Faith in a God that Does Not Kill

By Steve Watson

Most Christians worship an all-powerful and violent god; perhaps we become what we worship.

God does not kill.

I first heard these words from the lips of Abuna Elias Chacour, the archbishop emeritus of the Melkite Greek Orthodox Church. I met him while visiting Israel and Palestine with a group of pastors and rabbis. Of the many Christian, Jewish, and Muslim peacemakers that we met, he was the oldest. Chacour was born an Arab-Palestinian resident of the Galilean region before the establishment of the modern state of Israel and has for years pastored and tended to the souls and needs of Palestinians, while advocating for non-violent solutions to the long-standing, violent conflicts in that land. God does not kill, he argues, and so we should not either.

I found Chacour’s message of just peacemaking intuitive and winsome, so I was eager to share it with others. But when I did, I got pushback I hadn’t expected. None of my friends told me that people should be killers, but some of them thought that God was, at least sometimes. “What about this or that passage?” they asked, citing moments in the Bible where authors imply god’s agency in the death of humans. My friends, best as I know, aren’t blood-thirsty. They don’t defend divine violence with a smile. But they feel protective of god’s desire and ability to kill when it suits god’s purposes.

Christians have historically worshiped an all-powerful, violent god. And Christians have at times been extraordinarily violent people. Perhaps we are becoming what we worship. Perhaps we are creating our god in our image. Either way, it’s not so good for god and for us.

Here we explore a better way for us all. It is not the love of uncontrolled power; it is the power of uncontrolling love. In this essay, I briefly review the toxic history of Christian worship and human imitation of a violent, omnipotent god before suggesting a few reasons to worship and imitate the god who is revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, a god whose power is always relational, always loving, never violent or coercive, a god who is amipotent.

The story of Christian worship and imitation of a violent, sometimes murderous god runs old and deep. Most infamously, this is the case in the conquest of Canaan by the twelve tribes of Israel. In the book of Joshua’s stories of the battles there, god is quoted as saying, “Don’t be afraid of them. By this time tomorrow, I will make them all dead bodies in Israel’s presence. Cripple their horses! Burn their chariots!” (Joshua 11:6) The narrator of the story also celebrates the death of his opponents in the name of god. “Israel was then able to wipe them out as something reserved for God, without showing them any mercy. This was exactly what the Lord had commanded Moses.” (Joshua 11:20) Whether or not the conquest of Canaan occurred like the Bible describes, ancient Israel justifies their collective memory of military triumph by aligning their own violence with god’s.

Later in the Old Testament, divine judgment is regularly accompanied by brutal images of divine violence. The prophecy of Isaiah ends with a global worship service, in which all humanity gathers in Jerusalem to “see the corpses of the people who rebelled against me, where their worm never dies, where their fire is never extinguished.” (Isaiah 66:24) Divine violence, divine justice, mass graves, and human worship all intermingle in the moral and religious imaginations of the communities in which the early church was born.

There may have been good reasons for this violent portrayal of god. The faith of ancient Israel was born amidst polytheistic, tribal, local faiths vying for supremacy with one another. The majority of the Hebrew scriptures were also either written or collected and edited into their current form under Babylonian and Persian captivity. Pre-Christian Jewish faith blossomed as the identity statement and freedom manifesto of a colonized people, who hoped god was sufficiently powerful and indeed, possessed of sufficient violent force, to enact further liberation on their behalf. Jesus strongly indicated that other, non-violent forms of power and love would accomplish these objectives. When Jesus announces his purpose and calling, he quotes late Isaiah, saying, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me … to liberate the oppressed and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19) In this manifesto of good news, Jesus quotes Isaiah 61 but redacts the text, preserving its good news but eliminating the reference to “the year of God’s vengeance.” (Isaiah 61:1-2)

The biblical scholar Pete Enns writes, “God lets god’s children tell the story.” Some of god’s kids, including Jesus, told a story of a non-violent god. But in Chrisitan theology and history, most of god’s kids have often continued to tell a story of a violent god who at least in some circumstances co-signs and blesses human violence.

God’s theologian kids have blessed human violence in the name of their violent god. Let’s consider, for example, two of the most influential theologians in all of Western Christian history, Augustine of Hippo and John Calvin.

Augustine was a priest and bishop in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, right after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. He tried to integrate Christian theology with the political and civic concerns of Roman imperial society, reckoning with the kind of human violence commonly practiced by powerful governments. While Augustine affirmed what he called the greater righteousness of merciful justice, that doesn’t punish violently, he thought that humans – be they parents, government, or soldiers had a responsibility to violently punish their children or lawbreakers or enemies. He recommended only that their violence of hands not be accompanied by violence of heart, a mysterious and unrealistic distinction. Additionally, Augustine supported the torture of heretics, commenting that if Jesus blinded Paul, the church can torture its enemies’ bodies in order to try to save their souls. Beat your children and kill your enemies, as long as you don’t hate them in your heart. Somehow this was construed to be the way of Jesus.

John Calvin not only favored torturing enemies of the church, but executing them. As the leading pastor of 16th century Geneva, at the dawn of the Protestant Reformation, Calvin looked to the Bible to advise the state on matters of governance, including crime and punishment. Citing the violence of Old Testament law, Calvin approved of the corporal punishment and even execution of hundreds of men, women, and children, for crimes as varied as heresy, witchcraft, and disrespect of parents. The omnipotence of god, and god’s violent wrath upon sinners and sin, was central to Calvin’s theology and thus central to societal practice and culture where his ideas held sway.

The Christian societies produced by this theology were profoundly and unashamedly violent as well. Christendom’s explorers were empowered by the Doctrine of Discovery to enslave and to kill Muslims and pagans and steal their goods. Civic leaders in both precolonial and postcolonial America dispossessed and killed indigenous Americans, claiming their warrant from the Bible for their actions. The distinct patterns of violence even in America’s most recent century – anti-black violence, mass incarceration, trillions of dollars in weaponry used against America and its allies’ foes – has continued to reflect violent power consistent with faith in a violent god.

If an all-controlling god can use violent power against his enemies, why shouldn’t we aspire to control others through use of violent power as well?

The god who is expressed in the teachings and practice of Jesus of Nazareth looks nothing like this, though. Jesus commanded his followers to pray for and love their enemies, not to destroy them. And Jesus did the same. He healed the servant of a military commander of the Roman army who occupied and terrorized his people. When that same army crucified him, he asked god to forgive them.

Jesus wept over the fate of his beloved Jerusalem, foreseeing its coming doom. But he was powerless to prevent it. He had taught what he calls the things that make for peace, a kind of resistance movement of radical faith, hope, love, joy, and justice, but he did not try to compel people to agree with him or participate in his vision.

Jesus was a person of tremendous power. The gospels portray him as unusually secure, profoundly present, unfailingly insightful and wise, and persistently kind and brave. He has immense influence in the lives of his friends and followers, who attribute to Jesus a wide range of dramatic improvements in their lives, just as Jesus in turn attributes much of these benefits back to their own faith. These same friends and followers later insist that the spirit of the risen Christ is always with them. They launch a global movement in his name, one they are voluntarily willing to sacrifice and even die for themselves, but also one that at least in the early generations, they are never willing to kill for.

This is a very different kind of power. It is always relational and loving, never violent and coercive. It is the power of uncontrolling love. It is amipotence.

There are innumerable implications to faith and life in the name of a powerful god that always loves but that does not kill. Two areas where non-violent, amipotent faith might have the most radical impact are in our politics and our prayer. Followers of an amipotent god might wonder what criminal justice and foreign policy of more persuasion and less force might look like. We might examine the portion of our national budgets devoted to the purchase, use, and donation of weapons and advocate for the reallocation of large portions of those funds to diplomacy, global health, and other national and international projects that better promote human flourishing.

Followers of an amipotent god will also be less likely to pray that this god will unilaterally change people against their will. Instead, we might pray that more of the world will respond to the goodness of the god expressed in the teachings and life of Jesus. We might join Jesus in his prayer that god’s kingdom come, god’s will be done in the lives and communities of people who turn from bitterness to gratitude, from fear to faith, from resentment and violence to love and joy. As extraordinary as the biblical story of the conversion of Saul may be, in our prayers we will be less likely to ask god to blind our enemies and more likely to ask god to help them open their hearts to love, justice, and wisdom. These prayers of blessing may in turn empower us to use our words and bodies to learn the ancient art of blessing in our day to day lives – becoming people of daily, both mundane and extraordinary, encouragement and grace.

The politics and prayers of faith in an amipotent god would be less likely to form in us the anxiety, greed, and violence that marks this moment of post-Christendom late capitalism we have inherited. Instead, we might begin to see in one another an increase of good fruit of god’s spirit – more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Bio: Steve Watson is the senior pastor of Reservoir Church in Cambridge, MA, a leader in the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization and the Post Evangelical Collective, and a doctoral candidate in Open and Relational Theology at Northwind Seminary.

OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE

Steve Watson challenges a view of God that I also find troubling—the belief that God sometimes kills others. While this idea has some biblical support, Watson notes that it extends far beyond scripture and shapes how people justify violence. If we believe God uses violent power against enemies, we may feel entitled to do the same. Yet this is not the God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. In him, we find no violence or coercion, only peace and love. Following Jesus, therefore, means embodying nonviolence, compassion, and forgiveness, reflecting divine power as relational, healing, and ultimately uncontrolling love.

For more on Oord’s view of death, killing, and lament, see this article.

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