Facing Racism

The Trump era has caused us to face the ugly specter of racism. No one wants to think of themselves as racist. When someone says "that's racist" let alone "you're being racist" or worst of all "you're a racist" our natural reaction is to deny and defend ourselves against the accusation. It's more than an accusation, it's a condemnation. Our response is to want to distance ourselves from people or groups that we see as racist, as if by doing that we could claim to be immune and untouched and pure. 

I recently came across a talk by David Gushee called "In the Ruins of White Evangelicalism" which he gave as the presidential address to the AAR. In the talk he said that the connection between Trump's base being racist and white evangelicals being the demographic most likely to support Trump made it an inescapable conclusion for him that racism was a major problem within evangelicalism. He says he is driven to the conclusion that evangelicals support Trump not in spite of his racism and cruelty, but because of it.

But the part that really impacted me was where he went from there. Although he had distanced himself from evangelicalism, he did not distance himself from its sin of racism. Instead he wondered how he, as a major voice within evangelicalism focusing on ethics, could have been blind to racism for all those years. His talk therefore was one of him confessing and repenting for what he called the sin of racism.

Calling racism a sin is interesting because it opens up a way to see racism that leads to self-reflection and growth. Let me unpack this. As Christians we should be familiar with the concept of confessing that we are sinners. We see this in the catechisms, but also in the Gospels, in the parable Jesus tells of the Pharisee and the tax collector,

The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: "God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector."

But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. (Luke 18:11-14)

If we come at sin like the Pharisee, saying "I was a sinner before, but now I've repented and go to church and am saved and chosen. I thank God that I am not like those sinners outside of my church" then Jesus says we don't go away justified, even though we are trying to justify ourselves.  Growing up evangelical I heard statements like that made from the pulpit constantly. "Thank God we are not like those liberals, gays, woman's lib-ers, welfare queens, Muslims out there!" In other words, I heard messages of homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, and racism constantly growing up evangelical.

Of course as an ex-vangelical it's just as easy for me to say "Thank God that I am not like those racist Trump supporting evangelicals over there." It's easy to write of racism as a problem "over there" in evangelicalsm, or in the South. In fact, it's really common for progressives and liberals in an attempt to "out-woke" each other to condemn others for the sins of racism and white privilege. People will be shamed and ostracized on social media, calls will go out for people to be fired and shunned for some insensitive comment or act. In that atmosphere of self-righteous progressivism, it's really no wonder people react defensively. They act like they are being attacked and condemned because... well, they are. Progressives see themselves as champions of compassion, but boy can they be merciless.

Jesus said we should remove the log from our eye before we take the splinter from our brother's eye. What if I looked at my own life before I became the progressive moral police of social media? Maybe if I did, I could approach others with the same mercy I know I need. Maybe if I did I could have conversations rather than accusations. Maybe I as a progressive Christian need to take the stance of the tax collector in Jesus' parable and say, "God, have mercy on me, a racist!" What if instead of seeking to prove myself innocent of racism, I assume that just as I am a sinner, just as I know that I can do things that hurt others, I am open to the idea that I have blind spots in me, I have racial bias, and am therefore open to seeing this and becoming sensitized to it so I can do better.

I also feel pulled to look back at my evangelical past and try to make sense of why it is that evangelicals today so overwhelmingly support Trump, as Gushee says, not in spite of his racist cruelty, but because of it. At the same time, evangelicals would all deny that they are racist. I think that's due to a misconception of what racism is. We think of racism as the stereotypical Southern plantation owner in the Hollywood film. We think that if we don't have malicious intent in our hearts, that we are not racist. But the thing is, people who do evil and hurtful things, even horrific things, never think they are doing evil. They think they are doing good. That's why the whole focus of "but I don't have any racism in my heart!" misses the point, and blinds us to the racial blinders that lead to do cruel and hurtful things.

What's behind racism is a reaction to fear that causes us to be tribal, to protect our tribe, and if "they" suffer as a result, well that's just too bad. It comes from perceiving some other group as being a threat, and reacting in fear to that threat. Fear is the opposite of empathy and compassion. As Gushee says in his address, American white evangelicalism today has really become "U.S. white tribalist religion" characterized by "aggrieved white conservatives." That stance of "aggrieved whites" of course is the constant mantra of  Fox News, and it very much echoes what I heard from the pulpit Sunday after Sunday, a message of fear and resentment towards "those sinners out there" who were a threat to our family, our way of life.

That tribalist fear stance is very much tied to the tendency in evangelicalism to justify violence as good and righteous. Evangelicals are more likely than just about any other demographic to support violence as a means to good, whether that's supporting torture, war, capital punishment. When you tie that propensity to justifying violence and cruelty together with demonizing other groups, fearing them, seeing them as a threat, it seems inevitable that when little black boys are shot by cops, evangelicals stress that "blue lives matter" and when hispanic children are traumatically ripped from their parents and held in concentration camps, white evangelicals feel the need to justify and support this.

If you feel threatened, it's a natural human reaction (Paul would call it a fleshly reaction) to justify a harsh, merciless response. 

The two poisons of racism and violence go hand in hand, specifically violence understood as a means to good, and racism as a fearful otherizing and thus dehumanizing of a person or group. Of the two of these, I want to argue the most important one to address is racism. I do not want, therefore, to propose a Christian solution of total abstinence from violence. That is, I am not arguing that the police should not be armed, we should not have an army, or even that a person cannot defend themselves in their home. I say this, primarily because it is utterly impracticable. If we want to take steps towards reducing violence, towards less cruelty, towards more compassionate way I living together, I don't think abstinence from violence is the key.

Rather, I want to argue that the core problem here has to do with the otherizing or dehumanizing of a person or group. When we see a person or group as a threat, as "other" it is easy to justify cruel or inhuman treatment. We see them as a monster, an animal. If we instead saw them as our brother, our sister, our child, as part of us, we would seek to deal with them in more humane ways. This would lead to a reduction in violence, a reduction in cruelty and hurt. We would find other ways because we value the other as we value our own. That's something that Jesus was constantly preaching, widening our circle to include loving the sinner, loving the enemy.

Conservatives need to not see liberals and people of color as the evil other, and progressives similarly need to not see white evangelicals as the evil other. Isn't that what "love your enemy" means? That is, it does not mean they are not your enemy, but that you should act lovingly towards them nevertheless. We should see them as a part of us. Again, that does not mean we tolerate people doing or saying hurtful things, but it does mean dealing with them as we would deal with someone beloved, which would lead us to seeking ways to deal with things restoratively and humanely.

The Point of Hebrews: Further Conversation with Paul Copan

Paul Copan and I have been having an ongoing conversation revolving around the issue of violence done in God’s name and the corollary issue of violence and the Bible. Although we have very different views on these subjects, I am grateful for Paul’s willingness to engage with me, and also very much appreciate his respectful and kind demeanor. I hope to return that same tone of kindness and respect.

Most recently the conversation has centered around chapter 11 of Hebrews. Referring to Hebrews 11:31 which states “By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the army had marched around them for seven days” Paul asked me if I thought the author of Hebrews believed that “the battle against Jericho was divinely commissioned and thus morally justified.” It’s worth noting that after the walls of Jericho fell, the book of Joshua states that “everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys” (Joshua 6:20-21).

So I think it is without question that the author of Joshua did believe that the battle against Jericho was divinely commissioned. That seems to be the clear point of Joshua 6. Now, there is strong archeological evidence, based on high-precision radiocarbon dating, that shows that Jericho was completely uninhabited at the time of Joshua. So as Robert Hubbard concludes, echoing the current scholarly consensus, “There was no fortified city of Jericho for Joshua and Israel to conquer.” Since it is made-up that Joshua conquered Jericho, it is a very short logical step to conclude that it is equally made-up that God commanded him to.

However, let’s return to the author of Hebrews, who obviously did not know anything about archeology. Do I think that the author of Hebrews believed that the battle against Jericho was divinely commissioned and thus morally justified” as Paul asked?

No, I do not. Given the context of the central point the author of Hebrews is making in this chapter as well as in the following chapter, I would say it is clear that he is not trying to make the point that killing in God's name is morally justifiable, and in fact he is making the opposite point: The point of the entire chapter is encouraging believers who are suffering violent persecution to not resort to violence in their defense but to endure suffering in faith. Indeed, in the beginning of chapter 12 we read the author’s summary conclusion, “therefore, with all these examples before us... keep your eyes fixed on Jesus who looking beyond the shame of the cross, enduring it to get to the joy beyond it.” (Heb 12:1-2)

Paul seems to agree with me that the author of Hebrews is not using these OT examples to persuade his audience to similarly use violence in God’s name. He writes, 

“there is a new people of God who are the interethnic body of Christ--no longer a national entity with civil laws, national enemies, etc. So taking up the sword to rise up against their Roman persecutors in the name of Christ would be misdirected.”

He however disagrees with my saying the author of Hebrews is making the “opposite point” noting that the author of Hebrews speaks favorably of these OT examples who “conquered kingdoms, . . . became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight” (Heb 11:33-34). The implication is that the author of Hebrews is speaking favorably of war here, using it as a positive example. That’s true. However, I want to point out that in the next chapter this same author writes,

“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son. (Heb 12:5– 6, quoting Prov 3:11– 12 from the LXX)

The Greek word translated above in the NIV as “chastens” is mastigoō which in fact means “to beat with a whip, flog, scourge.” It’s the same word Jesus used to describe his being flogged by the Roman centurions before the cross (Mt 20:19; Mk 10:34; Lk 18:33).

Now, if we want to conclude that because the author or Hebrews cites being “mighty in war” positively, we should therefore see this as a New Testament endorsement of war in the OT, we would have to equally conclude that because the author of Hebrews cites being “flogged” by your father positively, we should likewise need to see this as a New Testament endorsement of what would unmistakably be regarded today as criminal child abuse in the OT.

This is not how I would read Hebrews 12, nor is it how I would read Hebrews 11. What I try to do is look at what the point is that an author is trying to make, and focus on that. In chapter 12 the point is to hold on to the idea that even when we suffer, we can trust that we are loved by God. The point of chapter 11 is to look to the past and take heart, while enduring suffering in faith. The point of the author is not to endorse violence in the OT, nor is it his point to condemn it. His point is not to make any sort of evaluation of the past, but rather to tell his audience how they should live now. That is pretty much always the point of NT authors. The Apostle Paul has plenty of really critical things to say about the OT, but it is always in the context of telling his audience how to live and love now. So he tells them that if they are under the Law they will be under a “curse.” He compares it to slavery, says it is “death” and gave birth to “sin” and on and on, always doing this in the context of how we should live now. Paul is not concerned with saying whether or not Joshua or Moses were justified, because they are not his audience. Jesus is the same. Jesus says everything with the focus on how his audience lives and loves now. So he breaks the Sabbath to heal, he disobeys the command to kill the woman caught in adultery (even though he is the one without sin who could have cast the first stone) and forgives her instead. He says “You know the law says this... but I say to you now...”

So I will thus concede that the author of Hebrews does say positive things about people in the past killing in God’s name. However, I maintain that it is quite correct to say that his clear point, the take away, the reason he is writing, what he wants his audience to do now is not to kill in God’s name, but to do the opposite: “choosing to be ill-treated with the people of God" (Heb 11:25), "regarding abuse suffered for Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt" (Heb 11:26), and even calling his audience “to resist to the point of shedding your blood” (Heb 12:1), rather than to respond with violence. Hebrews 11 is not an endorsement of OT violence, nor is it a critique of it. It is, as the NT authors always are, telling his audience how to live now. That is his point, that is his take-away message.

Do I see difficulty with telling people to “to resist to the point of shedding your blood”? Yes I do. I can see how a text like this could be used to justify people accepting oppression. But that is the tight-rope that we need to walk here, we need to work out how we can understand this way, which seems to me to be a very hard way, and put it into practice in a way that brings us closer to a loving and just world.

Paul Copan next addresses a question that I raised, where I proposed that we must not stop at what we can justify, but must go beyond this towards working to reform and repair and redeem. He writes,

“As for your other question, of course, a broader ethical discussion must go beyond justifying difficult moral exceptions. But that isn't the specific point that Matt Flannagan and I are tackling in our coauthored book. We are addressing a specific moral difficulty, and we do go into great detail about the matter of divine commands. In that setting, we raise the question, "Is taking innocent human life ever morally justifiable?" We give, I think, plausible examples (e.g., in the case of an ectopic pregnancy) that lead us to conclude that while it is an objective prima facie duty not to take innocent human life, it would not be morally absolute. (We point out too that this view is not idiosyncratic but is fairly widely accepted.)”

I note that here we are in agreement that there are some rare cases where taking innocent human life could be considered morally justified. I also acknowledge that this is a relatively widely accepted view. Paul then continues,

“Issues of hyperbole in ancient Near Eastern war texts, etc. aside, could it be that under certain less-than-ideal conditions, that an all-wise, all-good God might have overriding reasons for issuing these difficult commands?”

No, it could not. Absolutely, categorically, no. There is no possible reason that would justify going into a city and slaughtering infants and children. None. I dare say that it is universally accepted that killing infants is never ever okay. I strain to think of something that could possibly be more self-evidently immoral than this.

Paul next comments,

“I do think that John Goldingay is on to something when he writes: “Perhaps Deuteronomy [20:17-18] was only being realistic in recognizing the power of Canaanite temptation when Israelite faith in Yahweh was a newly budded flower.”

I cannot help but mention that the reasoning John Goldingay is using here for justifying these accounts is literally the same reasoning that the Nazis used to justify the Holocaust. I hope that gives all of us pause. The logic is that it is necessary to kill an two-year-old child and and six-month-old baby because otherwise they will grow up to morally corrupt the chosen people, making them impure. That is a truly horrific kind of logic. As we know from history, that kind of logic has led to many genocides.

I do not know John Goldingay, but I would not be surprised to find that he is a fine, loving person. I do know that Pastor John Ortberg has said something very similar, writing that “The beliefs of the Canaanites were a cancer that had to be removed from the land before the people of God could live there with any hope of health.” John Ortberg is well known for his commitment to care for the poor and the oppressed. So here’s a guy who is actively working to help the poor and the oppressed, a person who is exhibiting compassion and care, a person who is likely a much better person than I am. Yet they are calling people a “cancer.” I had the opportunity to speak with John Ortberg about this, and he graciously agreed that this was a fair critique.

I want to emphatically stress here that my point is not to claim that John Ortberg or John Goldingay or Paul Copan are bad people because of such comments, but just the opposite: I wish to underscore how easy it is for all of us as Christians— even the most loving among us— to feel the need to justify violence in the name of defending the Bible. In doing so we find ourselves seeking to justify things in the Bible, which in any other context we would without question wholeheartedly condemn.

I note again that the New Testament author’s focus was always on how people should live now. I would like to propose that this is how we need to read the Bible, too. That is the task of discipleship and also the task of ethics. While we can perhaps make ethical evaluations of things in the past, we cannot stop there. The most important question is to ask how we should live out the teachings we find in the Bible. I maintain that when we do this in a way that promotes acting in love towards others and ourselves we are reading the Bible rightly, and when we read it in a way that promotes harming or hurting others we are reading it wrong.

Paul, thank you for bearing with me as I work through this. I wish you God’s grace, peace, and loving care always.

A Reply to Paul Copan

In my previous blog post, "Boyd and Copan's Unbelievable Debate, and the Problem of Unquestioning Obedience." I outlined some serious problems I see in Paul Copan's approach to interpreting Scripture. Paul was gracious enough to reply to me in a comment on the blog, which you can read here. Since my reply to Paul's comment was getting rather lengthy, I decided to post here:

Hi Paul, thanks for posting. 

You write, “I'm incredulous that you attribute to me what I do not hold (e.g., that Mt. 15:3-4 is in force today).” I can certainly sympathize with that, as no one likes to feel misrepresented. However, I'd like to submit that, while difficult and uncomfortable, this could perhaps actually be good in that it allows us to really face what is at stake in the discussion.

I note that in your conversation with Greg, when he brought this up, you did not acknowledge that the idea of a command to execute children really troubles you, too. Perhaps it does, but you did not communicate that distress and struggle. You instead stressed (as you did again in your comment here) your view that “Jesus clearly seems to take this as divinely commanded under the Mosaic Law.” This left me with the impression that you had no problem with it since you believe Jesus endorses it. Or at least that, for you, the issue is not really whether or not you or I struggle with something as being alarmingly immoral, but simply whether it is commanded.

To state things differently, the issue is not that I am claiming that Paul Copan is endorsing such behavior today. I fully acknowledge that you do not, and if I implied otherwise, that was sloppy of me, and I apologize. The issue, i.e. what I am wanting to bring to light here, is that you are endorsing such behavior as morally justifiable if and when God commands it.

Indeed, if the reason you are not following this command to execute children is simply because it happens to not be in force today, and not because you think it would be morally abhorrent to do so, then you really should not feel incredulous. It would only make sense to feel incredulous if I claimed you endorsed something that you found morally abhorrent.

My suspicion however is that the reason you felt incredulous is because you actually do find it morally abhorrent (I mean seriously, who wouldn't?). I think it would be helpful if you could acknowledge that. Throughout your conversation with Greg I was waiting for something like that from you. He kept bringing up really troubling things like divine commanded genocide and so on. I never heard you say “Yes, Greg, your reaction is valid. I really struggle with that, too. Here's how I try to understand it, which is a bit different from how you do...” Instead your responses all seemed like none of this troubled you, like a tennis player volleying back every shot that comes over the net. Like it was a game of sorts. Again, perhaps this all does in fact trouble you, but I saw no indication of this.

To be clear, my wish that you would acknowledge and validate much more than you do the legitimacy of people's shock and moral outrage in regards to these examples of divine commanded killing of children and infants is not so much about the merits of your arguments, and has more to do with effective communication. It just works better to validate others' views and feelings--especially ones that are deeply morally troubling--and makes it more likely that they will be open to hearing yours.  I think the lack of this, both in your books and interviews, is what leads me (perhaps incorrectly) to conclude that you have no moral problem with any of it. The impression given is that while immature Christians might struggle with such things, you demonstrate the model of the one who has it all figured out, the model of faith as certainty as an antidote to doubt. I would submit that when people are troubled by such profoundly immoral commands, it does not represent a weakness in their morals or faith, but instead is the result of adopting the heart of Jesus. That is, such moral doubts spring from developed empathy which in no way should be regarded as being in conflict with faith.

To be fair, you do speak theoretically of how we might find certain actions “troubling,” but this is in the context of arguing that we should do it anyway if it is a command. This brings me back to what I see as at the heart of the substance of your argument: The issue of making commands the sole criteria for moral evaluation. You make the point that there are some circumstances where it is morally justifiable to use coercive force. I fully grant that point. I can think of lots of examples myself. That, however, in no way means it logically follows that therefore it was okay to execute children for being disobedient or slaughter infants. The moral justification I believe you would give for both of these is that they were divine commands. As you say in Is God a Moral Monster? “Without God’s explicit command (and thus his morally sufficient reasons), attacking the Canaanites would not have been justified” (169). Again, the sole moral justification here is simply that it is a command. We don't know God's reasons, we just know the command. This is what I term the hermeneutic of unquestioning obedience.

You say that you seek to approach the OT as Jesus and the apostles did, but I don't think you actually are. Jesus taught his followers to not follow certain OT commands, rejecting the command “an eye for an eye” and teaching them instead to follow his way “but I say...” Paul told his churches that they were not under the law, i.e. not under commands, but under love. Jesus, when told that the law commands a woman be stoned to death, opted to disobey that command, and instead forgave her – which under the law there was absolutely no provision for with the sin of adultery. I could go on for pages and pages with examples of this, and if you are interested, I in fact do in my book Disarming Scripture.

The bottom line here is that both Jesus and Paul consistently approach faithfulness to Torah as being expressed not in blindly following the command, but rather in seeking to do what is loving and good and just – even if that meant going against a command. That's why Jesus was regarded by the authorities of his own religion as a lawbreaker. He prioritized the welfare of people over commands and laws. That's why he broke the Sabbath. That's why he touched the unclean (by law making himself unclean). That's why he fellowshipped with the “woman of ill-repute.” His understanding was that the purpose of the law was to lead us into loving action, and if in practice it turned out it was not leading to this, then our application of the law needed a course correction. As Jesus says “People are not made for the Sabbath, the Sabbath was made for people.” Likewise, the law is intended to be a means to help us to love, not something that binds us into doing things that are unloving and immoral. That's how I see Jesus and Paul's approach to the OT, and so I try to take that same approach with all of Scripture.

I hope from this is is apparent why I maintain that the way Jesus and Paul both interpreted and applied Scripture was the opposite of the hermeneutic of unquestioning obedience, and thus why I take such issue with your approach to Scripture.

Boyd and Copan's Unbelievable Debate, and the Problem of Unquestioning Obedience

Premier Christian Radio's show "Unbelievable" recently hosted part 1 of a 2-part debate  between Greg Boyd and Paul Copan, discussing Greg's book The Crucifixion of the Warrior God. Those of you who are familiar with my own  debate with Greg on this topic (which you can read here, here, here and here) know I have had my own critiques of Greg's approach to the problem of violence in Scripture, so let me begin here by saying that in comparison to Copan, Greg and I are totally on the same page. I thought Greg did a great job presenting and defending his position, and I encourage folks to have a listen.

What I noticed more than anything listening to the two talk is that Boyd and Copan have very different ways of reading the Bible. Boyd speaks of the "humanness" of the Bible and how his understanding of the incarnation allows for him to see the Bible as divine, even with its flawed human parts. This is very much in line with the approach outlined by Pete Enns in his book Inspiration and Incarnation which I see as a healthy and realistic approach to Scripture. Indeed, Boyd pastorally warns that people who look for a "perfect" Bible set themselves up for disappointment and even a challenge to their faith by expecting the Bible to be something that it is not.

On the opposite side is Copan who exhibits what I describe as the hermeneutic of "unquestioning obedience" where one uncritically accepts everything the Bible says, no matter how unloving or morally irresponsible that may be. For example, in the debate the subject of the OT command to kill children who are disobedient to their parents is brought up (Matthew 15:4, citing Exodus 21:17 and Leviticus 20:9). Greg somewhat incredulously suggests that no one in their right mind could seriously propose that we follow that today. Paul Copan however argues that since Jesus called this a "command"  this implies that Jesus endorsed it. QED: so does Paul Copan.

The idea that a 21st century theologian who is focused on ethics could with a straight face and zero sense of irony endorse the execution of children is of course just jaw-droppingly morally irresponsible--not to mention a truly atrocious reading of the passage (which I'll return to in a second)--but it illustrates what the hermeneutic of "unquestioning obedience" looks like in action. Copan seems oblivious to how morally problematic his reading is. That's the "unquestioning" part of the hermeneutic. What is the alternative hermeneutic that we see both Jesus and the Apostle Paul demonstrating in how they read Scripture? The hermeneutic of faithful questioning, and the key question is "how can I read this in a way that will result in loving action? In this case, as Greg points out, the key take-away is that actually killing children seems pretty obviously not the loving thing to do, and so Greg presses on to dig into the passage, trying to find a way to read it that does result in love. If you listen to the interview, I think you'll agree that Greg does a pretty good job with his reading.

Copan on the other hand does not wrestle to find the reading that results in love, but instead approaches the Bible with the assumption that everything it says is good, and thus looks for ways to argue that the profoundly immoral and unloving things we find in Scripture -- like killing disobedient children, like genocide, like cannibalism, like slavery, and on and on -- are actually good and right and God's will. More specifically, because the a priori assumption Copan works with is that everything in the Bible must be good, he encounters a problem when he gets to the New Testament. This is be because the NT as a whole, and the teaching of Jesus in particular, constitutes a healthy Jewish critique of the OT. I stress that this is a Jewish critique because Jesus here is following in the tradition found throughout the Old Testament of a healthy introspective critique of one's own religion and institutions and systems in the name of love. In other words, Jesus does not agree with everything in the OT, and in fact the OT often does not agree with itself. The prophets and Psalmists (not to mention Job) frequently question the law, and do so in the name of love. However, that is not in the realm of the possible for Copan. His assumption is that the Bible must harmonize, and so Jesus can't be disagreeing. The result of this reading (which is extremely common among neo-Calvinists) is to end up missing (kind of by design of how their hermeneutic functions) most of the major teachings of the NT in a pained attempt to read Scripture as if it all agrees. This is the approach identified in the interview as "synthesis" but in the end it mostly means accepting all the authoritarian and militaristic parts of the OT as good, and mostly ignoring the NT and the way of Jesus. In contrast to this, the aim of Boyd's "cruciform hermeneutic" is to do the opposite: He begins with the revelation of God in Christ crucified, and reads everything else in Scripture in that light.


What I want to stress here is that Copan's approach is not an exception, but characteristic of how most conservative evangelicals read Scripture. This is what conservative apologetics looks like: Faithfulness to Scripture is understood to mean justify everything in the Bible, no matter what.

Let me give another example from the interview of this. Boyd brings up the subject of the Amelikite genocide, where the Israelites slaughtered every living thing, including slaughtering infants, under the command to "show them no mercy." This for Boyd is a clear example of a deeply problematic violent text, and it's hard to imagine that anyone could possibly disagree with him. Copan's response is to pontificate on how sometimes we "need to defend the innocent." Sorry, what? Are we even having the same conversation? How in God's green earth is slaughtering infants "without mercy" an example of defending the innocent!? Again this is an example of how in Copan's hermeneutic absolutely everything is justified and defended. That's how faithfulness is understood.

It's not a very big step to go from this kind of cognitive dissonance in biblical interpretation, and carry this into the public sphere and politics. We recently have seen examples of this from folks like Jerry Falwell Jr, Franklin Graham, and most recently Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council who, in a truly mind-boggling interview (be sure to listen to the audio of the interview in the link above)  justifies everything Trump does (including committing adultery with a porn star), saying--much to the apparent shock of the interviewer--that Perkins sees no problem morally at all in any of this for him as an evangelical.

So there you have it: Copan justifies everything in his authoritative book, and Perkins justifies everything the authority (here in the form of the President) does. It's not hard to see how one leads to the next. Within authoritarian evangelicalism, those in authority are typically unquestioned, and even more so the system itself remains unquestioned. When this makes its way into the public sphere as it has now with Trump and evangelicals' overwhelming support, the hermeneutic of unquestioning obedience has given birth to a Frankenstein monster. But in this version of the story the villagers can't seem to recognize the monster.  As an article in the Washington Post puts it, "evangelicals have lost their gag-reflex," they have seemingly lost all ability to be introspective and reflect morally on who and what they endorse and represent. This is painfully obvious to everyone but conservative evangelicals themselves. They have come to champion all that is untrue, whatever is ignoble, whatever is not right, whatever is impure, whatever is unlovely, whatever is not admirable.

What we need to do instead, as morally responsible adults, is to learn how to reflect on our own lives, as well as reflect on our public institutions and systems and sacred texts. That kind of introspection is what allows us to grow and develop and heal and reform and repent. That is precisely what Jesus taught us to do.

The Psychology of Evil, Part 2: Moral Development

In part 1 of this series, I introduced psychologist Roy F. Baumeister's five roots of evil: predation, dominance, revenge, sadism, and ideology, specifically covering the last two, sadism, and ideology. In this second part, I will discuss the remaining roots.

Predation

This term simply refers to primitive drives of greed and lust. This is evil as a means to an end. I want what you have, so I take it by force. This is the most simplistic concept of crime, dating back to the Ten Commandments (thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet...). It is a concept of right and wrong that any child can understand, and indeed is what children learn in Kindergarten (don't hit, use your words...). In other words, the antidote to this type of harm is the natural process of developing socially--learning to share, cooperate, and so on. 

There is a connection here with social justice. For example the social dynamic in some U.S. inner cities is comparable to a failed state. When the police are not seen as serving and protecting, but are seen as a threat, the idea of "justice" is thus not entrusted to the state, and "gangs" take the role upon themselves. Since there is little hope of economic opportunity, people can feel that the normal social contract has failed them, and thus some feel compelled to take what they want by force. In other words, there is a correlation between individual justice and societal justice. The social contract which motivates a person to be social only makes sense if the society itself is indeed social. So if we want to see individual reform, an important part of this is working for societal reform. Impoverished areas all over the world lead to unstable and thus unsafe environments.

Dominance

Dominance is likewise related to moral development (or the lack thereof) and has a lot to do with one's self-esteem. We often think of a bully as someone with inflated self-esteem rather than low self-esteem. However, really what we have in a bully or egotist is a profoundly fragile self-esteem. They thus feel compelled to put other people down to feel superior. This fragile self-esteem is easily threatened, and the bully responds with acts of dominance -- put downs to belittle you, shame you, and in some cases with acts of violence.

The antidote again is moral/social development. For example, as I explained in Disarming Scripture, restorative justice programs like RSVP work with society's most violent men — wife beaters, murderers, and gang bangers — helping them to become self-reflective, developing empathy, and finding healthy ways of managing their emotions. These violent men learn for the first time how to maintain their own dignity and respect without demeaning or harming others. The results are striking: The RSVP program boasts a staggering 80% reduction of violent recidivism.

Additionally, the RSVP program has seen a dramatic reduction of inmate violence as well, not only making society safer, but making the guards safer as well. Usually in prisons we of course do the opposite. We attempt to teach people not to dominate... by dominating them. This leads to violence in prisons (which endangers both inmates and guards), as well as to a high recidivism rate, leading to a "revolving-door" prison system. That's because our prison system is about punishment rather than reform. It dehumanizes people. Restorative justice programs like RSVP offer some light here, but ultimately the view of society needs to change. As long as we think prison needs to be a place where "criminals should suffer" we will support the perpetuation of this spiral of violence. That brings us to our next root cause of evil, revenge.

Revenge

Revenge is about the cycle escalating retaliation. As humans, we naturally have an impulse for revenge. As Pinker says, "Revenge is an easily pushed button in everyone's brains." In other words, the drive for revenge is biological, related to our self-preservation. 

For me, understanding this biological aspect was tremendously helpful. It meant that when I felt the desire for revenge when I was wronged, this did not mean that I was not really following Jesus, or that I still had "sin living in me" as Paul puts it. This is simply a biological reaction. It is biologically programmed into all of us as a means of self-preservation. The question of moral development, and the question that has to do with me being faithful to the way of Jesus, is what I then do with that drive for retaliation. Am I driven by it, or do I master it? Can I rise above it and look for a better way of resolving conflict? In other words, it's not the impulse, but what I do with it. Simply put, a big part of maturing is learning impulse control.

Of all of these above roots of evil, revenge may be the hardest to overcome for us because it is still seen as a virtue in many societies today. We think of predation as criminal, and dominance as characterizing bullies and tyrants. But we often still equate revenge with justice--especially in American society. So while we generally see predation and dominance as bad, revenge is the one root of evil that is still seen as a virtue. This cultural value is reinforced constantly by nearly every action movie ever made where revenge is made synonymous with justice. It takes a lot of moral imagination to rise above that, because it means rising above the moral imagination of our contemporary society.

One powerful movement away from this is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which was was set up in South Africa after the abolition of apartheid in 1994 to deal with the violence and human rights abuses that had occurred from all sides. One of the key elements of the TRC was uncompromising truth-telling. So often our legal system is focused on the opposite. If you admit guilt you are punished, so the accused never admit what they did. A typical condition of a legal settlement is that the corporation makes no admission of wrong-doing. Similarly, there is the constant spin of politicians and corporations doing "damage control" in an attempt to hide wrong-doing. But when we are wronged, we humans desperately need to hear an admission of this. We need this more than we need punishment or payment. If that's true on an individual level, it is even more so on a societal level. That's why governments and corporations fight so hard against it.

Another important principle of the TRC was the idea of incomplete (retributive) justice. There was retributive justice, but not in a way that was proportionate to the crimes committed. In one sense it was just impractical to jail everyone who took part in Apartheid. So in the interest of healing the nation they gave amnesty to most, only punishing the most severe crimes. That may seem shocking to many of us. It can feel like they "got away with it." But I'd suggest the place we need to look is not to our immediate emotional response, but the long term results. As imperfect as this justice may feel, the practical question is whether this allow us to go on as a society. Does this allow us to heal? Does it allow us to move towards repair? Does it lead us away from harm? As Amos Oz, referring to the seemingly never-ending Palestinian/Israeli conflict, puts it,

"Tragedies can be resolved in one of two ways: there is the Shakespearean resolution and there is the Chekhovian one. At the end of Shakespearean tragedy the stage is strewn with dead bodies and maybe a sense of justice hovering high above. A Chekhov tragedy, on the other hand, ends with everybody disillusioned, embittered, heartbroken, disappointed, absolutely shattered, but still alive. I want a Chekhovian resolution, not a Shakespearean one."

Conclusion

Commenting on the 1961 trial of Adolph Eichmann, Hannah Arendt coined the now famous idea of the "banality of evil." Evil is boring and stupid. She applied this to one of the key figures of the Holocaust, and while many have taken issue with her assessment (there certainly were aspects of the holocaust that were sadistic) what we can perhaps agree on is that evil's roots are found in very basic characteristics that all of us are susceptible to. As Solzhenitsyn so powerfully said in The Gulag Archipelago, "the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."


The three roots of evil we have explored here, predation, dominance, revenge all have in common a connection to basic human social development. In other words, the antidote to all of these evils is helping people to mature socially. As discussed in part 1, sadism is not actually a root, but rather an outgrowth of evil. This leaves us with the fourth root of evil, (authoritarian) ideology, which is a social framework that endorses harm as good. In other words, (authoritarian) ideology is a morally and socially underdeveloped view of the world which seeks to paint predation, dominance and revenge as good and admirable. We instead need to first recognize that all of us can easily fall prey to these egotistical and immature impulses -- we are not immune.  Second, having embraced a morally and socially mature view of the world, we need to seek growth both as individuals and as a society together, seeking to grow towards helping rather than harming, towards repair rather than revenge.

The Psychology of Evil, Part 1: The Myth of Pure Evil

Hannibal Lecter, Freddie Krueger, Dracula, Darth Vader, Cruella de Vil. We are all familiar with the myth of pure evil in Hollywood movies. It's a myth both because it serves as a literary device for the stories that shape how we see our world, and also because it is not true. It represents a naive cartoon understanding of what evil actually is.

Don't get me wrong, evil is real. People do really horrible, unspeakable, awful things to other people. If we can understand what leads a person to do that, then we can also discover how to move in the opposite direction, how we can grow and develop morally and socially--collectively and individually--towards being move loving, more just.

One of the key tenets of the myth of pure evil is other-izing, de-humanizing. When we refer to a person as a "monster" it is implied that they do not need to be treated as human. That allows us to treat them inhumanly, and then we ourselves commit evil actions, while thinking that we had no other choice, and perhaps telling ourselves that what we are doing is good and just. So we see our enemies as monsters and do horrible things to them, and they see us do that and think we are monsters, and thus feel justified in doing horrible things to us.

The problem with this cartoon depiction of evil is that it does not help us to break out of these cycles, and in fact contributes to keeping us locked in them. It's a fairy-tale world where we are the good guys and they are the bad guys. That's the opposite of being introspective and self-aware. What I hope to do instead is take a realistic and deep look at the reality of human evil that is a part of all of us, in the hopes of finding how we can move towards being good in a realistic and deep way.

Based on the work of psychologist Roy F. Baumeister, Steven Pinker, in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature identifies five roots of evil: predation, dominance, revenge, sadism, and ideology. In the first part of this series I will discuss the last two of these, sadism and ideology. When you think of ideology, think Isis. When you think sadism, think Charles Manson. Hollywood and the news media are obsessed with these stories of terrorists and psychopaths. I suspect they do this because it reflects our own obsession. These are the things of our real life nightmares. This is the kind of evil that leaves us baffled, perplexed and horrified. The problem is that the media tells us this story with very little reflection or insight because it’s an easy headline to write. “If it bleeds it leads” they say. This stokes our fear, rather than helping us to gain insight.

Let's begin with taking a look at sadism. Despite its frequent depiction in movie villains, sadism—taking pleasure in hurting and killing others--is actually quite rare. Baumeister explains that sadism is something that one develops into, much like drug addition. Studies have found that, of those actively engaged in violence, only around 5% become sadists. What keeps 95% of people from sadism, Baumeister says, is our sense of guilt.

Whether that sense of guilt is in-built, the product of culture, or a mix of both is not entirely clear. What we do know is that, as mentioned above, only a very small percentage of those participating in violence come to enjoy it. We also know that in the past it was common for people to do sadistic things as a culture. One example is the torture of animals for entertainment. Pinker gives several accounts of how animals, dogs and cats in particular, were brutally tortured as a means of public entertainment in Medieval times. This might indicate that where cultural taboos are absent, more people can develop sadistic tendencies unhindered by guilt.

The idea of someone taking pleasure in hurting others seems to represent what our cliché of pure evil looks like. Think of the Disney villain with his classic mwa-ha-ha-ha! maniacal laugh, and we have the cartoon version of sadism. The “thriller” movie version is only slightly more complex, sometimes it is even less complex. As mentioned previously, this cliché reflects our need to make sense of what seems "monstrous" to us. We watch these “monster movies” to try to process our fears. Unfortunately these movies typically re-enforce our ignorance. To be fair, many Disney movies (for example Zootopia) have actively moved away from that, addressing issues of racism and prejudice in a cartoon. I can’t say the same for action movies.

So what do we do with sadism? First we need to realize that even when the media give us the impression that it’s everywhere – every second headline seems to be about this. We know that it is actually very very rare. It’s also important to note that Baumeister concludes that sadism is not so much a root cause of evil, but rather a byproduct, entering the picture after evil (that is, actively torturing and killing others) is already in progress. It is something that a very small percentage of people have the potential for, perhaps we might even see it as a perversion of sorts. But it is not a root cause, it is not where evil starts. So if we are seeking to find the root causes of evil, the root that it grows from, we will need to look further.

This brings us to the second category: Ideology. Ideology and its connection to violence is something I have discussed at length in Disarming Scripture, and often on this blog. I refer to this as the way of “unquestioning obedience” and have often warned of its potential to lead to violence. As Pascal says, “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”

One might say that ideology acts as an antidote to moral conscience. It gets us to turn off our brains and hearts, to shut off our compassion and common sense, thinking that we are doing this “for God.” This can lead parents to harm the children they love, thinking that they are doing God's will or being true to the Bible. It has, as a matter of history, led many pious and idealistic people to commit horrific atrocities in the name of their god or political ideology.

It’s easy to look at groups like Isis and think that we would never be like that. However, studies like the infamous Milgram experiment reveal that the average person is disturbingly capable of hurting others in order to conform to authority. Most of us just go with the crowd -- whether that's in the halls of our high school, at our fundamentalist church, or somewhere else where the stakes are higher.

That's why it's so important to learn to think for yourself, to question, and perhaps most of all, to develop moral courage. If we don’t stand up in the little things, will we stand up for the big things? It’s easy to spot the evil of fanatical extremist ideology in another religion or another nation, and I certainly do not want to deny that this truly is evil. The true test however is whether we are able to stand up to authoritarianism and demagoguery when it wraps itself in our flag and claims our religion.

People often ask me how to deal with things like Muslim extremism. I have focused mainly on Christianity because that is my own faith. So I begin with looking at myself and my own tribe. But the answer to how to deal with Muslim extremism is the same as how we deal with Christian extremism. Fundamentalism is the same is any religion. The antidote to this non-thinking non-empathetic ideology is of course to learn how to have a thinking faith, how to be introspective and reflective, how to grow in empathy and moral maturity.

In understanding ideology as one of the roots from which evil grows, the key takeaway is to recognize that it is therefore not something that we only find in those monstrous bad guys “over there.” It is something that we all, as humans, are susceptible to. Put in the right circumstances we might find ourselves doing the same thing that the people in the Milgram experiment found themselves doing. Denying this does not make us immune. On the contrary, to the extent that we are unreflected about this potential in us, we are all the more susceptible to it. Only by facing these tendencies in us head-on, and actively deciding to move in the opposite direction, can we counter it. In the case of ideology that means, among other things, actively questioning authority and learning to think morally for ourselves. We need to practice it in the little things—among our peers, at school or work or church—if we hope to have the civil courage to take a stand for bigger things.

The Crucifixion of the Warrior God and the Myth of Redemptive Violence

This is part four of a series I have been doing on Greg Boyd’s Crucifixion of the Warrior God. Here are links to the other parts: Part1, Part2, Part3. Greg has also responded to these.

Volume I of Greg’s book lays out the foundation of his “Cruciform Hermeneutic,” and Volume II proposes how to apply that hermeneutic in a four-part “Cruciform Thesis.” The first part of Greg’s four part thesis is the principle of Cruciform Accommodation, which I discussed in my previous post. I noted there that I saw some issues with how Greg is understanding the cross that I did not really unpack there. My aim is to address that in this post now, focusing on the second part of Greg’s thesis, which he terms Redemptive Withdrawal.

The Cross as Punitive Violence

The Principle of Redemptive Withdrawal is grounded in an understanding of the cross where “the Son bore the judgment of the sin we deserved” (768). This reflects a penal substitutionary understanding of the cross, the key term here being “penal,” meaning punishment. I should note that Greg does not like the term penal substitution, and does make a point of stating that he rejects the popular form of this doctrine where “the Father had to vent his wrath against sin in order to embrace sinners” (796), arguing instead that “God’s punishments are always redemptive in intent” (785). In other words, he still holds to an understanding of the atonement rooted in punitive justice (the idea that things are made right through violent punishment), but sees the intent of the violence as restorative (or as Greg calls it, "redemptive"), rather than as retributive.

I'll return to the idea of violence being “restorative” later, but for now let's simply focus on the notion of the cross being understood in terms of punitive justice, and what this understanding looks like when it is applied as the lens to interpret OT passages which view natural disasters, genocide, and cannibalism as acts of God's judgment. Despite having earlier declared such depictions to be “sinful” and false representations of God, using this punitive understanding of the cross Greg now declares that a cruciform reading of these violent accounts does see them as ultimately good and just. For example, speaking of the biblical flood, he states, “this flood reflects a genuine judgment of God. The only thing that conflicts with God’s revelation on the cross is the manner in which this author ascribes the violence in the judgment directly to God” (526).

This focus constitutes the “withdrawal” element in Greg’s principle of Redemptive Withdrawal. Greg affirms that the violent accounts are correctly seen as God’s just judgment for sin, as the texts claim. He only denies the claim of the text that God was directly involved in committing the violence. Instead, he maintains that God simply “withdraws” his protection, allowing other “agents” to commit the violence, thereby enacting God’s judgment for sin. Speaking of the Canaanite genocide he writes,

“God decided, with a grieving heart, to withdraw his protective presence... Reflecting the same Aikido-like strategy that was employed on the cross, God would now use the evil of the Israelite’s disobedient reliance on the sword to punish the evil of the Canaanites wickedness and idolatry” (982).

Note that Greg refers to using other agents (in this case humans) to carry out God’s violent judgment in the form of genocide as “Aikido-like” here. What does he mean by this? Greg clarifies that while Aikido practitioners have the goal “of bringing as little harm to their opponent as possible” this minimizing of harm is apparently not something that God is concerned with. Greg explains, in contrast to these Aikido practitioners, “God is not adverse to allowing evil-doers to suffer the full destructive consequences of their own sin.” He further clarifies “The point of the Aikido analogy is that God himself never needs to actively engage in violence” (769, n6).

At this point one may be wondering how any of this can possibly be seen as congruent with the nonviolent understanding of God that Boyd laid out so carefully as the foundation of his Cruciform Hermeneutic throughout volume I of this work. Greg explains that based on his understanding of the cross as an act of divine punishment, “it becomes evident that not only can a nonviolent God judge sin, but the ‘wrath’ of this nonviolent God against sin is no less severe than it would be if God did engage in violence. It is just that whatever violence is involved... is carried out by created agents” (782).

What we can observe here is that when a cruciform reading is shaped by a punitive understanding of the cross, the result is to affirm the most extreme violence (global flood, genocide) as being just and good judgments. The resulting “nonviolent” God is therefore just as violent as the warrior god. The only substantive difference is that Greg apparently believes that God is absolved from any moral responsibility by not directly committing the violence entailed in these acts of divine judgment. As he puts it, “the distinction between what God does and what he merely allows removes culpability from God” (720, n29).

I disagree. Mob bosses and war lords commonly have people assassinated and slaughtered without directly participating in the killing. We would certainly not consider them innocent. Anticipating this type of objection, Boyd imagines that someone might compare these “indirect” judgments of God to a person unleashing “a rabid pit bull” on someone (902). That person would be responsible for the harm inflicted by the dog, even though they were not personally involved in the attack. Likewise, “if God unleashed violent nations for the purpose of having them afflict another nation, one could argue that he is responsible for the suffering that the violent nation brings about” (902).

Acknowledging that this is a “formidable objection,” Greg offers a four-point response. First, he argues, since sin is a matter of “pushing God away,” God’s withdrawal must be seen as “a decision to give people what they want” (903), and one does not ask to be attacked by the pit bull. The second point Greg makes is “this is what they deserve” (903) so it is a just punishment (think genocide as you read that). Third, God inflicts his violent judgments “in the hope that their suffering will teach them what God’s mercy will not” (904), although in the context of God’s judgment consisting of the “slaughter of entire populations” (983) it’s hard to imagine how that teaching moment is supposed to work exactly when they are all dead. Forth, he argues that “since God’s very being is unsurpassable love, the pain he experiences when people are afflicted, even when they deserve it, is unfathomably greater than the pain experienced by others who love these people, or by the people themselves” (904).

So in sum: (1) You asked for it. (2) You had it coming. (3) This will teach you, and (4) This hurts me more that it hurts you. While this may sound like some people’s fathers, it sounds nothing like the one to whom Jesus prayed “Our Father who art in heaven.” Note, too, that all of these points involve arguing that the violence is justified, and none address whatsoever the issue of moral responsibility.

The analogy of the pit bull is apt because, as Greg notes, the nations in their blood lust often went overboard in their violence, much like a “rabid pit bull” is completely out of control once you “withdraw” your hand from its leash. Far from being absolved from responsibility, I think it is pretty clear that were a parent to unleash a rabid pit bull on a disobedient child, this would be morally exponentially worse than it would be for them to beat the child with their own hand (which is of course also bad). So I must reject this concept of “withdrawal” as a means of avoiding responsibility. It simply does not hold water. God is morally responsible for what God does, whether directly or indirectly, just as we are.

Moreover, I maintain that the picture of God in Christ crucified is not one of withdrawal because of our sin, but just the opposite. It is a picture of "God with us," God in Christ entering into all of our brokenness and darkness and hurt. It is God in Christ “becoming sin” so that we can become “the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21). It is God stooping down to us in our depths. As David says, “Even if I make my bed in the depths of hell, you are with me” (Ps 139:8). We should therefore not be talking about “redemptive withdrawal” with Christ as our image of God, indeed with Christ crucified. The cross, understood as an expression of restorative rather than punitive justice, is a picture of redemptive union with humanity in the very depths of our sin and wretchedness. It is God entering into our abandonment like the father finding the prodigal son among the pig slop and embracing him there. At the moment Christ called out “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!” God was in Christ on the cross, and likewise when we most feel abandoned, God is there. As Paul writes,

"I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom 8:38-39)

You've heard it said, “God can’t be where there is sin,” but I say in Christ crucified we see that this is exactly where God is, and where God has always been.

“Redemptive” Violence

Let’s turn to focus on the “redemptive” aspect of Redemptive Withdrawal. To illustrate this, Greg cites Lev 26:16-45. This passage consists of God repeatedly threatening escalations of violence and terror if the Israelites do not repent. Here’s a sample,

“I will bring on you sudden terror, wasting diseases and fever that will destroy your sight and sap your strength...

‘If after all this you will not listen to me, I will punish you for your sins seven times over… I will send wild animals against you, and they will rob you of your children, destroy your cattle and make you so few in number that your roads will be deserted.

If in spite of these things you do not accept my correction but continue to be hostile toward me, I will send a plague among you, and you will be given into enemy hands.

If in spite of this you still do not listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me... I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over. You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters.” (Lev 26:16-27)

While he does mention certain “aspects of these judgments to reflect the pre-Christian perspective of the author,” mentioning cannibalism specifically as an example, Greg nevertheless declares, “I believe the motivation this passage ascribes to God... is a direct revelation. For what drives the escalating judgment is God’s hope to restore his people” (791).

I do not doubt that this was the ancient author’s motivation behind these threats of horrifying violence. However, we should seriously question the notion that inflicting violent physical harm and emotional trauma is “redemptive” in any way. Greg is certainly correct that these stories reflect the “pre-Christian perspective of the author” in regards to cannibalism, but he is apparently missing that it also reflects the ancient perspective of people who commonly practiced what we would today regard as criminal child abuse, seeing this violence as redemptive. As William Webb has outlined in his study of corporal punishment and the Bible, the Old Testament calls for striking a child with a whip or rod on the back or sides. Because this is where the internal organs are located, this would likely result in internal bleeding as well as welts and bruises. While leaving such marks on a child’s body would be legal grounds for charges of child abuse today, people at the time believed that inflicting such wounds was healing and redemptive. As Proverbs puts it, “Blows and wounds scrub away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being” (Prov 20:30). This reflects the common understanding of people at the time, and here this abusive understanding is being projected onto God unknowingly by this biblical author. They did not know any better. We, however, living in the 21st century, really should.

So what do we do with the violent judgments of God found throughout the Old Testament? We do what Greg proposed in volume I, we repudiate them as incongruent with Christ crucified, “Any conception that characterizes God’s power in terms of coercive control rather than self-sacrificial love must be identified as an all too common anthropomorphic projection onto God” (196). As Greg writes in his reply to me,

“My entire thesis is predicated on the insistence that the violent judgments of God cannot be justified, let alone made to look ‘loving and just’! Indeed, I argue that it is only when we abandon all attempts to justify them that we can see how these violent portraits bear witness to the cross.”

Precisely. We will not find God behind the violent judgments portrayed in the Old Testament. These reflect the image of a punitive warrior god. If we want to find Christ in these passages, we must look for the victims, the scapegoats in these texts. That is where you will find Christ crucified, deeply buried.

Conclusion

What began as a project to interpret Scripture through a cruciform lens is undermined by a punitive understanding of the cross. This is not a Girardian view of the atonement which seeks to unmask sacred violence, rather the principle of Redemptive Withdrawal makes the case for sacred violence. The principle of Redemptive Withdrawal is quite literally a perpetuation of what Walter Wink called the myth of redemptive violence. 

At the root of all of this is an understanding of the cross based on punitive justice. As we have seen here, this leads to calling horrific violence just and restorative. What is needed is a non-punitive understanding of the cross resulting in a truly nonviolent cruciform hermeneutic. I have attempted to work out such a non-punitive understanding of the cross in my book Healing the Gospel.

In the end, there is simply no room for violence in the economy of God. But I do not need to appeal here to Wink or Girard to make this claim. I can look directly to the work of Greg Boyd, and in fact I can look to this very work, volume I. 

“The indiscriminate love and unconditional nonviolence reflects the essence of who God is, and thus reflects the character of all God does. God can therefore no more act violently than God can lie or deny himself” (226).

“If we understand God completely in light of what happened on the cross... we can only conclude it is contrary to God’s very nature to engage in violence.” (225).

That means that we can look at God's actions and have them model how we should act. 

“On the cross, Jesus fully displayed God’s self-sacrificial, enemy-embracing, nonviolent character, and the church is called and empowered to embody this same character” (205).

To understand God correctly is to understand that God looks like Jesus. If we have seen Jesus, we have seen the Father. Both are equally examples of enemy love.

“Jesus predicates his command to love indiscriminately and to refrain from all violence... on the fact that this alone reflects the character of the Father.” (224-225)

So when we see images of a god who punishes—even if this is done with “redemptive intent”—we must recognize that this is not a cruciform Jesus-shaped understanding of God, and must therefore be repudiated as the false warrior god, a god made in our own image. In the cross we see that God does not overcome evil with evil, God overcomes evil with good.

In conclusion, let me stress that the issues I have laid out here have to do with the specific punitive understanding of the cross that Greg set forth with his principle of Redemptive Withdrawal. As I have outlined here, I see severe problems with that principle and believe it should be abandoned. However, I very much agree with the idea of reading all of Scripture through a cruciform lens.

On a personal note, Greg had wondered in his response to my reviews whether I was upset with him for his criticism of my work which he laid out in chapter 8 of his book. Greg, let me assure you that I am not. On the contrary, I appreciate you pushing me to not stop at repudiation of these violent portraits, but to go further from there, digging deeper to find Christ. I hear you, and I believe your principle of Cruciform Accommodation is a viable approach to doing this, so long as it is disentangled from a punitive understanding of the cross. I hope that what I have said here can be taken constructively, and ultimately serve to strengthen Greg's wider project of reading all of Scripture with cruciform eyes.

A Theological Review of the Crucifixion of the Warrior God (part 3)

Must there be skate goats?

This post is part 3 in a series reviewing Greg Boyd’s The Crucifixion of the Warrior God. In Part1 I cited lots of quotes from the book that I liked. In Part2 I respond to Greg's critique of me (which I did not like).

In this post I would like to offer a theological and ethical review of the central argument of The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, noting some problems I see and proposing possible solutions to them. I’ll begin with a broad overview of the argument in the book. The first 10 chapters of volume I set up the problem which, simply put, is that genocide and Jesus don’t mix. Boyd thus proposes reading Scripture through the lens of Christ crucified, understood in terms of self-sacrificing nonviolent enemy-love. The last two chapters of volume I present Boyd’s proposed solution, a “Cruciform Hermeneutic” which seeks to show how we can find the love of Jesus in these OT portraits of God’s violence. This is then further developed in the first two chapters of volume II (ch 13 & 14).

Boyd admits that these OT texts—as the biblical author intended them to be understood, and insofar as what the texts actually say and promote—do, in fact, present a “revolting” portrait of an enemy-hating violent “warrior” God, and are used to justify horrific violence being committed in God’s name. Examples given of this divine violence found in the OT include genocide, cannibalism, and public gang rape. Citing these disturbing examples, Boyd proposes that in the very ugliness of such passages we can see Christ’s beauty, just as we see this in the ugliness of the cross. For example, he cites the prophet Nathan’s decree of God’s punishment of king David (2 Sam 12:11), noting that this divine punishment consists of the “public raping of a multitude of unfortunate women” (718). Boyd first proposes that, in light of the cross, we know that God is in fact “outraged” by this, and further declares that this passage of Scripture reflects the “twisted and culturally conditioned heart of the biblical author” (719), which is clearly a “sub-Christlike portrait” (720). However, he continues, when read through “the lens of the cross” we can discern how this story of divine-decreed rape “bears witness to the same sin-bearing faithfulness that God displayed on the cross” (720).

The problem with this, of course, is that it does not. This is categorically not a parallel to the cross, but its polar opposite. This is something that Boyd acknowledges as he develops this in volume 2, stating that these violent OT passages present God as “a perpetrator of violence” whereas on the cross we see God as “a victim of violence on Calvary” (642). So despite his earlier claim in volume I that “we discern him in these literary crucifixes in the exact same way we discern him in the historical crucifixion” (511, emphasis added), he acknowledges here in volume II that these are in fact not parallels, but, rather obviously, complete opposites.

Behind all this appears to be a fundamental misunderstanding of how the cross functions as an expression of non-violent enemy-love. Properly understood, the cross is about seeing God in Jesus as the innocent victim of violence. In contrast, these OT depictions present God as the alleged perpetrator of violence. While both are indeed ugly, they are absolutely and in no way parallel. For instance, the above example of God’s punishment of David’s sin is clearly not a story of God “bearing sin” at all, but of God allegedly decreeing the sin of rape, portrayed as just punishment. Simply put: Seeing God in Jesus as the victim of religious and political violence, and seeing God in the Old Testament as the perpetrator of that violence are not parallels, they are polar opposites.

As the Gospels stress, Jesus on the cross is falsely accused of sin, not by God but by the religious and political powers. Through the cross, as Paul says, those powers are thus exposed as unjust, including unveiling their violence as unjust. This represents a Girardian reading of the cross, and in this same section of his book Boyd continues on to favorably reference Girard, affirming this understanding of the atonement (696-697). He quotes Walter Wink who states,

“The violence of Scripture, so embarrassing to us today, became the means by which the sacred violence was revealed for what it is: a lie perpetrated against victims in the name of a God who, through violence, was working to expose violence for what it is and to reveal the divine nature as nonviolent.” (697)

Read out of context one can see how the above quote does sound a lot like what Boyd is proposing. However, Wink is not claiming, as Boyd is, that these violent OT depictions of God as the perpetrator of gang rape, cannibalism, and genocide are in themselves “a testament to God’s covenantal faithfulness and his self-sacrificial, sin-bearing nature” (689) either on the “surface” or with a “deeper” reading. In contrast to Boyd’s going “deeper,” Wink (following Raymund Schwager and Girard) instead proposes a reading that I will describe as looking wider, understanding these violent passages in the larger context of the whole story of the Bible which culminates in Jesus. I therefore wish to propose that we can find a way in Wink, Schwager, and Girard’s looking wider to see how even these dark passages can, when read through the lens of Christ, play a vital and revelatory part in the wider context of the entire canon of Scripture, leading us to Christ. Allow me to unpack this a bit...

Throughout the multivocal Old Testament we encounter many conflicting and contradictory voices, each claiming to speak for God. Many, as we have seen, claim that God commands horrific violence. However we also find minority voices within that same Hebrew canon which give voice to the victim of violence. As Wink says, the OT can be thus understood as “a long and laborious exodus out of the world of violence and sacred projections, an exodus plagued with many reversals and falling short of its goal” (Engaging the Powers, 146). As Girard asserts, it is not until Jesus that the scapegoating mechanism is fully revealed and exposed. We can thus look back from Jesus and see these violent passages, which project human violence onto God, serving now with opened eyes to mirror our own proclivity to make violence sacred. These disturbing passages therefore stand as a record of how religious people like you and me can use God to justify our hate and violence.

If we look only at a particular passage of Scripture in isolation, portraying God as violent, it is simply not true that it shows us Christ’s self-sacrificial love. If you dig deep here it becomes no less ugly. In such passages we see our sin mirrored, and specifically we see the sin of religiously justified violence mirrored before us. This is revelatory when read in this way in the light of Christ, and I stress that it is not what the original authors intended. We can thus, as Boyd proposes, see here a divine revelatory intent in that, when we read these passages in light of Christ, we can now see them exposed as sinful projections. The original authors of course, themselves, under the grip of the lie of redemptive violence, intended these judgments to be seen as good and right. Through the perspective of the cross we now can see that they instead reflect the sin of religiously justified violence.

These violent passages mark the point on that exodus story when we are still in bondage to the lie that violence will save us. It is the point in the story when we are still blind like Saul. However, when we learn to read wide by beginning with the perspective of Jesus opening our eyes to the lie of redemptive violence, we can then look back and discern all of Scripture chronicling humanity’s messy and often failing struggle to break free of this lie. That of course is not to say that we are today somehow beyond it, nor to say that we as Christians are immune. On the contrary, seeing violence as “good” and “just” still grips us as a society today, particularly in America. Indeed, one could say that more than 80% of white evangelicals are deeply under this spell today. God revealed in Christ crucified, understood from a Girardian frame, unmasks that lie. Our eyes are opened to seeing that the way of Jesus is the way of God and the way of violence and power are not. To truly see this is amazing, revelatory. With opened eyes, these dark passages serve as a permanent reminder documenting the sinfulness and profound hurt that comes through religion, lest we ever think we are immune.

Whether or not Greg will find this approach compelling I cannot say. But while I find significant problems with his particular solution, as I have outlined here, I do see something worth salvaging in his larger project of developing a cruciform hermeneutic, and hope that others may find the solution of looking wider, found in the Girardian perspective of Wink and others, to be a viable means to do this. In other words, my intent is to provide a means to overcome the shortcomings of Boyd’s good proposal, in the hopes of furthering it. I believe that when we learn to look wide through the eyes of Jesus we can indeed see how even the most disturbing parts of Scripture can have a revelatory content that ultimately points us to Christ, just as seeing our own sin exposed drives us to the cross.

I wish I could stop here, but I cannot, because Boyd does not. Volume II continues for another 11 chapters (ch 15-25) presenting an apologetic for God’s violent judgments in the OT as loving and just, seemingly taking a u-turn from the nonviolent course Boyd had been establishing up to this point in the book. You can read that part here.

UPDATE: Greg has responded to this post on his blog. The main substance of his reply focuses on our differing understandings of how the cross functions. Greg seems a bit perplexed and that is probably my fault as I do not really unpack this in the above post here. In the next installment of this series, part4, I deal with this extensively, and hopefully this will serve to clear things up, explaining the difficulties I see in regards to Greg's understanding of the cross, and how this impacts how he then reads violent OT passages with that lens. Since the foundation of Greg's entire hermenutical approach is rooted in the cross, we definitively need to get that understanding right.

Since Greg's reply to me I've been thinking about the principle of Cruciform Accommodation and how these OT texts might be read through the same Girardian frame that the Gospel writers used to understand the crucifixion.

I still don't think it makes sense to draw a parallel between Jesus (as the victim of violence) and Yahweh (being the perpetrator of violence), even if we agree that both are falsely accused. The parallel would be between Yahweh in the OT who is falsely seen as behind the violence, and God the Father in the NT who is also falsely seen as behind the crucifixion (which is how Rome and advocates of PSA would see it). In other words, I think that Greg is right in saying that we can legitimately see Yahweh in the OT as being falsely accused of being the perpetrator, but I don't think this is where we find Christ in the story, at least not if we are reading with a Girardian frame...

Basically we look at who in the story plays the role of the righteous authority, and in the Girardian reading that authority is unmasked as being illegitimate. In the NT the authority that executed Jesus is delegitimized (i.e. the cross was not just) and in the OT the slaughter of the Canaanites was also delegitimized as an unjust judgment. In both we can say that the God figure behind all this is falsely portrayed, and is instead of being with the perpetrators is with the victims of that violence done in the name of justice.

That's where God in heaven is in these stories. However, if we want to find Christ, I'd say we need to ask who the scapegoat is in the story. Who is the victim of violence who is being described as bad and deserving of death? In this story it is obviously the Canaanites who are being scapegoated. Just as we find God in Christ on the cross, so too we find God among all those who are scapegoated.