Intro:

In 1994, Rwandas population of seven million was composed of three ethnic groups: Hutu (approximately 85%), Tutsi (14%) and Twa (1%). In the early 1990s, Hutu extremists within Rwandas political elite blamed the entire Tutsi minority population for the countrys increasing social, economic, and political problems. Through the use of propaganda and constant political maneuvering the president at the time, and his group increased divisions between Hutu and Tutsi. On April 1994, a plane carrying the President, a Hutu, was shot down. Violence began almost immediately after that. Under the cover of war, Hutu extremists launched their plans to destroy the entire Tutsi civilian population. Political leaders who opposed this plan were killed immediately. Tutsi and people suspected of being Tutsi were killed in their homes and as they tried to flee. Entire families were killed at a time. Women were systematically and brutally raped. It is estimated that some 200,000 people participated in the perpetration of the Rwandan genocide. In the weeks following, 800,000 men, women, and children perished in the Rwandan genocide, perhaps as many as three quarters of the Tutsi population. At the same time, thousands of Hutus were murdered because they opposed the killing campaign.

Richard Dawkins gives the following description of the God of the Old Testament in his book The God Delusion: The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a capriciously malevolent bully. Does religion lead to war? Does the Bible itself advocate ethnic cleansing like the Rwandian genocide? Is God guilty of war crimes? If you have ever tried to read though the Bible, you will notice that there are stories that often rub you the wrong way. Often God seems harsh or even immoral. Moses describes God in Numbers 14:18 as slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. The apostle John in the New Testament describes God as Love. Jesus himself says You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbour and hate your enemy. But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven (Mt 5:43-44; Mt 5:45-48; Luke 6:27-36; 9:51-56).

Yet, Moses states the following commands from God after the Israelites were delieverd from Egyptian captivity: Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. But you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the LORD your God has commanded you, so that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the LORD your God (Deuteronomy 20:16- 18; cf. Deut 7:1-2, 3-5; 20:16-18; 32:39; Josh 6:21; 8:24-26; 10:28, 40; 11:11, 14, 20- 21). One scholar says that the Israelites made this command up after the fact to justify their genocide, their greed, and their dominance of these people. Is this really the case? Why did God want these societies to be wiped out? The following frameworks, which I borrowed from Christopher Wright, will put this question in its proper context: 1. The Framework of the Old Testament Story 2. The Framework of Gods Sovereign Justice 3. The Framework of Gods Plan of Salvation

 1. The Old Testament Story A) The Culture and Rhetoric of Ancient Warfare The kind of warfare described in the conquest stories should not be called holy war (which is not used in the Bible), but a war of Yahweh. In other words, it is a war in which the God of the Israelites won over His enemies. The term herem or ban was applied in this context. This meant that all that was being attacked, human, animal, or material was dedicated completely to God himself. The rules of herem differed as illustrated by different Old Testament narratives. Sometimes women and children were spared (Num. 31:7-12, 17-18; Deut. 20:13-14; 21:10-14); sometimes cattle could be kept (Deut. 2:34-35). But, in the cases of nations living within the land of Canaan itself, the general rule was total destruction. The practice of herem was not unique to Israel. Other nations at the time also practiced this. The language of warfare had a conventional rhetoric that liked to make absolute and universal claims about total victory and completely wiping out the enemy. Even though this warfare was still very horrible, it was an exaggeration. This helps us to see the fact that descriptions of the destruction of everything that lives and breathes were not necessarily intended literally. Even in the Old Testament itself this rhetorical device is used. We read in the book of Joshua that all the land was captured, all the kings were defeated, all the people without survivors were destroyed (Josh 10:40-42; 11:16-20). But this must have been intended as

rhetorical exaggeration because by the end of the book, Joshua matter of factly assumes the continued existence of Canaanite peoples that could pose a threat to the spiritual lives of the Israelites (Josh 23:12-13). Archeology also confirms the use of this rhetorical device. When Joshua speaks of Jericho and Ai it appears harsh at first glance. He states that They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys (6:21 NIV); twelve thousand men and women fell that day all the people of Ai (8:25 NIV). However, there is no archaeological evidence of civilian populations at Jericho and Ai. Given what we know about Canaanite life in the Bronze Age, Jericho and Ai were military strongholds. The average reader of the Bible is not going to pick up on the fact that stereotypical ancient Near Eastern languages is being used to describe attacks on military forts or garrisons, and not attacks on the general populations that included women and children. B) The Conquest of Canaan was a Unique and Limited Event This conquest of Canaan was a limited event confined to one generation. Not all the wars in the Old Testament are the same as the conquest of Canaan. Israel was a theocracy, a nation ruled by God as their king. They were only to fight if God told them to fight. The Israelites were only to go to battle and wipe out the Canaanites because they were commanded directly from God. More to the point, God was the Warrior who was fighting for them.

 The Israelites went into battle elsewhere in the Old Testament without divine approval. Just because they were part of Gods people they sometimes thought that they could fight and kill who ever they wanted. For example, the Israelites went into battle against the Philistines with the ark of the covenant but without divine approval and they were roundly defeated by their enemies (1 Sam. 4). David himself was not chosen by God to build the temple because he had too much blood on his hands because of his many battles (1 Chronicles 18:3). When you are reading the Bible, you need to keep in mind that an An is not an Ought. Just because the Bible describes something does not mean it is approved by God. When you are reading a narrative, read it in light of other parts of the Bible which give clear commands. Often the narratives are illustrating how not to live. There was only one theocracy in history, Israel. Nations and groups of people have caused much harm by applying directly the Old Testament conquest narratives and the Old Testament civil law to their specific situations. The Bible cannot just be applied directly, paradigmatically. Just because God used the Israelites to go against the Canaanites, does not mean that if we are Christians, that we have a divine right to take over other cultures or to apply biblical law to society. So does Christianity cause war? That is the common view of many of the New Atheists like Christopher Hitchens. However, there is hardly ever one clear reason

to why war happens. Modern conflicts occur for all kinds of reasons. It is notoriously easy to mistake correlation for causation. There are many factors involved: politics, ethnic tribalism, historical factors, poverty, historical feuding, alienation, etc. Religion often turns out to be the label used to justify violence between warring parties. We have looked at The Framework of the Old Testament Story; now let us look at: 2. The Framework of Gods Sovereign Justice A) The Wickedness of Canaanite Culture and Religion According to the Bible, a society can reach a point of such evil that it needs to be judged by God. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire because not even ten righteous people could be found in the city (Genesis 18-19). In Noahs day, the society reached moral rock bottom even though Noahs call for reform lasted 120 years (Genesis 6:11-13; 6:3; cf. 5:32; 7:6; 2 Peter 2:5). Were the Canaanites that deserving of being judged? According to the Biblical text, the God of Israel was willing to wait about 430 years because the sin of the Amorite [a Canaanite people group] had not yet reached its limit (Genesis 15:16). In other words, in Abrahams day (before Moses came on the scene), the time wasnt ripe for

judgment on the Canaanites; the moment wasnt right for them to be driven out (Lev 18:25). What was Canaanite society like? The gods of their own imaginations that they worshipped were immoral. The Canaanite deities engaged in incest and this was a common practice among the Canaanites. Adultery (temple sex), bestiality, homosexual acts (temple sex), and child sacrifice to the gods were also common practice. The sexual acts of the gods and goddesses were imitated by the Canaanites as a kind of magical act: the more sex on the Canaanite high places, the more this would stimulate the fertility god Baal to have sex with his consort, Anath, which meant more semen (rain) produced to water the earth. The Canaanite deites also practiced bloodlust and violence. Anath, the patroness of both sex and war, drank her victims blood and sat surrounded by corpses; she is commonly depicted with a garland of skulls around her neck. B) The Conquest Did not Mean That the Israelites Were Righteous One of the strongest temptations in a time of war is to demonize the enemy and prop up your own sides righteousness. Its easy to see my enemies as the bad guys and my side as the good guys. God knew that the Israelites would be tempted to fall into this, so he said the following in Deuteronomy 9:

4 After the LORD your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, The LORD has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness. No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is going to drive them out before you. to accomplish what he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The fact that God intended to use Israel as the agent of his punitive judgment on Canaan did not mean that the Israelites themselves were righteous. In later Old Testament history, turning the tables, God used Assyria and Babylon as agents of Gods judgment on Israels wickedness. But that did not make those nations righteous! Quite the opposite. Those nations would be condemned for their own wickedness. As Christopher Wright has said: God can use one nation as a stick to punish another; but the stick he uses may itself be very bent. C) God Threatened to Do the Same against Israel, and Did So God warned the Israelites that if they behaved in the same way as the Canaanites, God would treat Israel as his enemy in the same terms as the Canaanites and inflict the same punishment on them using other nations (Lev. 18:28; Deut. 28:25-68). The land that had vomited out the Canaanites would be perfectly capable of doing the same with the Israelites, if they indulged in the same repulsive Canaanite practices. We have looked at:

1. The Framework of the Old Testament Story 2. The Framework of Gods Sovereign Justice Now, lets look at the: 3. The Framework of Gods Plan of Salvation A) The Vision of Peace The Old Testament condemns violence when it is the fruit of wickedness and when it leads to oppression. The Old Testament looks to a time when all war will end and Gods peace will reign in Gods new creation. Isaiah 2:4 speaks to this:
4 He will judge between the nations

and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. War is part of the fallen world of violent human beings, which God sovereignly uses, but it will play no part in the new creation when Jesus returns. Gods reign will mean the triumph of righteousness and justice. Jesus said: Blessed are the peacemakers (Matt 5:9).

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 B) Blessing the Nations Richard Dawkins states that the killing of the Canaanites was an act of ethic cleansing in which bloodthirsty massacres were carried out with xenophobic relish. The Bible doesnt support this at all. Genocide and ethnic cleansing are fueled by racial hatred. However, the reason the Israelites killed the Canaanites, was because God was using them to judge a wicked unrepentant people, not because the Israelites were racist. The promise to Abraham in Genesis 12 was that Israel was to be a blessing to all nations on earth. Israel was the people whom God had chosen, called, redeemed, and brought into covenant relationship with himself. The nations did not yet enjoy that relationship. But the key point is that the whole purpose of God in choosing Israel was so that the nations would eventually choose God. The overall thrust of the Old Testament is not Israel against the nations, but Israel for the sake of the nations. A mixed multitude of different races left as part of the Israelite people after they were delivered from slavery in Egypt (Ex 12:38). Moses married a dark-skinned Ethiopian (Num 12:1). God had set up certain laws to protect and show concern for aliens who lived in their midst because the Israelites had been strangers in Egypt. The stranger living in Israel had the same legal rights and protections as the native Israelite. Rahab the Canaanite and her household are spared because she believed in Yahweh the God of Israel. Deuteronomy 7 makes it clear that the problem with the Canaanites was not ethnicity, but idolatry. Rahab shows that somebody who renounced the gods of

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Canaan and came to worship the God of Israel was spared. Rahab enters into the genealogy of Jesus Himself (Matt 1:5) and is included among the models of faith that we should look up to in Hebrews chapter 11. Gods promise to bless all the nations through Israel included the Canaanites. Peoples who historically had been Israels fiercest, most brutal enemies would partake in a new covenant as Gods multiethnic people. 1 Choronicles 21 talks about how the Canaanites will become part of the people of God (15, 18, 28). 4. Conclusion What we learn from the narrative of the Bible is that God is Holy, Loving and Good, and that he must punish evil. Theologian Miroslav Volf was born in Croatia and lived through the nightmare years of ethnic strife in the former Yugoslavia that included the destruction of churches, the raping of women, and the murdering of innocent people. He once thought that wrath and anger were beneath God, but he came to realize that his view of God had been two low. Here Volf puts the New Atheists complaints about divine wrath into proper perspective: I used to think that wrath was unworthy of God. Isnt God love? Shouldnt divine love be beyond wrath? God is love, and God loves every person and every creature.

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Thats exactly why God is wrathful against some of them. My last resistance to the idea of Gods wrath was a casualty of the war in the former Yugoslavia, the region from which I come. According to some estimates, 200,000 people were killed and over 3,000,000 were displaced. My villages and cities were destroyed, my people shelled day in and day out, some of them brutalized beyond imagination, and I could not imagine God not being angry. Or think of Rwanda in the last decade of the past century, where 800,000 people were hacked to death in one hundred days! How did God react to the carnageBy refusing to condemn the bloodbath but instead affirming the perpetrators basic goodness? Wasnt God fiercely angry with them? Though I used to complain about the indecency of the idea of Gods wrath, I came to think I would have to rebel against a God who wasnt wrathful at the sight of the worlds evil. God isnt wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful because God is love. According to the Bible, all of us are evil and deserve to die for our sin. We are all just like the Canaanites if you were to look at our hearts. Jesus describes our human condition in Mark 7: What comes out of a man is what defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man (Mark 7:20-23).

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However, even though we are this way, God loves us deeply, so deeply in fact, that he became a human being, lived among us. Although sinless, he died on the cross to take the full wrath of God for our sin. He died in our place. For those who are willing to acknowledge their sinfulness and willing to trust Jesus as their Saviour and king, God offers forgiveness and acceptance and a rich relationship with Himself as Father and friend.

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