Why does God appear so violent?

One of the most often asked questions asked by honest skeptics and quickly dismissed with a cliché by Believers is, “Why does God appear so violent in the Old Testament?”

The problem is, in part, we do not like the answers offered to us.  The answers do not satisfy our logic.  That means we will never get a solution that meets our self-justifying processing of truth.  And that means if something doesn’t make sense to me, there must be something wrong with the proposition. 

On the other hand, one of the reasons we do not understand is that we cannot.  God’s rationale is beyond our capacity to comprehend.  However, we are very robust in our cognitive skills and just as defensive.  There is an old saying, “What the human mind can conceive the human mind can achieve.”  I’m not sure that is a quote, but it is the sentiment.  It seems to me the phrase was bouncing around about the time the NASA put the first man on the moon.

Could it be that humans needed an understandable explanation of the random temporary reality of existence?  To fill in the gap between what we know and what we do not know, between what we control and what we cannot control, we filled it with the concept of “God.”  Is the human idea of God birthed in our need to feel secure in a hostile environment where life is sometimes good but always deadly?

Does the growing knowledge of humanity eradicate the need for a god?  The more we have a formula or discover to explain, the less a god is needed?  Is science the new religion?  Science has all the characteristics of God, all-knowing, ever-present, unchanging,  but science cannot provide the fundamental answer need in life, “Why?”  As a result, it cannot give the longing of the essential human nature, “Why do I hurt?” and “Can I be healed?”

I have no answer to the violence question that would satisfy.  However, in pursuing the same questions, and others, I have decided to believe what God has revealed about Himself in His word, what we call the Bible.  I have found no empirical evidence that God exists.  Nor have I found any proof that He doesn’t.

God is a “jealous” god.  Why?  For the same reason, I am a jealous husband and father; I love my family.  I trust I will go to any length or sacrifice to ensure my family will remain exclusively my family.  That’s the kind of jealously about which I’m talking.  God is, first of all, “love.”  True love has an element of jealousy.  In the human creation place, the Garden of Eden, there was no violence.  It was only when Adam and Eve pursued their interpretation of love that violence came into existence.  The first act of violence was by Adam and Eve when they disobeyed God.  They violated God’s love provoking Him to act.    I do not see God as violent.  I see Him as perfect love protecting his identity.  He does not protect me; He protects His holiness, His identity.

From the beginning, people have a hard time with the existence of a loving God.  Their harsh and random life experience in this world feels undeserved and unfair.  If there was an empirical answer, I believe it would have been found by now.  The absence of that answer does not mean the knowledge is not available.  It is.  The variable in our plight is a choice, “Will I accept the information He has given on faith, accepting what He has revealed as truth.  I must add here; this does not mean accepting what humans have said about what God has said, that’s religion.  Go to the source and ask Him.  But be humble enough to take the answer He gives and to walk away from your self-contrived theories of how God ought to act. 

It is difficult for me to read in the Old Testament of the genocide of people.  But I only know part of the story.  I will not use what I cannot understand to disqualify what I do understand.  I believe the answer we long for is coming.  Until then, I will base my life on the truth that God is love.

Why does God appear so violent?  I can only give you my partial answer so far, “Because God is perfect love.” 

I do not understand many of the actions of God.  But I do trust the God who acts in love for His creation.

Photo – Man heading home from work in India.