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Is God Violent? Rethinking the Bible’s Bloodiest Passages

Is God Violent? Rethinking the Bible’s Bloodiest Passages

Last updated on: August 20, 2026 at 9:19 am by Gregory T. Smith

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Is God Violent? Rethinking the Bible’s Bloodiest Passages 2026-08-20T09:19:48-08:00 Gregory T. Smith

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Violence and religion have a long and tangled history. Is it just people who are violent? Or maybe is God violent too?

Not only is God nonviolent, but Jesus says that God’s people must also be nonviolent.
Image by Chil Vera from Pixabay

All you have to do is read the texts of sacred literature from around the world to learn that religions have been at the center of violence, either as perpetrators or as victims, since the dawn of time. But recently, that violence has been on the upswing.

Is God Violent?

The upturn in religious brutality leads to the question, “Is God violent?” Our answer will determine whether we condone or condemn such atrocities as the shootings in mosques, churches, temples, and synagogues, or whether we believe someone is justified in bombing abortion clinics. And what about violence that is not physical? If God is violent, then faithful people have license to engage in hateful diatribes against believers of other faiths and against nonbelievers. Suddenly, gay-bashing isn’t such a bad thing if it promotes a stricter adherence to religion. But if God is a God of love, we must denounce violence perpetrated in God’s name.

A God of Love or Violence?

For most of my Christian life, I’ve had a hard time grasping biblical passages that depict God as either directly violent (e.g., the Great Flood), commanding violence (e.g., the Jewish conquest of Canaan), or endorsing violence (e.g., prophets calling down curses on their enemies). I’ve asked myself, “Could a God of love really be violent and ask people to commit violence or support violence?” If the answer was “yes,” then God became a scary, mean, capricious person in my perspective. But if the answer was “no,” then that called into question the integrity of the scriptures that made such claims about such a seemingly violent God. I’ve struggled with this for years, going so far as to do my own lengthy study of the topic myself—with no good solution.

Cross Vision

Recently, I finished reading Greg Boyd’s Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence. While I can’t agree with 100 percent of what Boyd says (I have yet to agree with 100% of what anybody says), I did find his overall perspective compelling. In a nutshell, Boyd argues that God is love.

God Looks Like Jesus

God’s most perfect expression of that love is Jesus, specifically the self-sacrificing, nonviolent love expressed by a Savior willing to be killed on a cross rather than take divine anger out on his enemies.

1 John 4:7-12 (NLT) says:

Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.

Jesus was very clear that the most complete understanding of God can be found by looking at the Savior. When the disciples asked Jesus to show them the Father, Jesus replied:

Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. (John 14:9-12 NIV)

God and God’s People Must Be Nonviolent

To see Jesus is to see the Father. This means that the character of Jesus is the very character of God. Jesus was the one who refused to call down legions of angels to defend himself (Matthew 26:53). When Jesus’ disciples asked for permission to call fire from heaven to destroy those who rejected the Gospel, Jesus rebuked them (Luke 9:54-55). Not only is God nonviolent, but Jesus says that God’s people must also be nonviolent, doing the same works that he has done.

Biblical Violence

If this is the case, you may ask, what does Greg Boyd do with all the cases of violence in the Bible that God seemingly commits, orchestrates, orders, or condones? While Boyd affirms the Bible’s divine inspiration, he denies that every story accurately depicts God or God’s will. For example, when God drowns the Egyptian army in the Red Sea, or when God commands the Hebrew invaders to kill the men, women, children, and livestock in a particular village, Boyd argues that the biblical record renders not what God really did or commanded but the primitive conception of what God did.

Boyd is aware that biblical literalists will accuse him of misrepresenting who God appears to be in the Bible, making God out to be who Greg Boyd wants God to be. But Boyd simply points to Jesus, saying that the Savior is the true character of God and that any depiction of God that falls short of nonviolent, self-sacrificial love is only a shadow of who God is and falls short of being a true description of God. Then, Boyd does something fascinating with the picture of Jesus on the cross, explaining how the Bible could contain misunderstandings of who God is.

God Stooped to Being Misunderstood

On the cross, Boyd says, God stooped to being misunderstood. While God is a God of truth, God allowed the divine nature to be so misunderstood and misrepresented as to submit to crucifixion between two thieves. Jesus allowed himself to be identified as a sinner, even though he never sinned. Just as Isaiah 52:14 describes the Suffering Servant as being so abused and scarred that he no longer appeared human, Jesus allowed himself to be so misrepresented to the extent that he didn’t even appear to be God. On the cross, the nonviolent God was willing to be identified with violence so that God could identify with humanity, and we might know God.

Boyd suggests that this is exactly what God was doing by allowing people to misunderstand the divine character, identifying God in ways similar to other Near Eastern warrior deities**. To have a relationship with humanity, God was willing to be misunderstood in the short term so that, in the long run, Jesus could lead us to a full understanding.** Boyd contends that every passage of Scripture that depicts God directly committing violence, commanding violence, or condoning violence is an example of God condescending to be misunderstood by violent humanity, just as Jesus condescended to be misunderstood on the cross.

A Narrative of Humanity’s Misunderstanding of God

While many will say this view denies biblical authority, Boyd contends that reading Scripture this way allows us to see the Bible not as a science or history textbook but as a narrative of humanity’s misunderstanding of God, culminating in Jesus’ redemptive death on the cross. To believe that Old Testament depictions of God are truer to God’s character than the loving, nonviolent, self-sacrificial depiction of God we find in Christ is to elevate the Bible over the witness of Jesus himself. Boyd suggests that any biblical passage that depicts God’s character in a way that seems contrary to Jesus’ character must be reinterpreted in light of Jesus’ love. He says that the best way to understand this is to see that God is willing to be misunderstood and misrepresented as violent to stoop to our level and eventually, through Christ, lead us to a more perfect way.

Perhaps this is a new concept for you— it certainly was a new idea to me when I read Boyd’s book. I encourage you to read it for yourself and see if it helps you to deal with the subject of divine violence in the Bible. Personally, I feel sick over the religious violence that is all too prevalent in the world. We must answer the question, “Is God violent?” How we answer that question will determine not just whether God is violent but whether we ought to be as well.

For related reading, check out my other articles:

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About Gregory T. Smith

I live in the beautiful Fraser Valley of British Columbia and work in northern Washington State as a behavioral health specialist with people experiencing homelessness and those who are overly involved in the criminal justice system. Before that, I spent over a quarter-century as lead pastor of several Virginia churches. My newspaper column, “Spirit and Truth,” ran in Virginia newspapers for fifteen years. I am one of fourteen contributing authors of the Patheos/Quoir Publishing book “Sitting in the Shade of Another Tree: What We Learn by Listening to Other Faiths.” I hold a degree in Religious Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University and also studied at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond. My wife Christina and I have seven children between us, and we are still collecting grandchildren. You can read more about the author here.

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