Gunning for God (21 page)

How, then, should we understand these commands to eliminate everyone without apparent exception? One obvious approach is to ask whether there is any evidence in the rest of the biblical account as to what actually took place. There is. If we read the book of Joshua we find that Joshua struck down every person in the towns of Debir and Hebron with the sword. However, in the succeeding book of Judges, Judah and Benjamin are said to have conquered those very same cities. But what would that mean, if the cities had already been completely exterminated by Joshua? On this basis, Nicholas Wolterstorff
³⁴
argues that the expression “struck down all the inhabitants with the edge of the sword” is a formulaic phrase (for instance, it occurs seven times in Joshua 10). He argues that it is a literary convention that should be understood in conjunction with the fact that Joshua (as reported in Judges) did not literally wipe out the entire population of the cities with which he did battle.

Wolterstorff concludes that the commands to “utterly destroy” or “strike down all inhabitants with the sword”, etc. are to be interpreted as “score a decisive victory over”; and did not therefore imply that the Israelites violated their normal rules of war by eliminating the defenceless.

One swift response to this will be: even if Wolterstorff is right, there have been and are still multitudes of innocent and defenceless people who have suffered monstrous evil at the hands of their fellow human beings in all kinds of horrific circumstances. The weight of this objection is surely felt by all. We shall consider it presently.

To sum up so far, then: according to the Bible the invasion of Canaan was carried out for moral reasons, and constituted divine judgment on the evil of the Canaanite tribes. This evil was so malign that it would bring down judgment not only on the Canaanites, but also on the Israelites if they compromised with it.

Here we reach the heart of the difficulty, as many see it. Judgment. First of all, there is the whole concept of divine judgment; secondly, there is the nature of the specific judgment that involves taking away human life; and finally, the fact that admittedly imperfect human beings are entrusted to carry out that judgment.

We are also justifiably suspicious of the motives of leaders who feel called by God to rid the world of evil. And anyway, is idolatry really that serious? How can God, if there is a God, contemplate such judgments, let alone command for them to happen? Do these actions constitute firm ethical grounds for abandoning faith in God and joining the New Atheists? Does the atheist view make better moral sense in the end?

These questions can easily generate a lot of deep emotion that makes discussion of them almost impossible. However, we must face them with as much sensitivity as we can muster.

THE JUDGMENT OF GOD

The central issue, then, is the judgment of God and its ramifications. It is important to be clear from the outset that, contrary to popular opinion, this topic is not confined to the Old Testament, just as the topic of the love and compassion of God is not confined to the New. Indeed, it is the Old Testament prophet Isaiah that people frequently quote to encapsulate their longing for a world in which there is no more war: “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
³⁵

When it comes to the matter of judgment, the New Testament is, if anything, more solemn than the Old in its description of a final assize that is eternal in its implications. The fact is that, according to both Old and New Testaments, there is to be a final judgment at which human behaviour will be impartially evaluated. It is the claim of the New Testament that Christ is to be the judge.
³⁶
That final assessment will proceed on the principle of judgment by peer: it is humans that are to be judged; it will therefore be a perfect human who will be entrusted with the judging.

Such claims are more than enough to send atheists into orbit, since they reject out of hand the existence of a final judgment, to say nothing of Christ’s claim to be the judge. For atheism, by definition death ends all; and so there is no judgment to be feared. Remember the bendy bus message: “There’s probably no God, now stop worrying…” That element in the atheist message is very ancient. It certainly goes back as far as the Epicurean philosophy, so well expressed in the Latin poet Lucretius’s famous poem “
De Rerum Natura
”.
³⁷
In his poem, Lucretius takes up the ideas of the atomists Democritus and Leucippus, and argues that, because the atoms of the body disperse irretrievably on death, there can be no life after death: “Nothing at all will have the power to affect us or awaken sensation in us.” He preaches this as a charter of freedom: freedom from the threat of a final judgment.

This “freedom” remains a key element in the New Atheism. As we mentioned earlier in this chapter, many atheists deeply resent the idea of a God who is watching over people, since they think that this is an expression of tyranny, and they wish to be free. However, the notion of God watching over us actually makes a great deal of sense, which the New Atheists, with their
a priori
conviction that God is a tyrant, do not seem to realize. Yet they ought to. Would they wish to live in a country where there was no police force watching over the people? Would they be prepared to fly across the Atlantic from an airport that had no security screening? I think not. For it is common human experience that we need people to watch over us. Of course, some people are tyrants — as dictatorships both of the right and left have proved. But such terrifying watchers of others are often precisely those who do not believe that there is a
God
watching them, a point made so powerfully by David Berlinski’s story of the murder of the elderly Jew by the SS, related in Chapter 3.

The following abstract, from a research article on psychology, is telling:

We examined the effect of an image of a pair of eyes on contributions to an honesty box used to collect money for drinks in a university coffee room. People paid nearly three times as much for their drinks when eyes were displayed rather than a control image. This finding provides the first evidence from a naturalistic setting of the importance of cues of being watched, and hence reputational concerns, on human cooperative behaviour.
³⁸

Incidentally, the poster displaying the watching eyes was placed directly above the honesty box.

In his essay “Human Nature in History”, the eminent Cambridge historian Herbert Butterfield comments on the importance of some kind of supervision:

The historian begins, then, with a higher estimate of the status of personality than thinkers in some other fields, just as Christianity does when it sees each individual as a creature of eternal moment. Having made this splendid start, however, the historian proceeds — like the tradition of Christian theology itself — to a lower view of human nature than the one commonly current in the twentieth century… It seems to me, however, that in regard to the relations between human nature and the external conditions of the world, the study of history does open one’s eyes to a significant fact… if you were to remove certain subtle safeguards in society many men who had been respectable all their lives would be transformed by the discovery of the things which it was now possible to do with impunity; weak men would apparently take to crime who had been previously kept on the rails by a certain balance existing in society; and you can produce a certain condition of affairs in which people go plundering and stealing, though hitherto throughout their lives it had never occurred to them even to want to steal. A great and prolonged police strike, the existence of a revolutionary situation in a capital city, and the exhilaration of conquest in an enemy country are likely to show up a seamy side of human nature amongst people who, cushioned and guided by the influences of normal social life, have hitherto presented a respectable figure to the world.

Butterfield’s conclusion from this is that “the difference between civilisation and barbarism is a revelation of what is essentially the same human nature when it works under different conditions.” And he adds: “One point is fundamental, however. Nobody may pretend that there has been an elimination of the selfishness, and self-centredness of man.”
³⁹
If in a well-run city, he argues, crime has significantly reduced, because the police have successfully restrained it, no one would argue that there is no longer any need for the police. Without them basic human nature would resume its criminal activity.
⁴⁰

One of the most memorable instances of this was the great lightning-induced power shortage in New York on the night of 13 July 1977, which left the city completely without electric power. Its first effect was that people could neither see, nor be seen. It was the complete state of “nobody is watching you”. It spelt anarchy. People went on the rampage, looting stores, and then setting them alight to destroy any evidence. In one five-block stretch in Crown Heights, seventy-five stores were looted, thirty-five blocks of Broadway were destroyed; and in the mayhem 550 police were injured, and 4,500 looters arrested. Well-known behavioural psychologist Ernest Dichter said: “It was just like
Lord of the Flies
. People resort to savage behaviour when the brakes of civilisation fail.”
⁴¹

There are other areas where the brakes appear to be failing — for instance, in our attitude to the environment. Obtaining international agreement has proved extremely difficult, and some leading scientists are beginning to suggest that religion may have an important role to play. No lesser figures than E.O. Wilson, pioneer of sociobiology, and Lord May, former President of the Royal Society — neither of them a religious man — have called for an alliance of science and religion to combat the destruction of the biosphere.

Speaking about the failure to coordinate measures against such destruction, Lord May went so far as to suggest that, even though authoritarian religion had undermined attempts to achieve global cooperation on climate change, religion itself may have helped to protect human society from itself in the past, and it may be needed again. What is fascinating is the aspect of religion that Lord May feels important in this context: “Given that punishment is a useful mechanism, how much more effective it would be if you invested that power not in an individual, but in an all-seeing, all-powerful deity that controls the world.” He felt that such a system would be “immensely stabilising in individual human cultures and societies.” Thus, in his view, “a supernatural punisher may be part of the solution”.
⁴²

The existence of “bad eggs” in a police force does not make us think that there can be no such thing as a decent and just policeman, magistrate, or judge. Yet it is just this kind of argument that the New Atheists are making about God. They imagine that a God of justice and judgment cannot simultaneously be a God of mercy, love, and compassion. What they fail to grasp, however, is that a God who did not judge Canaanite (or any other) evil would not be a God of mercy, love, and compassion.

Lucretius and the New Atheists rejoice that there is no God, and that death is the end. Their joy is premature and remarkably superficial. They fail to see that if there is no final judgment, then there is no such thing as
justice
. It is a tragic, yet obvious, fact that the vast majority of people do not get justice in this life; and since, in the atheist view, there is no life after death, there can be no final assessment after death — so these multi-millions will never get justice.

It is for that reason that a very different note is struck in the book of Psalms, where the thought of coming judgment is an occasion for song:

“Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it! Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy; before the Lord, for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in his faithfulness.”
⁴³

God’s judgment was not feared, but longed for by those who suffered. It was welcomed, because it promised the solution to the long-standing problem of justice. The influential Marxist intellectual Max Horkheimer saw this clearly and said so. Unlike the New Atheists, he feared that there might
not
be a God, since in that case there would be no justice. Justice and judgment are inseparable.

When I mentioned this matter to Dawkins in our debate in Oxford, he responded that it was important to campaign for justice in this life. I agreed. Of course we should campaign for justice in this life, and Christians have not been slow to do so. Witness, for instance, the campaign to abolish slavery, or the Herculean work of Christian medical missions. However, I went on to say that it was not a question of either having justice in this life or in the next. Even if we did ever reach the point (and history tends to indicate that we humans never shall) that justice was done on the earth, it would be of no value to the vast majority who have already died without obtaining justice.

However, Dawkins’ words ring hollow, in light of his published view that
there is no such thing as justic
e. What would be the point of campaigning for justice, even in this life, if justice doesn’t exist? Yet, in the very same paragraph where Dawkins states that there is at bottom no good and no evil (and thus no morality), he also informs us that there is, in fact, no justice. Here is the full quote once more, with the relevant words italicized: