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The Murderous God and His Army

The Murderous God and His Army

Last updated on: August 1, 2026 at 10:14 am by Karl J. Forehand

The Murderous God and His Army 2026-08-01T10:14:16-06:00 Karl J. Forehand

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The Murderous God and His Army

Christianity has a habit of demonizing the other. Sometimes it’s within Christianity that we demonize other denominations and belief systems. My religion of origin is Southern Baptist, and we often highlighted Catholics as the worst example. But even in a broader sense, all of Christianity needs to demonize other countries and other religions to justify its existence and give it a purpose to pursue. If there is no enemy to conquer, then why are we asking people for money, volunteer labor, and their devotion?

Identifying an enemy, whether it’s another denomination or another country, gives us a reason to unite and a common purpose to pursue. Since I live in a small town, it’s easy to see this play out in real life. Most people get along and help one another, and don’t see their neighbor as the enemy until a political party or a church tells us that the enemy is just outside the door, and that must mean even our little town. The evidence points in the other direction, but if we seclude ourselves long enough with the same people, we can easily draw conclusions about the people we isolate ourselves from.

Yahweh’s Death Toll

Calculating the number of people killed by Yahweh (God) in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament depends on whether you count only the explicitly stated numbers in the text or include estimated totals for uncounted mass events. No matter how we calculate it, the numbers don’t look good for a monotheist god claiming the moral high ground. Christianity inherits this god by default while at the same time claiming the dual reality of the Old and New Testaments.

Several reliable sources quote actual numbers of murders attributed to God, even though he expressly prohibits it. But even if you just want to estimate the number, you can probably get the gist of this God who killed millions of people because they disappointed him in some way. Never mind the fact that he supposedly created these beings and knew what they were going to do before they did it.

In the Old Testament, God explicitly kills about 2.8 million people, according to Steve Wells in Drunk with Blood: God’s Killings in the Bible. This total reflects about 135 to 160 distinct incidents in scripture where the Bible provides a specific numerical figure for deaths directly caused by God or by divine command. Examples include:

70,000 killed by a plague sent as punishment for King David’s census (2 Samuel 24:15)
185,000 Assyrian soldiers slain by an angel of the Lord in a single night (2 Kings 19:35)
500,000 Israelite soldiers struck down during battle against Judah (2 Chronicles 13:17)
14,700 killed by a plague following Korah’s rebellion (Numbers 16:49)
24,000 killed by a plague at Peor (Numbers 25:9)

In addition, the Old Testament records numerous events that could represent 20–25 million.

These events include:

The Genesis Flood: The death toll is estimated between 15 – 20 million people.
Sodom and Gomorrah: A complete ancient city (Genesis 19).
Firstborn of Egypt: The final plague of the Exodus (Exodus 12).
Conquest of Canaan & Foreign Invasions: Multiple mass extermination campaigns commanded in Deuteronomy and Joshua where precise casualty counts are not recorded.

Satan’s Death Toll

Although Satan was not considered a being in the Old Testament, we often want to demonize this adversarial, and may I say fictitious, character (Ha-Satan) as the root of all evil. If this is true, then “The Satan” should have an even higher body count than Yahweh. But as much as we would like to believe this, it simply isn’t true according to the record. In the book of Job, Satan asks permission for approximately 10 deaths in Job’s family, and thus concludes his record of murder, which doesn’t come close to Yahweh’s murderous reign (Job 1:12–19).

Jesus Enters the Scene

Without going into specific verses and examples, I would like to state that Jesus portrayed a different model of justice that lifted up the poor and focused on “the least of these.” He spoke truth to power and encouraged his followers to treat people justly. They also urged others not to return evil for evil but to overcome evil with good. During the first 300-400 years of Christianity, most wars were fought by major nations, and Christians followed Jesus’ example and his words until Constantine united the church with the empire in 313 AD. It wasn’t long before Christians were in the fight, killing scores of people to fulfill their assumed manifest destiny.

Looking back, it is now common for Christians in the modern era to still be tied to this ancient narrative. When we believe we are right and God is on our side, we can justify just about everything, and we do! The Crusades killed 1-3 million people. The 30-year war in the 16th and 17th centuries killed 4 to 8 million people, and the colonization of the Americas murdered 50 to 90 million, mostly indigenous people. Hitler’s Army was mostly Christian, and like American Christians, they believed they were doing the business of justice for their god.

Root Problems

There is a wealth of information if someone really wants to investigate this further. But maybe it’s helpful to pause and think deeply about which paths we will follow if we believe we are right and that someone else is not just wrong but depraved and evil, and that they are other than us. It’s only a couple of steps, whether that’s a Yankee Doodle march or a goose step, to accept that it’s okay to eliminate our fellow human beings. Russia and Ukraine apparently serve the same God but have completely different ideas about who should die and who should live. Israel claims favored status with God, as they indiscriminately bomb their neighbors.

It’s easy to paint people who are different from us as terrorists, even though Israel and the United States have invaded other countries and killed scores of people to seize their resources. As an American, it makes me cry to see us repeat the same patterns over and over, somehow justifying what we do to other humans as just, fair, and reasonable.

Lindsay Graham, the war hawk, died recently, and I must admit I wasn’t sad, much like I won’t be sad when the former governor of Arkansas, who is now stationed in Israel as Ambassador, gets too old or passes away from inciting violence in the name of God and propping up the war criminal. But does my hatred of evil people like Hitler, Netanyahu, and Donald Trump lead me down the same path of wishing they would just go away and stop enabling the ruthless murder of innocent people? Christians believe that everyone is inherently evil, so it still doesn’t make sense that they give themselves the right to kill people because others are evil. They may be evil, but so are we!

In the last few months, I have heard Christians stirring up ideas we had decades ago about satanic panic and the commies. But it might behoove us to focus less on who we think is invading our privilege, whether it is another nation, another religion, or even the person who lives in our neighborhood and goes out of his way to annoy us, and to focus on the humanity in every person.

I hope we also understand that it’s easy for groups to control us when we’re afraid. That’s why they go to such lengths to hold rallies and worship services, to tell us that we should be afraid of everything outside our experience of the world. We must stop isolating ourselves where we agree with each other about who to kill, who to exclude, or simply who to ignore!

I long for Christians to understand that although they think they are battling enemies, they are in reality creating adversaries when they retreat because of their fear. The way to stop the war between other groups, parties, and religions is to advance beyond our comfort zones and share experiences with those we disagree with. Instead of congregating in a sanctuary meant to isolate us and produce adversaries, it would behoove us to walk across the street and meet our actual neighbors.

Be where you are, Be who you are, Be at peace!

Karl Forehand

Progressive Christian

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