery, polygamy, objectification of women... all not only occurred but often appear to be sanctioned by God, even commanded. Consider this example:

This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys. (1st Sam 15:2-3)

Most likely you have heard sermons where the pastor would attempt to explain why God would command the slaughter of every "man and women, child and infant". One explanation often given is that God is holy and so could tolerate no "tainting" of Israel. But this begs the question: how is that any different from what the Nazi's said? The website rational Christianity says that the demonstrations of God's faithfulness and justice to Israel "gave them reason to trust God even when he commanded them to do something they might otherwise refuse to do". Again, this statement strikes me as extremely dangerous. Does that mean that when I sense that something goes against my conscience that I should do it anyway of I feel God telling me to? The potential for abuse here is staggering. But on the other hand, if we simply deny this part of the Bible are we not either saying that either God is unjust or that the Bible is unreliable?

In the historical novel "Silence", Shusaku Endo tells the story of a Jesuit missionary in seventeenth-century Japan who is faced with the dilemma of being forced between watching as his peasant flock was tortured and killed before his eyes, or to trample upon an image of Christ placed at his feet as a sign that he had denied Christ. The priest is torn in two between the love for his flock, and faithfulness to his Lord. His foot aches, when he hears Jesus speak to him,

"Trample, trample! It is to be trampled on by you that I am here."

When we are confronted with difficult passages in the Bible like to one above we are placed in a similar situation. On the one hand we are compelled to condemn the horrific idea of genocide. On the other we want to defend God's justice as well as the infallibility of the Bible. If we do not defend God here, are we not admitting that our God is unjust? We need to remember here the scandalous message of the cross: God came into the world and was falsely declared guilty and condemned on a cross for the sake of the ungodly. He did not seek to defend himself, but was condemned for the sake of the unrighteous. Jesus gave his life for his enemies, God died for the Amalekites just as much as he did for sinners like you and me. Would not that same God call us to care not for his reputation but for the lives of those (not innocent but beloved) lives? When we seek to protect an image (as the priest did) or a book, but in the process need to condone the slaughter of human life we forget that Christ is not found in a book or an icon, but in the least. When we defend the foreigner, the poor, the outcast, the enemy we are defending God, as Jesus says "as you have done it unto these...you have done it unto me".

It is a good thing for us to seek to understand the difficult parts of Scripture and to struggle with them. But when we find ourselves justifying atrocities in our attempt to defend God, then something has gone terribly wrong. God does not need us to defend his honor and reputation, he calls us to follow Jesus in his way of loving so radically that he was accused of blasphemy and unjustly condemned. God came into the world not to defend his honor, but to be trampled for the sake of the lost and sinners. If we wish to follow him up to Golgotha, we must trample. So I will say, with my foot trembling over the image of Christ, that these accounts of genocide, of the slaughter of "children and infants", were not commanded by God and that this account in the Bible when it claims it is wrong. God have mercy, here I stand, trampling.

Love of Enemies v2

I have done a major rewrite of the chapter "Love of Enemies: The Way of the Cross". I think it is a big improvement and reads a lot better. let me know what you think.

read chapter "Love of Enemies: The Way of the Cross"

Love of Enemies: The Way of the Cross - book excerpt

I've decided to post a chapter from the book I am writing on the Atonement. This chapter excerpt "Love of Enemies: The Way of the Cross" deals with how to creatively apply love of enemies in every area of life, from interpersonal conflict to international relations. The intent of the chapter is of course not to exhaustively cover such a wide range of topics which would go way beyond the scope of a single chapter, but instead to lay the ground work for a creative dialog about what love of enemies could mean in our lives and world. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, so let me know what you think in the comments section here. Thanks!

read chapter "Love of Enemies: The Way of the Cross"

Amish Forgiveness

The cross is about how God forgave His enemies, and a big reason that it is so hard to understand is not that we are not smart enough, but simply that we are not good enough. We have not plunged the depths of what love can endure by loving in the face of evil; we have not experienced what it means to forgive a terrible wrong done to one who is our "beloved" as God the Father did on the cross when he lost his Son. Jesus once said of a prostitute "she loved much because she was forgiven much". The inverse is also true: to understand the forgiveness of the cross we need to learn to forgive. Until we can begin to do this in our own lives, we will have no idea what God has done for us, and what the cross cost God. The person who has forgiven a grievous wrong done to them understands what the cross means better than a thousand theologians.

So many worried over how the Amish, without our modern grief counselors or emergency services would survive when the ugliness of the modern world invaded their little parish. But it turns out that those "backwards" Amish have something that we in our post 9/11 post columbine world desperately need. The following story is from PBS's "Newshour with Jim Lehrer" by Anne Taylor Fleming

"The modern media world descended en masse into this rural enclave, as if dropped back through time, poking and prodding the grief of the families and the community as a whole. And what they found and what we heard from that community was not revenge or anger, but a gentle, heart-stricken insistence on forgiveness; forgiveness, that is, of the shooter himself. The widow of the shooter was actually invited to one of the funerals, and it was said she would be welcome to stay in the community.

In a world gone mad with revenge killings and sectarian violence, chunks of the globe, self-immolating with hatred, this was something to behold, this insistence on forgiveness. It was so strange, so elemental, so otherworldly.

This, the Amish said, showing us the tender face of religion at a time and in a world where we are so often seeing the rageful face. This was Jesus' way, and they had Jesus in them, not for a day, an hour, not just in good times, but even in the very worst.

The freedom contained in Jesus' teaching of forgiveness, wrote the German philosopher Hannah Arendt, is the freedom from vengeance, which includes both doer and sufferer in the relentless automatism of the action process, which by itself need never come to an end.

We have seldom seen this in action. So many tribes and sects in a froth of revenge, from Darfur to Baghdad. And, here in this country, so many victims and victims' families crying out in our courthouses for revenge.

To this, the Amish have offered a stunning example of the freedom that comes with forgiveness, a reminder that religion need not turn lethal or combative. I, for one, as this week ends, stand in awe of their almost unfathomable grace in grief".

Bonhoeffer, Just War, and Nonviolence Pt 2

Bonhoeffer's classic “The Cost of Discipleship” was based on the Sermon on the Mount. On the basis of the Sermon on the Mount he had boldly spoken out against Nazi anti-Jewish policies, and sought to persuade his fellow Germans to oppose Hitler. He argued that following Christ meant loving the “sick, the suffering, those who are demeaned and abused, those who suffer injustice and are rejected”¹ in other words, the very people Hitler sought to eliminate. He called on Christians to follow their Lord in “giving their honor for those who had fallen into shame and taking their shame upon themselves”² fully aware that this meant facing both imprisonment and death. Bonhoeffer was eventually arrested for helping Jewish families to escape into Switzerland. At that time, the plot to kill Hitler was still in its planning phase. The assassination was attempted a year later while Bonhoeffer was still imprisoned. In “Ethics” he explains his rationale for participating in the plot. Six years had passed since he wrote “The Cost of Discipleship” and now in “Ethics” the theme of the Sermon on the Mount so prevalent in Bonhoeffer's past writing was strangely absent. What had happened? Glen Stassen explains that Bonhoeffer's understanding of turning the other cheek in The Cost of Discipleship was mostly passive, a non-participation in evil rather than as a way of actively overcoming evil with good. Because of this, when he looked for a way to actively oppose Hitler, he did not find guidance in the Sermon on the Mount³. One wonders what someone with the vision and courage of Bonhoeffer might have done, had he understood love of enemies as an active way to combat evil.

At the time, Gandhi had just had major success with his nonviolent resistance against Brittan. Bonhoeffer had made plans to visit Gandhi at his Ashram in India and had received a formal invitation. As history had though Bonhoeffer never went. Instead he returned to Germany to join the underground Confessing church. In "The Cost of Discipleship" one can clearly see Bonhoeffer calling for nonviolent resistance

"The followers of Jesus have been called to peace...His Disciples keep the peace by choosing to endure suffering themselves rather than inflict it on others... in so doing they overcome evil with good, and establish the peace of God in the midst of a world of war and hate. But nowhere will that peace be more manifest than where they meet the wicked in peace and are ready to suffer at their hands. The peacemakers will carry the cross with their Lord for it was on the cross that peace was made."⁴

Gandhi and later King where able to organize massive nonviolent resistance against violent oppression. But when Bonhoeffer stood up, he stood virtually alone. "In 1933 Bonhoeffer was almost alone in his opinions; he was the only one who considered solidarity with the Jews, especially with the non-Christian Jews, to be a matter of such importance to obligate the Christian churches to risk a massive conflict with that state”⁵ If we must place blame here, it is not with Bonhoeffer, but with the church that ignored his cries. Bonhoeffer writes these scalding words,

“The church confesses that she has witnessed the lawless application of brutal force, the physical and spiritual suffering of countless innocent people, oppression, hatred and murder, and that she has not raised her voice on behalf of the victims and had not found ways to hasten to their aid. She is guilty of the deaths of the weakest and most defenseless brothers of Jesus Christ.”⁶

People often say that nonviolence would not have worked against Hitler, but where nonviolence was tried against the Nazis it did in fact work. Walter Wink chronicles how thousands of Bulgarian Jews and non-Jews participated in massive protests and civil disobedience and as a result, all of Bulgaria's Jewish citizens where saved from Nazi death camps. Similar success was achieved through nonviolent action in Romania who refused to surrender a single Jew to
the death camps, Finland which saved all but 6 of its Jewish citizens, and Denmark which smuggled 6500 of its 7000 Jewish population to safety.⁷ Nonviolent Resistance on a massive scale might have worked in Germany, but Bonhoeffer stood alone. In the absence of any alternatives that he could see, Bonhoeffer chose trembling before God to incur guilt for the sake of his fellow man rather than retain his purity while watching them suffer. Nonviolence does not always work, but then again violence does not always work either. The plot to assassinate Hitler failed, and in a brutal retaliation 5000 people were killed including Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was hanged by the Nazis on April 9, 1945.

1Bonhoeffer quoted in Kelly & Nelson, “The cost of Moral Leadership” p 92 from “Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works vol 4 - Discipleship”, p 106-7
2 ibid
3Glen Stassen and David Gushee, “Kingdom Ethics”, p 144. (See also Stassen's “Healing the Split in Bonhoeffer's Ethics” forthcoming)
4Cost of Discipleship p 126
5Heinz Eduard Tödt, quoted in “The Cost of Moral Leadership”, p 21
6Ethics p 50
7Engaging the Powers, p 254

Bonhoeffer, Just War, and Nonviolence

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran pastor and theologian was among the few German Christians who was outspoken against the evils of Hitler. After escaping to America, he made the decision to return to Nazi Germany saying,

"I shall have no right to take part in the restoration of Christian life in Germany after the war unless I share the trials of this time with my people.”¹

Back in Germany he joined the small resistance movement and, himself deeply committed to non-violence, made the agonizing decision to take part in a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. For Bonhoeffer this meant making the choice to deliberately sin and risk being condemned to Hell (what he did constituted both 1^st degree murder and high treason under German law) rather than do nothing and remain personally “innocent” in the face of the massive evil of the Nazis. Fully accepting the guilt of his actions, Bonhoeffer threw himself on the mercy of God. He writes,

“When a man takes guilt upon himself in responsibility, he imputes his guilt to himself and no one else. He answers for it... Before other men he is justified by dire necessity; before himself he is acquitted by his conscience, but before God he hopes only for grace”²

Bonhoeffer forces us to wrestle with him, he refuses to allow us to resolve the question of whether he was justified or not, leaving us with him in his tension before God. Bonhoeffer is adamant that we cannot take his decision as a justification for violence, but instead takes the guilt of that upon himself, seeing it like the decision to amputate a limb. While we may understand his decision and respect his courage, Bonhoeffer insists that we cannot ultimately justify or glamorize his choice. We may justify hurtful actions like abortion or divorce or war, but that does not make them "good" or "just". If we wish to join Bonhoeffer, it must be here in that tension trembling before God.

Next time we will examine the shift in Bonhoeffer's thinking that began as a focus on the Sermon on the Mount and a commitment to nonviolence in "The Cost of Discipleship" to his decision to participate in the plot to assassinate Hitler in his "Ethics".

1Dietrich Bonhoeffer The Cost of Discipleship p 18
2Dietrich Bonheffer, Ethics p 244

Just Peacemaking Theory

Love of enemies is at the center of what the cross means. While we were God's enemies he gave his life for us. Frustratingly though the discussion seems to get forced into a dichotomy of either fighting and hurting and wrath or inaction. This is how the classic dilemma of the cross is presented: God should act in wrath, but wants to show mercy. But if this means inaction that would be unjust.

This dichotomy is not just on a theological realm but comes into every sphere of conflict. Should we bomb the terrorists, or do nothing? In love of enemies God found a way to do something that would reconcile rather than destroy us. With the current spirit of war in our country I am always looking for real alternatives to war and bloodshed. Going beyond just saying what is wrong and presenting a real alternative. I discovered something called Just Peacemaking Theory which does just that.

Twenty-three Christian ethicists, international relations scholars, conflict resolution specialists, theologians, one New Testament scholar, and a handful of Peace Action leaders, have been working for five years to create what they call Just Peacemaking Theory. Just Peacemaking Theory goes beyond the debate of whether war is justified or not, and instead offers ways to prevent war and create peace based on techniques of diplomacy, conflict resolution, repentance, reform, and nonviolent action. They have summed these up into 10 practices that have been empirically proven to prevent wars and end conflict around the world.

1. Support nonviolent direct action.

2. Take independent initiatives to reduce threat.

3. Use cooperative conflict resolution.

4. Acknowledge responsibility for conflict and injustice and seek repentance and forgiveness.

5. Advance democracy, human rights, and religious liberty.

6. Foster just and sustainable economic development.

7. Work with emerging cooperative forces in the international system.

8. Strengthen the United Nations and international efforts for cooperation and human rights.

9. Reduce offensive weapons and weapons trade.

10. Encourage grassroots peacemaking groups and voluntary associations.

Glen Stassen's webpage at Fuller has a lot more details, check it out.