Addressing Violence in the Bible in Light of the Rise of Islam

David Victorious Over Goliath
Gabriel Joseph Marie Augustin Ferrier
1876

 The collapse of the compelling appeal of communism played out in the disintegration of the Soviet Union left an ideological vacuum that global Islam was poised to fill. Though the remnants of Christendom have allowed western democratic capitalism to acknowledge the cultural contributions of religion, especially Christianity, it is as materialistic and devoid of spiritual substance as atheistic communism. I have written elsewhere about my hypothesis that Christianity and Islam are competing for the refugees from the spiritual emptiness of both communism and capitalism. http://nstolpewriting.blogspot.com/2016/01/no-slogans-my-long-response-to-rise-of.html I also began an exploration of the violence in both the Bible and the Quran as well as in the history of both Christianity and Islam. Though I have an affinity for western democracy and for the United States and earnestly want them to flourish and prosper, as a Christian I am far more concerned to respond to the challenge of Islam to authentic Christian faith than any threat, real or imagined, Islam may or may not present to western democracy or the United States.

When I wrote “No Slogans: My Long Response to the Rise of Islam,” I concluded that as a Christian who aspires to follow Jesus, my response to Islam should strengthen and vitalize my discipleship and motivate me to invigorate the Church. In this essay I want to seriously and honestly address the violence in the Bible, especially the Hebrew Scriptures that we commonly call the Old Testament. I will not offer critique or analysis of the violent material in the Quran, Muslim history or Islamist terrorism. I will leave that work to Muslim folk. That is their responsibility. As a Christian, I am responsible for handling the Bible. Nor will I examine violence in history perpetrated in the name of Christ, though that would be a worthwhile pursuit for an historical ethicist. I make no claim of being a biblical history scholar. I am certain many who have devoted their lives to such study could add to or dispute my hypotheses. I would welcome such a vigorous dialogue among those more qualified to discuss it than I am. However, as a follower of Jesus who has served Christian congregations in pastoral ministry for over forty years, I do believe I have a responsibility to wrestle with my own faith in light of the challenges to that faith in my generation.

I well remember the Sunday school stories of the history of ancient Israel from my childhood and youth. They were told with a clear Israelite sympathy, typically portraying the peoples of Canaan and of Israel’s pagan neighbors as sinful villains who deserved their fate at the edge of Israel’s sword and point of Israel’s spear. The Israelites provoked God’s punishment when they did not thoroughly defeat and destroy these people but were ensnared by their idolatrous practices. The brutality of those times (which was not limited to Israel but practiced seemingly universally) tended to be obscured or glossed over by celebrating the faith and obedience of the heroes. For example, we were shown pictures of an innocent boy David felling monstrous Goliath with a stone from his sling, but not beheading him and displaying Goliath’s head as a battle trophy. (1 Samuel 17:51,54 – Apparently the stone did not kill Goliath but rendered him unable to defend himself from the beheading that killed him.) My graduate education and much of my congregational ministry focused on Christian education, so I am acutely aware of how this worked. I also found that sometime in adolescence, young people hungered for more honest engagement as they recognized the troubling themes of the stories they had learned in childhood.

One common approach was to bisect the Hebrew Scriptures from the New Testament and dismiss it as not relevant to Christians today, except to be inspired to faith and obedience by its heroic characters, warned of the dire consequences of disobedience, and to be in awe of the power and judgement of God that seemed foreign not only to us but to the New Testament, and even Jesus whose miracles came with a more gentle touch. My own sense is that such an approach undermines the essential integrity and unity of Scripture without coming to terms with the reality that includes both brutal violence and deeply flawed heroes.

Perhaps somewhat more satisfying is coming to know and understand some of the practices of pagan worship that Israel was to avoid: temple prostitution and human sacrifice, especially burning infants alive. Our sensibilities are understandably revolted by such practices and can evoke a sense of “those pagans deserved it” when the Israelites slaughtered them. While the ethics of contemporary sexual, contraception and abortion practices in the democratic west deserve honest dialog rather than strident social-political crusading, they are not exactly equivalent to ancient pagan practices and not relevant to sorting out the violence in the Hebrew Scriptures.

An interesting corollary to this “they deserved it” line of thinking is a glimmer of God’s patience and grace rising from Genesis 15:16. God had just cut the covenant with Abram. The sanitized Sunday school versions of Abram’s call focused on Genesis 12 and ignored the gory features of Genesis 15, rather than embracing the power of juxtaposing them. God’s prophetic word to Abram explains the delay of Abram’s descendants inheriting the Promised Land by saying, “they shall come back here in the fourth generation; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” Depending on how the dating of Abraham and the Exodus/Conquest are understood, the implication is that God was graciously willing to wait a couple of centuries for repentance, knowing that it would never come. Thus, their punishment is justified since they were not only evil but refused or at least avoided opportunities to repent.

The Hebrew Scriptures present this history with a distinctly Hebrew perspective and theology. But along the way there are hints that God was not limited to working only with Israelites but was concerned for all of humanity. In Genesis 12:3, God called Abram to bless all the families of the earth. In Genesis 14:18, King Melchizedek of Salem was identified as priest of God Most High, which is confirmed in Hebrews 7:1. In Numbers 22-24, Balaam appears to have been recognized as a genuine prophet of the Lord, but greed and weakness undercut his ministry. Yet, he might well have legitimately called people to God’s righteousness. While Joshua 2; 6:22-23 do not identify Rahab as  prophet, she somehow recognized God was present and active among the Israelites and is held up as an example of faith in Hebrews 11:31. In some way, she had access to God from a non-Israelite source. I don’t want to make too much of these sparse hints but only suggest this understanding is consistent with the idea that the peoples Israel displaced from the promised land might have had opportunity to escape judgment.

One line of thinking that I find suspect is that the violence committed by Israel on the peoples of Canaan was justified because it was commanded by the One True God, and the brutality of the pagans was not justified because they worshipped false gods that were either mere idols or demonic spirits. My main problem with this is that it does not respect the consistent holiness and love in God’s character. It reduces God to an autocratic, capricious despot and dismisses God’s concern for justice and peace, mercy and compassion. Secondly, it opens the door to subjectivity and self-delusion in thinking one has heard from God, perhaps to do what is unthinkable and evil. We consider those who claim God spoke to them audibly to command them to murder someone or commit some other heinous act to be mentally ill. Yet, in many Christian circles we hear people testify with great confidence that God told them to do one thing or another, even though others in the community of faith doubt the wisdom of the choice. In our pluralistic world, simply asserting “my God is the right God,” doesn’t cut it. Even saying “it’s in the Bible” is inadequate without addressing both presuppositions and responsible interpretation. Humility and respect are essential in discerning what God may be expecting of me or anyone else.

The violent material in Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy falls into two categories: total war conquest of the peoples of Canaan and harsh penalties for Israelites who “break covenant” with behaviors that threaten the solidarity of the Israelite community. Psalm 106:34-39 says that not driving out the inhabitants of Canaan was the reason Israel strayed from God and incurred God’s judgment. Some commentators have suggested that this harsh violence was necessary in the formative time as Israel was getting established in the Promised Land and essential for solidifying their distinct identity. Sometimes this is interpreted as God’s specific command and sometimes as created by the community itself in this time of feeling vulnerable and threatened. Here are some examples of relevant capital punishment passages.

·         Leviticus 20:2,27 – idolatry

·         Leviticus 24:13-16 – blasphemy

·         Numbers 14:10 – rebellion against Moses

·         Numbers 15:35-36 – Sabbath breaking

·         Numbers 33:50-55 – drive out the inhabitants of the land and destroy their idols

·         Deuteronomy 7:1-6, 16-25 – drive out the inhabitants and destroy their idols

·         Deuteronomy 13:10 – stone anyone who proposes idolatry

·         Deuteronomy 17:5 – stone anyone who worships idols

·         Deuteronomy 21:21 – stone rebellious children

·         Deuteronomy 22:21-24 – stone women who had sex before marriage

This theme becomes very personal in the imprecatory Psalms (curses calling down God’s judgment on one’s enemies). Worship and devotional literature typically selects the nice Psalms that celebrate God’s creation, power, love, and faithfulness. But the Psalms are gutsy and real, and fully two-thirds of them are laments and complaints. Often what is familiar as well loved devotional and praise Psalms is excerpted so as to avoid uncomfortable elements. The imprecatory Psalms are not specifically labeled or grouped together but are distributed throughout the Psalter. Facing the violence of the Bible requires honest confrontation by the imprecatory Psalms 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 17, 35, 37, 40, 52, 59, 56, 58, 59, 69, 70, 79, 83, 109, 129, 137, 139, 140, 143.

The idea that harsh measures may be intrinsic to the formative stages of a community’s development has been extended as a way of explaining some of the punitive and warfare violence in Christian history and the internal conflicts within Islam today. This is not just about enforcing and establishing community values, but also comes out as different factions in the community vie for dominance and control of defining the identity and values of the community.

Though there were theological and ethical disagreements in the church’s early centuries, the use of violent and political force to compel conformity didn’t come into use until Constantine coopted Christianity for the military expansion of the Roman Empire. The Spanish Inquisition is generally thought of as the peak of using violent force to coerce individual conformity. The Thirty Years’ War may be the pinnacle of using military violence to force political and theological compliance. I am not going to examine the history in any further detail, but mention this as an extension of the principle of immature community formation that is sometimes suggested as an explanation of the violence in Israel’s early history.

Some have suggested that as a younger religious movement, Islam is struggling to move from immaturity into a new maturity required by interacting with the broader, more diverse world. The hypothesis is that Islamist violence is the desperate attempt of some factions to cling to the world the way it was (or the way they imagine it should have been), while others are trying to figure out how to be faithful Muslims in pluralistic and democratic societies. These are not simplistically two competing movement but the lurching and floundering of different mentalities as they try to move into a new maturity. The hope often expressed is that though the process is painful and destructive, Islam will move into a more peaceful maturity as Judaism and Christianity have. Some have suggested contemporary conflicts within Islam may be the growing pains that precede something akin to the New Testament or Protestant Reformation. I have no insight into that, but my own opinion is that Christianity, at least, still has a long way to go, though much of the use of violent force to compel conformity has been relegated to the political and military functions in society. In many Christian circles militaristic nationalism and external moral conformity are celebrated and affirmed with religious overlays.

Having made these historical and cultural observations, I will leave their exploration and debate to others and return to my effort to understand the violent material in the Hebrew Scriptures, particularly religious and theological aspects of warfare. How can I recognize and understand the hand of God in the wars of ancient Israel and Judah?

The prophet Habakkuk has a vision of God’s activity in history that is at once clarifying and troubling. I strongly urge concentrated study of the text but will give my personal overview rather than detailed exegesis.

Habakkuk was an apparently righteous person deeply distressed over the injustice, violence, and divisiveness among his own people (of Judah). He cried out to God for help and questioned why God had not acted to address the evil (1:2-4).

God apparently answered Habakkuk quickly but not at all the way he expected or wanted. God told Habakkuk to look beyond Judah to all the nations. God said, “Be astonished! Be astounded! For a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were told. For I am rousing the Chaldeans, that fierce and impetuous nation, who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own.” (1:5-6) The Chaldeans (Babylonians) would be God’s instrument for bringing judgment and correction to Judah. God was clear that the Chaldeans were no model of moral rectitude. They will be on the march for totalitarian conquest, seizing with great cruelty what they have no right to possess. Yet, God will use them as a way of bringing the people of Judah to greater faithfulness and justice.

Habakkuk objects and argues that God’s holiness and righteousness are incompatible with Chaldean behavior, character and religion. He questioned God, “Your eyes are too pure to behold evil, and you cannot look on wrongdoing; why do you look on the treacherous, and are silent when the wicked swallow those more righteous than they?” (1:13) Habakkuk famously said he would watch for God’s answer. “I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.” (2:1)

God answered Habakkuk with a vision and instructions to promulgate it plainly for all to see, concluding “Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.” (2:4) The vision prompted Habakkuk’s prayer in chapter 3 in which he acknowledged the wild ebb and flows of the cosmos and of human history are in God’s hands whether they seem benevolent or malevolent. Though God may use a harsh and cruel people to bring judgment, that does not excuse their violence and injustice. Another, perhaps equally evil, power will be God’s instrument of judgment on them. Habakkuk ended his prayer with a personal response trembling and quivering in awe and made this profound confession of faith. “Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation.” (3:17-18)

I think of the philosophy of history that I draw from Habakkuk as a dynamic equilibrium of justice. No ideal, stable homeostasis of justice is to be expected in human history. When injustice becomes overly unbalanced, another force will tip the balance in a different direction. That force may not itself be inherently just. Even those forces that consciously seek to promote justice are susceptible to human failures that corrupt their principles. Nevertheless, as these forces interact a certain wavering balance of justice is maintained. But it can only be seen on a grand scale. Individual injustices may persist as God fosters justice in the interaction of even unjust forces.

None of this validates or excuses the injustices perpetrated by the correcting forces. The Babylonians indeed treated the people of Judah with great cruelty and injustice, for which they were ultimately judged by the Persians. We in the modern west look at these things through very individualistic eyes, which is far different than Habakkuk’s vision both of the violence he complained about in Judah and the judgment brought by the Chaldeans.  The book of Daniel is highly instructive here. (Don’t get distracted by the debates about Daniel’s historicity and miss the point.) Daniel is consistently portrayed as righteous and faithful in his loyalty to God. Yet he was taken captive and suffered (perhaps castration) in the Babylonian judgment on Judah. Though he seems in no way personally culpable, he prayed his prayer of confession in Daniel 9 as though he was included in the sin of Judah.

If this is a fair representation of God’s workings in the realities of human history, then the flow in biblical history might be summarized like this. Just as Assyria was God’s tool for judging the Northern Kingdom of Israel, God worked through Babylon not just for judging but for correcting the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Yet, both Assyria and Babylon were wicked, cruel, unjust empires and were judged by God in the flow of history. Daniel 5 presents Persia as the instrument of God’s judgment on Babylon. Though from the intertestamental period, Greece judged Persia and Rome judged Greece. None of these conquering empires were examples of justice or righteousness. God did not approve of their cruelties, yet God worked in and through them to maintain an equilibrium of justice.

Might we extrapolate from this that the Israel’s displacement of the pagans of Canaan was God’s judgment without implying that God endorsed Israel’s violence and cruelty? I fully recognize that some of the texts seem to say that God commanded what we could today call genocide and destruction of culture. While acknowledging this interpretive challenge, can some of that material be understood as explaining God’s behind the scenes purposes rather than approving or ordering specific violent acts?  Exegetical gymnastics cannot evade the frequent clear sense of the text that God ordered total destruction of many peoples. To say that God worked with the Israelites where they were may be true enough, but does not eliminate material from which we recoil today. Even while God worked through Israel in the conquest of Canaan, God expected justice and held them accountable for injustice. For example, though the Gibeonites deceived Israel in making a peace pact, once made, Israel honored its conditions. (Joshua 9)

As one who has been shaped by Reformed Theology (though a purist Calvinist might not include me in the fold), I regard God’s sovereignty as central and credible. Limited human thinking tends to treat this as determinism that is at odds with human free will. However, rather than seeing God’s sovereignty and human free will as incompatible opposites, I suggest that human free will functions within the much greater magnitude of God’s sovereignty. Yes, we humans are free, responsible moral agents, and God does not determine our individual, personal decisions and acts. For us humans to think that our free will can thwart God’s purposes would be the height of presumptuous arrogance. Sure, this is a mystery beyond our limited human intellect, but that does not make it any less real. As Psalm 76:10 says, “Human wrath serves only to praise you.” That is not to approve human wrath which, nevertheless, does not impair God’s purposes.

In some circles, the Bible is spoken of as though God dictated an owners’ manual for righteous living. Often individual phrases or passages are quoted as though they were aphorisms to be followed rigidly. In reality the Bible is much more complex than that. It is a collection (library which is what the word bible means) of a wide variety of literature. Most of which are accounts of human interaction with God or as God’s people. Only a small portion of the Bible is presented as being dictated by God. That does not in any way compromise seeing the Bible as inspired by the Holy Spirit, reliable and authoritative for all matters of life and faith. The best evangelical scholars acknowledge that God worked through the unique personalities, experiences and situations of each of the biblical writers. Thus, rather than lifting isolated quotes as though they we instructions from a recipe, each book in the library must be understood for the kind of literature that it is. With this thinking, Scripture is about recognizing God’s hand in human affairs, not giving a detailed account of events such as we are used to in modern news reporting and history texts.

Most of us have trouble accepting that God uses those who are cruel and violent to keep justice in balance. We certainly identify with Habakkuk’s objection, “Your eyes are too pure to behold evil, and you cannot look on wrongdoing; why do you look on the treacherous, and are silent when the wicked swallow those more righteous than they?” (1:13) And I do not offer this hypothesis as an easy solution to the problem of violence in the Hebrew Scriptures. While the easy answers I summarized earlier offer some limited insight, they are distinctly unsatisfying. I have no illusion of having solved the problem of violence in the Hebrew Scriptures with these insights from Habakkuk.

Before we who desire to be biblical Christians can quote or critique the violent passages of the Quran, we need to read, wrestle and come to terms with the violence in the Bible. I am not at all suggesting that the Bible and the Quran are interchangeable or equivalent. Nor am I equating today’s Islamist terrorism with this Hebrew history. But I do believe that if we are to be honest and have any integrity in communication with Muslim folk and Islam of all varieties, we must not flinch in facing the things in the Bible we ignore or explain away because they are uncomfortable and even offensive to our sensibilities. I do not believe this pursuit undermines our confidence in the Bible, but can and should strengthen our faith in the God who gave us the Bible. It should help us appreciate just how involved God is and always has been in human affairs, even those that seem beyond comprehension.

I’m certainly not suggesting that I have solved this problem, or even that it is soluble with logic and reason, which are certainly finite and limited. If you are troubled by being urged to face up to the violence in the Bible, I believe you are on the path to grow in your relationship with God. If you think my explorations are off base or inadequate, I invite you to formulate your own response and share it for the benefit of many. If you want to dismiss this as too uncomfortable or not relevant to your faith, or as some kind of attack on the veracity of the Bible, I hope I have gotten under your skin enough to get you to begin to wrestle. I do believe this sort of wrestling requires a certain tolerance for ambiguity. For those who insist on definitive answers, this can be terribly unsettling, yet my own experience is that my spiritual growth, my relationship with God, my journey with Jesus, my awareness of the activity of the Holy Spirit is stimulated most when I ponder the ambiguities of faith.