Permitted Violence)

In my last post I discussed how our culture has a strong condemnation for violence, making God’s death penalties in the Old Testament feel unsettling. However, there is also a hypocrisy in our culture, for while we still condemn violence by our words and policies, there is a sympathy among some for violence, so long as the target is correct.

This is most evident in political violence. Most recently, the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the public reaction to it showed just how brazen parts of our society can be in celebrating the death of their ideological rivals. This seems to be a rising trend, as well. A CloudResearch poll surveyed 1,583 Americans, asking whether Kirk’s killing was justified. While 12% of all respondents and 20% of all Democrat respondents said yes, those numbers jumped to 22% and 32% when respondents were under 30.

The death of Charlie Kirk is particularly interesting, because many of the justifications that people give for his killing have to do with the things that he said. The seemingly most egregious applications of the death penalty in the Bible are also for people who say blasphemous things. Thus, there are those who cannot see any justification for words incurring the death penalty in one context, yet in another emphatically defend it.

Hypocrisy and Culture)

Of course, I don’t mean to suggest that everyone who condemns the death penalties in the Bible also endorses the murder of their political rivals, but it is undeniable that there is an overlap. For such people, they might call God’s acts of violence unacceptable, yet they are not actually opposed to violence itself, only to violence against those who ideologically agree with them. They reject God’s penalties not by principle, but because He is not authorized by their ideology to assign those punishments. They have the very tribalistic paradigm that they pretend to be above.

My last post was directed towards those who do genuinely oppose violence in all of its forms, and this post has addressed those who are only selective in their approval of it. Having acknowledged and responded to both areas of criticism, I now wish to turn my focus to considering why God would have death penalties and why they went away. We will begin with those examinations tomorrow.