The Tragedy

A look at violence.

Men are made righteous through faith in God. This is true throughout the Old and New Testaments. While faith is not detached from works or action, it is primary. Faith is the root, righteous works are the fruit. Abraham trusted God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Enoch walked with God. Micah instructs us to walk humbly with Him. If the root is not faith, the action cannot be righteous.

So when we look at violence, we must be careful not to construct a new framework that divides violence into righteous and unrighteous categories as if the distinction could secure righteousness. If the root is not faith, trust, and obedience to God, neither violence nor non-violence will be righteous. The external act cannot compensate for a misaligned heart.

One of the strongest criticisms raised against the Bible is the genocide of the Canaanites. This is divinely commanded violence described in unsettling specificity. When the commands were not fully carried out, Israel faced consequences. Their failure to drive out their enemies is cited as a cause of later oppression and suffering.

To understand this, two foundations must be clear. First, Israel is not called God’s chosen people because they were morally superior. The designation was not intended to elicit pride, but humility. They were rescued from slavery in Egypt as an act of grace. The Old Testament is not the story of the good guys defeating the bad guys with the help of a divine being. It is the story of human rebellion within a fallen creation and the righteousness and mercy of the Creator.

Second, we must understand the fall. If we imagine the world as neutral or fundamentally good, with violence as an alien, evil corruption that does not belong, then God’s commands involving violence appear to make Him the author of evil. We then might ask, “Why doesn't He simply remove violence altogether?” But Scripture presents creation as fallen. Humanity turned from God toward itself, its own desires. In this misalignment, disorder entered the world. Violence is a product of that fallen state of creation. God’s plan is not to preserve the fallen state but to redeem and restore it.

Throughout history God has used the violence produced by the fall. But use does not mean endorsement. Violence is never righteous in itself. It is always bound up with death, and death is the enemy. Even when violence serves divine judgment, it remains a cause for mourning.

The destruction of the Canaanites was not a triumphant celebration of moral superiority. They were not innocent. They too had turned from God and taught their children to do the same. But their deaths were still tragic. Violence lays bare the reality of the fall with brutal clarity. Later, when Israel turns from God, the same pattern unfolds against them.

In Habakkuk, God is called the Lord of Armies. He raises up the Chaldeans to judge Judah. The Chaldeans are not described as righteous. They are later judged themselves. God’s judgment is just. The instrument remains part of a fallen world. In both cases, regardless of who wields the sword, God is sovereign.

His sovereignty extends over all creation. If we affirm that He is almighty, we cannot at the same time declare that particular events escape His control. Yet we must not confuse sovereignty with moral approval. God’s governance of history does not transform violence into something pure.

The contrast between Saul, David, and Solomon clarifies this further. Saul was commanded to destroy his enemies completely and failed to obey. His partial obedience was rejected. David, by contrast, is called a man after God’s own heart. He defeats enemies in accordance with God’s will. Yet when he desires to build the temple, he is told he cannot because he is a man of blood who has killed many men. Solomon, whose name is rooted in peace, builds it.

David’s obedience in war did not remove him from God, but it left a stain. The house symbolizing God’s dwelling among His people was built by a man of peace, not a man of war. Violence, even when commanded, even when carried out in faith, still belongs to the age of conflict, not to the image of rest.

This makes the issue more complex than a checklist distinguishing good violence from bad violence. Attempts to justify the violence of Israel, the Chaldeans, the crusaders, or the conquistadors risk missing the tragedy at the center. Worse, they risk assuming a final moral authority that belongs to God alone.

At this point the concept of the state is often introduced, as though governmental authority grants moral justification to violent acts. It is pretended that an individual without government authority may be condemned for violence, while the same act with political authority is declared righteous. But authority does not create morality. Rulers are under God’s sovereignty. Their hearts are streams of water in His hand. They do not escape judgment because they hold power. Their actions are woven into His providence, but everyone remains accountable.

This does not mean the state's authority has no role. It means that its role does not grant ultimate moral authorship. Nations rise and fall under God’s hand. Leaders act within the fallen state of creation. They may serve justice or perpetrate evil, and often both are tangled together. Our recognition of God’s sovereignty does not simplify these realities. It humbles us before them.

Psalm 127 declares that unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain, and unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. There is a gulf between divine sovereignty and human action. We plan, legislate, enforce, and debate. Yet righteousness originates in God, not in our systems. Without alignment with Him, even our most carefully constructed standards remain partial and fragile.

Before pronouncing judgment on violence, we must consider our foundation. Jesus provides just that at the Beatitudes at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.

Blessed are the poor in spirit. This is humility. It is the recognition that we are not self sufficient moral architects. Often suffering brings us here, forcing us to realize our inescapable reliance on Him.

Blessed are those who mourn. We mentioned God's sovereignty earlier, but it does not imply mourning reflects disbelief. Jesus Himself wept. Violence and suffering are not to be rationalized away. They are tragic parts of a fallen world and we are right to recognize this and mourn.

Blessed are the meek, the gentle. This is not weakness but control and restraint. It is submission to God. We are to be restrained and aligned, not driven by impulsive emotion, anger or pride.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Importantly, we do not define righteousness. We seek it from God, who is righteous. The movement is seeking, hungering, thirsting, needing, not inventing.

Blessed are the merciful. Mercy and righteousness are central here and throughout the Bible. Mercy does not erase justice, nor does it excuse evil. It tempers judgment and reflects our own dependence on grace.

Blessed are the pure in heart. Undivided loyalty to God strips away competing motives. Our whole hearts must be pointed toward Him. Every action should follow this pure-hearted faith, trust and alignment.

Blessed are the peacemakers. Peace is not merely the absence of violence. It is the restored relationship between creature and Creator. In a fallen world, peace cannot be fully realized by human enforcement or mere non-violence. A purely pacifist society must either rely on force to restrain violence, contradicting itself, or tolerate violence without response. In either case it effectively ceases to exist, and neither produces true peace. While non-violent reconciliation is preferred and is in many cases the most direct route to peace, violence, at times, has a role to play in the pursuit of peace.

Blessed are those persecuted for righteousness. The trajectory of the Beatitudes ends not in earthly triumph but in endurance within a fallen world. We remain in a creation marred by the fall. Alignment with God does not remove us from conflict. It reshapes how we stand within it.

Notice that the Beatitudes do not provide a rulebook for violence, but rather a foundation for the posture from which we are to engage the world.

In some circumstances obedience within this fallen state may involve tragic choices. It may involve violent actions. In other circumstances obedience may require enduring harm rather than inflicting it. There is no formula that absolves us in advance. We are not given a universal rule that guarantees moral cleanliness in every scenario.

Bonhoeffer captured these difficulties well with his statement in Ethics, “Whoever acts responsibly becomes guilty. He must therefore entrust himself to divine grace.” There are no easy answers. The same fall that birthed violence keeps us from fully understanding God's will. We are in every way dependent on His mercy. So as we walk humbly with our hearts set on Him, we must do just that: depend on His mercy.

Violence is not a tool we can purify through argument. Nor is non-violence a shield that secures righteousness. Salvation does not come through correct positioning on the sword. It comes through faith in God, who entered this violent world, bore its consequences, and overcame death on the cross.

Violence is a tragedy. It reveals the fracture that began when humanity turned from God. Our task is not to sanctify it or pretend we can escape its stain by our own moral clarity. Our task is to trust Him, to walk humbly, to mourn what is broken, to seek righteousness from its true source, and to await the restoration He has promised.

The argument thus far remains abstract. I understand that this all leaves room for both an entirely non-violent and some shade of a Just War stance. It is easy to outwardly claim alignment with God. It is, in a lot of ways, easy to internally rationalize our actions and be convinced that we are doing the right thing. Ultimately, there is a personal relationship between the individual and God at the heart of this issue, so conversations surround violence tend to dwell on this abstract level.

The reality of violence, however, destroys abstract contemplation.

A man I know was in the military. He was riding atop a vehicle through a desert town, traveling slowly. A child approached the vehicle. The child was concealing something beneath his dark clothing. The child looked to be about the same age as the man's oldest son back home. The man shouted for the child to stop. The other men inside the vehicle shouted for the child to stop. The child did not stop.

There were no easy answers. No abstract, philosophical thinking could make the decision for that man.

This is the reality of violence.

It is a tragedy.

Prompt: The Cross and the Sword

Word Count: 1812