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The Violence of God & the War on Terror

Reviewed by John Watson.

The Violence of God and the War on Terror, by pastoral theologian and family therapist Jeremy Young, is a provocative and, I think, disturbing book. As a Christian, he says he has “often felt acutely uncomfortable” during Christian worship, listening to biblical stories about massacres commanded by God, to which worshippers are expected to affirm the statement, ‘This is the Word of the Lord’, with the response, ‘Thanks be to God’ (p.7). I am sure that many people would agree with feeling uncomfortable, but what one does and how one responds to that feeling in relation to interpreting Scripture with tradition and reason is the chief concern.

His training and experience as a family therapist informs his own reading and response, making him “uneasily aware of the prevalence of divine violence in the Bible”, and in particular of “a disturbing parallel between the behaviour of the biblical God and that of men who are abusive to their female partners or their children’ (p.8). His honesty is appreciated as it helps the reader see the hermeneutic lens through which he reads the Bible, an honesty that many of us would do well to imitate. Yet his claim that the violence of God is “the interpretive key to the Bible” (p.7) is a debatable one, and disagrees with any interpretative key that seeks to see non-violence as an alternative, without much interaction, other than a cursory dismissive nod.

Although this is not a book on Christian ethics, it does fall into that arena, which has received considerable attention over the past few years in how the Bible is used in forming and shaping Christian ethics. Young certainly raises questions that cannot be ignored, especially with regard to war and peace, yet Christians believe that something else is happening in a worship service, in the biblical witness, where the Living Word, is encountered and received, and where Christians open themselves to being transformed by seeing the world through Christ’s eyes, and not simply our own limited cultural perspective, thereby offering a non-violent lens through which to read Scripture.