Some Christians and Jews cause great harm to innocent people by engaging in wars and genocides. They do so by pointing to the following verses of the Holy Scriptures to justify themselves:

Joshua 9:24: God told Moses that He gave the Jews the lands of what is now Israel, Palestine, and parts of Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, and therefore ordered the extermination of all inhabitants in those lands, including children.

Exodus 23:23: God will destroy the 7 ethnic groups that inhabited those lands, such as the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Canaanites.

Deuteronomy 7:1-2: God commands the Jews to commit the complete genocide of those 7 ethnic groups, including children.

Joshua 3:10: God is the one who will drive out those ethnic groups.

Joshua 6:21-24: The Jews exterminate all the inhabitants of Jericho, including children and animals, and burn the city, following the instructions God gave to Joshua.

Joshua 8:25-29: They also completely destroyed the inhabitants of Ai, killing 12,000 people, including children, and leaving the city devastated.

Joshua 10:28-39: Likewise, they committed massacres of all the inhabitants of Makkedah and Libnah, Gezer, Eglon, Hebron, and other cities, as well as the entire region from Kadesh to Gaza, including children.

Samuel 15:3: In a different era, God commands the complete genocide of another ethnic group, the Amalekites, including children, infants, and the animals belonging to them.

These verses have served to legitimize many bloody wars and massacres, which were frequent and inherent to the history of Christian countries until World War II and in some places even later. All this occurred with the approval of ecclesiastical authorities, when it was not the Vatican itself initiating wars, crusades, and genocides, such as those against the Cathars or in the Holy Land. In fact, chaplains have always gone into battle with a cross in hand, and not exactly to try to convince the combatants to cease hostilities.

Read LIVING WITHOUT HARM: Let us oppose imperialism, militarism, and the cult of violence

Read LET US NOT HARM ANYONE!

Wars, massacres, the burning and destruction of cities and towns, looting, and ethnic cleansing are not only typical of traditionalist Christian societies, but of most cultures that emerged from a certain point in the Neolithic. It has been as universal as the sky, the sun, and the clouds. Therefore, it is advisable to understand those verses within that historical and anthropological context.

To develop a Christianity freer from cruelty, it is best not to consider them as messages from a loving God to certain men, but rather as certain men who were interested in legitimizing their misdeeds (mass murders of innocents, ethnic cleansing, and land theft) under the pretext that it was God who commanded them to commit them.

Read HOW TO LIVE WITHOUT HARM? Let us understand each religious precept within its historical context

Read FOR A WORLD WITHOUT HARM: Let us contextualize the harmful verses of the Bible

Read THE ART OF LIVING WITHOUT HARM: Let us reform the harmful part of religions

For example, all the previous verses except the last one are very much tailored to the interests of the landless Jews who had fled Egypt and needed land suitable for agriculture and livestock. In fact, it is a recurring classic throughout history, in all kinds of places and times, for people to manipulate others to defend their own interests by appealing to supposed divine revelations. An example is the kings and emperors who claimed to be gods or sons of gods, or clergy who claimed to be the representatives of gods on earth and used that deception to legitimize the power of monarchs and aristocrats in exchange for large estates, wealth, privileges, favors, and protection.

For all the above reasons, it is highly doubtful that such massive violations of human rights proceed from the will of a benevolent God.

The explicit disavowal of these Harmful Verses by the different branches of Christianity and Judaism is very important, as wars continue to be justified in the name of God and the Bible, such as the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, who defends the war against Ukraine (with more than half a million dead and wounded) as an anti-LGBTI crusade, or Netanyahu, who cited the aforementioned verse of Amalek as a basis for his massacre in Gaza, where he has destroyed most of the housing.

Read THE REVOLUTION OF LIVING WITHOUT HARM: Let us reform the harmful part of Christianity

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