Biblical Contradictions and the Cross

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how 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, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. –2 Timothy 3:14-17 (NIV)

The Bible is the best selling book of all time, but when it comes to how we are to understand it, particularly when we look at problems and difficulties in the Bible, people start to get squirrelly. Paul penned what has become the most quoted passage in the church about Scripture, saying that Scripture is “God-breathed.” The question is, how are we to understand how God breathed it? My previous post dealt with interpreting Old Testament (OT) violence and genocide in light of Christ. In this post, I want to focus on the nature of biblical inspiration.

Right off the bat, I want to acknowledge that some other Christian sisters and brothers would disagree with me and would answer things differently from what I share in this post. That’s ok. As always, I could be wrong and ignorant about some things. While important, these issues don’t strike at the heart of Christianity. There can be a diversity of thought on these questions, and we can still love each other as brothers and sisters united around fulfilling Jesus' mission.

But I don’t want to pretend that how we answer some of these questions doesn’t have important consequences, and may make a difference over whether someone can come to faith in Jesus or not, or whether they remain a Christian or not. What we believe and the reasons we believe can impact people’s connection with Jesus. The apostle Peter says in 1 Peter 3:15, “…in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect…” Peter wanted his churches to be prepared to talk about why they’re Christians when it comes up in conversations, because that can make a difference in whether God uses us to open up a door for Christ or whether we put a stumbling block in the way of someone following Jesus. I also don’t want to pull any punches when it comes to dealing with the data. This post might be unsettling to some Christians. I’d encourage you to hang with me and read this even if this makes you feel uncomfortable, because I believe we should face truth and that Jesus is the God of all truth. In fact, while some of us may initially come to God through a profound emotional experience, sometimes it’s the intellectual grounding we get in our understanding of God that keeps us tethered to Jesus. I’ll start with a story that showcases this very point, and just like with my last post, it comes from pastor and author Greg Boyd.

Boyd shares in his book Inspired Imperfection that much of his growing up years were spent largely as an atheist/agnostic until he was converted to faith in Christ in a Oneness Pentecostal church as a teenager. God’s love and power became very real to him, and he was a passionate follower of Jesus in that time. When he left for college, however, his faith fell to pieces, mainly because of some faulty intellectual foundations he had received. A critical piece of that was his view of biblical inspiration. 

Greg’s pastor had taught that if the Bible is only 99% true, it might as well be 100% false, and said the Bible was inerrant in its history and details. In Greg’s first year of college, he took a class on the Bible as literature. In that class, he was exposed to thoughts on church history and issues in Scripture he hadn’t noticed before, some of them involving mutually exclusive claims in Scripture that seemed impossible to reconcile. His resulting inability to account for errors in the Bible eventually led Boyd to once again become an atheist. While he had experienced joy and deep love and purpose in being a Christian, he had to be honest with himself that if a flawless and perfect Bible was part of the bedrock Christianity was built on, such a notion wouldn’t hold water, and he had to leave it behind. Fortunately for Boyd, he was around a Christian friend who kept inviting him to explore further and to read other Christian theologians and writers. Boyd found Christians who had better ideas and arguments on which they based their faith in Jesus and the inspiration of Scripture, and he reclaimed his faith again down the road. He is a pastor and theologian today, having obtained his PhD in theology from Princeton. He has wrestled for years with how Christians could meaningfully believe in and understand the inspiration of Scripture, and many before him have done the same. Inspired Imperfection contains his more mature thinking on biblical inspiration.

Inerrancy

The notion that Boyd's pastor had imparted to him, that the Bible cannot contain any mistakes or flaws in it, has been called the doctrine of inerrancy. Inerrancy was a teaching articulated in 19th and 20th century America from some Presbyterian ministers, particularly some theologians connected to Princeton Theological Seminary who were part of the Fundamentalist movement that originated there. Some of the main proponents of the doctrine, B. B. Warfield and Charles Hodge, “claimed that Scripture was without error (whether it be physical, historical, psychological, or philosophical) when the precise words of the original documents were considered” (Collins, The Evangelical Moment, p. 43). It was done as a reaction to some excesses going on in the academic study of theology, where some theologians of the day were departing from crucial aspects of historic, orthodox Christianity in their teachings and methodologies. Some had started to deny the virgin birth of Jesus, had turned the resurrection of Jesus into a myth or totally psychologized it, denied Jesus' miracles, and more. Fundamentalists critiqued these excesses and wanted people to get back to the fundamentals of Christianity. Most of the time I hear people use the term “fundamentalist” as a term of derision for people who they think are anti-intellectual and politically fractious, but classic Christian Fundamentalism affirmed five main points:

1. The inspiration of the Bible by the Holy Spirit and the inerrancy of Scripture as a result of this. 
2. The virgin birth of Christ. 
3. The belief that Christ's death was an atonement for sin.
4. The bodily resurrection of Christ. 
5. The historical reality of Christ's miracles.

I can affirm points 2-5 and most of point 1, though I don't agree with inerrancy language. Like every Protestant, I believe the Bible comes first in how we come to understand God, ourselves, God’s will, and God’s authority, which is what point 1 is trying to lift up. However, the concept of inerrancy proves to be an unfounded assumption that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny as a way of understanding biblical inspiration. It strikes me as a way of trying to impose an outside requirement and assumption onto the Bible that doesn’t actually best make sense of what Scripture is. Boyd cites wise words from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famed character Sherlock Holmes: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts” (Inspired Imperfection, p. 37). 

Inerrancy largely flows from an assumption. Since we Christians believe that God is perfect and omnipotent, he naturally would all-powerfully inspire his people to produce a totally perfect set of writings. But what if that is just an assumption and not reality? What if that’s not how God in his sovereignty has chosen for inspiration to work? We should be careful in assuming we know how God ought to work. Jesus, as the bringer of God's kingdom, went quite against the assumptions people had for how the Messiah would operate, and in many ways God's kingdom functions by upside-down, counterintuitive logic. Many religious leaders and people missed that Jesus was God's anointed deliverer bringing in a new covenant and decisively fixing the world's problems of sin and evil. Further, it seems one could make a similar assumption about the church. Since the Holy Spirit is omnipotent and perfect, and the Holy Spirit is inspiring the church, therefore the church should perfectly obey the Holy Spirit, live a wholly Christlike life, and glorify God in all things. I hope I don’t have to twist your arm to see that though the Holy Spirit is inspiring the church, the church is not perfect and does not always follow God’s will and purpose. What is something similar could be at play in how God inspired Scripture?

Let’s dive into some passages of Scripture to get our lay of the land, starting with a look at Jesus and how he used Scripture.

 Jesus on Scripture

Pardon me for being a bit laborious, but I think it is illustrative to look at a good number of Jesus’ direct quotations of and allusions to Scripture in the Gospel of Matthew, though I’m ignoring some other Scriptures that the Gospel-writer himself includes. This should give us a fairly representative picture of Jesus’ view of Scripture, which for him would’ve been the Old Testament. 

During his forty day fast in the wilderness, Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy three times in resisting the devil (Matthew 4:4, 7, 10) and viewed it as an authoritative message from God for how he was called to live his life, and Matthew records it because he wants us to see it as authoritative for our lives as well and useful for resisting temptation. 

Jesus intensifies commands from the Law in Matthew 5:21-22, 27-28, 31-32, and 33-37. He modifies the Law and a traditional teaching concerning enemies in Matthew 5:38-48. 

Jesus cites Hosea 6:6 on God desiring mercy instead of sacrifice in Matthew 9:13 an 12:7, and says the Pharisees need to learn the truth of this passage.

In Matthew 10:34-36, Jesus cites Micah 7:6 as foretelling the opposition and divisions within family his followers would face as they evangelize. 

In Matthew 11:10, he cites Malachi 3:1 as foretelling John the Baptist's ministry. 

Jesus mentions what David and his companions did in eating consecrated bread in Matthew 12:3-4, and further alludes to Numbers 28:9-10 concerning how the priests desecrate the Sabbath by offering sacrifices in the temple and yet are innocent, and now one greater than the temple is here in Matthew 12:5-6. 

He pulls from multiple OT passages in talking about Israel’s blindness and inability to understand the Gospel in 13:13-15. 

In Matthew 15:4-9, Jesus quotes Scripture and prefaces it with “God said,” as he quotes one of the Ten Commandments from Exodus 20:12 (“Honor your father and mother”) and Exodus 21:17 (“Anyone who curses their mother or father is to be put to death”) then he chastises his audience for disobeying God’s commands for the sake of their tradition, and cites Isaiah 29:13 as exemplifying his audience’s hearts being far from God. In this, we see that Jesus believed the OT Scriptures were a reliable witness in giving us the voice and commands of God. 

In Matthew 19:1-12, Jesus cites Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 on God’s desires concerning marriage and engages contemporary rabbinic disputes about divorce concerning Deuteronomy 24:1-4, siding with the School of Shammai's stricter line of interpretation. 

In Matthew 19:16-19 in Jesus’ conversation with the rich young man, he tells him to obey the commandments and cites five of the Ten Commandments, along with the love of neighbor commands in Leviticus 19:18, 34, as integral to finding life. 

In 21:13, Jesus cites from Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11 as he turns over tables in the Temple, showing that the religious leaders have failed and people have missed God’s purpose for the temple in the first place, even though the importance of the temple would soon pass since Jesus is the new temple, the new dwelling place of God. 

In 21:16, Jesus cites the Septuagint version of Psalm 8:2, seeing the praise of children at his entry to Jerusalem as a fulfillment of that verse. 

In 21:42-44, Jesus cites Psalm 118:22-23 and expounds on it, viewing the resistance and rebellion of the religious leaders in terms of them stumbling over the stumbling stone mentioned in that Psalm. 

In 22:29-33, Jesus gets on to his audience for not knowing the Scriptures well enough when talking about the resurrection and the nature of people’s existence after death, and draws attention to the verb tense used in passages like Exodus 3:6, where God says “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” God did not say "I was," but "I am," meaning that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob still exist and he is still their God. Jesus thus makes a grammatical argument from Scripture. 

In 22:34-40, when asked what the greatest commandment is, Jesus cites Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, 34 on loving God with all our being and loving our neighbors as ourselves, and saying all of the Law and Prophets (OT) hang on these two commandments. 

He goes on in 22:44 to ask a question based on Psalm 110:1, asking how David could call the Messiah “Lord” if the Messiah has David as an ancestor, implying that the Messiah is greater than David. 

In 23:23, Jesus upbraids the Pharisees and teachers of the law for scrupulously observing more minor parts of the Law when it comes to tithing herbs and spices, but neglecting the weightier matters of it when it comes to justice, mercy, and faithfulness toward others. Basically, they are only being selectively faithful to the Scriptures and God’s revealed will in them. This also shows that Jesus views some commands of Scripture to be of more weight and importance than others.

In 23:39, Jesus cites Psalm 118:26 as referring to his second coming. 

In 24:15, Jesus refers to Daniel’s language about an abomination that causes desolation in Daniel 8:13; 9:27; 11:31; and 12:11 as referring to future events–interpreters divide over whether Jesus is solely talking here about the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, or solely talking about his second coming, or is referring to both simultaneously. 

In 24:29, Jesus references Isaiah 13:10 and 34:4 and interprets them to refer to judgments and difficulties that will precede the return of Christ–whether they are literal or metaphorical is debated. 

Jesus alludes to Noah's flood of Genesis 7-8 in 24:36-39 and sees it as an example of how things will be at his return, particularly the suddenness and finality of the return and judgment of Jesus.

In 26:11, Jesus references Deuteronomy 15:11 as he comes to the defense of the woman who anoints him with expensive perfume. 

Jesus’ multiple references to Passover in Matthew 26 connect to the original Passover in Exodus 12 and other places like Leviticus 23:4-8 and Deuteronomy 16:1-8. 

In 26:31, Jesus cites Zechariah 13:7 on the shepherd being stricken and sees it as prophetically foretelling his own suffering and his disciples falling away from him. 

In 26:54 and 56, Jesus’ sees his betrayal and coming passion as fulfilling the Scriptures. 

In 26:64, Jesus makes oblique references to Psalm 110:1 and Daniel 7:13 as he confesses that he is Messiah and God to Caiaphas the high priest. 

On the cross, Jesus cries out with the words of Psalm 22:1 and makes it his own prayer, showing that this Psalm prophetically foretells his suffering and coming resurrection victory and vindication.

This is just one of the Gospels, but I hope this demonstrates that Jesus was someone who was immersed in the Scriptures, who deeply valued the Bible, who quoted Scripture often, and who interpreted Scripture in various ways. He viewed the Bible as coming from God. He viewed some Scriptures as weightier than others. He viewed some Scriptures as foretelling and being fulfilled in his own life and ministry, his death and resurrection, and his second coming. He intensified some commands and edited/fulfilled other commands from Scripture in his role of being God’s clearest revelation and the bringer of the new covenant. He saw Scripture as useful for resisting temptation and staying faithful to God’s purpose. You see a similar approaches for interpreting the Scriptures in other NT authors. Jesus loved the Bible. He does not claim it to be inerrant, but he definitely lives by it, interprets it uniquely for his day, sees it as coming from God, and viewed as authoritative for his own personal life and for the lives of others.

Some Biblical Contradictions and Problems

Now let’s look at some problems and contradictions that occur within the Bible. 

A common example involves comparing Matthew’s account of Judas’ death in Matthew 27:1-10 versus Luke’s account in Acts 1:15-19. Did Judas hang himself or fall headlong (perhaps jumping off of a height onto some rocks) and explode? Some try to combine the two accounts and say he hung himself and when he was cut down his insides must’ve burst out. This is possible, and the impulse to harmonize isn't a bad one, though we must confess neither text actually says this and this is an imaginative combination of them both. It further doesn’t resolve the question of who bought the field, Judas or the religious leaders, because the two texts say two different things about who purchased the field. Even more, in Matthew 27:9-10, Matthew says it was Jeremiah who said the price of 30 shekels of silver was set for Jesus in buying the potter’s field, when actually Matthew seems mostly to be quoting from Zechariah 11:12-13. Zechariah is where the 30 shekels and the money going to the potter comes from, while Jeremiah 32:6-12 tells of a story of Jeremiah purchasing a field. Jeremiah doesn’t mention 30 pieces of silver nor does it mention buying a potter’s field. Matthew seems to have creatively combined Zechariah with Jeremiah, and the quote from 27:9-10 is largely not in Jeremiah.

How many women went to the tomb on Easter? John 20:1 only has Mary Magdalene, while the other Gospels have multiple women at the tomb (Luke 24:1; Mark 16:1; Matthew 28:1). 

Matthew 28:2 and Mark 16:5 only have one angel appearing to the women on the day of resurrection, while Luke 24:2 and John 20:12 have two angels appearing. How many angels were there?

 John 20:1-10 has Peter and John seeing the empty tomb before Mary Magdalene, while the other Gospels have the women seeing the empty tomb first. Who saw Jesus’ tomb first?

Matthew 26:1-13 and Mark 14:1-11 have Jesus being anointed at Bethany with expensive perfume by a sinful woman two days before the Passover, while John has this happening six days before the Passover in John 12:1-11. Two days and six days aren’t reconcilable, and it seems unlikely that in the same place, Bethany, Jesus was anointed two different times by two different women to the exact same complaints from his disciples and he gave the exact same teaching about it after their complaints. Most likely the different sources remember the same event happening on different days, but both can't be right about the date historically. 

In Mark 2:25-26, Mark reports Jesus as saying that David and his companions ate the consecrated bread in the days of Abiathar the high priest, whilst the story in 1 Samuel 21:1-6 reveals that it was actually Abiathar's father Ahimelek who was serving as priest when that happened, not Abiathar. Most likely, Mark flubbed the name of the priest as he was writing his Gospel. Matthew (see 12:1-8) and Luke (see 6:1-5) realize this and correct it in their presentation of this teaching in their Gospels, not mentioning any name for the high priest. 

1 Chronicles 21:1 says that Satan incites David to take a census of God’s people, which gets him in trouble, while 2 Samuel 24:1 says that God in anger incites David to take a census of the people, which then gets him in trouble with God. God and Satan are about as different as you can get. Which one is true? They can’t both historically be true, but they do showcase different theologies for understanding the census. 

In the story of Jesus casting out the demons into a herd of pigs, Mark’s account in Mark 5:1-20 says there was one demoniac, while Matthew’s account in Matthew 8:28-34 says there two. How many were there? Further, comparing those same passages, Matthew 8:28 reports the city as being the region of the Gadarenes, which is based off the town Gadara, while while Mark says it’s the region of the Gerasenes in Mark 5:1, which is based off the town Gerasa. These are two different cities, though they both are located within the Decapolis, a group of Hellenized cities near Galilee that had a large Jewish population but were primarily made up of Gentiles, hence the presence of pig herds. Matthew chooses the city that would’ve been closest to those more familiar with the region by identifying Gadara (six miles from the lake), but Mark chooses what used to be the capital of the Decapolis and the better known city in identifying Gerasa (thirty miles from the lake). More than likely, Matthew is the more precise one here, since Jesus just got out of a boat and they are next to a body of water.

Matthew’s genealogy for Jesus in 1:1-17 says that there are 3 sets of 14 generations from Abraham to Jesus, when the last set actually contains only 13 generations. Did Matthew have trouble counting? Further, Matthew omits three generations in the section from David to Jeconiah, skipping the three offspring that follow Joram (Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah according to 1 Chron 3:11–12). The Gospel writer simply says: “Joram fathered Uzziah” (Matt 1:8). How do you explain the discrepancies in the names and numbers?

A humorous one is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:14-16–“I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else).” Paul is exposing the error in what he has just written and is correcting things as he goes–this is just a reminder that Paul was human like us. He is saying that what he said in 1:14-15 is actually in error and that he did baptize more people, and that he might not be able to remember everyone he baptized in Corinth. 

Above is just a sampling–there are many more examples we could show. These discrepancies, errors, and contradictions seem very hard to square away with an inerrantist view of Scripture. Some will claim that if we looked deeper, a solution would appear that would resolve any apparent inconsistencies amongst different Scripture passages. I'm open to that and perhaps we can do that with some passages, but you better be prepared to come up with a lot of solutions (remember that we've just looked at a fraction above), and frankly some "solutions" I've seen aren't very convincing. Some inerrantists will acknowledge that we do have discrepancies and errors in Scripture as we have them now, but will further claim that Scripture is inerrant in the original autographs or documents. I find this position to be unhelpful and a bit evasive, since we don’t have any original documents of Scripture–at best we have copies of copies. It implies that if we could just get the original documents of Scripture in our hands, they would say different things that make all the present problems we wrestle with disappear. I fail to see how this inspires confidence in us being able to trust the Bibles we are reading today that textual critics have done a lot of work to present to us. Also, the chance of all the original documents of the Bible being preserved over 2,000 years and located seems well nigh impossible. If God wanted us to have them and place our faith in such a notion, don't you think God would've preserved the originals for us? Others distinguish what they mean by inerrancy so much that their definition seems to suffer death by a thousand qualifications, and it pushes against the plain sense of what most people think of with the word inerrant. If God wanted to give us a perfect text, then inquiring into it should demonstrate that fact. I don't think it does.

I appreciate what proponents of inerrancy are trying to do, which is to say the Bible is authoritative and is the most foundational and important source for how we come to understand God. I agree that the Bible should be our foundation and our most important source for understanding God, ourselves, others, the world, and the purpose of our existence. That’s a huge part of what the Reformation was about, getting back to Scripture and reforming the church to understand God from its earliest traditions and sources as presented in Scripture. If something can’t be proven or inferred by Scripture, it shouldn’t be required as a necessary for salvation, and if something contrasts with the message of Scripture, properly interpreted, we should leave that belief or behavior behind. I also believe that Scripture on a whole is very historically reliable and is worthy of a sympathetic and serious read. We have good reasons for believing the Bible is a historically reliable book, particularly when it comes to Jesus. Scripture is still God’s word to us regardless of whether some parts end up being totally historical or not, though the historicity of Jesus’s incarnation, ministry, death, and resurrection are non-negotiable (see 1 Corinthians 15:12-19). If you’d like further reading concerning the historicity of Jesus, I’d recommend Ben Witherington III’s The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth; it has scholarly bona fides, but isn’t going to take you forever to read. But to hang the authority of the Bible on inerrancy seems to be a bit of an intellectual sinking ship. Even more, I’m not aware of a passage of Scripture that claims Scripture is inerrant.

Biblical Imperfections as a Witness to the Cross

How, then, should we understand biblical inspiration? Is there a way to hold together Jesus' deep reverence for and deference to Scripture, as well as being honest about its flaws, or are these two notions inherently incompatible? Boyd maintains that God inspired the Bible to point us to Jesus as God’s perfect, inerrant word and gift to us, to show us how to live like Jesus, and that even the flaws of Scripture are inspired to point us to the cross of Jesus. In essence, even the contradictions we discover in Scripture can be redeemed and have an inspired purpose that God uses. 

Boyd’s premise that some of the imperfections of Scripture can be testimonies in themselves that perfection is only to be found in Jesus. God’s inspiration of Scripture accommodates human limitations, and those limitations are a reminder that God uses flawed and finite people to accomplish his glorious will, a reminder of our need for the grace of Christ in our mistakes and blind spots. And where do we see grace for the broken more than in the cross of Jesus? Thus, biblical imperfections are signposts meant to point us to the cross of Jesus. Boyd thus affirms that he believes all of the Bible is inspired, not just select parts of it, and even says the Bible is infallible, that it does not fail to accomplish God’s purpose. That purpose isn’t necessarily for the Bible to be totally perfect in every detail, or to coerce us into a relationship with God against our will, but to serve as an inspired witness to the Crucified and Risen One, and how we are to know and love and serve him, and to see ourselves as sinners in need of him. “I now had a paradigm that enabled me to trust the Bible to infallibly accomplish all that God intends it to accomplish without needing to deny or to feel embarrassed by the fallibility of the biblical writings themselves” (Boyd, Inspired Imperfection, p. 69). He calls his view cruciform inspiration (p. 81).

While I don’t agree with all of Boyd’s thoughts, I like his overall thesis. It seems to be a much more accurate conception of what Scripture actually is, as well as a better theology of inspiration that avoids the pitfalls of inerrancy, while still taking all of Scripture seriously. God didn't send us a perfect text. He sent us a perfect Savior. God’s perfect, inerrant word is Jesus. Our faith is to be in him, with Scripture as God’s inspired witness to him, even in its contradictions and difficulties. 

I wonder if Boyd had such a foundation when he went to college, he wouldn't have felt compelled to give up his faith when he was exploring the intellectual foundations of Christianity. Perhaps now, because of his work and the work of others like him, we who read the Bible today can have a better paradigm for understanding its inspiration, nature, and purpose. Hopefully that will lead to us loving like Jesus and pointing others to faith in Jesus.

Kill 'Em All: Wrestling with Jesus and Old Testament Genocide

There are several hangups people tend to have with Christian faith–fun topics like hell, sexual ethics, faith and science, exclusive divine claims, and making sense of the Bible. The very mention of some of these topics at the dinner table can quicken people’s pulses. But an issue that consistently makes the list and is also a quandary for Christians is divinely sanctioned violence and genocide in the Old Testament (OT). Not long ago, my church went through a Deuteronomy Bible study, and the total eradication of the Canaanites is a repeated theme in the book. The defeat of kings Sihon and Og in 2:24-3:11 included the annihilation of all the “men, women, and children” in their towns (2:34; 3:6). Total destruction is commanded multiple times for future battles as well (see 7:2, 16; 20:16-18; 25:17-19). Greg Boyd in his book Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence, says that commands for total annihilation of a people group are given thirty-seven times in the OT (p. 9). There also are multiple commands concerning putting individuals to death for certain infractions: idolatry (see chapter 13 and 17:2-7), murder (19:11-13), dishonoring parents (21:18-21), sexual violations (22:20-27), and kidnapping and selling people into slavery (24:7).

Prominent atheist Richard Dawkins says in his book The God Delusion that the Bible encourages “a system of morals which any civilized modern person, whether religious or not, would find–I can put it no more gently–obnoxious” (p. 268). He goes on to bewail some of the more repulsive episodes in Scripture–from commands about slavery, the oppression of women, stoning people for disobedience, seeming child abuse in the offering up of Isaac, the seeming sadism in the Father willing the Son to give up his life as a sacrifice, and God commanding the wiping out of entire people groups in the conquest narratives. Theologian Miroslav Volf in A Public Faith quotes another atheist, Sam Harris, who writes in his book The End of Faith that the Bible contains “mountains of life-destroying gibberish,” and Volf summarizes him as saying that “[w]hen Christians take the Bible as their final authority, […] they act in violent, oppressive, life-destroying ways that undermine the common good” (p. 18). Dawkins, Harris, and others contend that if we really get our morals from the Bible, we would turn into incredibly savage people. 

Of course, most Christians either ignore or interpret those passages in a way that does not condone such violence. When’s the last time anyone heard a sermon telling people to go stone children who dishonor their parents? When’s the last time you heard a preacher call for a holy genocide? Folks like Dawkins and Harris grant that modern Christians don’t teach such things, but they further contend that taking such an approach pushes against the traditional Christian teaching on biblical inspiration. If you don’t interpret those passages in a straightforward way, can you sensibly believe the Bible is inspired by God? Either you believe the Bible is God’s inspired word and have a mass-murderer morality, or you throw biblical authority and inspiration out the window in order to be a good person, but the notion of the Bible serving as an authority or a revelation from God doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on. Either way, Christians seem caught in a bind, forced into a contradiction of claims concerning their religion.

Dawkins and others raise excellent questions. Is there a reasonable way out from this conundrum? Can you believe genocide passages are God’s inspired word while also believing God would not want us to perform such actions today and be consistent? What do passages commanding divinely sanctioned violence mean as God’s word to us today?

A Christian View of the Old Testament

To begin, let's look at how Christians interpret the OT. One assumption behind the critique of Dawkins and others is that to believe in biblical inspiration, one must believe believe all parts of Scripture are equally authoritative. While Christians do believe all of Scripture is inspired by God, we do not believe all parts are weighted equally or serve the same function. A passage about putting adulterers to death (Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22) is not as authoritative as Jesus showing mercy to an adulterer and calling her go and leave behind her sins (John 8:1-11). Why? Christians believe that Jesus is the fullest revelation of God (John 10:30; Col. 1:19-20), and that the key to knowing God, understanding his will, and interpreting anything in Scripture, especially in the OT, is through the lens of Jesus and the Spirit. In light of Jesus being revealed in the New Testament (NT), Christians consider the NT more authoritative and binding than the OT, and contend that the OT has to be interpreted in light of God’s fullest revelation in Jesus. The function of the OT is primarily to prepare the way for and point us to Christ.

We see this notion at work in how Jesus and the early church interpret the OT. According to Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:17-20, he came not to abolish OT Law, but to fulfill it. This makes the idea of fulfillment a tool Christians might employ in interpreting OT passages. We can understand Jesus as bringing to fulfillment an idea or purpose an OT passage introduces. Once something is fulfilled by Christ, it may not be binding in the same way anymore for those who trust in Christ. Paul gets at a similar notion in Colossians 2:16-17 when he talks of OT food laws, festivals, and Sabbath as foreshadowings of the reality which is to be found in Christ. This once again is fulfillment language–a concept or practice gets introduced in the OT, but it finds its true fulfillment and perfection in Christ, which means those passages and concepts from the OT aren't applicable in the same way anymore. In Luke 24:25-27, as Jesus speaks incognito to his companions, he tells them that the OT points to his own suffering and glory (see also John 1:45; 5:39-47). Peter makes a similar point in 1 Peter 1:10-12 that God's Spirit was working in the biblical prophets to predict the sufferings and glory of Christ. In John 5:39-40, Jesus says in a conversation with Jewish leaders that they think they have eternal life by studying the Scriptures (the OT), and he says those Scriptures testify about him, yet the leaders refuse to come to him for life. Another picture is Revelation 5, where there is a scroll with writing on both sides that is sealed with seven seals, and no one can open it. Then, an angel tells John not to fret, because the Lion of the tribe of Judah can open it, and then John sees a Lamb looking as though it had been slain. The Lamb takes the scroll and is worshipped, and then in the following chapters starts undoing the seals. One way (though not the only way) to interpret this vision is that Jesus, who is simultaneously the slain Lamb and the powerful Lion, is the key to understanding God’s revealed will in the Scriptures, symbolized by the scroll. These passages see the OT as foreshadowing and preparing the way for Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. 

In one of the fullest reflections we get on this subject in the NT, Paul in Galatians 3:15-25 says the law (OT) was like a guardian or tutor God’s people were under temporarily, intended to lock everyone up under sin until Christ came and people could be saved by faith in him and his grace. While we’d all love for Paul to expound further on the specifics and how all this fits together, he does reveal a sense of progressive revelation, that the OT law was not God’s full revelation or his final plan of salvation, but was temporary and forward-leaning in nature, preparing the way for Christ. You also see Jesus cancel or modify parts of OT teaching. Jesus isn't afraid to correct some aspects of OT teaching. He cancels the OT “eye for an eye” principle (Ex. 21:23-25) and calls us to love, forgive, and pray for our enemies, while simultaneously making more stringent commands relating to murder (Ex. 20:13) and adultery (Ex. 20:14) in Matthew 5. Jesus considered himself to be revealing a more complete and better covenant than the former law, and he wasn't afraid to correct or intensify it in certain ways.

There’s more that could be said here, but I hope you see I'm not blowing smoke when it comes to how Jesus and the early church interpreted the OT. They saw Jesus as the center of the Scriptures, the key to interpreting the Bible and understanding God. There is a sense of progressive revelation going on until the coming of Jesus–the OT prepares us for and points us to Christ, but it is not the full revelation of God and doesn't always carry the same weight of authority as the NT. This does not mean the OT isn't inspired by God, but rather it means parts of the OT play a different role when we interpret them in light of the NT and the coming of Christ. If anything in the OT is contradictory to the teaching of Christ, the apostles, and their close associates who authored the NT, we must interpret those OT commands differently and discern how that passage might point to Christ, while the NT commands are most authoritative and binding for Christian life and practice today.

A key question is why would God not reveal all of himself immediately? Why did God selectively reveal his will over centuries instead of sending Christ immediately after humanity fell? While we’re peering into a mystery here, one possible reason is that God wanted to reveal to us just how incapable and weak we are apart from the fullness of his grace accomplishing salvation for us. Lest we think we could be good or save ourselves apart from a unilateral work by God, the OT serves as a painful but powerful reminder of how nasty sin is and how it enslaves us (Romans 7:13-14), of how imprisoned we are by sin and evil apart from God’s full rescue in Christ (Galatians 3:22). Paul, as he concludes a section of his argument in reflecting on God's work and faithfulness to Israel, says in Romans 11:32 that God has bound everyone over to disobedience in order that he may have mercy on us all. This gets at the notion that Luther lifted up from Paul (and it’s present in Deuteronomy 31 as well)–Luther taught the second function of the OT Law is to condemn us as sinners and drive us toward Christ our Savior. The OT reveals to us how bound we are by the power of sin and evil and prepares the way for a greater work of salvation in Jesus. Through it we gain a deeper perspective into our own flaws, but also a greater appreciation for Christ and a sense of our need for Christ and the Spirit.

Some Observations on Genocide in the Larger Framework of the OT

Let’s briefly make some observations on the genocide passages within the larger framework of the OT, and then turn to look at how the NT either enriches or changes these passages.

God Is a God of Judgment–One of the primary things we can learn from these passages is that God is a God of judgment, who is disturbed, wounded, and angered by our sins. Our sins are deserving of death, and God has rights over life and death. Some of the reasons listed in the OT for why God drove out the inhabitants of Canaan can be found in passages like Deuteronomy 18:9-14, which lists out some of the practices of the people. They would sacrifice their children in fires as offerings to the gods and would listen to sorcerers, physics, and necromancers. Leviticus 18 also lists out a host of sexual sins that were practiced by some of the Canaanite people, along with another mention of child sacrifice. So we’re not talking about societies that walked old ladies across the street and were deeply life-affirming, kind, and generous. Worshipping false gods isn’t just a matter of making God upset, but it has direct consequences on how we treat others. If we fail to worship the one true God and commit idolatry, the way we treat others will fall out of sorts as well. God takes the lead in decreeing judgment and is the primary fighter and giver of victory. In fact, a lot of the victories Israel wins are miraculous, because they weren’t a trained army or a bunch of professional mercenaries. These were people who were delivered from slavery in Egypt and had wandered in the desert for 40 years before undertaking the conquest at God’s leading. God's miraculous ability to give victory against frightful odds is on display in these passages.

There Is Mercy Even Toward Canaanites–In the book of Joshua, God commands mercy for Rahab, the Gibeonites, and sojourners who ostensibly could have been Canaanites–apparently God’s holy war wasn’t waged on the basis of ethnicity, but rather on the basis of whether people accepted or refused to find shelter under the wings of Yahweh. You also see that God’s plan has always been to bless all people and to reach the world–he tells Abraham all nations of the world will be blessed through him in Genesis 12. There are many passages in the Law that are about caring for the sojourner in your midst, the foreigner who lives with you. And sojourners were always welcome to worship Yahweh and to become devoted to Yahweh. So the wrath of God can’t be said to be racial in motivation or about ethnic cleansing–God loves all people and has always welcomed all people who were willing to be in relationship with him.

Exaggerated Victory Language–Ancient near eastern military documents typically exaggerated their claims of victory and their accomplishments in battle. Kings in the ancient near east used to claim that they killed every single person in the land, then later would talk about how much tribute the presumably dead group of people then had to pay. Hint: people who have been totally obliterated can’t pay tribute. It was inflated, trumped up language that exalted in victory, even if all of the people weren’t literally killed (see Dr. Lawson Stone, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGVn1gaSsAsn ). We see hints that a similar notion might be at work in the total destruction passages in the OT. For instance, Joshua 10:20 says that the Israelites “[struck the Amorites] with a great blow until they were wiped out,” and in the very next breath talks about the remnant that fled into fortified cities. I thought they were wiped out, but then they’re hiding in cities? You see this in Deuteronomy 7:1-5, in which Moses commands the Israelites to “devote [some of the native inhabitants] to complete destruction” in verse 2, and then goes on further to command them not to intermarry with them. Why would they even have the chance to intermarry if they are devoted to complete destruction? In 1 Samuel 15, Saul is said to have eradicated totally the Amalekites, but they pop up later in 1 Samuel 27 when David makes raids against them, and again in 1 Samuel 30 when they raid David’s city of Ziklag when he was living among the Philistines. Another example is a people group known as the Anakim. In Joshua 11:21-22, it says that Joshua totally destroyed the Anakim who were in the promised land and in the hill country around the city of Hebron. The text says only in the territories of Gath, Gaza, and Ashdod–Philistine territory–did some Anakim remain. Later, however, Joshua 14:12 and Judges 1:20 tell of Caleb asking Joshua permission to take possession of the hill country and to drive out the Anakim who are there. But wait, didn’t Joshua totally destroy them from the hill country earlier in chapter 11? Moses totally destroyed the Midianites according to Numbers 31, and yet they pop up again to oppress the people of Israel in Judges 6. There are other examples of “totally destroyed” people groups who reappear in Scripture. It’s possible the original audience would have understood those passages not to be talking about literal, total annihilation, but that it was commonplace to use hyperbolic, exaggerated language concerning victories (see Scott Risley, http://bibleteachings.org/what-does-it-mean-to-utterly-destroy-the-canaanites/ for more). With these passages in mind, the total destruction commands may not actually refer total destruction, but could be inflated military language that was common in the ancient near east at that time.

How Do Jesus and the NT Inform How We Interpret These Passages?

Jesus Bears the Curse of Death for Us–While some of the prohibitions in the OT are still considered sinful in the NT, the punishment of death has fallen away. Jesus does not stone the woman caught in adultery, even though Lev. 20:10 and Deut. 22:22 command it. Why? Through Christ bearing the curse of the law, namely death and an experience of exile, for us (Galatians 3:10-14). Jesus fulfilled the death penalty by dying for us, in our place, for our sins. This creates space for God to be both just in condemning sin in one place in Christ, and yet also making a way for God to show great grace and love for those who repent of their sins and throw themselves at the feet of God's mercy. That’s in part why you see no commands to stone or kill someone in the NT. The highest form of discipline in the NT seems to be excommunication.

Non-Violence and Spiritual Warfare–Jesus was undeniably non-violent toward people throughout his life. If there is a place for violence against other humans in the New Testament, you might be able to argue for it from Romans 13, with the constraints that someone is part of an official government position designed to reward what is good and halt evil, though that matter is disputed within the church. Otherwise, there is no divinely sanctioned violence against other human beings present in the NT. We do see a move from eye for an eye thinking into the call to love our enemies in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:38-48). We see Jesus call peacemakers blessed children of God in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:9). We see Peter telling us to follow the example of Christ when suffering unjust treatment in 1 Peter 2 and 3 by entrusting ourselves to him who judges justly, and to imitate Christ and show his love even to the people who would harm us. We have Paul telling us in Romans 12 to bless those who persecute us and not to repay anyone evil for evil, but to overcome evil with good. When it comes to following Jesus and having a Jesus-centered faith, becoming more devout and zealous about our religion should not make us more violent, but more peaceful. Becoming more devoted to Christ should, in the words of James 1:19, make us more quick to listen, slow to anger, and slow to speak. It should make us more full of the fruit of the Holy Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It helps us believe in and work for justice without having to insist on our own way or eradicate those with whom we disagree. It helps us hold together grace, love, and tenderness alongside a deep longing for justice, truth-telling, and things being made right. 

There is a place, however, for spiritual warfare in the NT. This gives us a hint that one way we can interpret violent OT passages is to spiritualize them and use them in reference to spiritual conflict. Jesus casts out many demons in the Gospels and gives a teaching about “binding the strong man” in Mark 3:20-30 and its parallels, implying that Jesus is stronger than Satan and came to drive him out. In Ephesians 6:10-20, Paul mentions that we are in a struggle against spiritual forces of evil and darkness, and therefore we need to be equipped with God’s armor and be ready to wage spiritual war. In 2 Corinthians  2:5-11, Paul urges the Corinthians to forgive an offender and to be on guard against the devil’s schemes, one of which apparently is to harbor unforgiveness and grudges. Later in 2 Corinthians 10:3-6, Paul says that though we live in this world, we do not wage war as the world does, but rather the weapons we fight with are not of this world. They are weapons of divine power that can take down arguments against Jesus in order to make every thought captive to Christ. The Apostle John says in 1 John 3:8 that the reason Jesus appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. The NT portrays the world and the church as caught up in a cosmic battle waged by spiritual forces seen and unseen. Suffice it to say there is a spiritualizing move when it comes to violence and warfare language in the NT. This illuminates one way we can focus our rage and violent energy. It isn't to be directed against human beings, but against powers, principalities, and the forces of darkness.

God Still Expresses Divine Violence in the NT– Divine violence and the judgment of God does not disappear in the NT. All throughout, from the Gospels to Paul to Peter to John, they affirm that Jesus will return to judge the whole world and exact justice. John sees a vision of this in Revelation 19-20, where Jesus as the Rider on a White Horse comes to wage war against all that is opposed to God, and you also see the great white throne of judgment, where God definitively decides the fate of the whole world. Also, the judgment of God is still active in the present age as well–its not all stored up until Jesus comes back. God strikes Ananias and Saphira dead in Acts 5:1-11 because they lied about how much they were giving to the church and kept back part of the money for themselves. In Acts 12:20-23, King Herod Agrippa I is struck down by the angel of the Lord when he is giving a speech because people started calling him a god and not a man, and he wouldn’t give glory to God. The text says “he was eaten by worms and breathed his last,” which sounds like a pretty unpleasant way to go. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 11:27-34, attributes people in the church getting sick and some even dying as a result of God judging and disciplining them concerning abuses in how some in the Corinthian Church were celebrating the Lord’ Supper. Jesus also says he’s going to kill the children of a false prophet labeled Jezebel at the church in Thyatira in Revelation 2:18-29 (perhaps her children are her disciples/followers?), who have been given time to repent, yet have not. God’s present justice and wrath has not disappeared in the NT. Still, we do not see any commands for God’s people to carry out divinely sanctioned violence against other humans in the NT like we saw in the OT. The NT focus tends primarily to be on the return of Christ as the time when God fully exercises his justice. Peter says this delayed justice and judgment displays God’s patience and kindness, which is meant to lead us toward repentance so everyone may be saved (2 Peter 3:8-9). God’s primary desire is for everyone to be saved, and in some cases he allows present injustices in hope that we will turn from our sins and be saved and transformed by his grace. Still, if we spurn God’s grace and mercy in Jesus, the same holy and just judgment displayed in these earlier examples waits in store for us.

Is God a Baby Killer?

You may think all the aforementioned stuff is well and good, but let’s not beat around the bush–are you really trying to defend God concerning commands about killing babies in those total destruction passages? Is it ever possible to give a moral defense of such an action? And if so, doesn’t that seem a bit hypocritical, especially since much of the church champions defending unborn life but worships a God who at least at some point in time commanded the killing of Gentile babies? Children are dependent and defenseless. Young children are more the product of their parents and culture than their own choosing. Who they are is almost entirely received, not chosen. Only when they get older are they able to have more power of choice and self-definition, and more moral responsibility gets assigned to people based on how much power they had in making moral decisions. How on earth could God command things like this and be good?

There are several options on how some people proceed here. 

1. Those Passages Are Wrong and We Need To Leave Them Behind–Some folks take this approach, but again, it seems to fall prey to the critique Dawkins and others give. It’s hard to make much case for biblical inspiration and authority if you simply choose to dismiss parts of the Bible you don’t like. This isn’t how Jesus treated the OT (see for instance Matthew 5:17-20; 15:3-11; 21:42-44; 22:29-32; 26:54; John 10:35). If Jesus viewed the OT Scriptures as inspired, I don’t think we can simply say they are wrong and we need to move on from them. It’s probably not wise to think we know better than Jesus. It’s better to ask how should we interpret those passages and how are we to understand them as being inspired, even if the surface level meaning is not applicable for Christians.

2. God Did Not Speak These Commands, but These Texts Showcase How God Accommodates Fallen Humanity–Greg Boyd is a proponent of this view in his Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence, and Boyd makes the case that Moses and others either misheard God and/or made him in their own image when it comes to commands about inflicting divinely sanctioned violence. Boyd maintains that if Jesus, the perfect Son of God, was misunderstood by his disciples multiple times concerning his crucifixion and resurrection, then could it also be possible that God was misunderstood by his servants in the OT? Boyd makes the case for direct and indirect revelations of God, that when any picture of God in the OT conflicts with the picture of God revealed in Christ crucified, we must consider it an indirect revelation of God (p. 98). These passages are still inspired, however, in that we may be able to lift some principles or truths out of them, even if the entirety of a passage isn’t 100% applicable to us as Christians. And, the flawed are grisly parts can showcase how God accommodates broken sinners like us, which points us to God’s ultimate act of accommodation–the cross of Jesus–where Christ painfully bears the sins of the world to make a way for us to be made truly whole and holy if we turn from our sins. Even the nature of Scripture is cross-shaped in that it accommodates human sinfulness in order to point to God’s love. In this way, Boyd maintains that Moses and others didn't actually hear from God on divinely sanctioned violence, but the passage is still inspired by pointing to God's loving accommodation which ultimately leads us to the cross.

I think Boyd’s paradigm has a lot that is stimulating. I would modify him in a couple ways, and I also don't think his paradigm is without issues. First, Boyd seems too limited in his typology (typology has to do with how the OT foreshadows Jesus and the new covenant). He makes his particular interpretation of the cross crowd out other valid biblical themes about Jesus. What about the resurrection, the ascension, and Jesus’ eventual return and judgment of the world? He has a typology of how OT divine violence foreshadows the cross, which is true and good, but he doesn’t seem to reflect much on how OT divine violence could also foreshadow other aspects of the work of Jesus. I think there are a lot of connections that can be made to Christ's final judgment in the genocide passages. In fact, the vision of the rider on the white horse (Jesus) in Revelation 19:11-21 reads a bit like an OT genocide passage. I think Boyd's model misses this.

Second, Boyd doesn’t fully capture how God sometimes results to coercive force. He writes, “God must always act by means of influence rather than coercion” (p. 58). I agree with an aspect of this statement since I’m an Arminian. I believe God acts by means of influence when it comes to inviting people into a saving relationship with Christ. We are not coerced into becoming followers of Jesus, but loved and invited into the relationship and given grace-enabled choice. But I chafe at the word "always" in the quote above. If we resist God, he is not opposed to bringing coercive judgment and discipline into our lives. Again, I’d appeal to the aforementioned examples of Ananias and Saphira (Acts 5), Herod (Acts 12), the Corinthian Christians getting sick and dying from God’s judgment (1 Corinthians 11), and Jesus saying he’s going to kill the children of Jezebel (Revelation 2). It seems pretty clear to me that God is using coercive power to bring judgment in these passages. You can still be a pacifist like Boyd and believe in God’s right to exercise divine violence–in fact, it can be some of the grounds of your pacifism. Boyd makes the case that many in the church have made God in our own image, and perhaps Boyd is doing the same when it comes to screening out any possibility that the God we see in Jesus crucified and risen could still use coercive force?

My main question is over why Boyd doesn't use the same explanation concerning OT food laws, the sacrificial system, circumcision, religious festivals, Sabbath observance, clean and unclean laws, etc. Did Moses "mishear" God on those commands? Jesus considered those things to be revealed from God, though he fulfilled them and they aren’t binding for Christians. Can we not think similarly on divinely sanctioned violence? Of course, the key difference between the former issues and divine violence is that the former did not entail any loss of human life. Could God have commanded divinely sanctioned violence, knowing it would be a temporary, incomplete revelation whose true significance would be revealed in Christ–Christ bearing the death all sinners deserve, Christ waging war against evil spirits and calling us to join the battle, and Christ bringing final judgment against evil? That leads to the next possibility, which also is not without its challenges.

The strength of Boyd’s approach is that it gets you off the hook for believing God commanded genocide while also holding onto the plenary inspiration of Scripture, but his approach is not without issues.

3. God Spoke These Commands, but Their Function Is Spiritual and Typological in Nature–I see a couple ways people could go here. One is to pull from the above knowledge of exaggerated military victory language to make a case that in giving the total destruction commands, God did not intend the total eradication of people, but rather the military defeat and overthrow of a broken culture. That is probably how proponents would interpret the distinction made in Deuteronomy 20:10-18 on how to go to war with nations outside the promised land vs. how to go to war with nations in the promised land. The total annihilation language was more on the eradication of a culture, not the actual killing of women, children, and babies. 

Others would say yes, God is speaking commands to kill women, children, and babies. Probably no one wants to get stuck defending this position if there's a better explanation, but even if it is the case, I’d have a hard time seeing God consigning people to eternal damnation, especially children, who have no ability to choose anything other than what is given to them by family and culture. Perhaps Paul’s comments in Acts 17:30 that “in the past God overlooked such ignorance” of idolatry would be relevant here? 

These approaches maintain the notion of God genuinely speaking these commands, even though they are temporary and indirect revelations, and their main Christ-revealed function is that they are prefigurations of the cross, spiritual warfare, and final judgment. They do not "get God off the hook" when it comes to commanding violence in the past, however. Whether you hold to a softer view or a literal view of the nature of the violence, these views still bring up questions concerning God's faithfulness and fairness. These may not be insurmountable given some of the considerations above, but they can be "sticky wickets," to quote a friend who gave some feedback on a draft of this. Of course, proponents of this view maintain they are not applicable at face value for Christians when it comes to God commanding people to eradicate others, since nowhere is this supported in the NT.

4. God Still Calls the Church to Inflict Violence and Holy War Today–This position would say there is no significant difference between Old and New Testaments on the issue of divinely sanctioned violence. God’s people are still called to use violence to enforce God’s will. This is the mistake parts of the church fell into during the Crusades. While you could make a biblical case for this position, you would have a hard time making a Christian case, because supporting this would require having the OT become weightier and more foundational than Jesus and the NT when it comes to your theology. That’s not a Christian way of doing theology and is not how Jesus and the early church interpreted Scripture. Perhaps an exception can be made for those in governmental roles created to preserve order according to Romans 13:1-7.

I think options 2 and 3 can work for thinking through this issue, though the conversation certainly isn't over.

Conclusion

Biblical inspiration does not mean all Bible passages are weighted equally or function in the same manner. Jesus is the key to interpreting Scripture since he is the full revelation of God. When an OT passage conflicts with a NT passage, Christians should obey the NT while also seeking to discern how that OT passage connects to the work of Christ. God has authority over life and death. He sometimes exercises that right in history, but mostly God patiently waits to express his full and final justice until the return of Christ, an act of love done in hopes that people would turn from their sins and trust in Jesus in order to find life, meaning, and hope. Christians have a diversity of views on if God actually commanded the genocides, and if he did, on whether it was an actual genocide or the use of exaggerated language. Becoming more zealous and devoted to Jesus should not make Christians more savage and violent people. Jesus was non-violent toward people, and he and his apostles call us to be non-violent as much as possible, while still standing for truth and goodness and struggling against spiritual evil with spiritual weaponry. 

With these thoughts in mind, I’m hoping that the next time we read or hear the genocide passages in all their gruesome detail, we can receive them as God’s inspired words to us through Christ. They should remind us that Jesus died for us to show us grace, though we are sinners who deserve wrath. They should remind us that we are challenged to join in Jesus' battle against sin and spiritual evil, participating in spiritual warfare through prayer and lining our lives up with God's truth. They should remind us that Jesus is returning to judge and totally annihilate all evil, while those who trust in Christ will enter into God's promised land of eternal happiness, healing, and harmony. May we wrestle with these texts and come away with a deeper appreciation of Christ.

Come, Gladdening Light

Every now and then I get inspired to write a song. I've entitled this one Come, Gladdening Light and it is about grief, loss, and hope. It's a rough cut–just me and my guitar. It has a folk vibe to it. My tempo is a bit all over the place, but I thought I'd share it with you anyway and hope you enjoy it. Here's the link to the song with lyrics in the description: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQppu2ykVfE&feature=youtu.be 

Thoughts for White Christians

We’re in a complex, chaotic, and charged moment in the life of America right now. It’s like a painful, tangled-up knot of many different strands. No one person has created this pain. It comes from things bigger than all of us. It comes from our collective past as a nation. It comes from our individual stories and experiences. It comes from the messages and actions of representatives of different groups. It comes from multiple issues colliding into each other, sometimes explicitly, sometimes under the surface.

So how are you doing? A lot of people are hurting right now. I’ve had to work through some emotions, and I think we’re all continuing to do so. I’ve been praying and journaling. Some of my initial thoughts were immature and unhelpful, but doing so has helped me wrestle with myself and with our moment. How are you processing your pain? I think we can all show each other some grace while also pursuing what we believe is right.

I want to share how I’ve been thinking through some of those strands and intersections that have had a pull on my heart. I'm speaking primarily to white Christians, mainly because that's my experience and these are the people I'm around the most. In doing this, by no means am I intending to make white experience the center of our present moment. As most minority folks know, we've had a bad habit of doing that for centuries. Still, there are things we white Christians need to grapple with. I've been thinking that we could use a lot of discipleship on the intersections of faith and ethnicity, faith and politics, and faith and conflict.

Faith and Ethnicity

As a white Christian pastor who has been in predominately white congregations and spaces for most of my life, bringing up the intersection of faith and ethnicity is often uncomfortable to us white folks. It can bring up painful past and present issues, and it usually puts us on the defensive. So… often we don’t talk about racism and hope that things will magically get better, or we always talk about it in terms of the past. If we preach on Christ reconciling Jews and Gentiles to each other through the cross in Ephesians 2:11-22, or God not showing favoritism along ethnic lines as per Romans 2:9-11, or Jesus engaging with Samaritans and Gentiles in the Gospels, it’s easy for us to apply those principles to the past and on an individual level. “Yeah, slavery was bad. Yeah, Jim Crow was bad. Aren’t we glad that isn’t happening now?” We talk of racism as something that got solved with the Civil Rights movement, and if people claim racist things are still happening today, we might accept it on an individual level, but be very resistant of talking about it in systemic terms. “Sure, Billy Bob might be racist, but our laws and country are fair now.” Unfortunately, this ignores or minimizes the experiences of many of our minority brothers and sisters. Hearing them talk about mistreatment and systemic sin can lead us to silence, or worse, to start casting stones at other ethnicities in an attempt to deny or deflect away from our faults. It’s a way of saying, “Oh yeah? Well you have problems too! What about X…” While we’ve done it for a long time, ignoring and lashing out isn’t going to help anyone going forward. This is not to say we white people have not brought gifts to the world and have strengths. It’s rather a way of saying that like every person and every group, we’re a mixed bag, and we need to own our faults.

White folks have been the majority of the U.S. population, and with that comes privilege and power. We have a troubled history when it comes to slavery, Native American genocide, Jim Crow, and a justice system that has had more teeth against minority people than whites (read Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow). There are lingering effects from these sins when it comes to inherited wealth, social capital, and opportunities. Whether we know it or not, these things shape our lives and they also shape how other ethnicities experience us. This is not to say white pain, white people struggling with poverty, and our individual choices don't matter. It's simply an acknowledgement that the past shapes the present, and that shaping is beneficial for white people and detrimental to minority people.

To be honest, even if we acknowledge the sin of the past and privilege in the present, we white folks haven’t really had to care much about other ethnic communities. For a long time, we've been able to get along well enough in life without them. We've had most of the power and could spend most of our time in white enclaves. This is going to become less and less the case in our country’s future. If trends continue, demographic research is showing whites will no longer be the ethnic majority in America in about three decades. I think part of what’s going on in our present moment is our country is starting to feel some of these demographic changes as minority people gain more voice. We’re also seeing differences among generations in how to understand and talk about ethnicity. The article I linked to above claims that as of this year, white people comprise less than half of the population age 30 and under, and so younger white people are having more opportunity to connect to people and concerns beyond their immediate ethnic group. Younger generations also haven't had to experience as much change as those who lived through the Civil Rights movement, who already have had to devote mental and emotional energy toward change. According to survey research from Barna (see the free ebook below), Gen X and millennials are much more likely to acknowledge how racism in the past affects our present, and express a desire for the church to take steps toward fairness and reconciliation. When it comes to navigating church, culture, and politics in the future, white folks are increasingly going to have to develop intercultural competence. To fail to do so is to hamstring ourselves when it comes to friendships, evangelism, how we do church, business, and political coalitions.

How can we own our faults without hating ourselves or lashing out? How can we be better at listening to and loving our neighbors who don’t look like us instead of ignoring them and pretending they aren’t a part of us when they’re in pain? As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:26, “If one part [of the body of Christ] suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” How can we build a fairer church and world together?

Several people have been recommending books to educate ourselves on this topic. I think that’s a good step. The more we can listen to different voices and research, the better. My hope is we become better informed and compassionate without being crippled by anxiety and feeling like we have to walk on eggshells when it comes to ethnic difference. Sometimes we can become so wrapped up in the potential for causing slights and pain that we feel it’s better to avoid reaching out across lines of difference altogether. Remember: We’re all made in the image of God, and the humanity we share is more fundamental to our identity than ethnic and cultural differences. We’re all more alike than we are different. For those who follow Jesus, the Spirit we share is more foundational to our identity than any other identity marker, and Jesus unites people you wouldn't expect to see together in other circumstances. My hope is for us to be informed and sensitive, but not lose heart for reaching out in love when it’s hard and there's the potential for rejection. 

Of course, the primary book I'd recommend reflecting on is the Bible. You might be surprised, but it's chock full of inter-ethnic issues and principles that can help us move forward. I'm grateful that my seminary is hosting several conversations on race, and the first one was very good on showcasing the biblical and theological tools we have for moments like these (though we haven't always lived into them well historically.) You can check it out here.

Barna group is giving away a free e-book on race relations, with some survey data and thoughts from diverse Christian leaders on how to move forward here.

I’m pasting books, some of which I've read, some of which come recommended by others, if you’d like to read further: 

• Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson (this has been turned into a movie that is streaming for free on Amazon Prime during the month of June if you’d like to watch)
• Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores by Dominique Gilliard 
• Letter from a Birmingham Jail by MLK Jr.
• Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Reform by John Pfaff
• Welcoming Justice: God’s Movement Toward Beloved Community by Charles Marsh and John M. Perkins
• I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown
• The Speeches of Fannie Lou Hamer: Telling it Like it Is by Maegan Parker Brooks and Davis W. Houck 
• Let Justice Roll Down by John M. Perkins

Faith and Politics

Our present moment has also revealed that Christians in America have very different approaches to politics. Once again, speaking from my context in primarily white churches in the South, I have often heard the phrase we should not “preach politics,” or overly meddle in political affairs. There is a sense in which this advice can be both helpful and unhelpful. 

Helpful–Not preaching politics can be helpful (1) because pastors and churches can idolize politics. We can become so wrapped up in political movements that we neglect things like evangelism, spiritual formation, and more. I’d be wary of a church that always harps on the latest in politics and calls for certain votes and political actions but doesn’t call people to faith in Christ and to grow in grace and prayer. (2) Politics can be divisive, so avoiding the subject can preserve a form of unity in the church. Usually when you preach in a way that addresses modern political issues, you can expect some pushback unless you’re preaching to the choir of a mostly mono-political church. (3) Not preaching politics is understandable because no current political party represents the full set of values present in the Bible. There are values that conservatives champion–ending abortion, strengthening families, protecting religious liberty, fiscal responsibility, creating jobs, and the importance of personal responsibility–and values that liberals champion–helping refugees/migrants, reducing gun violence, fairness when it comes to ethnicity and gender, providing for the poor, caring for the environment, and addressing systemic sin. When I read my Bible, I find all of these values. It can be easy to advocate for a chopped-up set of values that are handed to us from the Democrat or Republican platforms instead of letting biblical faith take center stage. Lately, I've really liked the analysis of The And Campaign and their Church Politics podcast in their efforts to transcend partisanship and evaluate current political issues from a biblical worldview. I understand that different Christians are going to choose to prioritize different value sets and politicians over others. We all have to make that choice. I also know the practice of politics is going to be imperfect. I don’t hold out high hopes for a political party embracing a fully-orbed set of Christian values. The church is called to serve of Christ as Lord, not necessarily the nation. But what I don’t understand is wholehearted devotion to certain politicians or party platforms like they are God’s gift to the world. That is idolatry and letting a party platform take center stage instead of God's desires. Such idolatries cause pain, confusion, and roadblocks to evangelism. We cause pain when we show up for some causes based around biblical values but not others, which is what I hear many of my black and brown brothers and sisters saying about white Christians right now. There's a lot of passion about being pro-life when it comes to abortion, but not much pro-life passion when it comes to black people being killed for no reason. Wading into the fray is hard, and there can be pressure to align totally with a party platform. Christianity doesn't fit neatly into party platforms.

Unhelpful–Yet not preaching politics is unhelpful (1) because it gives a divorced picture of Christian faith, that Christianity is all about a spiritual world, but it isn't concerned about the concrete realities that shape our lives. It's all about "saving souls," so we have nothing much to say about migrants, nothing to say about abortion, nothing to say about racial inequities, nothing to say about creating jobs and thriving economies. We don't reflect on the civil disobedience and political implications of some of God's servants in Exodus, Daniel, and Acts and how that might be relevant to us. We don't reflect on God using a political leader to save her people: Esther. We have nothing to say on policies and practices that trap people in poverty like Amos and James did. "Spiritual Christianity" has a lot to say about evangelism, formation, and prayer, but lets someone else’s rules take center stage when it comes to political issues instead of thinking about how Jesus might want us to approach these issues. The Lordship of Jesus isn’t just over our souls or over the spiritual realm–Jesus is Lord over all existence. He has come to reconcile all things to himself, things on heaven and things on earth (Col. 1:19-20). A famous quote from Abraham Kuyper gets at this: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’” The church has a distinct witness about what God desires that can be a boon to society when thoughtfully applied. (2) “Not preaching politics” is also unhelpful in that it’s impossible. Deciding not to talk about politics is still a political philosophy that has political ramifications in our churches and communities. There is no neutral position. (3) Not preaching politics often subtly aligns with the status quo. We don’t need to preach politics because what “is” is alright with us. It’s interesting I've heard this maxim in white churches, but not in other ethnic churches. Unfortunately, when you look at history, similar language was used in Southern white churches around the issues of slavery around the time of the Civil War and segregation during the Civil Rights Movement. Might we not want to preach politics because the status quo benefits us white folks, and to lift it up means to point us toward change? Meanwhile, the concerns and pain of minority people go unheard from the pulpit, and they wonder if they could ever fully be themselves in majority white congregations. 

I don’t want to paint the picture that if we’d all just agree on politics, revival would break out, tons of people would surrender their lives to Christ, and we'd finally get rid of all sin in the world. No. Neither do I want to pretend that I have all the answers. I’m a pastor, not a politician. I am open to the charge of being out of my depth in political thought, and I don't get everything right. Still, we lose a potential area of discipleship and doing good if we neglect focusing on how following Jesus should inform our political life. Instead of “Don’t preach politics,” I’d say “Sometimes preach politics.” It’s risky, but biblically grounded, informed, humble, and kind messages around political issues can be an uncomfortable blessing to our people, our communities, and our world.

Faith and Conflict

The first two points play into this final point. Since we don’t do well concerning ethnicity and politics, many of us think it’s fine not to act like a Christian when it comes to conflicts that touch these areas. We lose sight of the fruit of the Holy Spirit and love of neighbor. We avoid honest conversation. We tell one-sided stories. We avoid thinking that we might be wrong or have incomplete information. We avoid listening to our neighbor. We assume someone who is different from us ideologically is an idiotic scumbag. We don’t lose or win graciously. We try to control others instead of relying on persuasion. We carry bitterness in our hearts. And we don't always think or argue well when it comes to moments like these and when we're hurting.

I’ve witnessed a lot of overly simplistic statements and actions the past few weeks on all sides. The composition fallacy is a logical fallacy that assumes one part of something automatically represents the whole. “All police are evil.” “All protestors are idiots.” “White people are evil.” “Black people just tear stuff up when they get upset.” Just because we see instances where some people are acting in these ways doesn’t mean that the whole is like that. That’s not to say we can’t acknowledge systemic unfairness in how law enforcement have engaged with people of color, or stand against looting, rioting, and retaliatory violence. All or nothing statements based on composition fallacies don’t capture reality or help. I’ve also seen people employ false dichotomies, false either/or choices. "To support the African American community, you must be against the police, support disbanding police departments, and not care about the emotional heaviness and hardships many in law enforcement deal with." Or, "To support the police, you must critique the African American community, not empathize over the damage undeserved deaths of black and brown people are causing communities of color, and you must oppose all protestors." You don't have to be locked into these false dichotomies to support the African American community or law enforcement when it's done well. Further, I’ve seen several guilt-by-association techniques that try to push people into boxes: if you support Black Lives Matter, then you must automatically support everything about a very progressive platform (are you one of those pro-choice, anti-economy liberals?), or if you criticize rioting, you are supporting everything about a very conservative platform (are you fine with police brutality and throwing your lot in with white supremacists?).  

Don’t fall prey to sloppy rhetoric. Respect and good argumentation still matter, especially when dealing with painful and complex issues, and even more so for followers of Jesus, who are to embody the grace and truth of Christ. Bridge-burning statements may feel good in the moment, but they limit how many opportunities we get for coming to the table, for diverse friendships, for persuasion and for learning. We may not always be able to choose when or how those moments come to us. They can come around the dinner table, in the locker room, in the board room, in the church office, in the classroom, or on the street corner. But if we follow the way of Christ, those moments will come. Do we want them, or would we rather spend our days signaling how awesomely right we are on social media and push people away? 

We are in a messy moment. We can't flip a switch and fix racism. It took a long time for us to get where we are, and it will take time to move toward a fairer world. There are many things that are outside of our control. To be honest, racism is a global problem, and I don't think sins like it will be fully eradicated in the world until Jesus comes back, but that doesn't mean there's nothing we can do or that we should be defeatist. We can all do our part where we have influence. Prayer is crucial when we face things outside of our control. I'm reminded of Jesus' teaching on prayer in Mark 11:22-25, that if we pray in faith, God can uproot mountains and throw them into the sea. Let's pray that God would uproot the mountains of racism, anger, ignorance, apathy, and inequity out of all of us, out of the church, and out of the nation. If Jesus can rise from the dead, he can do this. 

Specifically to my fellow white Christians, I'd ask us to consider further reading on how ethnicity has shaped and continues to shape our world, to let Scripture ground our values rather than a political party, to show up for brothers and sisters of color regardless of if it looks "liberal" or "conservative," and to continue to have a humble posture of listening, love, and prayerful action. I know I've talked a lot in terms of politics, but I was reminded by a good Baptist brother who read a draft of this that this is an opportunity for sanctification, for becoming more like Jesus. He's right. And I want to try to do better. I hope you'll join me. Prayer, education, friendships, and wise politics will all be part of working toward a better world. 

Don’t lose sight of the positives. We’ve seen peaceful protests and prayer meetings break out across the nation. The vast majority of law enforcement have acted well and helped protect against looting and rioting. Several ideas (though maybe not all) are moving forward for better practices and accountability in policing that can benefit both minority communities and police departments. We’re seeing statues and symbols of white supremacy that have been unsettling to many start to come down from places of honor and power. We’re being called for more honest conversation about how race shapes our lives, our churches, and our country, and how we might move toward a better harmony together. For these things, I praise God. I pray the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and the many who have died before will not be in vain. I pray for our law enforcement, the vast majority of whom are doing things right, who face situations of incredible stress and danger that hardly any other job has to face, and for those who have been killed or shot during riots and looting. I hope and pray that moving forward we will be more committed to love and friendship across lines of difference than ever before, even if it’s hard. I pray that Jesus would give us eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts that are full of love to be agents of reconciliation and justice. And whether America pulls back together or falls further apart, my ultimate hope is in Jesus, who is Lord over all, who died and rose to rescue us from our sins, who calls us to repent and confess our sins in order to be free, who always gives us hope, and who is with us even now.

Thanks for reading. I love you all.