Is God Homicidal? Part 2

This sermon is shortened version of a talk given by the Revd Simon Coupland at the New Wine summer conference in 2010. You can download Simon's talk (£3 MP3 format, £3.99 audio CD) online at https://www.essentialchristian.com/revd-simon-coupland/teaching/is-god-homicidal-2

INTRODUCTION

Last week began exploring the question if we believe in a God of love, and compassion and forgiveness, how are we to make sense of those passages in the Old Testament which portray God as being anything but a God of love, passages where for example God appears to order the wholesale destruction of nations that inhabited the Promised Land.  In trying to address this question, we looked at two simple but wrong solutions, get rid of, or ignore the OT, or say it didn’t happen. 

There aren’t any easy solutions to this problem, but this morning I want to give three helpful thoughts, which I hope will begin to address this difficult issue. 

Helpful thought no. 1: judge events by the standards of the time

This argument gets support from an unlikely quarter.  Richard Dawkins in his book ‘The God Delusion’ writes, “It is a commonplace that good historians don’t judge statements from past times by the standards of their own.” 

By the standards of the day, it was quite normal that when you conquered a nation, you destroyed totally that other nation for your god.  So for example, one of the difficult passages we looked at last week was the instruction in 1 Samuel for Saul to completely destroy the Amalekites.  But when Saul failed to kill the Amalekite king Agag, Samuel does it instead.  This is one of those difficult passages, but you have to remember that Agag was not a poor innocent victim in all this.  He had blood on his hands, which is why Samuel says ‘Just as your sword left women childless, so will your mother be left childless’.  Agag knew that as a king, if you conquered another king, you had him put to death. 

We know from archaeological evidence that total destruction was something that other nations did.  So for example we know the Amorites, Moabites, Assyrians and Egyptians acted in this way, destroying totally their enemies.  We may look back and say that is a terrible thing to do, but at the time that was what they did, that was the nature of warfare. 

So by the standards of the time, what we read in the OT, of the people of Israel being commanded to by God to slaughter other nations was no worse than anyone else, and what other people would have expected and accepted. 

So with this in mind, it is surprising that there are some places in the OT where God does not command that.  The destruction of certain tribes, cities, and people, was a very specific command by God in certain instances.  It was not a general command for the people of God in Israel in every circumstance at every time.  

So for example when the city of Jericho was attacked, Rahab and her family were spared, because she hid two of the Israelite’s spies hide from the city guard.  And in Deuteronomy you see the rules of engagement for the Israelite army: 

• ·        When attacking a city, make an offer of peace (Deuteronomy 20.10).
• ·        Spare the women, children and livestock (Deut. 20. 14)
• ·        Don’t destroy fruit trees (Deut. 20.19)

The point is that we need to judge events by the standards of the time.  And by the standards of this time, what the Israelite’s did was no more brutal or worse than what anyone else was doing. 

To bring this more up to date, consider for example the question was it right fight in WW2?  Well most people would say yes, Hitler was evil, as we see with the holocaust.  Fighting such evil was the right decision.  But was the bombing of German cities – which resulted in the deaths of many thousands of civilians the right thing to do?  I think that most people would argue that with hindsight, it wasn’t, but at the time most people thought it was the right thing to do. 

Looking at the OT, with what we now know about the character of God, through the coming of Jesus, we would say that the slaughter of people was wrong, but at the time with what people knew, they would have said yes it was right.

So helpful thought 1 is that we must judge events by the standards of the time.

Helpful thought no. 2: remember why God commanded this

God commanded the death of some in Israel who had sinned, and the destruction of some nations outside of Israel, for the sake of holiness. 

There is such a thing as real evil in the world.  The Canaanite religion was one such religion, it was a religion based on prostitution, idolatry, and child sacrifice.  And God said: ‘that must be wiped out, that must be destroyed’.  That is why in Leviticus God says “Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants.” Leviticus 18:24-27

God knew that if they didn’t wipe out this religion, they too would be drawn into it, and be corrupted by it.  That is why in Deuteronomy 12, God says “When you have driven them out and settled in their land, and after they have been destroyed before you, be careful not to be ensnared by inquiring about their gods, saying, “How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same.” You must not worship the Lord your God in their way, because in worshipping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.” Deuteronomy 12:29-31

What God calls us to is radical holiness.  If you are diagnosed with cancer, you want to get rid of every single last trace of the cancer from your body.  That is what God said about the Canaanite religion, that if you leave Canaanites in your midst that practice their religion, you will start to worship their gods.  And what we see in the OT, is that this is exactly what happened, time after time.  The Israelite’s turned their backs of God and started worshipping other gods.    

And that is why God calls us to radical holiness.

The question is how seriously do we take holiness?  God says to us, be holy as I am holy.  Jesus says “If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away... And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.”  (Matthew 5.29-30) In other words Jesus says if there is something that causes us to be tempted, get rid of it, cut it out altogether.  God demands radical holiness. 

Helpful thought no. 3: Jesus changes everything

This is the main helpful thought, and the one to remember. 

The OT has truth, goodness, and the character of God in it.  But it is only a shadow of the reality that was coming, and that is Christ.  And it is Jesus Christ, who is the one who fully reveals God to us.  If you want to know what God is like, you only have to look at Jesus.  Through Jesus we see that God is compassionate, loving, forgiving, generous, and full of mercy and grace. 

And as Christians, we should look at the OT, and what it teaches, through the lens of Jesus and the cross, because that changes everything. 

When we read about death and destruction in the OT, that was for then.  But God has now shown us a better way, the way of Jesus, the way of love.  Jesus changes everything and knowing him changes everything.  

Because what Jesus reveals to us, is a God who gets his feet messy and his hands bloody, by coming down into our world and being slaughtered, being rejected, being destroyed on the cross.  Taking into himself the pain and suffering of our world, and redeeming it, and giving life. 

And because we know him, we can trust him, and we can trust even the things we don’t quite understand about him. 

CONCLUSION

What I hope you can take away from this, is a slightly less big problem about these difficult passages in the OT.  But what I really want you to take away is a trust in Jesus, that says ‘it's okay’, because if I don’t understand all of it, what I do understand changes everything, and that’s how I read those passages, through the light of the cross.  

Is God Homicidal? Part 1

This sermon is shortened version of a talk given by the Revd Simon Coupland at the New Wine summer conference in 2010. You can download Simon's talk (which is well worth listening to) online at https://www.essentialchristian.com/revd-simon-coupland/teaching/is-god-homicidal-1 (£3 MP3 format, £3.99 audio CD)

INTRODUCTION

How did the first reading make you feel? How many of you felt uncomfortable saying 'Thanks be to God' at the end of that reading?

Paul in his 2^nd letter to Timothy writes, 'All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.' But if that is the case, how are we to make sense of passages like the one we heard this morning? What possible connection can such violence have with the God we long to love, trust and understand?"

THE PROBLEM

The Christian faith talks about God, being a God of love. But yet there are passages in the Old Testament which portray God as being anything but a God of love.

This is what the well known atheist Richard Dawkins writes in his book 'The God Delusion': "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sado-masochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."

Richard Dawkins words are offensive, but if we are honest, I am sure that we sometimes find ourselves thinking the same thing when we read the Old Testament. Bible scholars and commentators don't try to hide from this fact. In Richard Hess' commentary on the book of Joshua he writes, "Few of the many issues raised by the book of Joshua create more difficulty than the question of how a loving God could command the wholesale extermination of nations that inhabited the Promised Land. There is no easy or simple solution to this problem."

This morning I want to look at two simple but wrong solutions to this problem, and next week we will look at three helpful thoughts as we tackle this difficult but important issue.

SIMPLE SOLUTION 1 CUT OUT THE OLD TESTAMENT

Solution 1 is to get rid of the Old Testament altogether.

This was tried in the past by a man called Marcion. Marcion lived in the second century AD, and argued that there were two Gods, the vengeful God of the OT –and the all forgiving God of the New Testament. Marcion believed that Paul was the only true interpreter or Jesus, and produced his own canon of Scripture, which got rid of the whole OT and large parts of the NT.


 
This prompted the church to agree its own list of accepted books, which became more or less the New Testament canon that we know today. The early Christians also agreed, against Marcion, that the Hebrew Bible was their Bible too, to be read, studied and quoted. Thus when Paul wrote to Timothy, 'from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness' (2 Tim 3:15-16), it wasn't the New Testament Scriptures to which he was referring, as they were still being written, but the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament.


 
What would happen if we cut out the OT?

1. We would no longer be following Jesus, who saw the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, as the Word of God. For example in a debate with the Sadducees (religious leaders) about the resurrection (which they did not believe in), Jesus rebukes them and says "You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God." (Matthew 22:29) When Jesus talks about the Scriptures, he is of course talking about the Hebrew Bible.
   
2. We would have to cut out large parts of the New Testament, too, as almost all books quote the Old Testament. For example in Mark 12:10 Jesus quotes Psalm 118 when he says "Haven't you read this passage of Scripture: 'The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone'?" (Psalm 118:22). Jesus clearly expected his listeners to know the Old Testament, to respect its authority and to see its relevance.
   
3. We lose the context into which Jesus came: the way he understood himself. For example on the day of the resurrection Jesus met two of his disciples travelling on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus, and Luke tells us that "Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he [Jesus] explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself." (Luke 24:27) We cannot understand who Jesus is, and the significance of his death and resurrection, without also understanding the OT.
   
4. If we cut out the OT, think about all that we would lose. The richness of the Psalms, the ten commandments, and so many incredible stories.
   

There aren't two different God's in the Bible, the angry one of the OT and the loving one of the NT. There are difficult passages in the OT, but we also see in the OT that God is loving, just, forgiving, patient, gracious, generous, liberating to women and men, the young and the elderly, the stranger, the disabled, the criminals and the outcasts. For example in the OT we discover the God of the Exodus, who rescues his people from slavery and demonstrates his character in these words: "The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin." (Exodus 34:6-7)

Jesus also clearly identifies his Father as the God of the OT

SIMPLE SOLUTION 2 SAY IT DIDN'T HAPPEN

What do I mean by this?

Well in 1 Samuel 15:3, Samuel, God's prophet, says to Saul the King, this is what the Lord says, "Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.'"

But later on in 1 Samuel 30, we read how the Amalekites raided the Negev and Ziklag, and took captive the women and all who were in it (1 Samuel 30:1-2) What this shows is that the Israelite's didn't actually wipe out the Amalekites. So although God gave this command, and Saul said 'yes I did it, I slaughtered them all', he clearly didn't.

The point some people have tried to argue is that, maybe the Bible is exaggerating, maybe it didn't really happen that way. Another example is in Leviticus where it says "If a man commits adultery with another man's wife, both must be put to death." But when King David has an affair with Bathsheba, no one puts David or Bathsheba to death. The conclusion may be that this is something that didn't happen. It's a rule that emphasises the gravity of adultery, but was never really meant to be put into practice.

Even Jesus used exaggeration to get over points. For example he said "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14.26) Of course Jesus isn't asking us to hate our families, but it is to drive home a point about the commitment he expects when people follow him.

We need to recognise that the Bible exaggerates. But this solution doesn't account for all passages.

So far we've looked at two solutions that don't work. Cut out the OT and pretend it didn't happen.

CONCLUSION

None of the solutions put forward are satisfactory. We cannot simply get rid of the OT, or ignore it. The Old Testament speaks of judgement, but it also speaks of grace, and the New Testament is exactly the same. The God of the OT is also the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and if we're followers of Jesus, which for me is the definition of a Christian, then we should, as the Book of Common Prayer says, 'read, mark, learn and inwardly digest' the Old Testament as well as the New. For as Paul says, these are the Scriptures which 'are able to make you wise for salvation' (2 Tim 3:15); they reveal the Father to us and they point us to Jesus.

Next week, we will consider some helpful thoughts, which may not solve the problem entirely, but hopefully will help us to embrace these passages as Scripture, and say yes this is the word of God.