Dionysus on a Bike

Deuteronomy 31:1-13 – 5/13/2026

The Lord your God himself will cross over before you. He will destroy these nations before you, and you shall dispossess them. Joshua also will cross over before you, as the Lord promised.

Deuteronomy 31:3 (NRSVue)

God promised the land of the Jordan Valley to the descendant of Jacob through the lawgiver Moses. Moses, because of his lack of faith, was not allowed to join the people in crossing the River and coming into possession of the promised land. Here at the end of Moses’s life, his successor Joshua is tasked with leading the people into that land and taking it by force from its inhabitants. What follows Deuteronomy and the story of Moses is the violent conquest of the land by all out war that results in genocide and displacement of those whose land this was. On a straightforward reading of the text, God is telling God’s people to wipe out other nations in order for God’s chosen people to come into their inheritance.

Is this really God? Does God condone, let alone command, the forceful taking of territory from another by waging wars that lead to the entire destruction of societies? On a reading of the Bible as inerrant or the literal word for word dictation of God, the only conclusion is that yes, God has commanded and enabled genocide here, all because God favors and has chosen one people over another.

Let’s take a look of the implications of this. If it were true that God commanded this conquest of the land promised to the descendants of Jacob, then it follows that God did not want the peoples who came before to prosper. God willed that the children be murdered, sold into slavery, and used as sex slaves. God willed that entire languages and cultures be removed from the land. It means that God valued the flourishing, happiness, and well-being of some families more than others. The implications here are horrible. God can favor one group of people over another simply because of who their ancestors were. If the conquest and genocide of Canaan is God’s will, then any form of warfare or violence can be justified in God’s name because God commanded the worst of it.

This reading of scripture and the conquest of the Promised Land points to a glaring tension in Scripture. On the one hand, God is a God of love, desiring what is best for creation and making promises of blessing and beatitude on those whom God has chosen. On the other hand, God is seen as indifferent to the suffering of other peoples. In choosing Israel, it appears that God has chosen against Israel’s enemies, making God not the universal God of all peoples, but the tribal God of a favorite population at the expense of the very lives and existence of others.

If we allow ourselves to question the idea that Scripture is inerrant or the absolutely true word for word record of God’s will, then this tension that appears to be in God is moved to the author of the text, a fallible human who both has faith and makes mistakes—someone attuned to the will and movement of the creator but who sometimes misses the message and favors tribal loyalties over insights about the love and impartial favor of God.

What the texts about the conquest of the Promised Land start to look like once we give up the idea that Scripture infallibly records the will of God is the record of the imperfect, still developing faith of a faithful people. The descendants of Jacob were promised a land where they could thrive. They journeyed long years and endured slavery in Egypt waiting for that promise to come true. The genocidal conquest of that land is evidence of both the faith in that promise and a lack of faith in God’s power to bring it about.

Here is the story of people following their God out of a deep faith that their inheritance in God is greater than anything they could bring about by their own power, but as soon as that faith is formed, they betray that faith. The hold onto the promise but reject that God can bring it about in God’s way. Instead they invent justifications for war, wars that destroy lives and families, wars that lead to rape, pillaging, and slavery for the captives. Is is as if all that the Israelites had to go through in their sojourn without a home of their own would be taken out on those they would displace. If this impulse is from God, then God’s love looks quite different from any sort of love I am familiar with.

In a time when the Word and Name of God are used to justify war, violence, and the destruction of families and societies, we must take a close look at portions of Scripture where such a stance is condoned or even commanded. What we do with these difficult portions of scripture determines how we follow Jesus as Christians. Do the commands to love and care for the other take precedence? Or do we set those commands aside when enemies appear to hold our promised land? We must choose to reject the way of violence to inherit our promised blessings. Our thriving, flourishing, and prosperous life are promised by God. What is not included in that promise is a road map of how these goods will come about. To resort to military intervention, war, police brutality, putting families in cages in detention centers, and deporting people who look and speak differently than we do is to not trust in the promises of God.

Let me say that again, to resort to violence to attain what we are promised by God is to not trust God to bring those promises about. Such violence disobeys the commandments not to kill and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. Nationalism in the name of God, Zionism and Christian nationalism, must be rejected as absolute unfaithfulness to the creator. We must follow different examples than the one of Joshua, and we should look to the story of his leading Israel in conquest of the promised land not as an example to follow but as an example of what it looks like to fail to trust the promises of God.

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Reflections of a Dionysian Lutheran, comments on the daily readings of the Revised Common Lectionary.