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I'm not blogging here any longer, and I'm afraid I probably won't pick up on any new comments either. I'm now blogging at The Evangelical Liberal but I'm leaving these old posts up as an archive.

Sunday 1 August 2010

Is God homicidal?

How do Christians square Old Testament bloodshed with the God who is Love?

There is much apparently God-commanded violence, bloodshed, killing, war, homicide and even genocide in the Old Testament. How do we as Christians square this with our knowledge of God as the One who is Love; the Lord of mercy, compassion, kindness, peace, generosity and goodness; the God we call our loving heavenly Father; the God revealed in Jesus who takes our sins and sufferings on himself to the cross?

Divine accommodation and progressive revelation

It's tempting just to write off the difficult Old Testament (OT) passages and the less pleasant elements of the OT view of God: to say it was simply an earlier, more primitive and partial understanding (or even total misunderstanding) of God for a more brutal age when war, killing and violence were a normal part of life. And there may be a certain amount of truth in this.

God has always revealed himself to particular individuals within particular settings
God has always revealed himself to particular individuals within particular cultural and historical settings, accommodating himself to their particular needs and norms while challenging and transcending them; adapting his language and self-revelation to their limited understanding (and their limited ability to understand). He is like a father learning to speak baby-language to communicate with his infant children, or even a Dr Doolittle learning to speak the language of beasts to communicate with his animal friends.

But always God is leading his people on to a deeper understanding of his very different ways of love, mercy, forgiveness and grace; of love for outsiders and enemies as well as family, friend and tribe. Here we have the ideas of divine accommodation and progressive revelation.

So when we get to Jesus who fulfils the OT law and prophets and indeed becomes the perfect representative of all Israel was meant to be and do, we see a very different interpretation of some of the seemingly harsh OT laws and regulations. No longer are Sabbath-breakers stoned to death; in Jesus, the Sabbath is given a whole new meaning and emphasis. Even prostitutes and adulteresses are offered repentance and redemption rather than the punishment required by law.

Holiness, judgement and protection

'Safe? Of course he's not safe! But he's good'
The other aspect of the OT is God's sheer otherness and holiness. In C.S. Lewis's famous description of Aslan from the Narnia stories, 'Safe? Of course he's not safe! He's the King, I tell you. But he's good', and 'He's not a tame lion'. God is wilder than lightning or a tornado, more powerful than the heart of a star; he is blazingly, blindingly righteous and good and powerful. And by his standards, even the best humans look like death-row convicts; even the best human actions look soiled and tawdry ('filthy rags'). It's not a pleasant thought, but God is entirely right and just to punish sin and evil, to wipe out sinful and idolatrous nations as we might wipe out an infestation of blight or bird flu or cockroaches (for example, the horrific and bloodthirsty ritual acts of the Canaanites and neighbouring nations brought down just judgement upon themselves). But it brings God no pleasure or joy to do this. He loves every human, however fallen and sinful, and his ultimate plan for all is salvation. (And with God even death is not the end, so it is quite conceivable that those wiped out in OT 'genocides' will ultimately find their place among the redeemed.)

Furthermore, in the OT God has to protect his fledgling community of faith from contagion and corruption, both from within and without, just as we need to protect infants from disease before they've built up their own immunity. The Israelite community was the nursery in which faithful, loving covenant relationship with God would uniquely be formed and shown forth to the world, and into which the whole earth's saviour will be born. That nursery of faith had to be kept clean and free from disease for a season, not just for the sake of its own inhabitants but ultimately for the whole world.

In the OT then we see the awesome holy otherness of a God who cannot be approached by mere mortals any more than we can touch the Sun, kiss the lightning or hug a wild lion. But God longs to draw us close to him and the whole OT is preparing for him to take on human flesh and frailty in Christ, to walk with us and die for us as one of us, and then for him to send his Spirit to live in us as close as our very breath, our heartbeat.

Love and goodness

Of course, the God shown in the New Testament is still not fluffy or cuddly - look at the story of Ananias and Sapphira, and all Jesus' and Paul's teaching on sin and judgement - but he is good, and above all he is Love'God is love', the apostle John tells us in perhaps the most profound statement of the Bible. The central fact of all that is, the ultimate cornerstone of reality turns out not to be raw power, or rigid legal justice, or sheer mathematical intellect; it is love. Unimaginable, unfathomable, unbounded, unquenchable love that goes to the very end - through death, hell and beyond - for the beloved. And amazingly, unbelievably, we are the beloved; we the stupid, sinful, failing, weak, messed-up losers we are.

God is not a homicidal megalomaniac; he is love and goodness incarnate. As I grow in worship and love of God, I may not understand those difficult OT passages better, but I see them in a new light and context and they cease to present such an insurmountable problem for me. Only through the lens of love and relationship can we hope to begin to understand God's actions and character in the Old Testament and to realise that even those parts that are offensive to us are ultimately born out of perfect divine love and goodness. As Tom Wright puts it, 'God gets his boots dirty and his hands bloody' for the sake of the world - and ultimately not by destroying sinners but by bleeding and dying for them; for us.