Hello my freinds!

I pray you are having a wonderful February so far. I can't believe it is already halfway over! Maybe it's because our little girl will be born in March and there is so much still to do! So time must just feels like it is moving super fast for me!

When the season of Lent begins every year, I tend to post a poem that I wrote as a reflection on the season as a whole. I even included it this year as the prologue to my devotional I wrote. A summarized version of the poem goes like this:

We want the warhorse.

Jesus rides a donkey.

We want to take up swords.

Jesus takes up a cross.

We want the Eagle.

The Holy Spirit descends as a dove.

We want the roaring lion.

God comes as a slaughtered lamb.

We keep trying to arm God.

God keeps trying to disarm us.

Inevitably, every year I post this, many people will ask me a version of, "isn't God super violent in the Bible?" Or "Yes, but doesn't Jesus does return on his warhorse in the book of Revelation to violently conquer sin and those who do evil?"

So, I thought I would invite us to think about these questions for a bit together today, as I'm sure we've all asked them at one point or another.

But before we get into that, here's some good resources on this topic.

RESOURCES TO CONSIDER

​-Did Jesus really tell his disciples to sell their cloaks to buy swords? I will also get a lot of questions about Luke 22:36-38 where Jesus tells his disciples to go and buy swords. Here I dedicated an entire newsletter to this passage and why Jesus did tell his disciples to do so and why it isn't for the reasons we might automatically think.

​-Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Following the Lamb into the New Creation by Michael Gorman. As a pastor, I'm always on the look for a good Bible commentary. I have read a lot of them on the book of Revelation and this one is not only so profound but it is so accessible. I have recommended it time and time again and those who do read it always tell me how much more confident they are in approaching such a complicated book of the Bible.

​-Why Wesleyans Aren't Fundamentalists by Al Truesdale. As a Christian in the Wesleyan tradition, I will get a lot of questions about how our tradition views scripture along with other things. As one who grew up a Fundamentalist Christian, this short article does a profound job of showing the two traditions that have both had an impact on my Christianity at certain points in my life and where I have arrived today in the Wesleyan tradition. I think you will find it really helpful in your journey as well.

​-The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire by Alan Kreider. I have also recommended this one time and time again. It is not only a masterful work on church history, but it also highlights how committed the first three centuries of the early church were to nonviolence. Many were even deeply opposed to military service. This was precisely because of what the early church believed about Jesus and his teachings. The author illustrates this by simply showing you the writings of the early church itself. Many take this for granted when thinking about the origins of our faith. Rather than causing our faith to diminish in the Roman empire, this posture of nonviolence, along with many other social postures, caused it to flourish. I highly recommend reading this book.

​-Truth Speaks to Power: The Countercultural Nature of Scripture by Walter Brueggemann. If you haven't yet already, I would highly recommend giving this one a try. In this short book, Brueggemann invites readers to take a closer look at the subversive messages found within the Old Testament.

​-"On Freedom, Love, and Power" One of the philosophers I find deeply compelling and challenging is Jacques Ellul (1912-1994). He was a French law professor, historian, sociologist, lay theologian, and Christian anarchist. During the Second World War, he was active in the French resistance; his efforts to save Jews during this time eventually earned him the title: "Righteous Among the Nations." He was a towering intellectual figure. He taught in Paris and at the University of Bordeaux, wrote and published extensively, and engaged throughout his career in a dialogue between the realities of technology and contemporary life, the tenets of the Christian faith, and the principles of human freedom. This compelling book is a series of talks which clarifies some of Ellul's most controversial insights into what it means to understand and live out God's wishes. It is a great work to expand your thinking on this topic. As always, it is important to note that I like to read books that challenge me rather than books I agree with 100%. This book, along with all that I recommend, is in that category.

Alright, let's look at today's content.

Isn't God Super Violent In the Bible?

Believe it or not, this question actually has more to do with how we think about the Bible than it does with how think about God.

You see, so much of how we understand the Bible is through an “either/or” lens. Since we have so often made the Bible out to be an "answer book," we can look at themes like morality or violence and think "the Bible either says it or it doesn’t and that should shape what we believe."

When we approach the Bible in this way, it can make us assume that all of Israel or all of the writers of the New Testament fully agreed on everything with each other. When you begin to study the Bible more in depth however, it can be really disruptive to try to hold onto that belief, because it simply isn’t true. The Bible is so much more nuanced, profound, and complicated than that. Authors of the Bible not only didn’t agree with each other at times, they opposed one another in their books. The authors of scripture also grew and matured in their theology overtime and we can miss this maturity as well as diminish our own when we aren't looking for this.

Let me give you just a couple of examples of what I'm talking about.

One of the many wisdom traditions in Israel advocated the belief that if you did good things, God will bless you with good things, and vice versa. You can see this in many of the Psalms and Proverbs. To question this tradition, another tradition wrote the book of Job, where the main character's life obviously did't work out that way.

In the book of Deuteronomy (23:1) Eunuchs were expressly forbidden from entering the temple. "No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting (genitalia) may enter the assembly of the Lord." Yet this changes over time and Eunechs are then fully welcomed by God into God's presence by Isaiah 56:1–8, then even sent to carry Christ's gospel to the ends of the earth in Acts 8:26-40.

There is a conflict within traditions in the Hebrew Bible over whether God would work primarily through prophets or through kings. This dispute is on full on display in 1 Samuel 8 and still wasn't resolved by the time Jesus came onto the scene. This is why you will see Jesus embody to prophetic tradition (like teaching from a mountain like Moses and weeping over Jerusalem like Jeremiah) while often being hailed as the "Son of David."

Even God is shown to be more complex than we often consider in scripture. God regrets making humanity (Gen 6:6) and regrets making Saul king (1 Sam 15:11). God changes God’s mind in a discussion about Sodom with Abraham (Gen. 18:16-23). God is even shown to repent in Jonah (3:10).

The most obvious example of this in the New Testament is how Paul says to one community that women should’t lead men (1 Tim 2:12) yet he had appointed and praised Phoebe for her leadership over the whole church in Cenchrea (Romans 16:1). Not even to mention Jesus sending women to be the first to preach the good news of his resurrection at the end of all four gospel accounts.

Paul and Peter also had a huge dispute in Antioch over the apostolic age, which is recorded in Galatians 2:11–14.

So, what about violence?

This same complexity is true when we come to God being violent in the Bible. The Old Testament is so often the place this question is referring to, pointing to the times God seems to literally command violence, war, and even genocide, not even leaving the innocent spared (book of Joshua).

The Book of Revelation is also a place where this question arises, especially Revelation 19 where Jesus arrives on a warhorse ready for what is often called "the battle of Armageddon."

So what are we to do with these? My simple answer is, just like Jacob did, we are called to wrestle more deeply with God over these texts until blessing and clarity comes. For this is exactly what the authors of scripture were doing. They were wrestling with who they believed God to be. They were doing the same difficult work of interpretation in their time and they left us their writings to call us to do the same work in our time.

After all, the very name “Israel” given to Jacob means, “one who wrestles with God.” We are called to do the same.

So, to do this, let’s take Nineveh as our example today. Nineveh is most famously known for the city that the prophet Jonah stubbornly refused to go to even though he was sent there by God. Yet, there is so much more to know about this city.

Nineveh was the flourishing capital city of the Assyrian empire, which was a constant tormentor of Israel and its people. The Assyrian warriors were known throughout the ancient world for their overly harsh an excessive brutality, even against women and children. I won’t share their tactics here because they are just so violent and barbaric. Let me just say that when I first learned about the Assyrian’s horrid treatment of Israel, I finally understood why Jonah would have such a hard time justifying even going to Nineveh, let alone believing that God wanted to show them any mercy or forgiveness. Why wouldn’t God avenge Israel and destroy Nineveh instead for all the horrible things it had done? Isn't God a God of justice?

Well, that’s actually exactly what the prophet Nahum tells us in his version of events. After 4 chapters of describing the brutal shame and terrible wrath God is planning against Nineveh, Nahum ends his entire book by saying about the destruction of Nineveh, “Nothing can heal you; your wound is fatal. All who hear the news about you clap their hands at your fall, for who has not felt your endless cruelty?”

So given these two very different ways that God responds to Nineveh in the Bible, one with nonviolent, forgiving love and the other with violent vengeance and the fires of wrath, what conclusion are we to draw about God and violence?

A lot is at stake here too, right? It isn’t just about violence, but about justice and God “allowing evil” in the world. This isn’t just one thing, but so many things at once! Hence why we are still discussing it today.

So again, what are we supposed to do with these texts in light of our questions today? Like I said before, instead of looking for an either/or answer, the Bible invites us to wrestle. So let's do that a little more.

The Difference Is Love

You know what one of the main differences between Jonah and Nahum is? The span of about 400 years. Many scholars suggest that Jonah was written not only after the Assyrian empire was long gone, but also after Israel had spent time as exiles in Babylon alongside Assyrians themselves.

Israelites not only got to know Assyrians in captivity, but they built friendships with them, did business with them, some even married them and built families with them. A lot can change in 400 years.

Yet, given Israel’s history, they still had this terrible suffering in their past done at the hands of Assyria. After getting to know the Assyrians in such a meaningful way though, they are now wrestling with the question “maybe we were wrong about how we felt towards Assyrians and our enemies in general.” They were now wrestling with the question, “how would God have us respond to them then and now given what we now know?” What form did this wrestling take? The book of Jonah.

You’ll notice how Jonah kind of ends with a cliffhanger. We as readers aren’t sure if Jonah finally changed his mind about Nineveh or not. Even after everything in the entire book from wind, waves, pagans on the boat, the king of Nineveh and even his cows respond to God, even God repents, yet we are still left with this question, "will Jonah repent?" More importantly, it asks the reader, "will you? Will you choose mercy and forgiveness too? Or will you be the only one holding onto the anger over the past and not allowing reconciliation and healing to happen?

Isn’t that such a bigger question than “is God violent or not?”

What we learn from the Hebrew Bible isn’t a rigid certainty about who God is. What we learn is about a people who are willing to not only wrestle with what they believe about God over the span of thousands of years, but also write it down in such a vulnerable way to say, “we don’t have all the answers, but here are some of the mistakes we’ve made along the way and some of the wisdom we’ve gained from learning from them. We are still learning who God is and we hope you are too.” Unfortunately, that’s a lot longer of a phrase to say than “the Bible clearly says.”

I think we have so often just assumed God’s justice to be violent that we then read that into the Bible when the Bible itself is still wrestling with that notion. Including the book of Revelation. When we read it as if God's justice assumes a violent response, we will read it as if it is an endorsement of both imperial and religious violence, rather than a blatant critique of them, which it is.

Take the passage from Revelation 19 as we have already mentioned. Jesus shows up on his white horse, but he’s already bloodied before the battle even begins. This is a very intentional detail because the entire book is about the Revelation of the crucified lamb and a call to follow him. Jesus shows up covered not in the blood of his enemies, but his own. Blood given out of love for the world, not blood from enemies he conquered in order to take the world by force. Then, with all the legions of angel armies behind him, armed to the teeth, they simply stand there and do nothing. What is so often called “the battle of Armageddon” is actually no battle at all. Jesus defeats the tyranny of evil and sin the same way God created. With the Word (John 1). It is a powerful metaphor of what he as God’s Word accomplished through his life, death, and resurrection. It was that act of self sacrificial love that was God’s victory over all futility, sin, and death. It is a Word that is not only sharper than any double edged sword could hope to be, but renders swords useless.

It is a fragile god who needs weapons and armies to achieve victory. It is a powerful God who creates and dismantles by the power of a Word. It was this “revelation” of power that gave the early church confidence that even in the face of death, they were following the one who defeated death. They would rather give their lives for others rather than take the lives of their enemies as Jesus did, knowing they would share in his resurrection. What radical love. A love the world that only knows violence would call foolish.

As a follower of Jesus, his way, his truth, his life are the lenses through which I read and wrestle with the Bible. So, while others may conclude that God is super violent in the Bible and even regrettably use it to justify Christian violence in our world, I simply don’t believe it is that “either/or.” It’s just not that cut and dry.

Especially as those who follow the crucified lamb, our holy scriptures are calling us to wrestle more deeply with these questions than we are. As one whose wrestlings has brought me closer to Jesus, I think they are so profoundly worth it and central to our faith. We who claim to follow Jesus must wrestle with the reality that Jesus lived committed to nonviolence in his life, even to the point of death. If we believe Jesus is the greatest revelation of God in the world, then that must compel us to intentionally wrestle with how we go about interpreting the character of God throughout the rest of scripture.