Is God violent or nonviolent?
CW: trauma, physical assault
One evening in 2016,
I attended a dinner party at an urban farm in our east Austin neighborhood. It was a gathering of pastors and community leaders and an invited guest, James Alison. As we sat down to our plates, I ended up next to James and struck up conversation.
I knew a little of James from his writings; I’d recently finished a piece of his titled “Worship in a Violent World”. In it, James describes the difference between—as he puts it—Nuremberg worship and un-Nuremberg worship.
Over dinner I found James as quick-witted, thought-provoking, and humble as I had expected. But I wasn’t prepared to learn the depth of violence he’s endured. What stayed with me from our talk that Spring evening was the joy, humor, and complete forgiveness emanating from him despite his mistreatment. As a therapist, I’m sensitive to the limitations of the human brain—our nervous system is wired to respond to trauma in a very predictable way. James’s s system defied neurobiological expectations.
“The first task of a theologian is to listen.”
Having never forgotten that night, two years later when I was given the opportunity to pursue a project while on sabbatical, I rang James to see if he’d take me on as a theology student. The question I wanted him to help me understand: “How do you understand what was happening on the cross—and how does that contribute to your joy?” Or to put it another way: “How does your theology produce in you such palpable forgiveness?”
James countered: “What do you mean by theology?”
I responded, “What do you mean by theology?”
Then he said this: “A theologian is someone who finds themselves one day on the inside of a communication they know didn’t originate with them. So the first task of a theologian is always to listen. And after listening a long time, perhaps to live what was being listened to. And after living it a long time, then perhaps one might attempt to speak about it.”
The lesson was underway. James proved to be a generous and patient teacher. Our sessions were mostly virtual—him in Madrid and me in Austin. In November 2018 we met up for a week in Mexico and did theology in the coffee shop. Evenings we ate dinner on the beach with my daughter, with fire poi dancers behind us. James assigned me writing prompts—thesis statements I was to defend in 1500 words. He eviscerated my work, one of the highest form of love. He lamented I hadn’t been given a “proper English education.”
“If we take seriously the incarnation, then Jesus reveals who God is.”
In studying the scriptures with James, one of theme that surfaced is that the incarnation gives us a magnifying glass.
The incarnation is the notion that Jesus was God—there is no part of God that is not reflected in Jesus, and no part of Jesus that is not a reflection of God. If we take that notion seriously, it follows then that we can look to Jesus to know who God is and how God relates to us.
When I listen to the stories of Jesus through the earpiece of neuroscience, a recognizable pattern emerges.
I find no mention in scripture that Jesus ever inflicted violence on anyone.
If you wish to try this practice yourself, listen back through the stories in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and keep an ear out for any mention of Jesus inflicting violence on someone.
I suggest we define violence this way: “inflicting of stress—to the degree it triggers a brainstem reaction.”
The twist is that each person’s nervous system has a different threshold, based on our memories. Brain science may be able to point us toward a useful way to think about what is and what isn’t “violent.” Under a threat alert (real or imagined), our brainstem is activated. Our heart races. Stress chemicals are released. As stress increases, our body feels discomfort, pain, and distress approaching agony. When a threat alert is chronic, it becomes physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, and spiritually taxing to us. And when our body is under an extreme threat alert, higher learning shuts down in the brain.
And, as Dan Seigel puts it, “What fires together, wires together.” Therefore, what feels like invigoratingly healthy conflict to me might feel dangerously violent to you—and the only difference is how our nervous systems are wired based on past experiences. We often attempt to define violence based on the action—the force, the intention, the result. But what if we were to flip the camera around and define violence instead according to how the nervous system of the victim or recipient experienced it? That would give us a more neurobiologically precise measure of violence.
“What if we flip the camera around and define violence based on the victim?”
Using this definition, let’s try to imagine if anyone who ever encountered Jesus—including sinners, persecutors, his own enemies—ever experienced Jesus as violent. When I tried this practice, I wasn’t able to locate an instance.
We’re told in Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19, and John 2 that Jesus overturned tables in the Temple, made a whip, and drove out the animals—was that violent?
Do we imagine Jesus was frightening to the grown men getting rich off people’s desire for forgiveness? Or might we imagine they were simply irritated and insulted at being inconvenienced?
We can’t know how the money changers felt, but we are given an important clue. In Matthew’s telling, immediately following Jesus’s outburst in the Temple, the blind come up to him and children circle around him singing (Matthew 21: 14-15). If Jesus had caused a violent reaction in anyone’s nervous system, do we imagine the blind would have felt safe beside him? Would parents have felt safe with their children running up to him?
I welcome your thoughts if you try this practice yourself. Throughout the scriptures, I haven’t located an instance where it would appear someone experienced Jesus as violent. In Luke 22, we find a compelling moment of nonviolence when Jesus is arrested, and Peter violently defends him by cutting of the ear of the helper of the high priest. Jesus stops Peter, and reaches out and touches his enemy’s ear and heals him. This is the gift of nonviolence—our already forgiven-ness—which we may understand Jesus to have died to reveal to. And as we reflection upon that image of God, we may hope to find in ourselves a growing resemblance.
∞
If we understand Jesus to be God in a body, then we can look to Jesus to discover whether God is violent or not. And if we conclude from the scriptures that Jesus wasn’t violent—what does that reveal about how God relates to us? How might we allow the person of Jesus to update and refresh our perception of who God is? And how might the scriptures to “shake loose” any misperceptions we’ve inherited about God, if our perceptions conflict with the image of God we see reflected in Jesus?
Listening with you,
Questions for reflection:
How often might you be failing to recognize violence because you’re not looking at the recipient’s nervous system?
How does reflecting on Jesus’ nonviolence affect your nervous system?
If you decide God isn’t violent… what do you make of the scriptures which attribute violence to God?
Further reading:
Matthew 21: 12–17; Luke 22:49–51
The Brain & the Spirit, Chapter 3, A Cup of Stress; A Cup of Safety, “Misperceiving God,” pp. 53–64.
