Religious Violence

The subject here is not so much people who commit violent acts in the name of religion, but rather religious texts themselves and the violent scenes they contain, and which are often committed by the holiest figures.

My perspective is Judeo-Christian (JC), and my argument is that the God of this tradition evokes nothing but love and creation even though certain scenes seem to contradict this example by presenting a God that destroys. My purpose is to address this seeming contradiction, which I think is no contradiction at all.

First we need to accept a certain metaphysical fact, which I think is implicit in the JC tradition, namely that NOTHING STAYS THE SAME, or all is in flux.

In the beginning there isn’t nothing but rather a chaotic deep, a raging flux, which isn’t stilled until God comes on the scene and starts creating. God is the presence that prevents the destructive tendencies of the flux. When God is absent, destruction runs rampant, as was the case at Sodom and Gomorrah, the great flood, and when Jesus died on the cross…

“My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?” Jesus died BECAUSE God wasn’t there, BECAUSE the flux wasn’t checked… When God is absent, the flood comes and everything is washed away. When God is present, we are saved from destruction… (IMO the JC God is not an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient God… None of these terms are mentioned in the Bible…)

Now here I’ll be the first to say that in the Old Testament the flood is a judgment by God. In other words, God judges that certain people aren’t worthy enough to be saved from the flux and so God releases its destructive power upon them. This is admittedly an older, more barbaric notion of God that is corrected in the teachings of Jesus Christ, where God forgives instead of casting judgment. There is a difference between Judaism and Christianity. Jesus was a rebel against the prevailing religious teachings of his day… To Jesus, God is no longer the one who delivers judgment, but is purely a salvific force, a healing force, a loving force…

Jesus would never release the waters to wash everything away. Rather Jesus would clean the world with unconditional forgiveness.

But anyways, that’s my take on JC religious violence. It isn’t God who destroys, but rather God is the one who holds back destructive forces. In the Old Testament, sometimes God lets these forces free to clean the slate (although it is not Godself who does the violence). In the New Testament even this is corrected by favouring the cleansing waters of forgiveness over the cleansing waters of a flood that washes everything away…

So god actually doesn;t destroy things? he only allows the universe to destroy us?

How do you feel about moses and the seven plagues?

What was it about marking your door with lambs blood that kept gods presence in?

If my memory serves me correctly the holy spirit or something similar was responsible for killing all the first born children.

Also, how is god absent if jesus is present?

If god simply let the flood happen by releasing the water, is that not the same as killing us?

he creates us, shelters us, then dissatisfied with us, destroys us?

god might not create the violence, but he releases it, he directs it. he knows it’s going to happen. he still judges we should die.

besides, god created the water. you know that.
.
“in the beginning, god created the heavans and the earth”.

I don’t mean to offend you, but it seems that the notion expressed in this thread is nothing more than an inexplored wishful opinion which helps you rationalize your faith.

For me the biggeest contradictin is that if god created me, how can he judge me unworthy or inadequate?

In a sense, yes, but I would say it’s more of a presence/absence thing rather than “allowance”. Sometimes God is there and we’re saved from the flux. Sometimes God isn’t there and we’re wiped out. In the Old Testament, granted, God decides to unleash the destructive powers of the flux. But this is eventually replaced by forgiveness, a non desructive way to “clean house”.

I feel the same way about this as I do the great flood. God stopped saving the Egyptians from the destructive powers of the flux and they were decimated. Again, this is a more barbaric God, and the God I espouse would have forgiven the Egyptians for enslaving Israel.

Good question. If you check out my other posts, I go into God’s nature a bit more, but even there this isn’t answered to satisfaction. Basically God is a way of life more than a particular life, so that God exists through particular lives that follow this way. Whenever an entity lives a life of love, God is present through that entity. Jesus’ life was a life of love, and so Jesus is rightfully called the “Son of God”, in the sense Jesus follows God’s example (like any son follows their father). When Jesus died on the cross, God may have been present THROUGH Jesus, i.e., when he lovingly forgave his executioners, but God wasn’t present anywhere else in that chilling scene. i.e., Jesus was executed; he wasn’t saved from the flux, which is precisely the action of God.

Sure, in a sense. And I disagree with these actions. But like I said, this God was “corrected” in Jesus’ teachings, where forgiveness replaced destruction/wiping the slate clean.

God releases it in the sense God stops saving us from it. But again, this isn’t the God I call for. I call for the God that forgives.

Here we disagree. To me, the flux preceded God. When God starts creating, “the deep” was already there. The idea of creatio ex nihilo was a later, Christian concept, i.e., long after Jesus. The more accurate account is that God created from pre-existing elements (the chaotic deep). If you read Genesis 1 closely, you can still see this… “In the beginning, a wind from God blew across the deep…” or something like that…

You are free. And again, I want to distance myself from the God that judges and condemns. To me God judges in the sense God provides an example to judge ourselves against. God does not actively judge and sentence as in the Old Testament…

So how does God decide where he wants to be? Sucks that his plate is too full to keep an eye on everything, but I guess that’s how it goes.

So this flux you speak of takes on the form of pestilence and plagues? Why?

Where am I misunderstanding? You say God wasn’t present, yet you say this was the action of God. Does God not have to be present to take action?

I guess I’m just confused. First you say that God is a fictional character, an example as to how we should live our lives. Then you go on to say that God is present wherever this lifestyle exists. If all you’re claiming is that God, the fictional character, is represented by a lifestyle…well, what’s your point?

God is shown to have emotion in the Bible

Wrath of God, Anger of God, Jealousy of God (which is in the commandments), God Despises, Love of God, Compassion of God, etc…

The only emotion that God doesn’t show that is on the human scale is apathy, although God is shown to ignore ("Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’.)

God is a being that has an agenda.

No one said God is the scapegoat for humanity.
God is just a higher power than humanity, and offers a way to be with God.

So, by the Bible’s representation of God, God is a near literal being with full ranged emotional maturity and indeed a bias based on a scale that God created.

There is nothing wrong with this.

For whatever reason human’s seem to think that there is and that because of it, either God is a cosmic jerk or doesn’t exist.

God is indeed shown to have emotion. I haven’t down an exhaustive search and comparison to human emotions, but I’m guessing you can find examples of everything, perhaps even apathy.

Does God always have an agenda? Again, I feel like such thinking points to God as some superbeing out there ruling over us/directing the flows of the universe. To me, God’s agenda is simple and it never changes: love. God’s agenda is to love everyone God meets, and this means to help them if God can.

I agree, God is not a scapegoat for humanity. I’m not trying to pin suffering on God when in reality it is humans who have caused it.

However again, God is not a higher power than humanity. God is simply a character in a story, not a superbeing out there…

GOD IS GREATEST OF ALL BECAUSE GOD SERVES EVEN THE LEAST.
God is NOT greatest of all because God has the most power…

Actually, that would be Paul, not God.

Paul was the professor of world wide forgiveness and compassion through the blessing of the sacrifice of Jesus.
Many other apostles were not in favor of this idea, Jesus was constantly talking about Israel exclusivity, and God spent nearly all of his time talking directly to the Israelite’s when quoted.

Among the mission of Jesus, however, is where the concept of charity, empathy, and love is highlighted more.

This passage shows up in all four gospels (actually not sure about John), where the disciples are discussing “who is greatest”. Are you saying the authors of these Gospels are in fact quoting Paul rather than Jesus, even though they have Jesus deliver the words?

I would believe you if you say so. I’m under the impression that Paul was an inspiration for the authors of the Gospels, which were written long after Jesus died and after Paul’s ministry, so it would make sense.

I agree that God addresses the Israelites and excludes others, and Jesus does so as well at times. It seems to me that it was largely Paul who wanted to extend welcome to everyone…

It really sucks that Jesus never wrote anything. Even if the earliest text we have with this passage is from Paul doesn’t mean Paul was the source…

So given this, I don’t know how you can say “Paul was the professor of world wide forgiveness and compassion…”

No matter who the original professor was, all that really maters is that the ideas are central to the Christian tradition.

The conversation of who is greatest in heaven by which Jesus uses the children as the metaphor is not an inclusive conversation of all of man kind.

You have to keep in mind that Jesus considered his own mission to save the lost of Israel, so when he speaks to other Jewish people, it is assumed by all listening that he is only referring to the Jewish population and not to those outside of being Jewish.
Jesus is found to hold all customs and practices in the Bible that a proper Jew should hold.
He even has the Disciples offer sacrifices at the temple, as well as pays a temple tax himself apparently regularly.

So, this is why the “who is greatest” conversation is immediately followed by a “lost sheep” conversation (for example: Matthew 18)

The lost of Israel are called the Lost Sheep, or the Lost Sheep of Israel.
These are not terms that Jesus would call a Gentile as a Gentile never knew the Jewish God to begin with so they are not “lost sheep”.

Or rather, they are not his flock, and therefore he is not concerned if they are lost from their shepherd (Caesar), only that his flock of sheep are not lost.

Paul, being the only man that is a Jew and worked for Caesar hunting Christian’s, is refereed to as the Apostle of the Law, and because of his experience with the Gentile world, it is then brought forward by Paul (I believe this is in the book of James actually) to discuss the provision of salvation through the Law of God for the non-Jewish.

It matters in understanding the nature of what you read.

I have to make a correction of my earlier statement.

When I got home, I looked up to double check and reading about I found that it is correctly accounted in Acts 15, not in James.

Although, if you want an interesting perspective of events of this kind, read Galatians around 2 and 3rd chapter, mixed with Acts 13 through 15.
Then compare Timothy to James, both being guidelines to life.
Then compare the Jewish bias in Matthew to the other 3 gospels.

It’s a long and twisted road (so bring book marks and notepad paper to keep track of things), but it is an interesting read.