And Israel vowed a vow to the Lord and said, "If you will indeed give these people into my hand, then I will devote their cities intot o destruction. And the Lord heeded the voice of Israel and gave over the Cannanites, and theyd evoteed them and their cities to destruction. (Numbers 21:2-3)
If there is a God, He kills people. Lots of people. Millions of people, every year. Some by the most horrific means imaginable.
Ebola. The slow rotting of your flesh and seeping of your fluids through your skin.
Drowning. Inhalation of water into your lungs, the burning sensation of absences of oxygen.
Fallopian pregnancies. The growing of a child in the Fallopian tube and a horrible death for both mother and child.
And, at least according to the biblical texts, He has his People sacrifice groups and nations to Him.
Ebola. The slow rotting of your flesh and seeping of your fluids through your skin.
Drowning. Inhalation of water into your lungs, the burning sensation of absences of oxygen.
Fallopian pregnancies. The growing of a child in the Fallopian tube and a horrible death for both mother and child.
And, at least according to the biblical texts, He has his People sacrifice groups and nations to Him.
And Moses said to them, "Thus says the Lord God of Israel, 'Put your swrod on your side, each of you, and go to an from from gate to gate throughout the campe, and each of you kill hi brother and his companion and his neighbor.'" aAnd the sons of Levil did accordin to the word of Moses. And that day about three thousand men of the people fell. (Exodus 32:26-27)
What am I supposed to do with this information?
I value life so much. I could ask why would God do such a thing? I mean, killing people, sure, but slow, arduous deaths? How could God so flippantly kill or demand the deaths of so much life?
I could say that was Old Testament times. That was old covenant. Now, we live under grace. But does that change the fact that God did it? Or that still, today, millions are killed in his Name?
I could say that wasn't Father God. That was some crazy, monomaniacal Demiurge, angry God who's taken a chill pill and now sits on a unicorn in the sky and scatters skittles into rainbows? But that seems to complicated. All the crazy, psycho bitch emotions God experienced in the Old Testament can be rooted in desire, in care. Desires and cares I share.
I could say these people were so immoral, so depraved they deserved it. But what about grace? What about nonviolence? As Jesus says in The Last Temptation of Christi, if we stab everyone who stabs us, when will the world be free of knives?
Now, I'm not an inerricist, and I don't think the Israelites had God all figured out. I don't know if God would really have wanted tribal warfare, I don't know if God really loved the Israelites more. But we still have today to recon with. The thousands and thousands of deaths every day of the most gruesome, myriad varieties. How could a God who hates abortion like the smell of burning flesh?
I don't have the answer. The God I worship is a God of life, of death only when it directly affirms life. Death is a necessary part of life. And that's why I don't have a problem with a God who kills people. But for morality? For land? For tribal boundaries and survival? I don't know. Are these necessary?
And, more importantly, how does this apply to my own life? Based in the teachings of Jesus (and Buddha, Tolstoy, Ghandi, Thoreau, and various other pacifists) I will never take a life even in self-defense. It's not given to me as an authority. It's not something I should control. I won't even use violence. Inerricists everywhere will try to find some way to rationalize violence from the Old Testament, but the truth is nonresistance of Jesus is incompatible with the Old Testament use of violence and the sword. Whether God, the covenant, or just our conceptions of God changed, it is changed.
We see God as we see ourselves. We see ourselves as we see God. It's impossible not to. The Israelites were a tribe, and it makes sense they would see God as a tribal God. Is this an accurate view of God? Maybe. Probably incomplete. Jesus saw God as a Father, and extended God to the world. Maybe Jesus' view of God was a little more complete.
I don't know. I guess the important thing here is our wrestling with it. Violence is never something we should grow comfortable with, even violence on animals, trees, plants, the "bad guys" to sustain ourselves. Violence is horrible whatever the justification is, even if there is justification for it. The moment we settle into our own rationalizations and become comfortable with the idea of taking life is the moment we lose our connection to all the other life in the world. I hope, slowly, I can extend my radius of nonviolence even farther and farther, growing it ever wider, even to encompass forms of life outside of earth. I will always have to take life, but that doesn't mean I have to be comfortable with it.
I value life so much. I could ask why would God do such a thing? I mean, killing people, sure, but slow, arduous deaths? How could God so flippantly kill or demand the deaths of so much life?
I could say that was Old Testament times. That was old covenant. Now, we live under grace. But does that change the fact that God did it? Or that still, today, millions are killed in his Name?
I could say that wasn't Father God. That was some crazy, monomaniacal Demiurge, angry God who's taken a chill pill and now sits on a unicorn in the sky and scatters skittles into rainbows? But that seems to complicated. All the crazy, psycho bitch emotions God experienced in the Old Testament can be rooted in desire, in care. Desires and cares I share.
I could say these people were so immoral, so depraved they deserved it. But what about grace? What about nonviolence? As Jesus says in The Last Temptation of Christi, if we stab everyone who stabs us, when will the world be free of knives?
Now, I'm not an inerricist, and I don't think the Israelites had God all figured out. I don't know if God would really have wanted tribal warfare, I don't know if God really loved the Israelites more. But we still have today to recon with. The thousands and thousands of deaths every day of the most gruesome, myriad varieties. How could a God who hates abortion like the smell of burning flesh?
I don't have the answer. The God I worship is a God of life, of death only when it directly affirms life. Death is a necessary part of life. And that's why I don't have a problem with a God who kills people. But for morality? For land? For tribal boundaries and survival? I don't know. Are these necessary?
And, more importantly, how does this apply to my own life? Based in the teachings of Jesus (and Buddha, Tolstoy, Ghandi, Thoreau, and various other pacifists) I will never take a life even in self-defense. It's not given to me as an authority. It's not something I should control. I won't even use violence. Inerricists everywhere will try to find some way to rationalize violence from the Old Testament, but the truth is nonresistance of Jesus is incompatible with the Old Testament use of violence and the sword. Whether God, the covenant, or just our conceptions of God changed, it is changed.
We see God as we see ourselves. We see ourselves as we see God. It's impossible not to. The Israelites were a tribe, and it makes sense they would see God as a tribal God. Is this an accurate view of God? Maybe. Probably incomplete. Jesus saw God as a Father, and extended God to the world. Maybe Jesus' view of God was a little more complete.
I don't know. I guess the important thing here is our wrestling with it. Violence is never something we should grow comfortable with, even violence on animals, trees, plants, the "bad guys" to sustain ourselves. Violence is horrible whatever the justification is, even if there is justification for it. The moment we settle into our own rationalizations and become comfortable with the idea of taking life is the moment we lose our connection to all the other life in the world. I hope, slowly, I can extend my radius of nonviolence even farther and farther, growing it ever wider, even to encompass forms of life outside of earth. I will always have to take life, but that doesn't mean I have to be comfortable with it.