The Expansionist Gene of The Biblical God
The Appetite for dominion
Every Nigerian Gen X fan of the Superstory series would be familiar with the popular anecdote that appears at the end of each episode — “We are pencils in the hands of the creator.” Three years ago, it dawned on me that there is no difference between the pencils and the creator. They are one. This concealment partly caters to our love of mystery, but also protects the integrity of our earthly, carnal existence. Just as components must be shielded for devices to function properly, our humanity requires that our god-side remains under wraps. However, any patient eye can see that the insatiable seed of the relentless quest for dominion, expansion, and limitless sovereignty in the men of Gods is the same compulsive desire to conquer and subjugate in the gods of Men. I grew up with him. I studied his morphologies and it took me a while to trace its territorial ambition in the bible from its genesis to the revelation of its intentions. It is not a mistake. Humans hide their gods as they hide their intestines. To an untrained eye, these gods are the puppeteers but don’t be confused - Men are the real puppeteers. Gods are the puppets of men’s machinations.
It all starts with
1. THE BEGINNING
Genesis 1:28
And God said, “Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
This establishes God’s original command for humans to proliferate and exert dominance over the earth but then the serpent derailed this plan and God decided to create an aperture for the fulfillment of this mandate.
Introducing…
2. THE PATRIARCHS: PROMISED LANDS AND DESCENDANTS
Genesis 12:1–3 God promises to make Abraham’s descendants a great nation and bless all peoples through him.
Genesis 15:5 — This is the first visualization exercise recorded in the bible. Abraham’s God told him associated the size of his descendants to the innumerable number of the stars.
Genesis 15:18–21 — God granted Abraham and his offspring the land from the Nile to the Euphrates. Land acquisition in those days often occurred through conquest and subjugation of other peoples, rather than through legal purchases or treaties. The concept of absolute private property rights was not as well-developed. So it makes sense that God served as expressed basis for claiming the land from others already living there even if the biblical narrative maintains that it was still ultimately God’s prerogative to determine the territory boundaries for his chosen people. The complex interplay of human ambition and perceived divine mandate was laid bare.
A recurring theme of God’s relationship with Abraham and other patriarchs was the promise of numerous descendants and vast territorial possession. This led me to believe that The God of Abraham wasn’t a deity in the heaven, but rather a psychological program driving the ambition for land accumulation and realizing the fantasy of having a prolific lineage It is a psychological program and an ideological construct for land accumulation and the increasing familial domination over lands and peoples through proliferation of offspring to inherit the promised territories. After Abraham’s death, this psychological program persisted within Isaac, continuing its mission of territorial expansion and multiplying progeny.
Genesis 26:3&4 — “Dwell in this land, and I will be with you and bless you; for to you and your descendants I give all these lands, and I will perform the oath which I swore to Abraham your father. And I will make your descendants multiply as the stars of heaven. I will give all these lands, and I will perform the oath which I swore to Abraham your father. And I will make your descendants all the lands; and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed:”
The same was with Jacob in Genesis 28:14 where The God of Abraham appeared to him and gave him the same promise of land ownership and the multiplication of descendants. However, starting with Israel, the God of Abraham decided to go Rambo.
3. THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT
Exodus 3:7–8 — The God of Abraham, now appended with Isaac, and Jacob appeared to Moses, and told him that he will deliver the Israelites from Egypt to a “good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey”. It is a variation of ‘leave this town for a land I will show you’ that Abram had. Although, with this case, it is required that such land exists because it would be meaningless to gain freedom without having a place to settle down — something the Israelites bitterly complained about.
Exodus 23:27 -31 — God vows to drive out other nations and give their lands to the Isrealites
Numbers 34:1–15 — God delineates the boundaries of the future promised Land the Israelites are to posses, stretching from the Wildness to the Mediterranean
Deuteronomy 2–3 — Records how God gave the Israelites over Kings Sihon and Og to take possession of their lands east of Jordan
Joshua 1:2–5 God commissions Joshua, promising “Every place…I have given you, as I promised Moses.”
Joshua 6:12 — Details the military campaigns to conquer the lands of Canaan from kingdoms like Jericho, AI, the Amorites, etc.
Joshua 11:16–23 — Summary of Joshua’s complete conquest and distribution of the lands between the tribes
The narrative from Exodus to the Book of Joshua is focused on the Israelites being delivered by God from slavery to being given an expansive “Promised Land” through military conquest over the previous inhabitants. On the surface, it looks like the expansionist ambition of a bloodthirsty deity, but as I said earlier, God said is just a tool for humans to rationalize their actions. This pulse continued all through the old testament even through the rise and captivity of Isreal. The introduction of the messianic persona in the Psalms and the prophets hinted at the coming of a spiritual expansion of God’s reign. It was faint but unmistakably distinct as in:
Psalm 2:8: Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. This started a series of anticipation for a future expansion of God’s rule over all nations
Isaiah 9:7: Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore
Isaiah 49:6: I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.
Like the Psalmist, Isaiah’s prophecies about the Messiah foresaw an eternal and ever-expanding dominion. The salvific component with the expansionist germ got more and more present like in…
Amos 9:11–12: In that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen and repair its breaches, and raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old, that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by my name, declares the Lord who does this.
…where the restoration of David’s kingdom and the inclusion of Gentile nations under God’s rule was promised. Amos wasn’t in alone in this, from Obadiah to Nahum to Hosea to Habakkuk to Zephaniah to Haggai, the germ persisted however with newer vocabularies like covenant, temple, and salvation. Once more, on the surface, it is very easy to attribute these dreams to a god and not to the normal human urge to be a colonial douchebag.
However, all that colonial wetdream got skewed in the Man of Nazareth.
4. JESUS and the NEW TESTAMENT
I was in the university when I learnt Judaism had a different messianic theology from Christianity. In Judaism, the concept of the Messiah (Mashiach) refers to a future human king from the Davidic line who will bring peace and justice to the world. The Jewish belief in the Messiah is focused on a future redemption for the Jewish people and the world, often associated with the coming of a messianic age. This Messiah is not a divine personality or a savior who will die for humanity’s sins, but rather as a political and spiritual leader who will restore the Jewish people to their homeland and usher in an era of peace. This is in tandem with the superlative force of the God of Abraham.
In New Testament Christianity, Jesus Christ is considered the Messiah (Christos) who fulfills the prophecies of the Old Testament regarding the coming of a savior. He is believed to be fully human and fully divine, and that his death and resurrection provide salvation for humanity’s sins. Essentially, the Messianic concept includes the idea of a spiritual redemption through faith in Jesus Christ and his sacrifice on the cross. The person of Jesus subverted the Judaist expectation in many ways, for example, his teachings and actions often diverged from the traditional expectations of a political Messiah who would liberate the Jewish people from their earthly oppressors.
But the central divergence is that while Judaism traditionally expected a Messiah who would establish an earthly kingdom, restore the Davidic monarchy, and bring political liberation to the Jewish people. Jesus, on the other hand, emphasized a spiritual kingdom and focused on spiritual redemption through faith in him rather than political liberation. But will this subversion be free from the innate impetus for dominion that is the crown of the God of Abraham?
At first glance, there appears to be a shift from the more overt physical conquest and subjugation of territory/peoples in the Old Testament to a spiritual warfare motif in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, God commands the Israelites to dispossess the inhabitants of Canaan through military force (Deuteronomy 7:1–2). Whereas in the New Testament, Jesus states “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36) and the warfare is described as “not against flesh and blood” (Ephesians 6:12). However, when you peel back the layer, the New Testament still displays strands of that innate drive for expansionism and total domination, albeit transitioned to the spiritual/supernatural realm.
In the Gospels:
The Great Commission (Matthew 28:19–20) — Jesus commands his disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations”, implying a mandate to spread his teachings globally.
Parables of the Kingdom (Matthew 13) — Parables like the Mustard Seed and the Yeast suggest the Kingdom of God will grow exponentially from small beginnings.
My favorite is Matthew 28:18 where Jesus suffixed ‘all authority has been given to me in heaven and earth’ with ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit’. It is my favorite because ‘baptize’ implies ‘submerge’. When you view that mission statement through that lens, it is literally conquest by absorption. Thankfully, for the most part, this has been interpreted as a literal event of water baptism and a spiritual equivalent of speaking in tongues — both which aren’t violent at all. Of course, it might have been the mission statement of the British colonial kingdom.
Acts of the Apostles:
Acts 1:8 — Jesus tells disciples they will be his “witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” — a clear expansionist mission. The spread of the gospel from Jerusalem outwards to Judea, Samaria, and then the Gentile world as recorded in Acts charts this territorial expansion.
Acts 9 — The dramatic conversion of Paul, the “apostle to the Gentiles”, facilitates the message being taken to all nations.
Acts 19:10 — Notes that “all the residents of Asia” heard the gospel, showing its proliferation.
In 1 Corinthians 15:24–25, it says Christ must “reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.” This subjugating of “all rule, authority and power” echoes the OT conquest narratives.
Revelation 19 depicts Christ waging war against the “kings of the earth” to achieve global conquest of “every tribe, tongue and nation.”
Hell itself, as the place of eternal conscious torment for God’s enemies (Matthew 25:41), can be viewed as the ultimate expression of territorial domination and occupation.
So in spite of the transition from physical warfare to spiritual warfare, the New Testament retains the same innate essence of God’s kingdom proliferating through aggressive conquest/subjugation of all competing powers and peoples — whether human souls on earth or supernatural forces. The “pushing back borders” of opposition until God’s supreme territory is inviolably established. The Old and New Testaments’ narratives are simply different chapters in the saga of God sovereignly and relentlessly expanding the territory under the dominion of His Kingdom rule — by force when necessary. The impetus remains intact, even if the methods evolve.
Certain interpretive approaches to the New Testament, such as Universalism, attempt to downplay or erase the expansionist territorial impulses present within its narrative. Their primary tactic involves employing hermeneutical methods that excessively metaphorize and spiritualize elements which lend themselves to be understood more literally. They are masterful deplorers of overzealous allegorizing that aim to explain away or soften the unpalatable aspects that point towards an underlying drive for domination and conquest within the biblical texts.
Trust me when I say that after extensively surveying these theological landscapes, such revisionist readings always ring hollow and forced. They strain credulity through their disparate efforts to divorce the New Testament vision from the apparent continuum of God’s innate propensity towards territorial acquisition and subjugation under divine sovereignty. I admit that, sometimes, those arguments have the façade of legitimacy since they are cloaked in admirable inclusivistic convictions, however, their interpretive endeavors require a contorted hermeneutic that contravenes the texts’ overall rhetorical thrust. And this brings me to why I write this article.
5. IT’S ALL MAN. IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN MEN
Territorial expansionist desires originate from human ambition rather than divine decree, with God serving as a convenient rationalization device to legitimize and drive these acquisitive inclinations without pricking the conscience. At the core of the biblical narratives depicting an ever-expanding, territory-consuming force lies a human phenomenon — the insatiable longing of our species to dominate, to conquer, to subjugate the unknown under our dominion. Throughout our cultural histories, this innate impulse towards expansionism has powered unceasing cycles of invasion, annexation and colonization across the globe.
Our insatiable drive to acquire, a force that has molded civilizations, carries a psychological weight too heavy for mere mortals to bear alone. This burden compels us to unconsciously create elaborate divine figures — transcendent, archetypal embodiments of authority. By attributing our expansionist agendas to these deities, we seek and create a higher approval that can transforms our actions into righteous crusades ordained by sacred cosmic forces. Bloody campaigns of subjugation become far more palatable, the ethical conscience numbed, when cloaked in the supposed certainty of divine approval.
God, or the multifarious conceptual incarnations of such supreme beings across faiths, serves as the ventriloquist’s dummy into which humanity as a whole funnels its existentially restless, territoriality-fixated id. As we project these impulses onto a God-figure construct, we fashion a conduit of disassociation — where we can afford to distance our subjective cravings from their objective consequences. This ventriloquistic dummy-God serves as the indispensable psychological proxy upholding humanity’s intrinsically territorial cravings at a conceptual remove, never forcing our fragile existential identities to face the civilizational shadow of our own imperialist darkness. God was always but a malleable conceptual artifice, a legitimizing shibboleth that cloaks the naked exercise of humanity’s perpetual passion to stake sovereign claims over contested ground. Humanity itself is the ventriloquist, using faith as a cloak to project fantasies of divinely mandated expansion
And even today, in our modern world ruptured by endless geopolitical clashes over disputed lands from Israel/Palestine to Kashmir to Ukraine, the perennial shadow of expansionist territorialism endures. The bitter inheritances of these boundary-line xenophobias, these senses of theologically codified Manifest Destinies, linger still. For Abraham, it was God. For 21st century citizens, it is the Federal Government.
There is a part of me that wants to believe that by acknowledging this shadow, by pulling back the curtain on the theological and patriotic puppet that grants us distance from our brutal past, we can begin a crucial ethical awakening. But I don’t think that’s possible. I believe human beings are necessitated by survival so steal, kill, and destroy. A pacific response to this drive will be tantamount to death for we only have reference to the fact that crises can only be efficiently resolved by violence. If you set out to be the Messiah that preaches peace, you will be crucified and your lot swill be another man’s. Or even worse — you may be baptized into the narcissism and psychopathy that is necessary to survive living among predators. The options are kill or be killed.
The only other way is to detach oneself from everything, which is impossible yet may be necessary. How can I tell Palestinian children who watched their parents blown apart that the only way to transcend that tragedy is to detach themselves from it? It doesn’t ease or remove the pain. In fact, it creates a cauldron from which more terrifying monsters will erupt. The other remedy is this — whenever you or I encounter this colonialist and imperialist germ, whether in the guise of God or Patriotism, we must call out its origin as Man. We must constantly tear off the curtain and burst the bubbles by declaring that “This is not from God or for Country. It is an agenda of Men.” We may be doing this at the end of a gun’s barrel, or it may be a tirade of hopeless counterarguments against those who think they are doing God’s work. But if this is all we do, it will be worth it.
