How do we respond to Biblical genocide?

[Soma-Sight]

Overview of some biblical genocides:

The Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) of the Bible describe many events which involved major loss of life. Most were conventional wars. Four of these events would probably qualify as genocides under most current definitions of the term. They were:

The worldwide flood at the time of Noah as described in Genesis, chapters 6 to 8. From the description, it almost completely wiped out the human race, with the exception of Noah, his wife and sons and their wives.

The Passover incident described in Exodus chapters 11 and 12, in which all of the firstborn of all Egypt were slaughtered.

The conquest of Canaan, in which God ordered the Hebrews to completely wipe out the Canaanite people -- from the elderly to newborns and fetuses. This is described in the book of Joshua.

The near extermination of the tribe of Benjamin by the remaining 11 tribes, triggered by the serial rape and murder of a priest's concubine. See Judges, chapter 20.

The first three of the above genocides have at least three factors in common:

The Bible explains that God was primarily responsible.

Many liberal Christians, liberal Jews, historians and biblical archeologists believe that all three are religious myths -- stories of great spiritual significance about events that never happened.

Jewish and Christian conservatives generally believe in that the authors of the Bible were inspired by God and thus their writings are inerrant. They believe that the genocides happened exactly as described in the Bible.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/god_cana.htm

 

[Guest]

Attempting to justify a supposedly all-good God with his repeated incidents of genocide, rape, and torture has led many people to question their faith and perhaps ultimately deconvert...and rightly so.

 

[Drew]

As much as I think the Scriptures are a gift from God, full of wisdom and truth, I do think that accounts attributing genocide to God (and they are indeed there) really cannot be correct. At the risk of inciting the ire of inerrantists, I will take the risk of suggesting the following: a model of God that includes using humans as instruments of violence may be true to the words of Scripture, but it does such violence to the concept of love as to be totally unworkable.

When one takes these accounts as written and actually visualize the act of soldiers slaughtering babies with swords on orders from God, I claim that a truly loving human being has to say "No, this is too much to ask me to believe". It is not so much the "unfairness" of the suffering or the life cut short (after all, God allows babies to die in earthquakes, etc), it is rather the implied message that humans can legitimately be agents who bring violent death on others (without real need).

 

[phatcatholic]

well, i think there's a couple things we have to keep in mind as far as these instances of killing are concerned. please try to bear with me. i am not very good at citing direct verses from the OT.

1. herem warfare (or however u spell it), where the Israelites were commanded to completely wipe out the different peoples who resisted their occupation of the Promised Land served a dual purpose. for one, the Lord knew, for example, that if the Canaanites were allowed to remain alongside the Israelites in the Promised Land that the Israelites would be tempted to engage in their aberrant sexual and worship practices, like they did when they were living in slavery alongside the Egyptians. secondly, this destruction is punishment for the sins of these people. there is one point where they people are ready to enter the Promised Land but the Lord has them wait b/c "the sin of the Canaanites is not complete" or something to that effect. the Lord endured the sins of the inhabitants of the Promised Land for hundreds of years. they had ample opportunity to turn to Him. but they refused. it was not time for the Israelites to occupy the Promised Land until total eradication of the people became the only just response to their lifestyle.

2. the wages of sin is death. many of the very Israelites were killed for breaking the covenant in various places in the historical books of the bible. this was b/c when God's people entered into covenant w/ the Lord they made an oath with Him that if they broke the covenant may death fall upon them. that's what is meant by sprinkling blook on the altar and on the people. they are basically staking their life on the covenant. so, when they break it, they are simply getting what they deserve (for example, in the sin of the golden calf).

3. death b/c of sin is not foreign to the NT either. in at least two places we see it. Saphira and her husband are struck dead by Peter for attempting to withhold some of the money for themselves. also, Paul says that many of the corinthians were falling ill and dying for receiving the eucharist unworthily. so, its not like we see an altogether different God in the NT that we see in the OT. death is simply the just punishment for death. period.

4. we must also remember that loss of physical life is not the greatest evil that could befall us. what is worse even still is the death of our soul. Jesus warns us to beware not the one who can harm our body, but the one who can harm our soul.

5. finally, altho the Isralites were commanded to wipe out their enemies, they were punished whenever they kept some bounty for themselves (instead of giving it all to God), when they raped and pillaged, and when they started to believe that they were conquering these people b/c of their own inherent worth, instead seeing these victories as a gift from God.

that was admittedly a rushed response. i can go back and find the scriptural citations, if need be. i hope it helps.

pax christi,
phatcatholic

 

[Soma-Sight]

As much as I think the Scriptures are a gift from God, full of wisdom and truth, I do think that accounts attributing genocide to God (and they are indeed there) really cannot be correct. At the risk of inciting the ire of inerrantists, I will take the risk of suggesting the following: a model of God that includes using humans as instruments of violence may be true to the words of Scripture, but it does such violence to the concept of love as to be totally unworkable.

When one takes these accounts as written and actually visualize the act of soldiers slaughtering babies with swords on orders from God, I claim that a truly loving human being has to say "No, this is too much to ask me to believe". It is not so much the "unfairness" of the suffering or the life cut short (after all, God allows babies to die in earthquakes, etc), it is rather the implied message that humans can legitimately be agents who bring violent death on others (without real need).

I think I am in your boat as well...

It makes no sense to me for God to command Saul to kill babies of another culture?

WWJD???

That sounds like WWSD!

Of course the inerrants will proclaim that "folly to man is wisdon to God" or some such rhetoric....

But the many genocidal events in the OT leave me questioning the "inspiration" of those events unless we are dealing with a Demiurge.

 

[Soma-Sight]

No more takers on this one?

The only "apologetic " answer i can find is that God did it to prevent future evils...... That makes a lot of sense..... Kill all babies to prevent future evil instead of just not having them be born to begin with.

 

[Imagican]

What seems to be forgotten or ignored so far is that God created life and it is His to take at His discretion. Most of the genocide of which is spoken of here concerns 'punishment' of those that had 'proven' themselves to God.

Each incident that has been mentioned involved peoples that had 'turned their backs' on God and therefore their lives became forfeit. And if we take into consideration that EVERYBODY dies, what's the difference to God if we die at the age of ninety or nine? We are judged according to that which we perform during our lives. Whether we are allowed a long life or a short one is irrelevant to our Creator. He that gives is certainly capable of 'taking away'.

It would be utterly foolish for any one of us that has so little understanding to even think that we are capable of judging God or the 'reasons' that He does that which He does. His will, not ours, is beyond our ability to make any kind of judgement of.

God knows and has known exactly what must be done in order to insure that which He desires for mankind. There is an order that cannot be thwarted regardless of our 'feelings'. The important thing is this: If ones heart is right with the Father, there is NOTHING to worry about concerning death. If, however, ones heart is not right and one worships the world instead of God, there is EVERYTHING to worry about death.

Read what the apostles offered concerning their feelings of death. Most welcomed it for upon this 'other' aspect of 'life', death, one is released from the pain and turmoil of this world. Of course, these that had no fear of death understood that it was NOT an end but rather a NEW beginning.

 

[Drew]

What seems to be forgotten or ignored so far is that God created life and it is His to take at His discretion

Fair enough. But when God specifically uses human agents as the mechanism for taking life, a whole set of other issues arise. It is one thing for God to allow people to perish in an earthquake, it is quite another to ask young men to use their swords to slice into the flesh of women, children, and babes in arms. To me, the only reason a lot of Christians accept these tales is because they exist in a far-off past that has no connection with our world today. However, Christians would howl with rage (and rightly so) if such acts were carried out today in the streets of, say, New York. Theological justifications would be of no value, I suspect.

I would ask the reader to consider the actual act of taking an infant out of its mother's arms and stabbing it with a sword. I think such an act is abhorrent as to be inconceivable. What have we become if we do such things?

You may argue that I am appealing to sentiment. Well, I'll take my chances trusting my "gut" and disavow any act of needless killing. I think it is precisely the sense of revulsion and outrage I feel when considering such acts, that shows that there is something of the imprint of God in the mind of the human person.

 

[Packrat]

The Passover incident described in Exodus chapters 11 and 12, in which all of the firstborn of all Egypt were slaughtered.

One of the reasons Moses was put into a sort of basket was because the Egyptians were killing all the Israelite's children. I think you should keep that in mind when judging God on his decision to kill the Egyptian's first born. The only concept I struggle with in genocide and the killing of infants is why God would harden the people's hearts to fight against Israel.

I know that those who do sin and continue in sin do not deserve God's protection or even life if we were created by God for his purposes. So to those who live in sin, their lives can be turned into examples of God's power. The peoples that Israel were supposed to rid the promised land of were living in sin. From what I gather, they were committing immoral acts of sex and offering their children to Moloch by burning them. God even told the Israelites that if they let any of the people live that they were supposed to completely destroy, that they would be a thorn in their side for a very long time (if not indefinitely).

If God allowed a few of the enemy's children to live, they would have grown up sooner or later and heard of the matter of their families' destruction. Doubtless some would be disturbed and shake off slavery and the land would slowly be polluted again with bickering and squabbles (murder, slandering, lying, revolts, who knows). If some of the adults of the enemy were allowed to live they would probably keep to their old customs of worshiping false gods and idols and things would probably get worse a lot more quickly. Eliminating any resistance was in God's right to do so if they were his creation. Period. God can slay the righteous just as well as the wicked and it would be his right. This would be contrary to his nature though, since he loves those who love him and follow him. God tolerated little resistance in the Old Testament. The only reason he didn't kill off his people entirely by allowing others to utterly destroy them is because of his promises.

I've been concerned with genocide in the Old Testament as much as the next person has, but now I'm really not. Just to put things into perspective to possibly remove any preconceptions we might have with the word Genocide: If there was a race of murderers that slew their young and wore their skins in autumn festivals to gods of war and death, and had sexual intercourse with infants and beasts, would they deserve to live? Would you want them to live if they refused to change their ways?

If someone - anyone - says yes to this, I'd be incredibly amazed at their apparent lack of morality. :o

 

[Packrat]

Hmm. I'd be a liar if I said that http://www.jcnot4me.com is an interesting read. I can see where a lot of his (or her?) hate is coming from by his/her own literary illustration: She is a fragile sort, and these threats ruin her life. So I suppose that he/she was just tired of being faced with the prospect of hell so they have to try to make Christian's lives miserable and turn the Bible into a book of lies and God into a farse in order to find peace of mind.

The only problem with using this image is that it speaks to our emotion and not our logic. Here's another image, but God didn't kill this one. Look at your own risk.

http://www.priestsforlife.org/resources/monica/m64.htm

The unwary and unwise can be easily swayed by such illustrations. However, it is not simply the killing of children that is evil, but the killing of potential that makes it either evil or good. It can be the killing of potential evil or the killing of potential good. We, as humans, cannot know whether someone will turn out to be the next Hitler or Stalin so it should not be up to us to decide who to kill and who not to - whose potential to end and whose not to end until they have proven their greatest potential.

 

[Soma-Sight]

Packrat,

Pretty brutal pic I must say.

JCnotforme.com is quite a read is it not? Pretty intense to say the least.

 

[Packrat]

Pretty brutal pic I must say.

On that site there are many more as I'm sure you can see with a bit of navigation. The thing is, those genetic soups of mangled viscera and limbs had the potential to become the next plain Joe or maybe a Tolkien, Mozart, or Isaac Newton. Maybe they would have become the next Darwin or Steven Hawkings, but we may never know what, apart from a heap of tissue, they may become. It's easy to point to the incidents in the Old Testament and say that God is evil, ignoring his testimony of the reason why he did such things, and then go back home and live comfortably in atheism, trying your best to ignore mortality and then lobbying for abortion.

I, too, think that parents should have the right to kill their own children. If we lived in a Godly society, then I would be prochoice. But when a couple teens start throwing emotion around and have sex and then kill their child because of their own folly, that is wrong. Also what would be wrong is if a harlot had an unwanted pregnancy and killed (aborted) their child. I'm even somewhat against aborting a pregnancy resulting from rape. It's not the child's fault. They should track down the rapist and "abort" him instead.

But then again, that's another thing I struggle with in the Old Testament. There appear to be incidents where children were killed or ordered killed by God because of the sins of their parents (David and Bathsheba for an easy one). Judgment should not be on the child but the parents. I don't know if it was the right choice to kill that child, or what exactly was going on. But I will continue to research such events and find possible answers. If I cannot come to terms with God's decisions, then the end result may be my forfeiture of faith or rejection of God. At the moment, I have faith that there are logical answers just as there were for the driving out of and killing of the inhabitants of the Promised Land.

 

[Soma-Sight]

They should track down the rapist and "abort" him instead.

You have the right idea my friend.....

 

[SputnikBoy]

They should track down the rapist and "abort" him instead.

You have the right idea my friend.....

Said in jest, I hope. I thought the intent of this thread was to oppose the killing of anyone.