Photo credit: Image by me, Getty Museum, January 2011
I’ve been struggling of late with my knowledge of the violent God who exists in the Old Testament. I am a follower of Jesus, and in the pages of the New Testament, I discover God walking around on earth in the person of Jesus Christ.
In this Jesus, I discover the fullness of love. I discover a God who teaches and embodies peace, forgiveness, and reconciliation. I discover a God who bears burdens gladly. I discover a God who forgives all enemies.
But in the pages of the Old Testament, I discover a different kind of God. Here, I find a God who chooses favorites. I find a God who chose Israel and no one else. I find a God who decimated whole cities and countries because they lived lawlessly or opposed God’s chosen nation.
One God exhibiting quite different attributes between each testament.
I don’t say any of this to be flippant or disrespect my God. I truly want to understand what this means and why it is, and I’ve been asking God to help me understand. I’m writing about it here for two reasons:
- To continue chronicling the reality of this very real journey I keep walking into nonviolence, including all its questions and difficulties.
- To learn what you might say. Have you ever struggled with this subject?
I’ve wrestled with this question for over two years. Quite early in my journey, actually, I wrote a piece called “What About the Violent God of the Old Testament?” on another online space I maintain, and I continue to wonder if the place I landed at the end of that piece isn’t the most orthodox place to land: that perhaps in the death of Jesus, the full justice of God was truly satisfied. This means God no longer has reason to administer justice in the ways he used to do.
As I share at the end of that piece, this brings with it its own fair share of new questions, and there are questions I have about that which weren’t even raised in that article.
But even if it is true that this is what happened to make God “change” when it came to Jesus, that still left thousands upon thousands of people in the hands of an angry God. All those people who lived and died before Jesus walked the earth lived under the wrath of a God who administered such grave justice.
I get that God is just. I get that such a supreme being bears the high standards of perfection. And yet still, my heart breaks at the reality of what that means.
A couple weeks ago, for instance, I read the Passover account in the book of Exodus. This is where God “passes over” those houses of the people of Israel when he comes in wrath against the citizens of Egypt and all their first-born sons. In one night, all the first-born sons in the houses of Egypt died.
That same day, I read the following psalm:
What a stack of blessing you have piled up for those who worship you,
Ready and waiting for all who run to you
to escape an unkind world.
You hide them safely away from the opposition.
As you slam the door on those oily, mocking faces,
you silence the poisonous gossip . . .
Love God, all you saints;
God takes care of all who stay close to him.
But he pays back in full
those arrogant enough to go it alone.
– Psalm 31:19-20, 23 (The Message)
Earlier in my faith journey, I used to read these kinds of passages and find great comfort and solace in them. They told me of a God who cares for those who love and follow him. They told me that those who mocked and scorned me for my faith wouldn’t keep their days of herald forever.
But today, it’s not like that at all.
Today, I read these passages and weep. I weep for those God killed in the Passover. I weep for those parents who lost those sons. I weep for all the people who lost their lives because of the anger and judgment of the God I serve. Such weeping for those I would normally deem my enemies just won’t seem to go away.
Lately, I’ve been sitting here in a struggle with this violent God. I don’t fully know how to reconcile him with the Jesus I’ve come to know and dearly love — the Jesus whom I believe is the incarnation of this same exact God — who tells me I am wholly precious and cherished.
I know that I didn’t choose God. I did nothing to merit the love of God, and yet here I stand, utterly steadfast in it, unable to lose it at all. Why me, yet not those?
These questions trouble me, and I ask God to teach me. I hold these questions, and I wonder. Will you wonder with me?
It’s interesting that you bring this up because I was talking with someone recently who says he is an atheist and he asked me how can I reconcile the violence of the Old Testament with the message of Jesus and love of the New Testament. Honestly, I don’t have a good answer at this point, so I’m looking forward to hearing what you discover. So far, I’ve found a series of blog posts by Greg Boyd to be helpful in figuring things out.
http://gregboyd.blogspot.com/2008/03/whats-at-stake-in-trying-to-explain.html
Paul, so interesting to hear how this meets you in your current experience, too. And I do plan to continue thinking aloud on this topic, so feel free to continue chiming in with your thoughts. :-)
Thanks for the link to Greg Boyd’s article! I look forward to reading more of his thoughts inside the series.
Those are difficult and weighty questions. I can sense your intense struggle and also your reverence of God in the midst of that struggle. And, I believe that God has given you your tender, mercy-loving heart that breaks for your enemies. You have such a tenderness about you, Christianne.
I believe that there are many mysteries about God that we cannot comprehend. The trinity. His love. His justice. His incarnation. His death. His grace. (In fact, as I am typing this I realize, everything having to do with God is shrouded in a veil mystery to one degree or another. One day, we will see clearly. Oh, what a day that will be! ) And yet, it is good to struggle with these things. To wrestle with the God we trust and love, begging Him to bless us with a deeper and fuller understanding. Struggle on, dear friend, and don’t lose heart. It will not be a fruitless pursuit.
I have been sitting her thinking and praying about your question. For some reason, I keep thinking of Revelations. How does the picture of Christ in Revelation fit into the God of the OT and the Jesus in the Gospels? Perhaps the Christ we see there, the Lion and yet the Lamb, is one way to help us understand how God’s wrath and mercy can coincide.
Rebecca, I can’t tell you what your comment means to me. It totally floors me how you blessed me with your words here. Thank you.
I really appreciate the image you offered from Revelation. That gives me something more to ponder through this. I’ve been reading my way through the OT, psalms, and the Gospels . . . perhaps I need to add Revelation to my devotional routine now, too! :-)
Thank you for seeing my heart in this. Thank you for seeing me, period. And I’m thanking God for the tender, contemplative heart he has given you, too, that makes you the sort of person who would even sit and ponder the question to the point of offering an image to consider. Love you.
Christianne, thanks for your response. I always appreciate that you reply. It’s nice to know that we’ve connected.
I’ve been thinking about you all week, since I first read your post. I’ve been in the place where I have really wrestled with God about an issue (actually, issues). It is such a hard place to be and I am praying for you. I know you’ve been in this place before and know the path well. And that you know that God will lead you through. I’ve been praying that your journey is not just about heading toward non-violence, but heading into the arms of Christ–the Lion Lamb–the Savior who rights all wrongs and takes our sin upon himself. The mystery of wrath and mercy, of love and justice, perfectly unified in bodily form.
Amen to that prayer, Rebecca.
It’s meaningful to me that you say that. From the beginning, my journey toward nonviolence has always been rooted in my relationship with and knowledge of Christ. I can’t separate the two. I guess the best way to describe it would be to say that this journey flowed out of my relationship with Christ. Thus, the questions in this post . . . it’s difficult to reconcile what I have personally experienced and know of Christ with other pictures of God in the OT.
I really appreciate your prayers for me, Rebecca. You are a holy woman of God, and your prayers humble me. Love you.
Excellent post, Christianne, and something I have wrestled with like Jacob wrestling with the angel. Can’t say the struggle is over, but hopefully I’ll get a blessing out of it (without damage to my thigh, though;-)
This clip doesn’t answer all your questions, but for further relfection, I offer a lecture by an Orthodox priest in the Greek Archdiocese by the name of Fr. Hans Jacobse. I have been to a similar lecture of his concerning violence in the Old Testament, and was happy to find it on YouTube. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka-4898NN2U
Again, this is not intended to answer all your questions (or mine), but here’s a bit of food for further thought.
Thomas, what a treat to hear your voice chime in here! Thanks so much for stopping by and offering your thoughts. I, too, hope to emerge from this struggle with a blessing that still allows me to walk. :-)
I so appreciate the link you shared. I look forward to settling in and watching it to see how it helps me through this ongoing process!
Blessings, friend.
I have thoughts on this… rambling ones a bit. I will try and put them in an e-mail and share.. or chat sometime about it.
Your thoughts, rambling or coherent or jumbled or lucid, are always welcome, my friend! :-)
“that perhaps in the death of Jesus, the full justice of God was truly satisfied. This means God no longer has reason to administer justice in the ways he used to do.”
this is a thought that will require much pondering… one I’d never stopped to consider, but find deeply possible and intriguing.
Lisa, I so agree! When I first encountered that possibility, it made me stop and go, “Whoa.” It was such a surreal experience to see how the personal way I had applied what happened on the cross could also be applied on a more grand scale. It was almost like, “Why had I not considered that before?!”
So glad to see you here and hear your thoughts. Look forward to ongoing conversation. xoxo
Hi Christianne, You right beautifully! Thanks.
I’ve wrestled with this issue for years and am now writing a book on it. I collected into one chapter the OT’s worst material, and Christianne, some of it is brutal! If we found depictions of a deity doing some of the things Yahweh is said to have done in OT in non-canonical literature, we’d justifiably label it demonic (e.g. Yahweh rips fetuses out of wombs in rage/ causes families to cannibalize each other, etc. ). Yet, as a member of God’s church, my faith compels me to confess that this material is not only divinely inspired; it somehow POINTS TO JESUS! How is this possible?
I can’t go into it now, but try out this perspective and see if it helps. Jesus reveals what God is REALLY like, and we’re to read the OT through the lens of Christ. Since Jesus is God INCARNATE and CRUCIFIED, perhaps we should read the OT looking for ways in which God humbly entered into our humanity (anticipating the incarnation) and bore our sin (anticipating the crucifixion). Jesus reveals a God who beautiful takes on our ugliness to redeem us out of it.
In this light, Christianne, I suspect that when we find depictions of a ferocious deity doing terrible things in the OT, it says a lot more about the people envisioning God this way than it does about God. Yet, the fact that God mercifully continued to work with his people, humbly entering into their fallen and limited frameworks, identifying with this people and their violent images of him, bearing their sin and appearing less beautiful than he actually is, reveals God’s Christlike, incarnational and cruciform nature.
In other words, while the violent portraits don’t accurate depict God, the fact that God condescended to being portrayed like this does, for it anticipates the Incarnation and Crucifixion.
Think about it.
And keep your eyes fixed on Jesus!
Greg Boyd
Greg,
You blew my mind with your response this morning. Thanks so much for stopping by and sharing your thoughts with me. I’m humbled!
What you’ve shared here touches on some of the ideas in a book I just finished called Things Hidden by Fr. Richard Rohr. Have you read it? Because it sounds like you and he are saying the same thing: that the OT representations of God are somehow framed within humanity’s limited perceptions of God at that time.
To be honest, I’ve struggled with this idea since I finished reading Rohr’s book. I plan to write more of my thoughts about this in an upcoming post. :-)
I really appreciate the perspective you’ve offered here that God’s incarnational and cruciform love was at work even in the Old Testament by humbling himself to be viewed the way humanity viewed him. Yes, you have definitely give me more to think on here. Thank you.
Thank you for this post, Christianne–I had been actively struggling with this issue before the holidays and it seemed to get lost in the shuffle of day to day. It comes up with my kids fairly often. Bible stories (even in the New Testament–in today’s reading, Peter cut of the servant’s ear and they were both aghast!) can be incredibly violent by today’s standards and as a parent I am sometimes at a loss to explain it. This fall we were reading the story of Noah and my 3 year old asked what happened to all the other people. When I told her that they all died, she said, “That’s not very nice,” and I absolutely agree with her.
I found the video helpful–thank you Mr. Llizo for posting it! The culture of the time of the writings has to be considered, and I was pleased to see the priest acknowledging that our moral norms have changed/evolved/become more Christian. It seems that I’ve heard atheists arguing that the God of the OT is barbaric and we’ve evolved past him, but I love the thought that it was Christ who taught us to be better in order to make that judgment.
I’m looking forward to more discussion and posts.
Jessica, thank you for sharing how this subject is meeting you in your day-to-day life with your kids. What you said about the story of Noah made me wonder if this subject is difficult for those of us who know the love of God because we can’t fathom the God we’ve come to know ever treating people this way. I had a sense while reading your story that part of this difficulty for me is my being out of touch with God’s wrath because I don’t experience God’s wrath over me. Does that make sense?
I’m glad you chimed in here, and I’m looking forward to more discussion and posts, too. :-)
So I’ve kept this open for a couple of days now, hoping that somehow I’d be able to put thoughts into words and let them take flight. Sadly, no such miracle occurred. And then I came back and found all of the wise and insightful things others wrote and I feel overwhelmed by the amount of thought and information there is here.
I think this is why I’ve struggled with some of your thoughts on non-violence all along, why I’ve been that questioning, dissenting voice (minus, of course, the fact that I like to ask hard questions ;) ). But I feel like your questions here are very TRUE – we see violence in God, or what looks to our eyes like violence, and it’s hard to see anything else in some of the stories you refer to.
It feels like a Mystery to me (not, mind you, just a mystery). Not unfathomable, maybe, but difficult and heavy. A place where faith walks, where we do our best and remember that there’s always more. A bit like walking a tightrope in the dark and the fog.
Sarah, this is so true. It does feel like Mystery . . . something upon which to tread with reverence in the midst of our questions. Your image of the tightrope in the dark and fog is fitting . . . and reminds me a bit of the fog image you once wrote about on your old blog, walking forward with outstretched hands into a thick, dense fog, wondering where you are and where you will land.
I always appreciate your questions, no matter how dissenting they may be. They spur me along this path and help me think more deeply and hard about these things. xoxo
Christianne, I struggled long with these questions a few years ago. Terribly hard, unsure what to do with all I’d read and how I’d been taught to read the Bible, shaking my entire faith. But Rohr’s book, Things Hidden (which you mentioned earlier), and another by Alden Thompson, Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God?, were a relief and rescue. I came to see the Bible more as a journal of people’s experiences of and encounters with God. It is precious to watch those views change over time, three steps forward, two steps back. People saw God through their limited, human perspective. And it took much time for them to develop a wider lens. But through it all there are glimpses of a gracious, compassionate, nonviolent God. And then comes Jesus to totally turn religion, politics and social status on its head and reveal who God really is. The Old Testament encourages me, reminds me that I too often project my violent shadow on God to justify myself, reminds me that humanity can change, reminds me that God loves us even this small and narrow-minded, reminds me that God is with us in the ugliness (as well as beauty) of human experience.
Hi Joelle,
I always love hearing your perspective on these things because I know you’ve walked the path for quite some time and thought deeply about these questions. It was good to hear some of the particulars of your journey in this regard, and I’m going to look into the book by Alden Thompson you mentioned.
I’ve been reading my way through the Scriptures from several entry points for the last few months in an attempt to get a more wholistic view of the God that emerges in the Scriptures and how God relates to the world as the history moves through time. I am looking forward to seeing more of the ways Rohr’s “three steps forward, two steps back” emerges as I read, especially since there were some aspects of Rohr’s commentary that didn’t set as well for me as most of the other things he writes. :-)
Thanks for sharing, Joelle!