Why is the Bible so violent? It is very violent. So violent, it's gotten the attention of a listener named Scott who writes us this, "Hello Pastor John, I walk my dog early each morning while I listen to various audio books and to this podcast. This year I set for myself the goal of listening to the Bible from start to finish.

I'm on Judges at the moment and came across a passage that I had not read before, Judges 19. I was shocked." Why are passages like this in the Bible, passages that are so violent, and what can they teach us? I have young teens and I would never let them read or watch media that describe this level of violence, and yet here it is in God's holy Scripture.

Maybe I should make matters worse before I offer any answer. If you were shocked, Scott, by Judges 19, that is a concubine killed by sexual molestation and then cut into 12 pieces and sent throughout the tribes to muster revenge, you probably are a newcomer to the Bible, maybe a newcomer to the faith.

I am very glad that you are reading or listening to the whole Bible. I would encourage everybody who can read to read all of the Bible over and over again because the Apostle Paul wrote, "All Scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable." That's what he said. All of it is profitable and God-inspired.

That includes the most violent parts and I would not withhold any of it from teenagers. And I say that while totally agreeing with you that most worldly presentations of violence are not profitable and should be avoided. But God's presentation of these things in writing, in the inspired Scripture is no mistake.

He presents the world in divine context-laden interpretive words, not lurid videos of blood and gore that preempt and replace the God-intended movement from reading written words to having word-built images in the mind. Verbal descriptions with divine explanations are not the same as worldly depictions for entertainment or education with no ultimate divine meaning.

We live in a very soft, easily offended, emotionally fragile culture that unfits us to grasp what most of history has been like and most of the world is still like. I think God gave us the Bible the way it is, with all the horrors, partly because he knew the day would come when we would be so spoiled, so cocooned, so overprotected, so coddled, that we would not have the emotional and mental capacities to grasp utterly crucial realities in the Bible and in the world.

In other words, I think that saturating ourselves in the whole Bible year after year shapes our minds and our emotions and our expectations so that we have the mental and emotional wherewithal to come to terms with central Biblical realities which otherwise we would reject as simply outrageous. There are truths about God and about his ways in this world and there are truths about sin and judgment that unless we have been made resilient in the face of horrors, we will not be able to grasp.

We won't be able to grasp them with any sense of proportion and truth. So all of that, Scott, just to say that I hope you will press on in immersing yourself in the whole Bible year after year. Those horrors are there for a reason. So, let me cut to the chase and give three answers to the question why is there so much violence in the Bible?

Let's start with the context of the book of Judges. Four times in the book of Judges we read this sentence, "In those days there was no king in Israel." And in two of those instances that sentence is followed by, "Everyone did what was right in his own eyes." One of those sentences stands at the very gateway of the chapter Scott is asking about, Judges 19, verse 1.

As if to tell us up front what this violence signifies. It signifies what happens to a society when the river of evil flowing from the human heart runs wild without a damn of civil authority to keep it from spilling out over the whole earth and corrupting with violent effects.

That's the point. There was no king. Everybody did what was right in his own eyes. This is what happens when human beings run rampant without any restraints. That's the most immediate contextual explanation for the violence in the book of Judges. The book of Judges is written to demonstrate what happens when human beings in all our sinful rebellion against God have no restraints.

This is a very valuable lesson for us to learn from the Bible. Lest we have some naive romantic notions about the essential goodness of the human heart, and lest we think it would be a very good idea to dispense with civil authority. But that's not an answer to the most ultimate question of why there is so much violence in the Bible.

The reason there is such an abundance of violence in the Bible is because there is so much violence in the world. And so we must ask the ultimate question, why is that? The Bible is documenting what is. It's not creating what is. It's just telling us what is the reality.

And the biblical answer is that when sin entered the world, described in Genesis 3, that is when God opposing, God rejecting, God disparaging, God demeaning, treason against God entered the world, God responded not simply by judging man's emotions and thinking and willing and relationships, but also he responded by subjecting the human body and the entire material and physical creation to his judgment.

And we see that in Genesis 3, and we hear it explicitly in Romans 8 20. The creation was subjected to futility. The creation was subjected to futility, to corruption, not willingly, but because of him who subjected God in hope. Now, why did God do that? Why did he ordain that the effect of moral evil would be displayed in the horrors of physical evil, earthquakes, floods, famines, pandemics, wars, and every manner of horrible mistreatment of man on man?

Oh my. He did it because he knew that people who are dead in their trespasses and sins would never comprehend the moral outrage of treason against God unless they saw it reflected in the physical outrage of violence against man. Nobody loses sleep over their treason against God, but let their physical body be touched with cancer or their house be touched with rioting, and then their emotions really rise up with moral indignation.

Violence and suffering exist in this world as a divine witness to the meaning and the seriousness and the outrage of sin against God. There's one more answer to why there is so much violence in the world and in the Bible. Revelation 13 8 says that there was a book in God's presence before the foundation of the world, and the name of the book is the book of life of the lamb who was slaughtered.

Revelation 13 8. All thoughtful Christians know that at the center of our faith and at the foundation of our salvation is one of the grossest, most violent, and gory events in the history of the world, namely the crucifixion of the Son of God. There is no salvation without this violence.

And what Revelation 13 8 shows is that this was God's plan before the foundation of the world. And not only was it God's plan before the foundation of the world, Revelation also tells us that we will sing about this violence forever. Revelation 5 9. And they sang a new song saying worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals for you were slaughtered.

That is the right word. Sphagidamai. Slaughtered. Slain is a lessening of the feel. You were slaughtered and by your blood spilled shed gore. You ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. Now, we might plan a different kind of world and a different kind of salvation from eternity to eternity if we were God.

But that isn't our choice. God planned to save us through violence. The gruesome death of his infinitely precious Son. And he said that this is how we know his love. God shows us his love in that while we were yet sinners Christ died and we know how he died.

Christ died for us. There is no softening the death of Christ as though it were a little gold symbol hung around our pretty necks. So those are my three answers. One, the violence of judges exists to show what happens when the river of human evil is not damned up by civic authority.

Two, the futility and corruption of creation exists to give us some idea of the horror of sin against God. And three, the most egregiously violent act in history exists to save us and to show us the love of God. Amen. The most spectacular sin of all. Thank you Pastor John and thank you for the question Scott.

That was Pastor John joining us today remotely over Skype. Thanks for listening. If you want new episodes of this podcast delivered to you, subscribe to Ask Pastor John in your favorite podcast app in Spotify or by subscribing to DG's YouTube channel. And to find other episodes in our archive or to submit a question to us of your own, do that online at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

Well next time we talk about enjoying God and glorifying God. Are those different things? Are they the same thing? Is enjoying God kind of a private thing and glorifying God a public thing? It's a really good question. Next on the docket for Pastor John, I am Tony Reinke and we will see you on Monday.

Thanks for listening. (music)