Violence

Greg is an internationally recognized theologian, preacher, teacher, apologist and author. He has authored or co-authored 18 books and numerous academic articles, including his best-selling and award-winning Letters From a Skeptic and his most recent books (co-authored with Dr. Paul Eddy) The Jesus Legend and Lord or Legend.

Greg Boyd received his Ph. D. from Princeton Theological Seminary (1988), his M.Div. from Yale Divinity School (1982) and his B.A. from the University of Minnesota (1979). He was a professor of theology for 16 years at Bethel University (St. Paul, MN). He is the head pastor of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. 

Greg and his wife Shelley have been married for 28 years. They have three children and two grandchildren.

Scott, Marcy, and spencer skype in Greg Boyd. 

During the intro with Greg Boyd, Scott highlights a couple of Greg’s books, Cross Vision and The Myth of a Christian Nation. After telling Greg -- a pacifist -- how excited we were to have him on the podcast, since we are Montanans who have a reputation for having lots of guns and like to shoot things, we dive right in to asking his views on how to read the Bible. It seems like when we read some of the things found in the Old Testament (particularly the violent parts), we come up with justifications and answers, because it just seems like that’s what we have to do...even for our own hearts. So we are curious what Greg’s take is on it...

He begins: All through the 1990s and early 2000s, the more clear the centrality of non-violence and Jesus and the revelation of God and His Kingdom-ethic became to Greg, the more problematic Old Testament violence became. So he decided he was going to write a book that gave his best explanations about why Old Testament violence happened...as a way to justify it. But about 40 pages in, he realized his explanations weren’t very strong and that he was basically writing a book that had already been written before by Paul Copan -- Is God a Moral Monster? So he stopped.

He knew he had good reasons to believe that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that Jesus endorsed the Old Testament as the inspired word of God. So, on authority of Jesus, he HAD to accept the whole Bible as the Word of God.

“I can’t call him Lord and correct his theology.” - Greg

The New Testament presents Jesus’ revelation on the cross as the revelation that colonnades and supersedes all others. All Scripture is about Jesus.

“If you’re reading it [Scripture] and it doesn’t point to Jesus, you’re not reading it right.” - Greg

The cross sums up what Jesus is all about. The cross is a summation of all Scripture...it weaves it all together. It is the definitive revelation of God. So Greg came to the conclusion that he couldn’t accept the violent portraits of God in a straightforward manner because they contradicted what the Bible says about God in Jesus Christ. He didn’t know what to do from there though, so for a while he just sat in cognitive dissonance.

Early theologian (2nd/3rd Century) Origen once said that whenever you come into moral conundrums in the Bible, don’t get angry. They are there to cause you to dig deeper and to mature by checking down further. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you a deeper revelation that will reconcile this conundrum and show you how this unworthy picture of God is actually worthy of God. The treasure of God’s revelation is not on the text, but sometimes is hidden in the depths of the text. So you gotta dig. Rely on the Spirit and your eyes will be open. 

So for several months, Greg took Origen’s advice and did just that. He dug through the horrendous texts of God’s word. Then, when he stopped trying to defend the violence, he began to see how those passages pointed to the cross. He compared the process to magic eye books, which from a quick look, appear to be random wallpaper. But if looked at the right way -- not looking AT it, but looking THROUGH it -- you will see a three-dimensional object arise. In a similar way, he began to see the Cross in the violent portraits of God.

“My challenge isn’t to try to make God look a little less monstrous, maybe even ethical, maybe even Christ-like. The challenge is to show how all Scripture points to the Cross.” - Greg

So, how does a God commanding genocide (for all intents and purposes) point to the cross?

The answer to this question came to Greg when he asked himself: “How does this first century crucified Jewish criminal become the full revelation of God for me?” He explains how a pagan just looks at the surface of the cross, but a believer looks beyond the surface. By faith, the believer sees something else going on in the depth of the cross...and that is the message of the cross. God is in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. Through the cross, we see God stepping this infinite distance out of love for us, to become this crucified criminal. It’s the distance that God crosses that reveals the perfection of the love that He is and the perfection of the love that He has for us. And that is why the cross is the supreme revelation of God.

The cross is simultaneously beautiful and horrifically ugly for the believer. It is horrifically ugly on the surface because it reflects the ugliness of the sin that Christ is bearing. But it’s also profoundly beautiful when you see it with faith and look through the surface of the cross because then you see your loving Creator willingly stepping through this infinite distance to become this for you.

If the cross is the full revelation of God, then the cross reveals what God’s ALWAYS been like. This even includes what God was like when He breathed Scripture. So, instead of God revealing Himself on the surface of the text, He reveals Himself by stooping to enter into the solidarity of the people that he’s in covenant with, bearing their sin, and thereby taking on an appearance that reflects the ugliness of their sin.

All of the treasures of God’s wisdom and knowledge are found in Christ. God, on the cross, steps into our sin and takes on an appearance that reflects that. Those ugly portraits don’t reveal God’s character as much as they reveal the character of the people that he’s dealing with. They’re what they thought about God. But God wasn’t going to coerce them into having true perceptions of Him. The cross is the power of God. It isn’t coercive power; it’s influential power. God, in his love, influences people as much as possible in the direction of truth. He accepts people’s view of Him and, at some point, is going to accommodate their fallen views of Him, while working in them, through them, and loving them no matter what. Since God was writing the narrative of His missionary activity through them, that’s the way He was going to appear in the biblical record. Now all of those literary portraits of God become like literary crucifixes. They are reminders that what God did on calvary, He’s always been doing. They do in a literary way what the cross does in a historical way. And in that way, they all bear witness to the cross.

So how does Greg view something like the plagues then?

He says that’s part of the people’s portrait of God. Throughout the Bible, there is this motif that the way people experience and hear God, says more about them than it says about God. He calls it the “Rorschach God”. To the pure, God appears pure; to the twisted, God appears twisted. What we see is a little bit of a reflection of ourselves.

Greg tells us to take all the narratives at face value. He explains how the cross was a judgment of God; Jesus bore our judgment, and it was a violent judgment. All of the violence, however, was carried out not by God the Father, but by human agents working under the agency of principalities and powers. God doesn’t carry out the violence of the judgment, but He does allow others, if violence is in their hearts, to carry out what they want to do. So God delivered Jesus over and withdrew His protection as Jesus stood in our place. Though he withdrew with a grieving heart.

In the ancient East, the primary way you would praise a deity is by ascribing your violence to that deity. Essentially, you credit God with your violence. People would never actually see their god do the violence, but they wanted to give their god the credit for it. Biblical authors did the same. So any violence or judgment you find in the Bible, look for other agents involved. You may have to dig, but you’re sure to find angelic agents, fallen agents, or human agents that are carrying out the violence. Even in 1 Corinthians 10, Paul warns us to not be like the grumblers who were destroyed by a destroying angel.

When Greg reads the Bible as God’s word, he views the narrative as being divinely inspired. He enters into the narrative and tries to understand it from the inside, through a cross perspective. He says that is what’s revelatory. The Bible doesn’t get its authority in how it relates to a particular history. To him, it’s enough to just wrestle with the narrative and see that it wasn’t actually God carrying out the violence; it was menacing demonic agents.

God uses evil to devour evil. For instance, on the cross, God caused evil to self implode. He used Satan’s evil against him. Satan orchestrated the crucifixion, but the crucifixion ends up causing the kingdom of darkness to self implode. Greg calls it "divine aikido". Aikido is a martial arts technique where you never exert your own aggression against an aggressor, but you instead use their aggression against them. It’s like trying to wake them up to the evil that’s in their hearts.

“Divine aikido...It’s the pacifist martial arts.” - Greg

Greg also mentions the importance of laying aside historical critical issues when reading the Bible. Don’t let historical critical concerns get in the way of reading the Bible naively. He says that it’s almost like we need to return to a second naivety to truly hear what God is trying to say to us. To dive into this thought more, he recommends Hans W. Frei’s book The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative.

Marcy asks Greg if we’re supposed to be “like a child”, why would God makes it so hard then? Greg replies that it’s not that God makes it so hard. We are supposed to be like children in terms of our naivety, but not in terms of our knowledge. The Bible even says to be wise as serpents. That’s where teachers use their role to open people’s eyes to stuff.

The early church was full of theologians who had a problem with the violent portraits of God. However, as soon as the church came into power (thanks to Constantine) and had to take responsibility for helping run the Roman Empire, we suddenly had to be okay with violence because we had to protect the borders on the outside and keep law and order on the inside. So if we were going to keep the violence yet still be Christian, we had to motivate Christians to wield the sword. It’s hard to justify and motivate people to kill by appealing to the ministry of Jesus, so they stepped over Jesus and appealed instead to the violent episodes found in the Old Testament.

Greg claims that our fallen natures want a violent god, because we want to be violent. Throughout history, people would appease their pagan gods so they wouldn’t punish them. They’d try to please their gods, so maybe the gods would cash in their power on their behalf.

“It’s a quid pro quo religion...and it’s the oldest thing in history.” - Greg

Jesus tells us a very different way of how we go about fighting our wars, though. And to follow Jesus, it means that you crucify that violent nature and therefore crucify the “warrior god”. Circling back around to Marcy’s question, Greg says at its heart, it’s really very simple. If you really, really trust that God is actually as beautiful as he revealed on the cross, and you really believe that the Bible is all God’s word, then when you look at the violent portraits, you’ll see all of this. It’s reflective of the character of the people whose sin He is bearing. But that can’t be just the surface, it’s got to be the depth.

So when Greg looks at the character of Jesus, does he see that God is a pacifist?

He works under the assumption that God is incapable of acting violently. He claims that much of the Bible was just people praising God for the violence that others did.

So what does he believe about Revelation? Especially those parts where God is coming back with his sword and gonna kick some butt...

Greg says the power we ascribe to gods is actually the type of power that we wish we had. Paul refutes that power in 1 Corinthians 1:18. “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

Greg thinks the violent reading of Revelation is just misguided. We find a violent Jesus in the book of Revelation because we find a violent Jesus everywhere. It’s the violent Jesus we’re looking for. If you read it carefully, you see that John completely subverts the violent images he uses. For a long time, Greg avoided Revelation, but after realizing this, he now loves Revelation and finds it so beautiful and insightful. If you’re interested in learning more about this, he suggests going to a section on his website called Greg’s Library. It has over 3,000 books he recommends, including a whole section on the non-violent reading of Revelation.

So let’s talk about our violent culture. It’s ingrained with America. We like our guns. In the gun control debate, there are so many different voices and opinions. What’s the solution? And why is God so present holding back serpents in the Bible, but in the present, there are school shootings so often?

Greg points out that we don’t see what would happen if God completely stopped holding back the forces of evil. If He did, we’d be in the depth of hell. God’s always holding back forces of evil. If a school shooting occurred, it’s not that God wasn’t there or that it was a judgment of God. It was because of people’s free will. Additionally, unless God has told us that something is a judgment, we shouldn’t explain it as a judgment of God. We only do that for self-serving purposes.

He explains further. When God gives you a domain of say-so and free will, it comes with a built-in non-interference clause. If we genuinely have free will, with the power to go this way or that way, by definition God cannot revoke that...otherwise he didn’t really give me that ability to go this way or that way. This implies there is a certain withdrawal there. We have domain to determine what happens.

Greg is of the opinion that America should follow Australia’s lead, who had a buy-back gun deal, and then crime rate drastically dropped. He also thinks we should up our prison programs because the rate of incarceration is so high. He suggests we read the book The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander for more thoughts on this subject.

As a pacifist, what does Greg think of self-defense?

Jesus’ commands often get reduced to try to love your grouchy neighbors and your in-laws. But Jesus doesn’t make any exceptions. We’re commanded to love our enemies too...that’s based on the character of the Father. It may seem outrageous, Greg says, but that’s what he calls us to.

If you start loving your enemies in little ways, then maybe after several years of doing that, you will have formed a character that, if someone were to break into your house, you wouldn’t try to love him just because there's a rule that “I'm supposed to love him”...maybe you’d actually love him. If you’re willing to look at it and get rid of the option “I have a right to kill”, there is a different way of giving God a chance to intervene. Maybe there’s a word God would give you to say that completely neutralizes the person. God knows their whole history...so He can help.

“Find the person that you have the hardest time loving, the person that you most easily hate, the person that threatens you or threatens your country, and commit to praying for them. I think that’s one of the best spiritual disciplines you can do. It’s easy to pray for the people you love. Pray for the handful of people that you absolutely despise, and really pray for them. And it really changes you. It’s the only way of staying above evil. Otherwise you get sucked into it.” - Greg

Greg says that this is not only the most Christian way of responding to aggressors, but it’s also the wisest way. When you introduce a gun into a situation, the odds that you or a loved one are going to get killed goes up exponentially. Usually the intruder knows more about guns and is less hesitant at using it. So, the idea that you’re safer with your gun is kind of an illusion.

Since schools are being targeted, is getting rid of assault rifles the answer?

Greg doesn’t think there’s a distinct Kingdom perspective on this. However kingdom-minded people should be absolutely grieved by it and willing to try anything to see if it has any effect. For 10 years what would happen if we took guns off the table, would that be an improvement?  

“Kids lives are so precious...far more precious than my right to own an assault rifle.” - Greg

It’s not just a personal heart issue, it’s a cultural sickness. “We have a love affair with violence.” Our culture is permeated with violence. We glorify violence and end up reaping the dividends of that. So Greg thinks the church should preach non-violence and the beauty of living a non-violent life and loving your enemies.

He wraps it all up with saying how we all would benefit by loving more people a little bit more, and loving our enemies. We should do everything reflecting self-sacrificial, humble love.

Scott, Marcy, and Spencer debrief the podcast

Everyone agrees that Greg Boyd is incredibly smart.

“I liked having Greg Boyd on the podcast. He was clearly a really smart dude. Really, really smart.” - Marcy

Spencer appreciated Greg’s point of needing to learn to love our enemies more, because we haven’t been very good at that.

Marcy says the gun debate is complicated. She used to be kind of scared of guns because she didn’t grow up around them, but she doesn’t think they’re all entirely bad.

Scott didn’t quite agree with Greg when he said we don’t need the automatic rifles, because when you actually look at the amount of guns there are in America compared to how many times they’re used in a horrific way, it’s a pretty small percentage. He’s not trying to justify it by any means, though. He just recently read an article about how the mayor of London said they have massive gun control there, but are now having to have knife control too. So what’s next? Even baseball bats are harmful. Should we have baseball bat control too?

Scott does appreciate how Boyd is very passionate about what he believes, but still understands where other people are coming from. He says it’s interesting how so many people have such different beliefs, and in their own minds, they are right. So this conversation with Greg has sparked a bunch of questions within him as he wrestles about what he believes. He doesn’t want to believe something just because someone says to believe it.

Marcy points out how people love to give the “evil thing” a name. Right now, it’s the AR-15. So we may think that if we just get rid of the AR-15, it’d fix everything. After 9-11, the evil thing’s name was “Iraq”. We went and attacked, but that didn’t fix the issue. This stuff doesn’t fix the real problem...it’s just a bandaid.

Violence breeds more violence. For instance, World War II happened because of World War I. At what point do we step in and say we are going the way of peace? We don’t know the answer, but it seems like we would do that...

Scott asks Marcy and Spencer their thoughts on the debate between just violence and defense of the weak?

Marcy thinks that it brings up a scale of violence. Like, “This violence is okay; I can punch him or break his nose...that’ll heal. Maybe breaking his knees is okay. But shooting him might not be okay...” There are these levels of violence. But she thinks Jesus doesn’t care about that. He probably doesn’t okay one and not the other.

Does it all fit into one box? Are we all just pacifists and everything will be okay?

There are so many questions, but this conversation has definitely opened our eyes to how we can love and pray for our enemies.

Shifting subjects a bit, Scott says he believes what is written down in the Bible is absolutely true...but admitted that he can’t say that he believes ALL of it was from God at this point. Because, as you get to know the character of Christ, either God changed and was cool with some things, sin or not, OR Jesus was like “Nah, I was never down for that. Moses did that because that’s what they did back then...but I was never down for it.” Look at how many times throughout the Bible that Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said….BUT I SAY…”

“That helps me understand that those were PEOPLE. Moses was a PERSON. The Jews were PEOPLE. They weren’t perfect. CHRIST IS PERFECT.” - Scott

Marcy brings up the question, how do you read the Bible then? You could probably read only the Gospels and be fine. But there’s also a reason that God gave us the Old Testament. We can’t just throw that out because we have Jesus. The Old Testament does have value, but that’s where you need to see it through the lens of Jesus. Because Jesus didn’t just appear on the scene in 0 AD...Jesus was there through everything. Jesus was there from the very beginning...through all of the Old Testament stuff...and is the same yesterday, today, and always. Jesus is the Word of Life...that’s a great way to read the Bible.

The whole Old Testament shows that they needed a Savior. They kept trying to do it themselves and continuously screwed it up. Then when you see the Savior they were needing was Jesus, that makes the cross so beautiful and that much greater!

“It almost makes me believe it more, ‘cause then I’m like, God allowed us to write it down. He didn’t try to make the soft stuff go away. To be like ‘Hey even the Jews, they were messed up in some of their theology about me....I didn’t want them to go kill those kids and rape those ladies...that’s not good. But I wrote it down so you can understand how much better Jesus is, and a better way of life.’” - Scott

Those people were discovering life just like we are today in 2018. We are discovering parts of God and how He thinks and how He feels.

To sum up, the talk was so good. Greg is definitely a smart dude. And everyone should go read his book Cross Vision. It’s very well written, funny, and humble.

Wanting to know more about Greg Boyd? Check out his blog or his sermons.