Is God at work in our violence?

Despite what we may think, are we actually living in the most peaceful period in the history of our species? Steven Pinker, a highly respected but nonetheless controversial American academic, believes exactly that.
Steven Pinker
The two world wars, conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, genocides in Rwanda and Darfur and other atrocities are still fresh in our collective memories. Add to that the ever-present horrors of Iraq and Afghanistan and it’s not surprising that we associate modernity with unspeakable aggression. In our minds, earlier generations are just less violent, just less pathologically self-destructive and just more harmonious.

Pinker, is at pains to dispel what he calls “the myth of violence” by arguing that in fact our ancestors were far more violent than we are and that violence has been in decline for long stretches of time. He also admit that this statement may seem somewhere between hallucinatory and obscene.

How then does he reach this startling conclusion? Well, he points to very compelling evidence which shows a decline in violence on a millennial, century and even decade scale. Archaeological evidence, for example, showing that there was a 60% - 15% likelihood for a male of a prehistoric hunter-gatherer society to meet his demise in violence compared to the meager 3% in a 20’th century world (and that includes all the deaths from both world wars).

Prehistoric versus modern human society is definitely a leap, but you may find the evidence on the decade scale to be the most astounding. Since 1945, worldwide there has been a steep decline in interstate wars. Statistics tracking the number of battle deaths show a decline from 60000 per conflict per year in the 1950’s to less than 2000 deaths per conflict per year in this decade.

If anything, Pinker’s observations raise challenging questions about our perceptions of violence and its prevalence in our time. One explanation is that we are perhaps now more than ever convinced that every human life is priceless.

As a Christian this rather empirical perspective points to a deeper spiritual reality that I have always held to be true. God is at work in all of human history, a divine force that is constantly seeking to redeem humanity from self-destruction and despair.

He has not abandoned his creation into the hands of a species that frequently chooses to abandon him. Through a perfect and definitive act of revelation in Jesus Christ, he has called us home by taking on the very nature of our humanity and then being subjected to one of the most odious forms of torture and execution.

If God is intimately involved in the course of human affairs it means that he is present with every man or woman who stepped up to confront an enemy. He is present with these people who have given of their lives, who like Christ made the ultimate sacrifice for those he calls friends.

We look upon this violence and the cost of human life and we are rightly appalled.  But let us never forget that nothing in human history is beyond or beneath the transformative power of God’s presence, that even in the midst of futile, pathological and heinous self-destruction God is at work. This is a great truth. God cannot stop us committing violence upon one another because of fear or greed or jealousy. But God is always at the task of ushering in a kingdom, a kingdom that is set upon a foundation of sacrificial love.

On Sunday we remembered those who have fallen and continue to fall in the violence of our time. We do this to remind ourselves of the priceless dignity of their lives and human life in general.  But we should also be painfully aware that the great work of God’s kingdom is in our hands, that it cannot be shaken by the despots or the misguided powerbrokers of our day. So as Christians, we do not remember passively but also offer ourselves as living sacrifices for that cause, the words of St Paul ringing in our ears “Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.” (2 Thessalonians 3:13)