Is the God of Peace a God of War?: Reconciling the Older and Newer Testaments

I recently wrote an exegetical paper on the Ten Teachings, which can be found in both Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. For those unsure, an exegesis is a fancy way of saying I wrote an extensive interpretation paper of a passage of Scripture. What I found was that the 6th teaching, which is commonly translated "do not murder" or "do not kill" (the former commonly accepted as being the more accurate translation), is an all-encompassing kind of act against another human being. Under this category, exists the act of intentional killing out of hatred or force and the act of unintentional killing of another human being. It is, yet, that God allows and seemingly ordains conquest of war and siege warfare, which entails an array of violent and murderous acts against other people groups. We often gloss over passages that say that Israel "utterly destroyed" another nation. What we do not realize is that this language implies barbaric killing of both, soldiers and innocent civilians (men, women, and children alike), the destruction, including flooding and burning, of crops and livestock, and enslaving the enemy. It often was even the cause for famines that led people to eating bird droppings and their own children in order to survive (2 Kings 6; Lamentations 2). Now, on this occasion, it is quite difficult for me to reconcile not just the Hebrew Scriptures with the Newer Testament, but also the Hebrew Scriptures with themselves. God lays out one rule and seems to have broken it all at the same time. What are we to make of this? I will submit a suggestion.

In order to reconcile these seemingly contradictory passages, I will make three important points to consider: firstly, we must agree that our human minds are finite, and what might not seem right to us is seen very differently by an infinite being, who has perfect judgment and encompasses everything that is. This is to say that what God does and allows may very well be beyond our comprehension--God is just to do whatever he sees as right (this may seem like a generic cop-out, but it remains and must remain regardless. Our humble state is that which recognizes One infinitely greater than ourselves); Secondly, while God allows and seemingly ordains violence, he never desires it; and thirdly, God has chosen to reveal himself throughout time in a progressive manner ultimately leading up to his manifestation in Christ.

The first point stands alone. We recognize that if we can understand everything about God, including what he does, says, and allows, then we cannot rightfully call him God because he would then be no greater than us whom he created. The second point is that which suggests God never wanted and still does not want violence against his creation to happen. He always desires peace. When we consider the story of Noah's ark, the first thing that we recognize is that God has done something horrible. He has destroyed nearly all of creation. We ought to recognize, however, that this story stands out in the time it was written amongst other religious stories like it. God seems to be grieved by humanity. Why is he grieved? Because "every inclination of humanity's heart was all evil all of the time..." and there were all kinds of violence in the land. God could not take it when humanity, whom he created in his very image to be like him, became hateful and anti-creation. And when he restores the created order through Noah, he makes sure that Noah knows how valuable and even sacred human life really is (Gen 9:6). And not only that, but God also puts a bow in the sky. We understand this to be a rainbow, which it is. But what the rainbow is symbolic of is peace; it is to say that God himself is hanging up his weapon (a bow) because he does not want to fight with his creation anymore. He set the example for creation by hanging up his own weapon and hoping that they would also hang up theirs and stop fighting with him and all that he created. The world that God desires according to this passage is one of an all-encompassing peace. The Hebrew word for peace is shalom and the Greek word is eirene (pronounced ay-ray-nay), which constitutes wholeness or completeness that brings order in the midst of chaos and an inner state of tranquility that pervades every area of our lives. This is how God desired for the world to be: whole, complete, and in a state of perfect peace.

Another passage where we can see this theme is in Zechariah 9. In verse 6, God speaks of taking away and destroying the chariots and horses and the bows that were used in battles and wars--all because he desires for peace to be proclaimed to all the nations. While God desires peace, he is working with a people who do not. And this is what leads me to the final point. What God does has everything to do with what humans desire and what humans do. This is not to say that God is controlled by our actions; but it is to say that he takes us seriously enough to allow us to be free to do as we so desire. And accordingly, God chooses to participate in the ongoing drama of life. The way, then, that God chooses to reveal himself to humanity, given these conditions, is according to humanity's desire to know God. It is that God revealed the fullness of who he is in relationship to humanity in a progressive way throughout time. While he told humanity that war and violence is unacceptable, he had to work with a people who accepted it not only as a part of life, but as a way of life. God eventually not only desires this to be restored but he also acts in a way that causes humans to actually make love and peace a way of life rather than war and violence.

So, as I mentioned above, God gave the Israelites a teaching that they obviously did not live by--do not murder. We understand that God gave this law because he desired them to be a peaceful people made in his image. However, God also promised Abraham that he would have many descendants and that they would have a particular land. Well, the only way that anybody in the ancient Near East understood the blessing of land was that you gain land by conquering it. This teaching and this promise are opposing each other in the minds of the ancient culture. All of the ancient Near East cultures believed that divine conquest was the way to gain land. It was understood that if a nation went to battle and won, then it was because the gods wanted them to have the land. The idea of conquest was nearly always linked to not only a battle between people, but also a battle between the gods of the people. Furthermore, when the Israelites heard that God had promised them land, they thought that it was their responsibility to go to war in the name of their God. It was the only way that they knew. They even assumed that it was the only way to act faithfully upon the promise that God gave them. God could have given them the land in another way, but the Israelites would not take the land in another way.

Remember that the entire Bible is the story of God restoring a fallen humanity. And part of being a fallen humanity is that we don't always get it. The Israelites didn’t quite get this concept of all-encompassing peace. It was so foreign to them and their culture. Perhaps they understood that the peace of God was an inner state of the heart; and certainly, they understood that times of peace in the land were better times than those of war in the land. But they also were influenced by the cultures around them that said, “the gods will fight our battles for us if we have made them happy to do so.” Israel likely believed that if they hadn’t gone to battle, then their God would never be known amongst the nations of the world. When Israel won a battle, their enemies might have believed that Israel’s God won that battle for them. Somehow, God took something that he didn’t approve of and made something good out of it. The people defeated in the battle didn’t say, “why would Israel’s God do this to us?” Rather, they would have asked, “if Israel’s God is powerful enough, then why wouldn’t he have done this to us?”

Again, God was working within a very fallen culture created by humanity. He chose to work within the realm of human fallen-ness as a testimony to the freedom he has given us to co-rule over creation. He constantly reminded them that he desired peace and a non-violent created order even if they did not completely understand this concept. God worked with the Israelites little by little to bring them to the place of knowing what he desired for human life to be called sacred and not expendable; ultimately God chose to express this in a very tangible way—the person of Christ. As Christians, we understand Jesus to be the bodily manifestation of all that is God. Jesus, in many ways, is the remedy for a fallen humanity. We must understand that when it comes to difficulties reconciling war and peace in the Bible, Christ was God’s ultimate means of expressing his love for all of humanity, paving a way that brought an all-encompassing peace to those who truly follow him and his ways. When we act violently, we are acting anti-kingdom of God as revealed by Christ. When we go to war, we are failing to follow the Prince of Peace who was God’s ultimate reminder of the reality he so desired. I am not hoping to offend anybody by this post; I am hoping, however, to stir the minds and hearts of those who truly desire to heed the words and the way of Christ. Please consider this, rebuttal my thoughts, and ask the tough questions. This is a safe place to dialogue about these kinds of things.