There are many answers to the question of why we accept God's violence as part of our theology. We could talk about our perception of God's holiness or our theory about the cross or our concept of the afterlife. We could also consider the role that influential evangelists, pastors, and authors play in our understanding of the Bible.
In the end, though, all our answers come back to a fairly simple premise: We believe God must punish sin because that's what we read in the Bible.
It's there, plain as anything, in Lamentations 1.
Or so we believe.
For the LORD has punished Jerusalem
for her many sins.
— Lamentations 1:5b NLT
Why we accept divine violence is an important question to consider, but it’s not the most interesting question to ask first.
At the beginning of our migration towards A Nonviolent God, a much better question is how.
How can we accept God's violence?