I like me the idea of pacifism and especially a nonviolent God. But human pacifism is impossible with a nonviolent God.
Too many people have a theology centered on a God who cannot cause pain. This rises from a belief that pain is bad and to be avoided at all costs. That is a Buddhist belief not a biblical one. The biblical God is not afraid of suffering — neither ours nor his. The suffering of Job and of Jesus are not only acceptable, but are essential to biblical faith. They aren’t unfortunate detours from God’s plan. They are unavoidable parts of the road to God’s good future. They aren’t the whole road, but they are essential to our pilgrim progress.
Throughout the Scriptures, including both the Old and New Testaments, God is violent. Easily the most notorious of his violent episodes is the Flood, where God wipes the earth clean of human violence. Human violence is met with divine violence. If God is looked at from a purely human perspective, treating him as if he were simply another human being with lots of power at his disposal, then he can seem capricious. How can our smaller violences compare with his vast violence?
Similarly, the handful of genocides under Joshua and Saul seem horrific. How can God wipe out entire people groups, even if they are small and measure in the hundreds or thousands?
Likewise, when God disciplines his own people for their mistreatment of the poor and their mistreatment of God himself through their idolatry, he lets them be crushed in war and hauled into exile. Jeremiah’s book of Lamentations details the devastation of Jerusalem as it went through siege and loss in war — death in battle and even cannibalism of dead family members.
These are all grievous horrors. How can God be involved in them, much less merely condone them from the sidelines?
Then there are the Psalms, in which we come across numerous pleas for God to deal violently with enemies: Shame those who are trying to shame me! Smash the fangs of those who suck the blood of the poor! Kill the man and impoverish the family of the one who is out to get me! Crush our enemies in battle! Bless those who smash their babies against the rocks!
We can assume God didn’t answer all of these vengeful prayers with a Yes, especially the smashing of the babies (Psalm 137). But we do get the sense that God does give the occasional Yes. And even more than that, we can see that it is well within a biblical spirituality to pray for God to do violence against others.
This is actually essential to a peaceful human existence.
If I don’t offer the violence within me to God, I will retain it. And if I retain it, I will figure out ways to be violent. Those ways might not result in physical violence, but they will almost always end up in verbal violence and character assassination. There is a reason why the vice lists in the New Testament spend so much time on verbal violence like slander, gossip, and outbursts of anger.
The violence within us always spills out. Either we’re going to spill it out before God in prayer or we’re going to spill it in either physical or verbal violence.
If I can truly hand over my violence to God, trusting him to deal with those whom I believe deserve a smack down, then I can get on with a more peaceful existence. My violence is drained when I lay it in God’s hands.
But this only works if I can trust God to deal with the hurts and injustices experienced by me and by the ones I care about. If God does nothing in any of the situations where I and those I love suffer hurt and injustice, then I will grab back my urge for revenge.
It was OK to pray for the death of Adolf Hitler during WWII. And it is OK to pray against current political leaders. A biblical spirituality expects us to do so.
But again, pain is not as bad as we make it out to be. And I write those words as someone who avoids relational discomfort if at all possible, steering around confrontation and messy emotions if I can.
God is not like me. God does not avoid necessary pain. In fact, God both leads us through pain and walks through it himself.
The author of Hebrews puts it this way:
And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart (Hebrew 12:1b-3).
The ends don’t always justify the means in our human dealings. But they do in God’s case, for he sees and knows and weighs all. God doesn’t lead us through suffering and violence casually. He does so like a doctor or midwife during a birthing. Four times I watched doctors and nurses lead my wife through the births of our children. They always took her pain seriously and eased her through it, supporting her through each contraction and push. But they knew that each contraction and push was necessary for a child to be born.
This is why biblical writers often view God’s judgments through the lens of labor pains. The excruciating agony of childbirth is the passing moment of delivery. It will be replaced by something new and wonderful that will replace sorrow with joy. The tears of labor are so quickly replaced by a whole new set of tears as a mother holds her newborn. This is why Eugene Peterson once mentioned in conversation with me that “all of God’s judgments are creative.”
The violence of God is never an end in itself. It is a means to something new and wonderful and joyful.
This isn’t true of my violence, which is why I leave the violence to God. He will deal with evil. He is at this very moment dealing with what is wrong in the world, sometimes violently. Vengeance is his. He will repay. And as he repays, I believe he transforms. Beauty for ashes. Laughter for tears. Though sorrow may last for the night, joy comes in the morning.
God does not fear the night, for he has set a day when the night shall be no more. There is a day coming when the violence of God will no longer be necessary, for it will have achieved its purpose. And God will be all in all.