God’s doing what he’s knows is the right thing, assuming that he has a better grasp on the knolwedge of good and evil than we do, and we should stick to sinful and not sinful.

I’m going to jump off from this comment and attempt to defend the idea that divine violence can be seen as a just practice consistent with God’s character throughout Scripture.

I would say that liberalish North Americans (which probably includes everyone reading this) typically see violence as an inherently bad thing. This is natural for us, because we have witnessed it or experienced it in situations such as the Holocaust, the USA’s ill-conceived invasion of Iraq, child abuse, slavery, September 11, suicide bombs in Israel and Iraq, KKK lynchings, police brutality, Europeans’ removal/extermination of Native Americans, the Vietnam Conflict, and ongoing wars and genocide around the globe.

We can think of few instances where most everyone would agree that widespread violence was justifed, the easiest of which is the Allies’ efforts to overthrow the Third Reich.

The Bible, on the other hand, often describes violence as being divinely ordained and therefore (at times) good, if regrettable. Just six chapters into the Old Testament, we see God’s destruction of almost every person alive along with most of the animals, in the flood story. The theme continues with the plagues on Egypt, the conquest of Canaan (which involved wiping out men, women, and children), and the destruction and exile of Israel, then Judah.

(A quick note: for anyone skeptical of a religious group that claims God is always on their side, note that in the exile God specifically used violence against Israel. I would argue that this shows his concern was justice, not victory.)

One Christian response to this violence is to claim that things changed under Christ. True, we might say, the OT describes horrific acts, and maybe we don’t know what to make of all that, but the important thing is that Christ has shown us God’s true nature as a God of peace and love.

I think that biblically, this claim that divine violence died with Christ is partly right and partly dead wrong. Jesus’ teachings on loving one’s enemy and turning the other cheek are well-known, so I won’t repeat them (check out the Gospel of Luke 6:27-36 if you’ve never read it). The problem is, the New Testament affirms its share of violence as well. God strikes dead Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11), then Herod (Acts 12:23); Matthew apparently believes that God brings about the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 (Matt 22:5-7; 23:35-38); Paul warns the Corinthians that God is striking them with illnesses to teach them not to mistreat the poor in their assemblies (1Cor 11:29-32); and then we have the bowls of God’s wrath poured out upon the world in Revelation.

Now, I’m not in favor of force-reconciling Scriptures that claim different things, but in this case I actually see a clear consistency in God’s character throughout the Bible.

Looking back at the OT passages, I think it’s significant that the ones I have mentioned are all specifically described as acts of divine justice against human wickedness. At the time of the flood, “every inclination of the thoughts of [humanity’s] heart was only evil all the time” (Gen 6:5); the plagues are called “mighty acts of judgment” against Egypt (Ex 6:6); God implies to Abraham that his descendants will destroy the inhabitants of Canaan because of their sin (Gen 15:16); God tells Jeremiah when the destruction of Jerusalem is imminent, “Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, look around and take note! Search its squares and see if you can find one person who acts justly and seeks truth––so that I may pardon Jerusalem” (Jer 5:1).

The NT passages mentioned above, like the OT passages, all clearly indicate the human sinfulness that is being punished.

But here’s the difference in the NT: humans no longer are commanded to carry out God’s divine violence; that prerogative is reserved for God. God has established a new covenant, under which we no longer carry out his acts of violence for him. Consequently, I think Jesus’ words show us not something about the nature of violence in the eyes of God, but rather a new way for humans to act.

The implication, as I see it, is that God considered, and still considers, widespread violence to be a legitimate act of justice in response to human wickedness. Under his covenant with Israel, he called on his people to carry out that violence. In Christ, he calls believers to renounce violence and allow him to avenge wrongdoing in his time.

So under Christ, violence is sinful, but not inherently evil. Oddly enough, this lengthy defense of the integrity of divine violence has landed me, as a human, somewhere near the camp of the pacifists.