Category: god and violence

Peaceable politics and the story of Jesus (Peace and the Bible #11)

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Ted Grimsrud—December 18, 2023

In my blog series on “Peace and the Bible,” I am showing just how political the concerns of the Bible are. Most people I know find it easier to see that in the Old Testament than the New. In the second half the series, I will argue that the New Testament presents a kind of political philosophy. This philosophy has at its core a commitment to pacifism, a commitment based on the centrality of Jesus Christ to the Big Story the Bible tells. Christians have tended to miss the social implications of the New Testament part of the story because of assumptions about both politics and Jesus.

Politics have been seen as directly tied to running governments and the necessary use of violence. Jesus indeed did not talk about running governments or using violence. However, if we define politics more broadly as the way human beings order their lives together in social groups, perhaps Jesus and the rest of the New Testament were engaging in political behavior. Once we think of politics in this wider sense, we will be more open to recognizing that Jesus indeed was interested in politics—and, actually, very little else. When Jesus spoke of the “Kingdom of God,” perhaps what he had in mind was not some other-worldly existence but a reimagining of politics in this life—in line with the political dynamics in his Bible (what we call the Old Testament). The notion that Jesus spoke only of the personal sphere actually has little support in the texts.

If Jesus did indeed care about politics, then that Christians understand him to be the model human being and the definitive revelation of God would seem to require them to take seriously Jesus’s political witness. If we do take the story of Jesus seriously as an account of a peaceable way of ordering our social lives, our other question will be how relevant that account should be for our present-day political convictions and practices.

Who was Jesus?

At the very beginning of the story of Jesus in Luke’s gospel—the song of Mary in 1:46-55 upon her learning of the child she will bear—we learn that this child will address social reality. He will challenge the power elite of his world and lift up those at the bottom of the social ladder. This child, we are told, will bring succor to those who desire the “consolation of Israel.” Those who seek freedom from the cultural domination of one great empire after another that had been imposed upon Jesus’s people for six centuries will find comfort. From the beginning, the story presents this child in social and political terms.

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May the Joshua story be read peaceably? [Peace and the Bible #9]

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Ted Grimsrud—December 11, 2023

One of the more challenging passages in the Bible is the story told in the book of Joshua. God’s chosen people enter the “promised land,” meet with opposition from the nations living there, and proceed—with God’s direction and often miraculous support—to kill or drive out the previous inhabitants. The book ends with a celebration that now the Hebrew people are in the Land, poised to live happily ever after.

Probably the most difficult aspect of the story to stomach is the explicit command that comes several times from God to the Hebrews to kill every man, woman, and child as part of the conquest. This element of the story is horrifying, even more so in light of the afterlife of the story where it has been used in later times to justify what are said to be parallel conquests—such as the conquest of Native Americans and native southern Africans. I wonder as a Christian pacifist what to do with this story. But, really, even for Christians who are not pacifists, how could any moral person want to confess belief in such a genocidal God—or accept as scripture a book that includes such a story?

Exhortation not history

I want to see if we can find meaning in the story that will help us put it in perspective and protect us from uses that find in the story support for our violence. More than defending Joshua per se, I want to defend the larger biblical story of which it is a part—an essential story for faith-based peacemakers. So, the first step for me is to recognize the type of literature, in a general sense, that Joshua is. I will call it “exhortation,” not “history.” It was an account likely written many years later than the events that inspired it may have happened. It was shaped in order to offer exhortation to its readers and hearers to seek faithfully to embody the teaching of Torah. I do not think it was meant to tell the people precisely what happened in the Joshua years.

I would characterize the Joshua story, then, as a kind of parable, a story (mostly if not totally fictional) that makes a point. To see the Joshua story as kind of a parable does not take away the troubling elements of the story—however, I think such a view changes what is at stake for we who believe in the Bible. What is at stake for us, most of all, is to try to discern the lesson the story is meant to make—not to feel bound to believe that the details are factual. Thus, for one thing, believing the Joshua story conveys important truths does not require us to accept its portrayal of God (or of the vicious character of the “conquest” of the promised land) as normative for us.

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Arguments for a pacifist God [Peace and the Bible #6]

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Ted Grimsrud—November 29, 2023

Ever since my “conversion” to pacifist convictions back in 1976, I have closely associated those convictions with my Christian faith. Early on I realized that pacifism was not a common conviction among Christians, but that never made me doubt what I had become convinced was true: The call to love our enemies and reject warfare should be something affirmed as a core and indispensable Christian commitment—for all Christians. I do accept that mine will almost certainly only ever be a viewpoint affirmed by just a tiny percentage of Christians. However, I still keep working at it—and hope for the best.

It took several years after my initial commitment to pacifism as a young adult to clarify the significance of that commitment for how I understood God. The faith community that I in time became a part of, the Mennonites, did not actually make belief in God as a pacifist a necessary part of its peace position. But I became convinced that for me it is. Let me explain why.

I will start with a simple definition for a complicated and contested term—pacifism. By “pacifism” I mean, in brief, the conviction that nothing matters as much as love for all human beings. And this love forbids using death-dealing violence (or supporting it) against anyone. To me, the term pacifism connotes a positive commitment to love, more than simply a tactical commitment to avoid violence. And, I believe, this commitment to love is grounded in a belief that God is love and that love is at the center of the meaning of the universe.

Argument #1: The biblical narrative

Certainly, the Bible gives us many images of God that are far from pacifist—angry, vengeful, even genocidal. However, it also gives us many peaceable images—merciful, forgiving, compassionate, deeply and universally loving. I think it is important to recognize that these various images are not all compatible. They cannot be harmonized. They have to be sorted through and weighed together. To me, the peaceable images are decisive. My first point, about the Bible, is that if we read it in light of its overarching narrative, what I call the Big Story, we will see that it presents God, ultimately, as pacifist.

Continue reading “Arguments for a pacifist God [Peace and the Bible #6]” →

A resolution to the problem of violence in the Old Testament? [Peace and the Bible #4]

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Ted Grimsrud—November 24, 2023

The Old Testament has a poor reputation among many Christians (and others) for telling stories of terrible violence that is either initiated directly by God or clearly favored by God. Certainly, this can be a problem for Christian pacifists. But it actually should be a problem for anyone who gives the OT authority as divinely revealed scripture. I had a student once who thought he was in favor of OT violence and sought to gather evidence for an argument against pacifism. As he studied the OT, though, he realized that it was a lot more violent than he had anticipated; before long he had given up on Christianity altogether. Thus, I would say that the “problem” requires attention, even for those who do not find it a deal-breaker for faith.

Not long after I became a pacifist in 1976, I had a short time of struggle as I confronted the problem of violence in the Old Testament. I was assured by some people I respected that the problem could be overcome. So, I kind of put it on the back burner and moved ahead with developing my peace theology, emphasizing, of course, the message of Jesus. Since that time, I have not been troubled by the OT problem all that much but have focused more on finding a peace message on those writings. However, I have remained interested in how to think about divinely initiated violence. Here are some of my current thoughts.

An alternative political economy

The first argument for a certain kind of pacifist reading of the Old Testament that I encountered was a chapter in John Howard Yoder’s book The Original Revolution, the first book on Christian pacifism I ever read. Yoder drew heavily from his colleague at the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries, Old Testament professor Millard Lind. A bit later, I used the library at the University of Oregon to track down Lind’s PhD dissertation on war and the Old Testament that Yoder cited. Lind turned that work into a book, Yahweh is a Warrior: The Theology of Warfare in the Old Testament. As it happened, this book was published late in 1980 when I was a student at AMBS. In the spring of 1981, Millard taught a class on the book, and I was fortunate enough to be able to take it.

In my memory now, the class was quite helpful, though it was fairly narrowly focused. The main emphasis was on how to understand the stories in the books of Exodus and Joshua of God’s violent intervention in liberating the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt and driving the Canaanites out of the promised land. Millard’s main point, as I remember, was that the stories tell us that God fought instead of the Hebrews. It was a unique moment in the people’s history that was not repeated. The key motif was that the people needed to depend on God for their security, not on their own military might. After they settled in the promised land and established a territorial kingdom, their political dynamics changed. They became “like the nations,” including establishing a standing army. Crucially, the kingdom became quite corrupt, practicing injustice against the vulnerable in their community and also beginning to practice idolatry. Because of these injustices, God turned against the Hebrew kingdom and allowed it to be destroyed by the area’s great empires, Assyria and Babylon.

Continue reading “A resolution to the problem of violence in the Old Testament? [Peace and the Bible #4]” →

How should we think about the violence in the Old Testament? [Questioning Faith #19]

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Ted Grimsrud—April 7, 2023

I have heard it said that the stories in the Old Testament about God’s involvement in war, punishment, and various other forms of violence have been responsible for more Christians losing their faith than any other single thing. I have no idea whether that is actually true, but I do know from my career as a pastor and teacher that Old Testament violence is a problem for lots and lots of people. Because the Old Testament is so big and diverse and the issues so complex, it is impossible to give a quick, clear, and concise answer to the questions. But because they are so often present and distressing, I think it is important to try to have some kind response in mind. What follows is mine—which is admittedly not likely to change anybody’s mind.

Starting with God’s love

My starting point for all theological questions is my core theological conviction: God is love. It follows from that, for me, that I would affirm that God is nonviolent, as I believe that violence and love are mutually exclusive. And, I happen to believe that the Bible supports these convictions. So, when I turn to the Bible, I am seeking to understand what the Bible’s teachings are that give us the best images of God. What in the Bible leads us to confess God’s love and, thus, nonviolence? And what should we think about the parts of the Bible traditionally cited as the bases for denying that God is nonviolent?

Let me first, though, say just a bit about what saying “God is nonviolent” means for me. In a nutshell, to make such an affirmation is to confess that the Bible teaches that God created what is out of love and for the sake of love. It also teaches that God participates in the world most directly in how God brings healing in the face of brokenness, binding wounds, reconciling alienated relationships, and empowering creativity and compassion.

Also, I believe that the Bible’s definitive portrayal of God is found in the story of Jesus. That is, God is most clearly and reliably known to humanity in the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus. My affirmation of God’s nonviolence finds its strongest grounding in my affirmation of Jesus’s nonviolence. Just as it is unthinkable to me that Jesus would punish, hate, exploit, or violently coerce, so is it unthinkable that God would.

Continue reading “How should we think about the violence in the Old Testament? [Questioning Faith #19]” →

Why did Christianity move so far away from the message of Jesus? [Questioning faith #7]

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Ted Grimsrud—November 21, 2022

From the time I made a commitment to Christian pacifism in the mid-1970s, I have believed that Jesus and the Bible as a whole support that commitment. In the years since, I have learned a lot more about how this “support” is complicated and at time ambiguous. However, I still believe that the general message of the Bible and more clearly the message of Jesus obviously point toward peace, compassion, care for the vulnerable, and what we now refer to as restorative justice—even if some may quibble about whether it explicitly teaches pacifism.

A few years after my turn toward peaceable Christianity, my wife Kathleen and I spent a year at the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. We gained a terrific foundation there of biblical peace theology, especially from Old Testament professor Millard Lind and New Testament professor Willard Swartley. I have preached through much of the Bible in the 40 years since attending AMBS, each year during my 20-year teaching career at Eastern Mennonite University I taught a class called “Biblical Theology of Peace and Justice,” and I have written several books on peace based on the Bible. I feel quite established in my sense that the Bible (especially, but not only, Jesus) gives us a strong message of peace.

The difference between the Bible and Christian practice

So, that leads to the obvious question. What happened to Christianity? The history of Christianity is a history full of wars and militarism, conquest and domination, crusades and the embrace of empire. One statistical piece of evidence comes from the United States. In 1940, after several years of intense lobbying by peace advocates, the legislation passed to begin a military draft included allowance for pacifists to be exempt from joining the military. So, this proved to be kind of a test case.

From my analysis, I would estimate that about one out of 1,000 American Christians chose the conscientious objector route. For the vast majority of the young men who were drafted, the option to be a CO—and the sense that Jesus would support such a stance—seemingly never even entered the realm of possibility. Not only have Christians around the world almost always supported their nations’ wars, even when they would be fighting other Christians, it actually seems to be the case at least in the United States that Christians are more likely than non-Christians to support wars and preparation for wars. It doesn’t seem farfetched to call Christianity a pro-war religion—the opposite of Jesus’s message.

So, again, the question: Why the transformation? This is a question that has interested me for a long time, but I have never devoted serious attention to it. I have come up with a preliminary list, though, of what seem to be key elements of the evolution away from Jesus’s teaching.

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In what sense is Jesus our “savior”? [Questioning faith #3]

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Ted Grimsrud—November 7, 2022

Quite a few Christians, it seems, assume that there is a clear demarcation between those who are Christians and those who are not. They might differ on how they describe the line of demarcation, but for many it has to do with whether a person trusts in Jesus as one’s savior or not. That is certainly what I was taught when I started going to church. I don’t find that a helpful notion anymore.

What I was taught about salvation

It took a while after my age 17 conversion for me to figure out what I was actually being taught about Jesus as savior. As I look back now all these years later, I find it remarkable that something that was such a pillar of faith would be so little explained. But this is how I would now reconstruct my first church’s understanding of Jesus as savior.

The key first step would be to assert that human beings are inherently sinful—each one of us. We are born that way. And because we are sinful, we exist in alienation from God. Ultimately, if something does not happen, we will be condemned to spend eternity in hell. So, making “something happen” is extremely important. We can be assured that God wants this “something” to happen, that God has provided a way for this alienation to be overcome.

This way (and it is the only way) is for us to accept Jesus as our personal savior, to recognize that we are sinful and deserve condemnation, and to recognize that Jesus’s death on our behalf has made is possible for us to find reconciliation with our holy God and thus to escape our certain condemnation. What is rarely explained, though, is how this works. How does Jesus’s death make our salvation possible?

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A Peaceable Take on Christian Salvation: The Genealogy of a Writing Project [Theological memoir #14/Rethinking salvation #2]

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Ted Grimsrud—August 19, 2021

I have long been interested in the theological theme of salvation. This interest stemmed from my concern with how complicit it seems that Christianity has long been in accepting warfare and other violent practices. I came to see a connection between atonement theologies and the acceptance of war. In the 2003-4 school year, I received a sabbatical from Eastern Mennonite University in order to write a book on this topic. Shortly before the sabbatical began, I presented this paper at an EMU Bible and Religion forum (April 2, 2003) that described the upcoming project.

As it turned out, I did most of the work on the book during my sabbatical year, but for various reasons was unable to complete it until 2013. During that time, my plans changed a bit so the final book was a bit different than what I outline in this paper. Most obviously, I changed the title from “Salvation Without Violence” to Instead of Atonement: The Bible’s Salvation Story and Our Hope for Wholeness (Cascade Books, 2013). I also decided to include the discussion of Paul and Revelation and make it a one-volume project.

I reproduce the paper here as it was presented mainly because I think it is informative to see how I understood the rationale for the project before I did the work on it. My interest in these issues has not diminished (see this recent post, “Why the cross of Christ is so hard to understand.” To put it mildly, my proposal for a different to approach atonement theories and the understanding of Jesus’s crucifixion did not get much traction among theologians. But maybe if I keep trying….

In the fall of 2002, I received one of the great gifts of the academic life—the granting of a sabbatical from EMU. This sabbatical meant that I would be paid a significant part of my salary for the 2003-4 school year and freed to research and write full time. In order to be granted a sabbatical, I had to gain approval for a proposal outlining the main project I intend to work on next year. What follows in this paper is what I shared in our forum (drawing from my sabbatical proposal) about the genealogy of this writing project—how it was that I came to be interested in a subject with enough intensity and passion that I wanted to devote about a year of my life to do nothing else except write about that subject. And in sharing this story, I expected to open a bit of a window into how my mind works. What follows is my paper from April 2003:

The title of my project is “Salvation Without Violence.” In a nutshell, what I intend to do is write a book taking a pacifist perspective on the biblical portrayal of God’s initiative toward human beings. I am intense and passionate about this issue because I think that a fundamental misunderstanding of God lies behind much of the ideology has and continues to undergird Christian support for violence. In telling you how I came to see this as an issue and how I have been approaching it, hopefully I will communicate at least a little of what I think is at stake.

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God and warism: The dilemma [Theological memoir #12]

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Ted Grimsrud—June 7, 2021

I can’t seem to escape the reality that people’s beliefs in and about the divine and their attitudes about war seem to be closely related. On the one hand, it seems obvious that belief in God often underwrites war. Yet, on the other hand, in studying the history of pacifism I am struck with how important religious faith has been for quite a few of war’s most committed opponents. So, this is the dilemma: How do we find a way to navigate this centrality of religious faith in ways that lead to peace and resist warism? Let me illustrate these issues with my story.

“God” and radical politics

When I began my political awakening back in the mid-1970s, I believed very intensely in “God” (meaning the personal, all-powerful, all-knowing, transcendent deity of conservative Protestant Christianity). My belief in “God” gave me the sense that truth in light of this “God” mattered more than anything else. I also believed that Jesus was the incarnation of this “God,” and that we know best what “God” wants through “God’s” revelation in Jesus.

These beliefs gained political significance for me due, first of all, to paying attention to the war in Vietnam that had been destroying so many lives for no good, life-giving reason (I had faced the genuine possibility of being drafted to fight in this war and missed out by being a bit too young). When my disenchantment with the US was emerging, I happened upon a newly arrived sensibility expressed by various younger evangelical Christians that in the name of radical discipleship critiqued the American Empire and called for alternatives (most significant for me was the Sojourners community in Washington, DC, and their monthly magazine). These radical evangelicals helped me see that loyalty to “God” actually stood in tension with loyalty to the nation of my birth.

So, “God” was very important in helping me step outside the lines of the received sense of security and comfort that comes with being a loyal American. Once I did step outside the lines, I easily came to see the profoundly corrupting nature of the American Empire. Vietnam was surely the most egregious case of imperial violence on an incomprehensible scale—but only one case out of many dating back to the very settling of the Western Hemisphere by Europeans (I learned a lot from William Appleman Williams’s book, Empire as a Way of Life). I have become ever more certain about the deeply problematic nature of the United States. Still, I realize that my initial step outside the lines was definitely not inevitable. It had a lot to do with being in the right place at the right time. The Vietnam War, the possibility of being drafted, becoming friends with several returning war vets, entering the evangelical world at precisely the same time as the emergence of the radical evangelicals, gaining a theology that connected “God” with engaged pacifism—all these factors and more coalesced at just the right time for me.

As I think about it now, I am especially intrigued with the significance of the “God” part of this constellation of influences. I tend to think that I never quite believed in “God” in the way I was taught during my fundamentalist and evangelical years (about 8 or so years from the time when I was 17 [1971]). Certainly, it was easy and painless to evolve away from that belief. At the same time, I do think that the belief in “God” that I had was crucial for me having the wit and courage to step away from the Americanness I was raised with and surrounded by.

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What matters most? [Jesus story #6]

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Ted Grimsrud—April 22, 2021

Back in the 1980s, when I was pastoring in Oregon, our neighbor asked me to perform a wedding ceremony for his sister who would be visiting from the East Coast. I really liked our neighbor, so I reluctantly agreed. I’ve never enjoyed weddings that much. (Kathleen and I made sure our own wedding was short and sweet—we took 17 minutes from the beginning of the processional to the end of the recessional.)

The wedding of our neighbor’s sister and her partner ended up being fine—good fun for the 15 of us on a beautiful spring day among the rhododendrons. It was an interesting experience. Our neighbors were not religious, nor was the wedding couple. But the mother of the bride was Jewish. She was skeptical about having a Christian minister do the service. She was so happy her daughter was finally getting married, though, that she was willing to accept the terms. I was told beforehand, though, that she was very worried I would talk too much about Jesus, even pray to Jesus.

Given the religious sensibilities of the couple, I used as my main text a song from Bruce Springsteen. That seemed to go over pretty well. Still, I was struck by the fear of the mother about having Jesus pushed on them. It was understandable. Over the past 1700 years, all too many people, especially Jews, have had a lot to fear from Jesus being “pushed on them”—often accompanied by a sword or other tool of coercion.

This problem, of Jesus being used as a basis for coercion must always be on the table for Christians when we try to understand what really matters in life and in our faith. Can we confess Jesus as the center of faith in a way that will not be scary to vulnerable people? Can we live life anchored in a message about Jesus that truly blesses all the families of the earth? What does matter most in our lives and in our faith?

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