Genocide in the Old Testament

I was visiting Ireland a while ago and learned about how the British banished the Irish people from their best agricultural land, pushing them to the areas of Ireland they were not familiar with that were filled with rocks and bogs. This reminded me of the trail of tears and the plight of indigenous people in North America, and I said so to the tour guide. He said, “Same people, same playbook.”

Growing up evangelical, there were so many Bible stories that made no ethical sense. WHY did all of Sodom and Gomorrah have to die except a handful of people? WHY did God have to kill everyone on earth except Noah and his family? WHY did they spy on and infiltrate the land of Canaan and call it their own when there were already people living there? WHY didn’t God pick a promised land for them that they wouldn’t have to murder and steal for?

These kinds of questions were greeted with “God is above our understanding.” or one book I read some of that pretended to address the topic called “Is God a moral monster?” Questioning the violence of the OT was a “doubt” to work through, even as we sang incongruous liturgies and worship lyrics of “God is good all the time; all the time God is good”. But at the end of the day, it really seems like learning that “this is what God’s chosen people do” desensitized church goers to the idea of mass killing in order to obtain God’s promises. Even Christ and other martyrs are examples of how brutality and death are glorified in the church.

So with the genocide happening as we speak, my tour guide’s words feel strangely apt— “same people, same playbook”.

What do you guys think? How are you coping?