A challenge to Christians: Stop defending genocide

9 November 2009

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ZJ: The act of genocide is one of the worst crimes that mankind is capable of. The systematic mass murder of an entire people is such a grave offense, it is considered a crime against humanity itself. Throughout history, countless millions have suffered and died needlessly as a result of ethnic cleansing and campaigns of extermination.

We look back on these atrocities with horror and regret, vowing that we will never let this happen again, because nothing justifies genocide. It is intolerable. This is a moral boundary that none of us are willing to violate, and everyone in the civilized world can agree that genocide is never acceptable.

Or so I thought.

For some time now, I've presented numerous examples of genocide in the Bible, committed, assisted, or commissioned by God. For example, God declared that the Israelites will "blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven", and later ordered Saul to "utterly destroy" the Amalekites, "put to death both man and woman, child and infant", and "fight against them until they are exterminated." Saul and his army subsequently "destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword."

God also told the Israelites that "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." This happened repeatedly in the Old Testament. There's also that little matter of when God decided to drown every living thing on earth, except for a single boat.

And I had expected that everyone would easily recognize that these events, like all genocides, were clearly wrong. But this was not the case. Instead, I was surprised to see that Christians were defending these genocides and claiming that they were justified. One of the reasons they offered was that the victims were so evil that that they all deserved to be killed. Others said that the Israelites were in need of land, so God allowed them to conquer neighboring territories. And some even claimed that anything God commands is morally right, by definition, and that we have no standing to question this or disobey his commands.

It was really quite startling that these excuses were so similar to the justifications used by the perpetrators of genocide: The victims were simply "unworthy of life", or they needed to acquire more territory for themselves, or they were "just following orders".

Even more unnerving is how indifferent these people are to the realities of genocide. They apparently have no problem with killing defenseless children and treating even infants as too evil to live. It's like none of this seems real to them.

But perhaps the most disturbing aspect is that of all the Christians I've discussed this with, not one of them has been willing to condemn these genocides. Not a single one. They have all tried to defend this.

So, I'd like to issue a challenge to Christians: Can you acknowledge that genocide is wrong, even if God commands it? Can you agree that genocide is never acceptable, including the genocides of the Bible? Are you capable, as a Christian, of condemning genocide without equivocation?

That's all there is to it. I await your responses.

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