Tag: violence

Name that quote: the Bible vs. the Quran

In his remarks at this year’s Presidential Prayer Breakfast, President Obama talked about violence done in the name of religion:

Remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ. Michelle and I returned from India—an incredible, beautiful country, full of magnificent diversity—but a place where, in past years, religious faiths of all types have, on occasion, been targeted by other peoples of faith, simply due to their heritage and their beliefs… So this is not unique to one group or one religion. There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency that can pervert and distort our faith.

His comment about “terrible deeds [done] in the name of Christ” were met with unsurprising outrage and protestations of innocence.

A former Virginia governor called them “the most offensive [comments] I’ve ever heard a president make.”

Bill Donohue of the Catholic League undertook to rewrite history, arguing the Crusades were justified and suggesting the Church was barely involved in the Inquisition.

Ravi Zacharias, a respected Christian apologist, called Obama’s remarks a “presidential blunder” demonstrating an “absence of wisdom” the likes of which he’s never before seen:

The president obviously does not understand the primary sources of [Christianity or Islam] to make such a tendentious parallel.

Yet the president could’ve gone further. He could have mentioned Rwanda, where the church was complicit in one of the worst acts of genocide since the Holocaust. He could have invoked Srebrenica, where thousands of Bosnian Muslims were slaughtered at the hands of professing Christians. He could have highlighted the colonization of Africa, which was steeped in an imperialistic, racist brand of Christendom.

Obama’s aim, however, was not to pick on Christianity but to demonstrate how “religious faiths of all types” are vulnerable to distortion when they are used to justify violence and discrimination against others.

If we don’t recognize this, they maybe we’re the ones who need to spend some more time with those “primary sources” that Ravi Zacharias mentioned. It’s worth noting that both Christianity and Islam have their problem texts in their primary sources, the Bible and the Quran. Both contain passages that seem to allow or even encourage violence.

Read the texts below and see if you can guess which holy book they come from—the Bible or the Quran. (The answers are given at the end of this post. No cheating!)

One note: References to God and/or specific people have been generalized where necessary)

—//—

1. We took all his cities at that time, and we utterly destroyed the men, women, and little ones of every city; we left none remaining.

2. When we resolve to raze a city, we first give warning to those of its people who live in comfort. If they persist in sin, judgment is irrevocably passed, and we destroy it utterly.

3. So he made a vow to God, and said, “If you will indeed deliver this people into my hand, then I will utterly destroy their cities.” God listened to his voice.

4. When God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them.

5. Slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them.

6. You shall destroy all the peoples whom God delivers over to you; your eye shall have no pity on them.

7. Fight for the sake of God those that fight against you, but do not attack them first. God does not love aggressors.

8. The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms; He will thrust out the enemy from before you, and he will say, “Destroy!”

9. He left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as God had commanded.

10. Do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.

11. Slay them wherever you find them. Drive them out of the places from which they drove you.

12. True believers fight for the cause of God.

13. This charge I commit to you, according to the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you may wage the good warfare.

14. Let those who would exchange the life of this world for the hereafter, fight for the cause of God.

—//—

Were you able to tell the difference? What similarities did you notice between passages from the Bible and the Quran?

As Christians, we would argue that context matters when reading the Bible’s more violent texts. However we make sense of these passages, most of us agree they do not permit us to commit comparable acts of violence today. And we don’t like it when people use them as weapons to try to discredit or disparage our faith.

Which is kind of the whole point.

Muslims can say the same about their so-called problem texts. And we should give them the same benefit of the doubt that we expect others to give us.

We don’t get to decide what someone else’s holy book teaches—especially when most of us have read even less of the Quran than we’ve read of the Bible.

I don’t get to decide what the Quran says based a handful of proof texts I’ve heard quoted out of context.

I don’t get to decide what it says based on what a handful of extremists do with it—no more than others get to decide what the Bible teaches based on what white supremacists have done with it.

None of this is to encourage us toward religious relativism. The Bible is my holy book. This is about simple human respect—or, as President Obama put it, “basic humility.”

Yes, we should push back when others try to distort our faith. But we should let the experience remind us not to disparage or misrepresent someone else’s faith.

—//—

Answers:

1. Bible (Deuteronomy 2:34)
2. Quran (17:16)
3. Bible (Numbers 21:2-3)
4. Bible (Deuteronomy 7:2)
5. Quran (9:5)
6. Bible (Deuteronomy 7:16)
7. Quran (2:190)
8. Bible (Deuteronomy 33:27)
9. Bible (Joshua 10:40)
10. Bible (1 Samuel 15:3)
11. Quran (2:191)
12. Quran (4:76)
13. Bible (1 Timothy 1:18)
14. Quran (4:74)

Words matter: the language of warfare in a kingdom of peace

Last week I was at a conference in Bangkok where the military metaphors flowed freely.

“We’re raising up an army.”

“Fighting for God.”

“Doing battle with the enemy.”

“Going to war for this generation.”

It felt like an awful lot of violent imagery for a conference that was all about kids and faith.

It’s true you’ll find military metaphors in the New Testament, as friends on Facebook and Twitter pointed out when I aired my concern the other day. Jesus talks about bringing a “sword” of division. Paul greets his friends as “fellow soldiers,” counsels believers to put on “the armor of God,” and urges Timothy to “fight the good fight.”

But there is, I think, a crucial difference between us and the earliest Christians: the pre-Constantine church was united in its opposition to violence of any kind. As Preston Sprinkle writes on Scot McKnight’s blog (and in his book Fight: A Christian Case for Nonviolence):

While early Christian writers were divided on many issues (e.g. the mode of baptism, the role of women in leadership), when it came to killing, their voices seemed to be unanimous: believers are prohibited from taking human life.

The early church rejected the distinction that some like Mark Driscoll try to make between “authorized” and “unauthorized” killing. Origen, Tertullian, Lactantius — they condemned killing, period.

The Church Fathers prior to Constantine were united in their opposition to military service. For example, Tertullian argued that, “The Lord, by taking away Peter’s sword, disarmed every soldier thereafter.”

The New Testament writers took pains to emphasize the metaphorical (or at least non-physical) nature of the church’s “fight.” Jesus’ kingdom was “not of this world,” meaning that his followers would not fight. Paul insisted that our struggle “is not against flesh and blood” and that we “do not wage war as the world does.”

The New Testament’s military metaphors must be read in light of its larger commitment to nonviolence — a commitment to which the early church held unwaveringly. For ancient believers, there was no mistaking the significance of these metaphors — or what they didn’t signify.

But all that was before Constantine.

That was before Augustine and Aquinas and just war theory.

That was before the Crusades.

That was before a millennium of wars fought in God’s name by those who saw themselves as God’s people doing God’s work.

That was before God’s name was invoked in our own lifetime to justify military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That was before some Christians in Uganda, backed by others in the US, rallied behind an anti-homosexuality bill that included the death penalty for some offenses.

So when Christians today speak of “raising an army,” “going to war,” or “doing battle with the enemy,” what exactly do they mean? After centuries of killing and war in God’s name, is it still just a metaphor, as it was for the early Christian writers? And if so, is that clear to those listening on the outside?

I’m not so sure.

The origins and implications of our words matter, as David R. Henson’s thoughtful post reminds us. The language we use should reflect our commitment to the teachings of Jesus — including his call to nonviolence.

Choosing our words carefully is perhaps even more important, precisely because we haven’t always lived up to this call.

How Islam is no more a “religion of violence” than is my faith

Sometimes a single Facebook post can restore your faith in humanity just a little bit.

Like when a friend who’s a Boston-area church leader shared that she was engaging in a dialogue with her Muslim counterparts, reflecting together on the Boston bombings and the days ahead.

What a concept.

Talking WITH people of the Islamic faith instead of just talking ABOUT them or, worse, listening to Bill O’Reilly talk about them.

On his show, O’Reilly complains that too many Muslims are “silent” about violence perpetrated in the name of their religion. Yet as my friend pointed out after actually spending time with Muslim leaders, they have condemned these acts repeatedly. They see them — and denounce them — as heretical distortions of their faith.

But they feel like their voice gets ignored by a 24-hour news cycle which prefers a simpler narrative.

O’Reilly says he can’t hear any Muslim voices denouncing violence. Maybe if he stopped pontificating for two minutes and tried listening…

The truth is, we all see and hear what we want to. And we’re all blind to that which we just don’t want to see.

—

“Islam is a religion of violence.”

That’s the prevailing notion among many Christians, most of whom don’t know a single Muslim person.

Perhaps these Christians heard a fragment of the Quran that sounds like it’s promoting violence. Usually quoted without any context.

Sometimes it’s not even that. Sometimes it’s just what we think the Quran says — because, let’s be honest: most of us (myself included) couldn’t quote a single word of Islam’s holy book if we had to.

Sure. Islam has its “problem texts.”

But I’m a Christian, and that means I’ve got my share of problem texts to deal with too.

Then Israel made this vow to the Lord: “If you will deliver these people into our hands, we will totally destroy their cities.” The Lord listened to Israel’s plea and gave the Canaanites over to them. They completely destroyed them and their towns. (Numbers 21:2-3)

“Have you allowed all the women to live?” [Moses] asked them. “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people. Now kill all the boys [Heb. taf, or “little children”]. (Numbers 31:15-18)

At that time we took all his towns and completely destroyed them — men, women and children. We left no survivors… the Lord our God gave us all of them. (Deuteronomy 2:34-36)

You must certainly put to the sword all who live in that town. You must destroy it completely, both its people and its livestock. (Deuteronomy 13:15)

In the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them — the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites — as the Lord your God has commanded you. (Deuteronomy 20:16-17)

The church has various ways of dealing with these and other violent texts in the Bible. Some Christians suggest they’re no longer applicable because they’re Old Testament, as if genocide was all well and good for Israel but not so much for us today.

Some traditions read these texts allegorically. Others question their historicity, noting that archaeologists have unearthed scant evidence for any wholesale extermination of Canaan’s indigenous population during the second millennium BC.

Still others have pointed out similarities between the Old Testament’s violent imagery and that of other ancient Near Eastern religions, suggesting the Israelites borrowed some less-than-ideal notions about God and violence from their neighbors.

And some of us would note that whatever path you take to get there, eventually you end up with Jesus, whose Sermon on the Mount puts a categorical stop to the whole “death to our enemies” business.

So yes, we have ways of dealing with our problem texts. But they’re still in the Bible. They’re still etched into parchment, there for anyone to read. Seemingly legitimizing violence, warfare, genocide.

The thing is, if someone used these texts to typecast Christianity as a religion of violence (as some indeed have), I wouldn’t be too happy about it. I’d probably say they were proof-texting my holy book. That they hadn’t considered the full scope of Christian thought and the various options for interpreting these problem texts.

I would probably suggest that as outsiders who are evidently hostile to Christianity, they probably aren’t the best ones to judge whether Christianity is, in fact, a religion of violence.

So why do we think it’s OK for us to read a handful of verses from the Quran and conclude that Islam is a religion of violence?

I don’t want someone demonizing my faith on the basis of a few “problem texts.” So maybe I should treat people of other faiths with the same courtesy. Maybe I should give my Muslim neighbors the same benefit of the doubt that I want them to give me.

How the Iraq War changed everything

Ten years ago.

Close to 200,000 people dead. Most of them civilians.

To say nothing of the more than 30,000 US soldiers wounded — many with debilitating injuries they will carry for the rest of their lives.

Or the undetermined number of “excess deaths,” likely in the hundreds of thousands — those who died not necessarily from bullets or bombs but from the general disruption of war.

Or the 3 to 5 million people displaced, many driven from their homes forever — including most of Iraq’s Christian minority.

Or the nearly $2 trillion price tag of this war. Never paid for, and about 25 times higher than what was promised.

Or the most recent projection, which puts the final price tag at $6 trillion, once the full cost of veteran care is accounted for.

That’s $6 trillion we don’t have to spend on our children’s education, healthcare, international aid, infrastructure, environmental cleanup, or any number of other worthy endeavors.

All in the pursuit of weapons that didn’t exist.

Was it worth it?

For me personally, Iraq marked a turning point. It was the last war I will ever be lured into supporting.

Like most Americans, I threw my support behind the call to arms. September 11 showed us how vulnerable we are (even though Iraq had nothing to do with the events of that day).

I wanted to feel safe again. I wanted to believe that a little bit of “shock and awe” could deliver on its promise of security.

It couldn’t and it didn’t, because there is no such thing as redemptive violence. There is no such thing as a war to end all wars. Violence only ever breeds more violence.

“Peace through victory” is the myth of empire. It didn’t work for the Romans, and it will not work for us.

May God forgive us for what we’ve done to ourselves and to the people of Iraq.

Ten years on, kyrie elieson. 

Lord, have mercy.