The Encourager
“The Innocent with the Guilty? - by Jeff Curtis”
The Innocent with the Guilty?
By Jeff Curtis
The Old Testament contains the idea of group accountability. That is, the guilt of one person could contaminate a whole group of people; and the guilt of the group made individual members guilty, even though they may not have been directly involved in any wrongdoing. When “corporate guilt” is punished, the whole group is punished, even though not all are equally guilty. For example, in Joshua 7, God punished Achan’s individual sin by causing Israel to lose a battle at Ai, with the loss of thirty-six Israelite lives. The whole nation of Israel shared Achan’s guilt, and his punishment included the death of his whole family.
In a sense, the idea of community responsibility also applies today. When an individual breaks the law and goes to jail, everyone in his family pays a price for his wrongdoing. A member of the church who sins may suffer personal consequences, but his sin also hurts the entire church.
This concept may explain the destruction of the Midianite camp, including some who were innocent. They were all part of a guilty nation; therefore, all those in the Midianite camp were collectively guilty and deserving of punishment.
Another important factor in this event is the element of influence. If the Midianite male children had been allowed to live among the Israelites, they may have influenced the Israelites to turn away from God. Perhaps even at a very early age, they had become so engrossed in the Midianites’ false religion and low morality that their presence among the Israelites would have posed a continuing threat to Israel’s standing with God. Destroying the Midianite children, then, was like cutting out an infected part of the body in order to keep the infection from spreading.
The best view regarding the destruction of the innocent Midianites is simply to say, “God did it, and that means it was right and fair and just!” Too often, when questions are raised about God’s behavior, we try to solve the problem backward. We ask, “How can we show that God is just, fair, loving, and right.” Instead, we ought to proclaim that God is God: That means He is just, fair, loving and right – whether or not we can explain His actions.
Of course, the fact that God required the destruction of a group of people because of their sinfulness in Old Testament times doesn’t mean that He approves of the employing force to destroy unbelief or unbelievers today. Christ’s kingdom is “not of this world” (John 18:36). The only weapon Christians are authorized to use in their war against Satan, sin, and error is the Word of God (Ephesians 6:17).
When we say that God is unfair, we are like a lump of clay complaining because the potter hasn’t made it the way it wants to be. What right does the clay have to tell the potter how to go about his business? (Notice Romans 9:20-21). Saying, “I’m not going to believe in God because He allows or causes bad things to happen” is like saying, “Since the weather has caused damage to my home or my crops, I won’t believe in the weather anymore.” We can’t control the sun or the rain; but we cannot pretend they are nonexistent when they displease us. Similarly, we can’t dismiss God as nonexistent when He does not meet our expectations.
The thought of judging God is ridiculous. God is the source of our sense of fairness. We don’t need to presume to know more about justice than our Creator
