One of the major things I learned when I deconstructed evangelicalism was that the notion of a retributive God is a myth that Jesus and several of the Jewish prophets debunked (although some prophets weren’t always consistent). Sure, God holds people accountable for wrongdoing and warns of judgment for evildoers, but the goal of God’s judgment is not punishment for punishment’s sake. It’s to restore people through reaching them and helping them to repent.
Narratives that Conflict with the Retributive God
The prophet Isaiah tells us, “I will not accuse them [the Israelites] forever, nor will I always be angry, for then they would faint away because of me—the very people I have created… I punished them… yet they kept on in their willful ways. I have seen their [sinful, greedy] ways, but I will heal them” (Isa. 57:16-18). Punishment leads to healing not to appeasement of God’s anger or eternal damnation.
As is stated several places in the Old Testament, “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever” (Psalm 103:8-9). Hosea says of God, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (6:6). The story of Joseph and his family in Genesis is a story of mercy and restoration, not divine anger and retribution.
When Jesus comes along, he highlights places in the Torah and Prophets that tell of God’s true character. God is merciful to Gentiles, for example, not just the Jews. He also exposes passages in the Torah that conflict with God’s character. God is not retributive per the eye-for-eye, tooth-for-tooth, life-for-life code found in the Torah, but loves his enemies. He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. He is not calling for vengeance. When Jesus quoted Isaiah 61, the good news proclamation, he left off the climatic verse: “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor…” He did not include the phrase, “and the day of vengeance of our God.” Moreover, he introduced a Mercy Code that we should be merciful because the true Father God is merciful.
Jesus was non-violent in his nature and never sided with violent retribution. He rebuked the disciples for asking to call down fire upon their enemies. He refused to allow a crowd to stone an adulterer, what the Law proscribed for such an offense. He told his followers to not take up the sword. He refused to defend himself from violent physical abuse and torture. He took no revenge when he resurrected from the dead.
Confronting the Retributive God Narratives
This is a direct contradiction of the narratives about Noah’s flood, the Canaanite conquest, the appeasement of a wrathful God in Joshua 7 and Numbers 25, the calls to respond to violence with reciprocal violence, and punishment of the disobedient with capital punishment. I go into great detail how obvious this is in my new book, Breaking Bad Faith: Exposing Myth and Violence in Popular Theology to Recover the Path of Peace (release date: July 4, 2023). I explain how these violent narratives are part of violent sacrificial religion.
They show a god who demands violent sacrifices in order for his people to remain in good standing. The Israelites had to destroy Canaanite cities and leave no survivors in order to occupy the Promise Land (including children, infants, and the unborn). When Israelites disobeyed this god, they needed to be sacrificed in order to appease god’s anger and restore harmony. Sometimes even innocent family had to be sacrificed (Achan’s children in Joshua 7). Sometimes other innocent people had to be sacrificed in addition to the perpetrators. In Numbers 25, a plague killed 24,000 people. In the flood story, all of humanity except for one family was drowned, including children, infants, and the unborn.
What Judgment Means
When Jesus did call for judgment, he had a nuanced message. “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Mat. 7:1-2). He called for restraint about judging others. When he pronounced judgment, it was toward the hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees, anyone who refused to take his path of peace as opposed to violent opposition to the Romans, or anyone who didn’t care for “the least of these” in society. In other words, those who needed a warning. He was not talking about judgment on anyone who didn’t convert by responding to an altar call. He was judging people who had certain behaviors (or lack thereof) that didn’t fit his love ethic.
For him, judgment was not about the afterlife, hell, or eternal damnation. He referred to Gehenna (the garbage dump outside Jerusalem), similar to how the prophet Jeremiah did: be careful or you will be destroyed by your enemies and your bodies will be tossed in Gehenna. When he spoke of the “tribulation of the age,” it was in the context of the warning about the Temple and Jerusalem being destroyed. This occurred in history only about 40 years after the time of Jesus, as recorded by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. It occurred, not because God is retributive, but because the fruit of a violent revolt by the Jewish people against the power of Rome would inevitably lead to destruction. Jesus wept over Jerusalem because he foresaw the Zealots of his day would one day use violence to oppose the Romans who would ultimately crush the city.
The Merciful Restorative God
His reference to “eternal punishment” is a myth. The term is aionios kolasis. Aionios doesn’t mean “forever” but “pertaining to an age.” It’s a period of time. Kolasis does not mean punishment for punishment’s sake, but for correcting or chastising someone. It originally was a term that described pruning vines to bear more fruit. Ann Nyland in The Source New Testament translates it “rehabilitation for a set period of time.” It is not eternal damnation but God’s Rehab Center, if you will, that changes and purifies lost people.
All of these things reveal the true nature of God. He is not retributive but rather restorative. A God that holds people to account, but not for the purpose of appeasing some divine wrath, but to enable them to eventually repent. Paul told us, God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he can have mercy on them all (Rom. 11:32). And “God’s kindness leads to repentance” (Rom. 2:4).
Moreover, the record of history confirms that the earliest students of Jesus for at least the first 200 years were not retributive or advocates of war. The evidence shows they disavowed military service. They were pacifists. Most of the early church fathers during this period believed violent retaliation was foreign to the spirit of the gospel.
Overcoming a Flat Reading of the Bible
The biggest issue to get to this conclusion is to overcome the belief in the inerrancy of the Bible, or what some call a flat reading of the Bible. A flat reading is when people are forced to treat everything in the Bible as historically true and infallible. They are forced to accept the retributive-god depictions in parts of the Torah, the book of Joshua, in places like Numbers 25, and other Old Testament passages. Also, in parts of the New Testament like Revelation, which was the most disputed book before the Western church finalized their scriptures. They have to believe that God is sometimes retributive and sometimes restorative. But in order to be treated in a restorative way, you have to believe the right things about Jesus and God (so they say). They are forced to believe that God is two-faced, a god of reciprocal punishment, divine violence, and war, as well as a God of love. Jesus and many of the prophets were telling another story about God. They were saying God is not two-faced, but one who practices restorative justice.
Once people give themselves permission to think for themselves when it comes to the Bible, you can easily recognize the two-faced God. You can see the retributive narratives as opposed to the restorative ones and separate them out. This is when you can come to the conclusion that Jesus was trying to help us recover the restorative God and reject the retributive god because that god is a myth. That god was like the pagan gods of ancient times who needed his worshipers to kill dehumanized sacrificial scapegoats to appease divine anger.
Again, I go into much more detail on this in my new book, Breaking Bad Faith. But here’s the bottom line: understanding how the Bible works and having freedom to state the obvious leads us to conclude that God is not retributive. What is the obvious? That the retaliatory god of Noah’s flood and the Canaanite conquest and the capital punishment commands is disgusting. And the restorative God found in many other scriptures and Jesus’ teaching is beautiful. God is not retributive but merciful and restorative by nature. His solution for evil people is rehabilitation not eternal punishment.
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Michael Camp tends the Spiritual Brewpub, which helps disillusioned or post-evangelicals (or “nones”) uncover historical facts and insights that help them deconstruct, rethink, and rebuild a more authentic faith or philosophy of life. He is the author of Breaking Bad Faith: Exposing Myth and Violence in Popular Theology to Recover the Path of Peace, which releases on July 4, 2023 (Quoir). To get updates and read other themes in the book, subscribe to this blog. To get specific help deconstructing conservative Christianity and rebuilding healthy faith, see Michael’s Religious Deconstruction Workshop. To hear fascinating interviews with leading voices in the deconstruction community, listen to the Spiritual Brewpub Podcast.
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