Friday, March 26, 2010

Emergent Questions - Is God Violent?


Brian McLaren has written a new book, A New Kind of Christianity. I ran across a link from my brother Dan's Blog, and followed link after link until I found a video of Brian McLaren discussing a part of his book. It addresses the question, "Is God Violent?". To which I immediately replied to myself, "Yes". But McLaren doesn't like that answer. Although in the video, he discusses how many people are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with God-caused harm. There's the story of the Flood or the slaughter of the Caananites in the OT to put this into focus.

Although he pats himself on the back for raising this question, he doesn't want to directly answer it. Instead, casts doubt on whether its a good idea to have God as the source of this violence. I think a great follow-up question to McLaren's question, "Is God violent?" might be, "What do the Scriptures say? How do you read them?" (hat tip to Jesus).

If we are uncomfortable with the God that the Bible talks about, then who do we turn to? Shall we make up our own God or try to twist the Bible to say what it never intended?

The Bible clearly implicates God in Ananias' and Sephira's death in the Book of Acts. That was violent? Does it matter the numbers after that? 5? 50? 1000? a city? the world? This was seen by the Church as a good and right thing. And, in contrast to McLaren's view, the Fear of the Lord that came was a good thing.

I have not read McLaren's book. I'm simply responding to his video. Frankly, if his book and video are similar, I'm not interested in reading his book.

(image from Amazon.com)

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