Four Views on Genocide

This book tries to reconcile a ubiquitous problem with the Scriptures. That being- how can a God portrayed as love in the NT have condoned and sanctioned so much death and violence in the OT. Particularly such actions as Holy Wars which are unanimously decreed as unacceptable today within the Christian community. How is one to hold a consistent view of God when he’s portrayed as a war machine in the OT but a God of grace and mercy in the NT?

The book presented four views on the issue, but I find there to have only been three explanations for the problem. I’ll share the explanation and a brief discussion of why I cannot come to fully accept it before moving on to what I think.

1. God shows us more of who he is over time (progressive revelation); perhaps the Israelites were falsely attributing acts/requests of the devil with God because they had no concept of Satan at the time.

This idea seems to make sense when taken at face value, but, as I’ll discuss later, there isn’t much validity to progressive revelation. The view makes the assumption that God did not show himself as loving and gracious during the time of the OT, but that’s inaccurate. Also, I’m very tentative to attribute anything to Satan exclusively, let alone things that are written in Scripture as said to be brought by God.

2. God is afraid that the Canaanites (and them specifically) will corrupt Israel so he wages a war against them. Holy war is only acceptable when Israel is doing it at the direct command of God. It’s more a physical representation of a spiritual battle that will come to a culmination at the end of times.

There are many problems with this one. First, it makes God out to be someone who has to fear other religions. It also doesn’t discern why he’s so afraid of the Canaanites but not the Egyptians who also have other gods. There’s also the issue of double standards when it comes to holy wars. Israel’s wars were acceptable because they were decreed and commanded by God, but modern ones aren’t, even though they believe they are being commanded by their god.  That’s basically the same thing. I do agree that it’s potentially more an issue of a physical representation of a spiritual battle.

3. Neither the Israelites or modern extremists should be condemned for their actions, but Christians must condemn all acts of genocide. When Revelation comes to fruition the ultimate genocide will happen when Christ returns.

Not wanting to condemn either party is essentially condoning all modern genocide today, which is something I caution anyone to be wary of doing. Especially if you then say that Christians should condemn all modern acts of genocide. Furthermore, this view takes an inaccurate representation of Revelation (that it is literally going to happen at some time in the future). The problem is that’s not how Apocalyptic literature (the literary genre Revelation falls under) was understood when it was written. It was meant to portray hope to people; it’s filled with wild symbols and imagery which are not meant to be taken literally. And, probably most importantly, it’s not meant to be explicitly prophetic. On the other hand, Revelation was meant to show people that no matter how sucky the world is, God will make it better in the end.

So then, where I do stand on the issue? I’ve been thinking about it for about a month now  I’ve come to three basic conclusions on the matter that I think we need to remember.

1. The Bible is sacred history, not literal history.
This will rustle some feathers but I must say it: we cannot take the Bible 100% literally. In antiquity, history was not recorded to be perfectly factual as we would expect it to be today, (and even then, history looks different from the “winning” side from the “losing” side, but that’s a different story) so for us to expect everything in the Bible to have happened exactly as it is unfolding would be disrespectful. It assumes we know more about how they communicated than they did. It assumes our modern way of explaining history and concepts is superior to their way of expanding their religion at the time.

So what does this mean for us? It means we need to look beyond exactly what the Bible says and look more at why it says it. I’ll use an example from the Gospels. Going through school they taught us countless times that the Gospels are not biographies. They do not tell us everything that happened in Jesus’ life exactly as it happened (and we can see this based on the differences between them.) We’ve known this for a long time. Does that mean they aren’t useful? No. It just means we need to step back and examine them for what they are (snapshots of Christ’s life put together to communicate certain things to certain people) and not what they’re not (exact, word-for-action descriptions of Jesus’ time on earth.)

Translating that to the OT we need to remember that the OT was written over a long period of time, by many different people, in many different literary genres. It wasn’t written to give a historically accurate description of everything that happened but was meant to communicate the oral traditions of Judaism that had already been passed on from generation to generation. Does that make the OT, or, by extension, the NT, wrong or inaccurate? No. It just means we need to remember that we’re looking at a text of sacred history, not literal history. Then we’ll have a better understanding of what it means based on what it meant to those people.

Takeaway

Perhaps what’s written isn’t exactly how it went down. We will never know. Perhaps the stories are exaggerated. Perhaps they thought God was telling them to do things he wasn’t based on how society operated in that day. We still see things of that sort in Christianity today.

Takeaway

Maybe God did command genocide in the ancient world. Does that mean we must suddenly view God as a monster? No. It just means God was speaking and working with those people in ways that they understood, as he has throughout history since then. As society has evolved and civilized, God’s goal of love and mercy has become more prominent and acted upon.

3. God has always desired and asked for mercy, love, grace, kindness over anything else.
“But doesn’t the above make God a monster?” or “So you do believe in progressive revelation because over time God became less violent.” Hogwash to both.

There’s only one text in the OT that Jesus tells people to find the meaning of. Just one. And he does it twice. It must be pretty important. What is the text?

I want you to show love (mercy, grace, kindness), not offer sacrifices. I want you to know me more than I want burnt offerings. (Hosea 6:6 NLT)

Jesus understood it. He knew that God had always wanted love and mercy. Sacrifices had never been a part of his original plan (much like Israel having an earthly king wasn’t a part of his plan, but he met them [yet again] where they were and granted them one anyway.) Love and mercy have always been the goal. Just because they don’t always come about as we (or even God would like) doesn’t mean they weren’t what was intended.

Takeaway

Just because things have happened that should be seen as evil does not mean that God has not always had love and mercy in his mind as the best way to do things. Humans just tend to get in the way time and time again.

It may seem that I’m avoiding the issue. And perhaps I am. But I think there’s more at stake here than just understanding how the genocide of people fits into the story of the Bible. We’re taking a small piece out of it and trying to work it into our understanding when our understanding of the Bible and the parts that make it up are sometimes fundamentally flawed. When we remember the three things above, we can better see how the genocide fits into the entire story.

Yes, it sucked. Yes, it was terrible. No, we should never condone such a thing. No there isn’t going to be an ultimate genocide in the future. God is the business of renewal, not destruction. History has been a process of renewal and reclamation to God, not of destruction. The ancient world is the world we will never understand. The actions of the people during that time are things we will never understand. If we spend all our time trying to reconcile the past with the present we’re going to drive ourselves crazy and will miss out on the ultimate goal- grace and mercy.