Is God Destructive?

(Originally written for The Baldwin Bulletin: Pastor's Column January 26, 2022)

…Joshua said to the people, “Shout, for the LORD has given you the city. And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction…But you, keep yourselves from the things devoted to destruction, lest when you have devoted them you take any of the devoted things and make the camp of Israel a thing of destruction and bring trouble upon it. But all silver and gold, and every vessel of bronze and iron, are holy to the LORD; they shall go into the treasury of the LORD”…Then they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, with the edge of the sword. (Joshua 6:16-21)

The women of Baldwin CRC’s Dorcas Society, a Bible study and serving group named after the woman who was “full of good works and acts of charity” in Acts 9:36-43, are currently studying the book of Joshua. One of them shared at our recent annual meeting how it’s been an enjoyable study, and yet there are things to wrestle with like the passage above. She was right—there are actions and commands of God that we read in the Bible that are not easy or avoidable.

Especially in the Old Testament, you may have found yourself with similar struggles. In Genesis, we read the introduction to the flood: The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them” (Genesis 6:5-7). God did just that with the flood, sparing only Noah, his family, and the animals on the ark. Afterwards we read the original reason for the rainbow and what God intends it to be a sign of: “…I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you…that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth” (Genesis 9:9-11).

Other times in Israel’s history God commanded them to destroy all their enemies in certain places, children and infants included. “…Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘…Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey’” (1 Samuel 15:1-3). If you go through the laws, there are plenty that included a death penalty. One that uses the same language of Joshua 6 is, “Whoever sacrifices to any god, other than the LORD alone, shall be devoted to destruction” (Exodus 22:20).

These passages and others can stir up difficult questions. Is God bloodthirsty? Didn’t he know what all these people would do before they were even born? If he knew they would do such evil, why even create them? Or why didn’t he change them after knowing what they might do?

It is appropriate to recognize God is just. When people act against his standards of righteousness—when we sin, there is judgment. A constant in each of the above accounts is wickedness, and part of the answer to wrestling with God’s action is recognizing these weren’t perfect or innocent people God had killed or destroyed. Yet we take these principles into our lives, and wonder why certain terrible people are allowed to live, especially when believers or people who we consider “good” or much less evil are struggle or die. Sometimes God’s justice seems unjust to us.

Maybe you know what’s coming: I don’t know all the ins and outs of why God does or allows everything that he does. I do think, though, that Bishop Joseph Butler, an Anglican priest back in the 1700s, sheds some truth on the matter. In his The Analogy of Religion, he wrote, “For men have no right to either life or property, but what arises solely from the grant of God: when this grant is revoked, they cease to have any right at all in either: and when this revocation is made known, as surely it is possible it may be, it must cease to be unjust to deprive them of either.” We want to believe we have total rights to what happens here in this world and that our sense of fairness must be the same as God’s, but ultimately he is the only one who has those rights and chooses when to give and take. Our God can use destruction for his purposes. He is in total control, even when we have trouble understanding him.