God Does Not Kill

     I blame the psalmist.

     Oh, I know it wasn’t just one guy who set in motion our long and checkered history of religion-based violence—there was a lot of it that preceded him, and he has a lot of company in both testaments of the Bible, as well as in other religious traditions—but this unknown writer’s comments in Psalm 149 are pretty baldly symbolic. They crystallize the issue efficiently and chillingly. And since this psalmist’s poem is part of the daily lectionary readings for today, I’m singling him out for blame.

     Psalm 149 starts out all right. It comes across as a standard psalm of praise, with lines like these:

     Sing to the Lord a new song,

          [God’s] praise in the assembly of the faithful (v. 1).

     Let [Israel] praise [God’s] name with dancing,

          making melody to [God] with tambourine and lyre (v. 3).

     Let the faithful exult in glory;

          let them sing for joy on their couches (v. 5).

     But then in verse 6 the poem takes a fateful turn. See how all the praise and worship of the first half of the psalm morph into something ugly and sinister:

     Let the high praises of God be in their throats

          and two-edged swords in their hands,

     to execute vengeance on the nations

          and punishment on the peoples,

     to bind their kings with fetters

          and their nobles with chains of iron,

          to execute on them the judgment decreed.

     This is glory for all [God’s] faithful ones” (vv. 6–9).

     Oh, well, you might be thinking, this was a long time ago. It was a more primitive time, when people did not yet understand God the way we do. It was before Jesus came to reveal God’s nature as uncontrolling love. They can be excused for their violent rhetoric.

     To which I reply, can they? Isn’t there enough of God’s gracious nature revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures to indicate that these sentiments are unworthy of God?

     But let us leave that aside for a moment while I quote a more recent example of the same sort of irresponsible language: “Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation…. Give [our military leaders] wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.” These words come from a prayer spoken publicly back in March by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a man who wears his Christian faith on his sleeve (and tattooed on his body) and who should therefore know better. A Christian is one who follows the way of Jesus of Nazareth, who was not noted for his military prowess but for his nonviolent resistance to evil and his loving response to people from all walks of life and who, I am convinced, would object to the notion that there is anywhere in the world anyone who deserves no mercy.

     The Bible is admittedly full of depictions of God that lend themselves to notions of divine violence and that therefore justify human violence in response. But if we read the Bible through the lens of Jesus Christ, we see that such passages are not worthy of the God Jesus called Abba. They reflect the mistaken notions of people who projected their own violence onto their image of God. These unworthy depictions of the divine are to be rejected in favor of Jesus’s revelation of God’s love, grace, and forgiving nature.

     In the same way, we need to reject in no uncertain terms the notion that God might endorse “overwhelming violence of action” under any circumstances. We need to be consistent in offering healthy depictions of God to counter those of people like the psalmist or the secretary. Let us say clearly and repeatedly, “God does not kill!”

     This is glory for all God’s faithful ones.