JustARide said:
Jenyar - first of all, thanks for providing actual quotes to support your argument. It's refreshing.
Your interpretation may indeed lead you to the conclusion that God only ordered killings for a select period of history, using a select people to achieve those goals. Sadly, it seems your interpretation of scripture has not been entirely accepted, as evidenced by the continuing religious strife in the world. I wish more people agreed with you.
So do I. I think the root of the problem is ignorance. It's alarming how many people live under the impression that they have the same authority as God. Satan's true lie to Adam was more deceptive than we realize: we have indeed become like God, at least in our own eyes - but the truth is we'll never
be God.
My problems remain as follows...
1. Whether you believe God ordered killings for only a small time in history or that he continues to order them today, it's fairly difficult to deny that that belief alone has led to great bloodshed throughout history. If God himself had never introduced the idea in the first place, at least we could be sure that none of the violence being perpetrated in his name was truly warranted. After one takes the leap and affirms that God is capable and, in fact, has already ordered slaughters, it tends to make the entire notion far more palatable, would you agree?
God didn't introduce the idea of bloodshed. The act that set the precedent was when Cain killed his brother Abel because "his own actions were evil and his brother's were righteous" (1 John 3:13). But God demands accountability, and He is fully
capable of carrying it out:
Genesis 9:5 And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man.
My whole argument up to this point was that God did not slaughter anybody out of whim - it was always in answer to injustice. Their can be nothing worse than exile from God (sometime called being "given over to their sins"). Submitting the Amalekites to God meant their complete annihilation. That's something we can't accept anymore, because we live under a different paradigm. There are two reasons for this, one is what I've been explaining at length - the political circumstances. The other is closely tied to this: the authority by which these exterminations were carried out.
I have already mentioned that at that point, God was starting on a path of redemption for
the whole world. He was establishing His authority among the nations, using Israel as the chosen vehicle. It's important to remember that Israel's rise wasn't a path of victory - it was a struggle for survival, typified by their 40 years in the Sinai desert, and the Amalekites typified the enemies they would encounter. Israel was at this point under direct command of God, with the Ten Commandments as their prime directive. After their initial settlement, God confirmed His authority during the time of the Judges (you'll find the first few verses of Judges 3 especially interesting
), and the early history of Israel is filled with conflict - as all the ANE cultures were. But after the Middle Babylonian period a transition came with the
monarchy. Saul was the first king - the first time Israel demanded a visible authority over them. This one event not only described but emphasized his disobedience, and showed why God removed him from power and replaced him with David. But in the same way, as a king, he is described as having replaced God's authority in the eyes of the people.
And Jesus in turn came from David's line to re-establish God's kingship and remove the oppression (Acts 13:23). Once again, God is the final word, not man. People can't order wars in God's name anymore, because everything has been submitted to God himself. He established Israel, but only so that they would realize His authority.
Romans 13:1
"Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God."
1 Peter 2:13
"Submit yourselves for the Lord?s sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority,"
In other words, we can't use the way God established His kingdom to justify establishing our own - our way leads to war, His way leads to peace. We have to submit to the laws of society, unless they violate God's laws. We can fight for what God has already established, but there is nothing more to establish that warrants bloodshed. We have to accept His authority - and the same authority that ordered Saul to annihilate the Amalekites orders us to love one another. That's not a contradiction because
it's towards the same goal: establishing a kingdom that would 1)be under God's sovereign rule, 2)contains no evil and therefore can 3)experience God's unreserved presence.
2. I'm still curious as to why God did not carry out the death sentences himself (as he had shown the ability to do), but instead ordered earthly armies to do his bidding. Surely, he knew this would only lead to more violence, with more and more leaders crying, "God told me to kill you."
With that thinking we're back to square one. Why did God create people in the first place, if we were just pawns He moved around or pushed off the board at will. God was involved in freeing
Israel from slavery and creating a nation for Himself. Sin and injustice is not something you can wish away - it's a reality we have to face. Eden is gone my friend. As for people crying "God told me to kill you"... we should make it better - not worse. The Bible makes that quite clear enough, at least. It also makes clear that it's impossible to achieve this while being disobedient to God.
3. Again, by limiting the killings to certain points within the Old Testament and thereby making the very idea off-limits to research or discussion, the Bible is, essentially, covering its own ass. The killings probably had to be cordoned off in history because, had they been allowed to continue, A) the entire world might look like the Middle East, B) People might grow suspicious as to the motives of the righteous killers (as they should have been in the first place), and C) If people were still making those claims today (as some wackjobs still do), people might realize how full of shit they are. God is an unchanging rock, the same "yesterday, today, and forever," but yet he decided to radically shift his tactics roughly 2000 years ago?
The shift wasn't with God, it was with society. It's interesting that you would admit the killings were limited. Even your case studies in their dangers are limited: The first Christian "holy war" was probably that of Constantine, whose outnumbered Christian army won an army that was supposed to be protected with a pagan enchantment. This was a turning point in Christian history (for better and for worse). [source:
BBC: Wars that are not Just Wars].
The next was the first crucade, intended to right the wrongs Muslims committed against Christianity, and prbably an outflow of the Christian state. But at the point of victory, it became a secular war of great brutality. People took justice into their own hands. I think the pattern can be found in any so-called holy war. And I maintain that the vast majority of people do not need "God's approval" to wage them. I would like an example where I might be wrong if you have one.
But none of these ever represented the idea of
shalom that Israel hoped for, which would eventually translated in our present idea of heaven. God answered the challenge when the world declared war on his people - He is the Rock they broke themselves on. But instead of making Israel the strongest and greatest nation on earth, He let them be dispersed and weakened - and the similarity between Israel and Jesus isn't coincidence. Christians don't have a tyrant warrior God on their side - we have the victory of Jesus over death on our side. Any war could be won with that, but no act of terror can be justified by it, because life doesn't belong to us anymore. If you really believe God reserves the right to grant victory or not, you would think twice about taking those reigns into your own hands. Unfortunately, there are people who place their own interests above God.
Bottom line: belief in a God who has, even at any time in history, ordered killings increases the likelihood of more violence. Again, I don't see many Taoists claiming the Tao told them to go bomb innocent people. If the Tao Te Ching had included the line, "And the Tao ordered the king to smite his enemies with great force," they might have some basis for a belief in Tao-sanctioned violence, would they not?
People can still point to one atrocity and say, "God did not inspire that," then point to another and say, "God might have inspired that." It's all a crapshoot as far as I can tell.
It's crapshoot because it's speculation. We don't have the authority to judge, only God has. The course of history is just too complex too formulate it in black and white like that. But at least from the Bible we can see that no event is so out of control that God cannot make something out of it. How He responds is up to Him, and how we respond is up to us - but a separation between the two results in conflict. Tao is certainly a valid way of living, but it has no power to deliver us from injustice or resolve the conflict, and has never asserted such power. If this life was all that mattered, it might have been an ideal way of life even, but we are in exile in this world, facing death and suffering as a reality, we can't afford not to be delivered from it.
The world is at the moment gripped in the "war against terrorism", and the recent incident in Spain makes it clear that it's a real war with real casualties. But how do we fight it? How is justice done? Will justice be done once each terrorist is serving life in prison, or only once the authority that prompts them has been replaced?
The Bible leaves no room for political aggression, because God's kingdom isn't a political state. It leaves no room for religious aggression, because would undo its message. And it leaves no room for territorial aggression, because God will establish a new earth himself. Nothing God has promised us is something we can bring about ourselves - not even peace. Our task is to take hold of what God has promised under all circumstances, and exercise the love for which He created us.
