Is God a Hypocrite?

By Jason Tripp

Amipotence is critical to reconciling the divergent portraits of God presented in the Bible.

As someone born and raised in a conservative evangelical family, for as long as I can remember, the Bible has always been held in high regard and viewed as a central component of faith formation. I vividly recall, as a child, waking up each morning to discover my father reading the Bible, with pen in hand, taking notes on thoughts and reflections on the passage he was reading that morning. I still own an old Gideon’s New Testament with the date and time I first prayed to invite Jesus “into my heart” as a young, inquisitive 3-year-old. I also still own the leather-bound NKJV study bible I won as a child for memorizing Scripture in my Sunday school class at the Baptist church I attended growing up.

Without a doubt, I have many fond memories of the Bible, and yet, my relationship with the Bible hasn’t always been safe, simple, and satisfying. In fact, my relationship with the Bible, at times, has been complex, chaotic, and catastrophic. There was a time when I wouldn’t dare express such thoughts about the Bible for fear of being chastised by my family, faith community, and God. Yet, if I’m honest, the more I took the Bible seriously as I grew into my adolescent years and adulthood, the more I kept bumping up against passages of Scripture that were disorienting, discouraging, and, in some cases, downright disturbing.

One such passage is that of Noah’s Ark and the story of the flood in Genesis 6. I’m sure this story was a big part of my childhood learning how to sing, color, and interior decorating, as this story inspired numerous Sunday school songs, coloring pages, and pieces of bedroom décor. Viewed through the lens of my childhood, this story was one of God’s salvation (at least as depicted in the wall-hung portrait in my bedroom as a child depicting Noah and his family waving happily from the safety of the ark surrounded by smiling pairs of animals!) and God’s promise to never again flood the earth, with the rainbow serving as a continual reminder of God’s faithful promise.

And yet, if taken at face value, this story is one of the violent mass executions of nearly the entire human race. A mere six chapters into the Bible, God’s self-declared ‘very good’ humanity has gone so far off the rails that God deemed it necessary to hit the reset button and start from scratch, preserving only Noah, his family, and a pair of animals to go back to the proverbial drawing board for a re-do.

As I kept bumping up against violent passages that permeated the pages of the Bible, a growing sense of disorientation and despair was taking root in my heart and mind. The Bible, which at one time was so simple, so pure, and so sacred, was quickly becoming so complex, so polluted, and so profane, and I found my life and faith quickly unraveling.

Things came to a head one evening in university while reading through the book of Joshua (truth be told, if there was one book in the Bible that I wouldn’t miss one iota, it’s this blood-soaked story of violent conquest). I vividly recall, in a fit of rage, picking up my Bible and hurling it across the room like ______ (insert name of your favorite hard-throwing right-handed baseball pitcher), followed by verbally hurling some choice words at God, which I can’t repeat here. To sanitize and paraphrase, my words in that moment of rage went something like this,

‘God, if you are like this, then I want nothing to do with you, and if that means burning for eternity in hell, then so be it because I would rather burn forever than follow the violent, bloodthirsty, vengeful, retributive God I read about in the story of the flood, the conquest narratives in Joshua, and countless other parts of the Bible! If that’s what you are like, you are a monstrous hypocrite!’

As I reflect upon that experience, as disorienting as it was at the time, it was a pivotal moment of raw, unfiltered honesty. Despite the tradition I inherited, with its certainty seeking faith rooted in an inerrant bible, my lived experiences, coupled with the life and teachings of Jesus, led to an intense experience of cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, I wanted to embrace the centrality of love, both in how I related to others and how I perceived God. And yet, on the other hand, my inherited tradition left me in the irreconcilable position of having to both hold onto the peaceable teachings of Jesus with an emphasis on love for one’s enemies (Matt. 5:43-45) and the blood-soaked, violent stories where a seemingly omnipotent God appeared more like a divine hitman than a divine lover (1 Sam. 6:19). The only conclusion I was able to come to at that time in my life was that the loving God had a dark side; a Janus-faced God, commanding us to love our enemies, while often slaying God’s enemies.

Twenty-five years later, my relationship with the Bible has not been severed, but it has undergone a significant transformation. As a pastor serving in the Wesleyan tradition alongside many others undertaking similar journeys of wrestling with Bible conundrums and other areas of faith and theology, I have had the opportunity to introduce people to ways of thinking about the Bible that are consistent with the God of uncontrolling love.

The challenge for my twenty-year-old self, and the challenge I encounter when countless others are undergoing a deconstruction of their inherited religious beliefs, is the inability to fathom a God who does not possess the power to do anything to anyone at any time. The only two live options for many are omnipotence or impotence!

In his book, The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence, Thomas Jay Oord makes a compelling case for abandoning the traditional understanding of God’s omnipotence in favor of amipotence—the potency of love, which Oord defines as love acting intentionally in relational response to God and others, to promote overall well-being.

One of the many implications for shifting from an omnipotent God possessing the power to do anything to an amipotent God whose action is borne of love and never coercive nor violent is the way it can reform our understanding of Scripture.

It stands to reason that if there ever was a time when it would have been beneficial for God to micromanage for the sake of quality control, it would have been to ensure that the content contained in the most read and widely distributed book in the world was much clearer, consistent, and agreed upon by those who claim the Bible as their holy text.

The reality is, however, that while the Bible remains a source of wisdom, guidance, and inspiration for many throughout history, the Bible has and continues to be misused, abused, and weaponized with devastating effects. Sacred Scripture is used to justify slavery, colonialism, misogyny, racism, and homophobia. Indeed, an omnipotent God would ensure the Bible is error-free and crystal clear regarding what it prescribes for loving, holy living. An amipotent God, intrinsically incapable of unilateral control, could no more singlehandedly control the words I type in this essay than control the words contained in Scripture.

In his sermon, Free Grace, John Wesley, founder of the Methodist tradition of which I am a part, writes, “No Scripture can mean that God is not love, or that his mercy is not over all his works.” For Wesley, any Scripture that, on its face, appears to portray God as unloving and unmerciful needs to rightly be set, interrogated, and re-interpreted. In his book, Redeeming Violent Verses, author and Old Testament scholar Eric Seibert writes these words or exhortations:

Despite what violent biblical texts suggest, God is not a deadly lawgiver, an instant executioner, a mass murderer, a divine warrior, or a genocidal general. Whenever the Old Testament portrays God in these ways, it fundamentally misrepresents God’s true nature and character, and we should have the courage to say so. I would even say that if you are a religious educator, a member of the clergy, a mentor, a spiritual director, or a person of influence in your place of worship, you have a moral obligation to help people see God as clearly as possible. It is irresponsible to leave violent portrayals of God unchallenged.

Little did I know twenty-five years ago that my brutally honest, profanity-laced tirade towards the God I believed might be a monstrous hypocrite was, in fact, more of a courageous, responsible act of fidelity rather than a reckless, faithless act of betrayal. Though still locked into a theological box that presupposed an omnipotent God, I was already intuiting something was amiss.

Exchanging omnipotence for amipotence has enabled me to think about and preach from Scripture differently. Having embraced the uncontrolling God of love who always communicates but never coerces, I have come to embrace the Bible we have for what it is, not an infallible text directly downloaded from God, but a product of both divine and human sources, a mixture of windows of God’s love and mercy, and mirrors revealing our propensity to project our violence, and deficiencies upon God. No longer need I try and futilely attempt to reconcile the love and mercy of God with the violence and bloodshed of God in the Bible or ignore the troublesome texts that motivated my rage-induced outburst.

Exchanging omnipotence for amipotence has reinvigorated my engagement with the text and emboldened my preaching. I’ve been afforded opportunities in formal preaching and informal conversations to encourage and empower others wrestling with the bible conundrums they face. With empathy, I can assure them God is not the monstrous hypocrite the Bible seems to suggest at times. The invitation to consider embracing the amipotent God of uncontrolling love can unlock new ways of seeing Scripture as a product of both divine and human origin.

Embracing both the wisdom and the messiness of Scripture testifies to a God who is ever-present and active but never coercive nor controlling. An amipotent God is not a monstrous hypocrite but a persuasive lover acting intentionally in relational response to creation to promote overall well-being.

Bio: Jason Tripp lives in Sudbury, Ontario, where he serves as a pastor and chaplain. He holds an M.Div. from Tyndale Seminary and is working towards his Doctor of Theology Degree in Open and Relational Theology at Northwind Theological Seminary. As a basketball enthusiast and cinephile, he enjoys coaching, refereeing, and playing basketball, as well as regular pilgrimages to local movie theaters.

OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE

Jason Tripp contends that amipotence can help reconcile the conflicting portrayals of God found in the Bible. Some passages depict God as violent or harsh, while others—especially those centered on Jesus—portray a loving, compassionate deity. Are we to believe God is sometimes loving and sometimes brutal? Is God a monster hypocrite? Jason offers a third option through amipotence. He argues that depictions of God as a genocidal general or wrathful executioner misrepresent God’s true nature. Instead, we have a moral duty to embrace the loving God revealed in scripture and reject images that distort this love. Amipotence presents God as consistently loving.

For more on Oord’s view on the Bible from an open and relational view, see this article.

* A drabble is an essay exactly 100 words in length.