Thursday, June 12, 2014

Violence in the Bible

Great googely-moogely, can you narrow that down a bit? Yes, the Bible is full of violence pretty much from cover to cover. What about fallen didn't we understand? The mistake comes when someone thinks this is how God wanted it. For just a little while at the very beginning, we get the world as God created it. Then, we get just a bit more at the very end. And, we have this one command from Jesus, "Love your neighbor as yourself." That one command is obeyed and all that violence we do to each other stops. Not all violence of course, we would still suffer earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, volcanoes, and so on.

The fall affected everything. Eden hung up the 'No Vacancy' sign and God stationed a guard out front with a big sword. Some animals began to eat other animals, and violence grew so common that God was ready to wipe the slate clean with a big flood by Chapter 5 of the first Bible book. Yup, you can see it right there at the very end with the introduction of one boat builder called Noah. Why did God make such fragile critters anyway?

First the obedience of our ancestors was too fragile to stand up to one temptation. Then, hardly had the family thing begun, and the first brother kills the second one. Violence already? Yup, and deadly violence at that. We must read way to near the very end of the Bible before the killing stops. We are somewhere in between Genesis 1 and Revelation 22, and lurking just below the surface of this peaceful-looking day is the violence. Actually, if a mouse moseyed through the living room right about now, the killer cat would bring the violence in 'bout a half a heartbeat. God's word just tells it like it is. The world would like to blame the Bible for the violence, but if the Bible goes away the violence won't. And, if we lose the Word of God, we also lose the only answer to the violence, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Have a godly day!
Bucky

No comments: