I was grading student essays about modern perceptions of God contrasted with actions attributed to God in the Hebrew Bible and found myself pondering why students who said divine demands for violence/genocide are in the text because "God is just." Or, students would say "Christianity is peaceful" contrasting their current faith with the "old covenant" with Israel.
God's justice is genocide and damning God's creation?
If Christianity is "peaceful," why has its history been so bloody?
If we are to hope in a God of justice, a God of power, and a God of love, should we not consider God's idea of power was not to establish a monarchy or empire. God's power is suffering love, and liberation from death. Should we attribute Israel's theological understanding of war and conquest to the reality of God? Would the God who is for creation (why would God NOT be for it?) "justly" order its death?
I find the perception of God's justice as warring violence to be a human perversion of God because the entire Bible speaks a God whose power and justice defies human reason......defies humanity's tendency for self-destruction.
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