“But your own lifeblood I will avenge; I will avenge it against both animals and humans. Whoever sheds human blood, by humans let his blood be shed, Because God made humans in God’s image reflecting God’s very nature. You’re here to bear fruit, reproduce, lavish life on earth, live bountifully!”
-Genesis 9:5-7
Hawks and doves. War and peace. Domestic disturbances alongside loving families. Bullies and friends. Ukraine and Russia. Hatfields and McCoys. Campus assaults within higher education. Strip mining and care of creation. Guns and butter. Cops and robbers. Emotional and spiritual abuse or spiritual nurture and acts of kindness. I could go on. There’s a lot of violence in the news these days. The media can’t give us enough of it and every time they do…our hearts are broken. Imagine how God must feel…
Someone said to me… “I stopped reading the Bible… it’s just full of violence.” I agreed although I’ve not stopped reading it… You know… Cain and Abel. Noah and the flood. Joeseph and his brothers. Moses and Pharoah and then the Amalekites. David and Goliath… just to name a few on the left side of the holy book. And the right side? King Herod killed babies. His son, Herod Antipas beheaded John the Baptizer as a birthday present… and referred Jesus back to Pontius Pilate leading to Jesus’ brutal death on the cross. And there was Saul of Tarsus… he held the cloaks of the temple leaders as they stoned Stephen to death… and oh yeah… all of the disciples except one died a cruel death… so yeah… to my friend… the Bible is full of violence… most of it caused by humans and full of moments where God said violence is not the way to go… with a prohibition of killing as one of the 10 commandments and commands of love noted in many other parts of the Bible… and why we call it the ‘book of love.’
Violence comes in many forms and seems to have been around forever… from biblical times to Genghis Kahn… the Romans and the Greeks… the Vikings… the Crusades… the 100 Years War… the English and the French… and the Scots … and even now there are civil wars and threats of one country taking over another… all around the globe to say nothing of continued forms of slavery and cartel terror and in these days it seems there are some whose goal is nothing but violence… an all-out disregard of God and a disrespect of neighbor… to which this behavior has become a research project with the experts telling us there are at least ten types of violence…including violence toward others or one’s self… violence against nature… spiritual and sexual violence as well as cultural and structural violence where nations devise ways to do another nation in… it’s disheartening to say the least…
And this makes my head and heart spin when I spend too much time thinking about it… because it’s easy to note violence always begets violence until it is no longer required to sustain a time of peace but on the other side is the life of peace and love of God, self and neighbor that never leads to violence… as A.J. Muste noted… in 1957 … “there is no way to peace; peace is the way”… as injustice will always lead to jealousy and evil and when jealousy and evil take charge… violence is the outcome… just look at Cain and Abel or Herod and John the Baptizer… or Hitler and the world or Putin and Ukraine… or ask yourself this simple question… “what keeps any of us from buying a gun and walking into a school or a mall or wherever and ruin the lives of innocent people?” I know why I don’t do that…
So… keep reading your Bible… make a habit of it… and do not be discouraged by all the stories of all the people choosing violence as a means to an end… and remember… Jesus overcame religious and political violence to show God’s way is a better way… the better way… Faith matters!
