I’m going to justify genocide.

Let’s lay down a few premises to get there. First, assume an all powerful, all knowing, and all loving God who interferes with the affairs of men. Second, assume that an objective, perfect system of morality exists and God by definition embodies that system. For a mainstream Christian that might be expressed as God being the source of all that is good and true, though a Mormon would articulate that God would cease to be God if he did not obey the laws of morality, which are higher even than him. Third, assume that this life is a tiny sliver in the eternal duration of our spiritual lifespan, less than a blink compared to the hereafter. And fifth, assume that agency, or the ability to make informed moral choices freely, is the most important virtue in God’s plan for his children.

Now, because God is all loving he wants all of his children to be happy and return to him in heaven, but that requires that we humans choose to do the right thing so that we can be worthy of returning, and because agency is so important God will not force us to to do it. He’ll let us fail and make mistakes, even to the point of no longer returning to him after this life because our ability to choose is sacrosanct. This would, of course, mean that things which take away our ability to choose are necessarily evil, perhaps the most evil thing which could be done. After all, in Mormon theology Lucifer was cast out of heaven because he wanted to revoke the agency of man.

That said, the Lord often works in mysterious ways, doing or demanding things which may not make any sense to us mortals. But because he is all knowing and all loving, he clearly is doing it for a good reason. It’s part of the plan. Besides, it doesn’t really matter because this life is just a short trial, a formality before we embark on the rest of our eternal lives. Any injustice, any hurt or misunderstanding, that will all be made up for in the hereafter. What does it matter if we suffer here for a few decades? This is why God let’s bad things happen, we have literally forever to make up for it.

Having all this established, open up your bible to the 1st book of Samuel, chapter 15. This is during the conquest of Canaan in the Old Testament, though toward the latter parts of it, and God has been commanding the Israelites to smite the other residents of Palestine for quite some time now. This time, however, the instruction was a little different. I’ll be reading from the King James Version, simply because it’s the one I’m most familiar with. I’ve highlighted the parts I’d like you to pay the most attention to.

15 Samuel also said unto Saul, The Lord sent me to anoint thee to be king over his people, over Israel: now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the Lord.

2 Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt.

3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.

4 And Saul gathered the people together, and numbered them in Telaim, two hundred thousand footmen, and ten thousand men of Judah.

5 And Saul came to a city of Amalek, and laid wait in the valley.

6 And Saul said unto the Kenites, Go, depart, get you down from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them: for ye shewed kindness to all the children of Israel, when they came up out of Egypt. So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites.

7 And Saul smote the Amalekites from Havilah until thou comest to Shur, that is over against Egypt.

8 And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword.

9 But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them: but every thing that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly.

10 Then came the word of the Lord unto Samuel, saying,

11 It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king: for he is turned back from following me, and hath not performed my commandments. And it grieved Samuel; and he cried unto the Lord all night.

12 And when Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning, it was told Samuel, saying, Saul came to Carmel, and, behold, he set him up a place, and is gone about, and passed on, and gone down to Gilgal.

13 And Samuel came to Saul: and Saul said unto him, Blessed be thou of the Lord: I have performed the commandment of the Lord.

14 And Samuel said, What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?

15 And Saul said, They have brought them from the Amalekites: for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God; and the rest we have utterly destroyed.

16 Then Samuel said unto Saul, Stay, and I will tell thee what the Lordhath said to me this night. And he said unto him, Say on.

17 And Samuel said, When thou wast little in thine own sight, wast thou not made the head of the tribes of Israel, and the Lord anointed thee king over Israel?

18 And the Lord sent thee on a journey, and said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites, and fight against them until they be consumed.

19 Wherefore then didst thou not obey the voice of the Lord, but didst fly upon the spoil, and didst evil in the sight of the Lord?

20 And Saul said unto Samuel, Yea, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and have gone the way which the Lord sent me, and have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites.

21 But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the chief of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God in Gilgal.

22 And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.

23 For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king.

This actually isn’t the first instance of genocide we’ve seen in the bible, though it’s the most direct. We also have instances of God himself destroying entire cultures, such as Sodom and Gomorrah or the entire antediluvian world except for Noah and his family. Even when I was a believer, these stories bothered me greatly. It didn’t seem, well, good for anyone to wipe out cities and nations, including the children, any more than it seemed good that the book of Revelation prophesying about all the destroying that God would do in the future. But remember, God is good by definition so there has to be a reason for all of this death. It may not be obvious and we may not have a full answer in our lifetimes, but there has to be a good reason. And I tried to find one.

Here’s what I came up with: We know that God called all of these peoples and civilizations he destroyed or made to be destroyed wicked. We also know that God doesn’t just go out and destroy any kind of wicked people, otherwise we’d have far more examples of divine retribution culling out the bad of humanity. As such, these destroyed cities must have been especially wicked. In fact, the only reason that God would directly intervene so drastically is because something as important as agency was being denied people. It very well be that these people were so bad that the new children born into their societies wouldn’t have any reasonable chance to choose to be good in their lifetimes. If that’s the case, then these societies would need to be destroyed, and God would absolutely be right in doing so. And don’t worry too much about collateral damage. While it’s unlikely that there were no good people among these societies, and the children were certainly still innocent, God is sure to make up for all of it in the afterlife. Looking at it that way, the genocide of a few cities isn’t really that big of a deal, it’s just a way to prune the vineyard, so to speak. And remember, God knows far more than we do and loves us more than we can understand, so it doesn’t even make sense to ask if what He is doing is right. He can’t not do what’s right.

Ten years ago, these are the things I told myself to justify how a good God could condone genocide, and I’m sorry to say it held me over for a while. But what else could I do but try? Thinking that these events described in the bible were evil simply wasn’t an option so something else had to give, and unfortunately it was my inner conviction that killing people is wrong. (As an aside, I’m not arguing that there are no circumstances where killing is justified, that’s a different topic for a different day).

Do you know what it feels like to wake up and realize that you are defending genocide?

This wasn’t the only morally reprehensible thing I believed and defended either. I found ways to get behind an abusive system of polygamy practiced by the early Mormons, to explain away blatant and institutionalized racism from the church, and (ironically) to give reasons why being gay was evil, to name a few. And when I look back on it, it’s not because I had any sort of rational, coherent moral paradigm which allowed or all of these things. On the contrary, I was hard at work trying to force these ugly aspects of my faith into alignment with the legitimately good parts, and it was a constant battle. No, I believed these things because I was told to believe them, that someone with a higher level of understanding and moral development knew better than me. The passage above puts it as “to obey is better than sacrifice,” i.e. it’s better to do exactly as you’re told than to reason for yourself, but a Mormon publication articulates this idea in even stronger terms:

“When our leaders speak, the thinking has been done. When they propose a plan — it is God’s plan. When they point the way, there is no other which is safe. When they give direction, it should mark the end of controversy. God works in no other way. To think otherwise, without immediate repentance, may cost one his faith, may destroy his testimony, and leave him a stranger to the Kingdom of God.”

—“Sustaining the General Authorities of the Church” Improvement Era, June 1945, page 354

This is what I’m called offloading morality, relieving yourself the burden of making moral judgments and letting someone else make that for you. And to be perfectly fair, there are areas where I think this is appropriate to do from time to time, such as with a child to a parent or when you defer to someone you trust where you don’t have enough information to make an informed choice. The problem is when that moral authority insists that they cannot be wrong and that the mere act of questioning is something which you need to repent of. It creates a trap where you have to accept what that authority say, no matter how badly it clashes with your own inner moral compass. It’s the reason why religious parents disown their own children for being gay, why over 900 people drank cyanide at Jonestown, why I personally obeyed local church leaders instead of going to the police with an allegation of pedophilia.

It makes good people do bad things.

Don’t take me wrong, I’m not saying that every instance of offloading morality will result in committing harmful action, nor that there aren’t moral authorities which can generally be trusted. But I think it is wrong, as in both incorrect and unethical, to claim that a moral source is always trustworthy. We need to reserve the right to make our own moral judgments, to question whether the moral code we’ve been given is flawed in some way, and to act in defiance of a status quo because we believe it’s wrong. We need to listen to our own hearts and speak up. There is no virtue in obeying something we know is unethical.

Applying this to the sphere of religion, I believe that there is no reasoning of the eternities which justifies mistreating people here and now. I don’t care if a scripture says that homosexuality is an abomination or if a holy man preached that black people were the seed of Cain, it’s still wrong to treat them poorly and discriminate against them. I’m perfectly happy to live by what I feel to be right instead of going against my inner moral compass because words attributed to God say so.

The tragic thing is, I didn’t ever really believe the justification I gave above for killing the Amalekites, or any of the other ones. Deep down I knew these teachings simply felt wrong, but as I said before I couldn’t even entertain the option that God or his chosen representatives were incorrect. I repressed my own moral framework for over two decades and accepted one which I knew wasn’t right and I think I’ll always regret that. That I wasn’t able to stand up and say “no.”

Be better than I was.