Did God really command violence?

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In my experience, the people who chant the “Bible God Evil God” refrain tend to support legalized abortion and euthanasia.

But let’s assume the questioner is asking a genuine question.

First of all, we aren’t given an absolute right to life. The universe is under no obligation to sustain us. We might die at any time of all sorts of natural causes.

Second, the worst possible outcome for a believer is damnation, not death. Nowhere in the Bible does it indicate that these defeated people wound up in Hell.

Thirdly, God created life. He alone has the right to decide who lives and dies. Not us.

A lot of people are very offended at the idea of a sovereign God, but there it is…
 
thank you for your valuable answer, I can see how this can be difficult not only for atheists, but for us too to understand and accept.
 
very nice, your answer gives some really good arguments to use in debating.
 
@tomo_pomo

No, God does not command violence. This is a very old question. For your viewing pleasure:


Peace.
 
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God doesn’t command violence. Please watch the short video as it addresses this topic.
 
TK421 said:
God doesn’t command violence. Please watch the short video as it addresses this topic.
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I just watched it. The priest made the point that is wasn’t about killing as much as it was about fighting evil to its fullest extent. Killing wasn’t the end just the means.

Frankly I don’t accept that.
 
The point in the video is that God doesn’t command violence at all. As an ancient culture, the Israelites went to war with neighbors and this was a brutal reality throughout the world and something that springs from human nature.

Not all Catholics are necessarily going to accept that but people as high up as Pope Benedict XXVI have spoken on the subject of violence in the OT.
 
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Where did it say thus? I have read it several times, I did not see that.
And in Jewish culture sex in marriage, which, you would have to marry a woman to sleep with her, is a woman’s right and not a man’s. As far as “it doesn’t take much to figure out what happens” well, it takes plenty of assuming. Western culture is rape-prone, like when anthropologist peggy reeves-sanday did cross cultural study on what prevalence of rape, and western cultures, all of them as far as I know, fit the rape-prone profile [google sanday, rape-prone rape-free]. IDK how Jewish culture was with that they have some of the attributes but not all and like I said sex is a woman’s right not a man’s and is a mitzvah, a divine encounter as well as a physical and personal one, it represents the Creator’s special connection to the Jewish people. Western society by contrast has “the masculine sex right” and sees sex as a form of consumption and/or possession, which is part of why it’s rape prone, and it sounds like that informs your assumption. It’s normal to project one’s own constructs onto other cultures automatically if we aren’t careful, but considering Jewish concepts about sexuality contrasted with Western ones, I would say your assumption is likely incorrect. We need to remember these people were different from us in more ways than we probably realize; we shouldn’t judge their sacred texts based on our cultural expectations and, historically, behaviors.
 
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The Bible goes into graphic detail why God ordered these tribes to be wiped out: bluntly, they were baby-burning sex perverts. Yet even these, God gave the opportunity to run away, not authorizing the Israelites to hunt them down beyond the borders of the Promised Land.
 
Stellar1982 said:
Where did it say thus? I have read it several times, I did not see that.
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Deuteronomy 20:10-14
When you approach a city to fight against it, you are to make an offer of peace. If they accept your offer of peace and open their gates, all the people there will become forced laborers to serve you.

But if they refuse to make peace with you and wage war against you, lay siege to that city. When the LORD your God has delivered it into your hand, you must put every male to the sword. But the women, children, livestock, and whatever else is in the city—all its spoil—you may take as plunder, and you shall use the spoil of your enemies that the LORD your God gives you.
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Deuteronomy 21:10-14
When you go to war against your enemies and the LORD your God delivers them into your hand and you take them captive, if you see a beautiful woman among them, and you desire her and want to take her as your wife, then you shall bring her into your house. She must shave her head, trim her nails, and put aside the clothing of her captivity.

After she has lived in your house a full month and mourned her father and mother, you may have relations with her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. And if you are not pleased with her, you are to let her go wherever she wishes. But you must not sell her for money or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her.
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The Bible does not endorse your position, though. It draws a clear distinction between the condemned tribes in the Promised Land and the pagan Gentiles beyond the borders. The death penalty for idolatry applied to those who dwelt in the Promised Land or otherwise among the Israelites; it was not a blanket justification for wiping out pagans. The pagans in the Promised Land were condemned not merely for idolatry, but because they did every disgusting thing under the sun and called it holy. God even said to Abraham that his descendants would have to wait 400 years because the sin of the Amorites had not yet reached its full measure. God does not desire the death of the wicked, but rather their conversion, so He resorts to exterminating the wicked only once they have demonstrated that they will use any mercy they receive as an opportunity to engage in greater evil.
 
To those objectors I say: God can give life and can take it away. The only point is that there was/is/will be a valid reason for killing. Take the event prior to the final judgment. The Lord will come and at his word all the enemies of the faith will simply drop dead. There may be no blood but it is still killing, so is there a problem? certainly not.
 
It’s clear from Christ’s own words that the Mosaic Law was flawed because of the “hard hearts” of the Israelites. Pope Benedict XVI notes human resistance to revelation, which was incomplete; so at best we have a people interpreting God’s will, not yet fully revealed, imperfectly, and resisting it. God allowed all of this of course, as he allows evil generally, for some greater good. Unless we accept a moral caprice in God’s nature (as Islam does) then it’s incoherent that he would positively command an evil act, such as slaughtering the babies of a group of people because of their ethnicity.
 
0Scarlett_nidiyilii said:
Thirdly, God created life. He alone has the right to decide who lives and dies. Not us.

A lot of people are very offended at the idea of a sovereign God, but there it is…
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The problem that I see isn’t that God has the right to take lives — naturally he does constantly. The issue is commanding people to commit intrinsic evils, like genocide. It is evil because human beings have no right to slaughter innocent human beings. One answer to this is, “the Canaanites [etc.] were not innocent” but that reasoning can’t be defended if the Herem extended to very young children and babies.

Another answer would be that God granted them some kind of dispensation or exception to the natural moral law to slaughter innocents. Then we have a Euthyphro dilemma and a serious challenge to the idea of God being “good” at all. Not to mention this is repugnant in any practical moral sense.
 
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Neithan said:
Another answer would be that God granted them some kind of dispensation or exception to the natural moral law to slaughter innocents. Then we have a Euthyphro dilemma and a serious challenge to the idea of God being “good” at all. Not to mention this is repugnant in any practical moral sense.
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And thus we arrive to the Crux of the problem;
If it was an exception to the rule why so?
If it was a product of the time then why is there an unsettling implication that should it be required to the rape and killing fields we go?

I find it extremely uncomfortable that should Catholicism find prominent in a G7 country things like “the war on terror” would be child’s play.

It’s bad enough we see an annoying orange as president but despite him killing his allies, assaulting Americans with tear gas we must vote for him because of the poor Innocents in the womb.

Where is the line that won’t be crossed to do good at the means of so much evil?

I want to be Catholic, I really do but honestly my boy Odin is at least consistent.
 
I’m not claiming those passages are easy.

But if you look at the Bible with a wider lens and notice how the narrative plays out, you’ll see that not only are God”s commands to His people more and more gentle, and forgiveness more abundant, that He Himself comes to live among us and suffer violence at the hands of men.

I don’t know what it all means. But you can’t in all fairness concentrate on one part of the story without looking at the entire Book.
 
Anrakyr said:
Yes I’m aware, it’s still rape by today’s standard.
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By “today’s standard,” men can become women, and women can become men. Maybe there is more wisdom than it might seem in the Sacred Pages…
 
Neithan said:
He allowed the ancient Hebrews to do horribly evil things because of their “hard hearts” and progressive revelation.
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Not by positive precept, or else we would be accusing God of commanding evil. Every jot and tittle of violence commanded by God, even through the major representatives of God, is justifiable, even without a full appeal to Divine Arbitration (allowing for some small appeal due to the “logic” of the movement of the Israelites into Canaan being part of a special series of commands and Covenants).
 
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