Question by Moatilliatta: Serious question for christians?
Someone posted this website: http://godandscience.org as a good source of clarity on biblical contradictions that just seem to make no logical sense, and where opposers draw the majority of their material from…. ok, so I peeped this site and I read the article posted why the god of the old testament went around on a tirade for like 12 books.. this is it here: http://godandscience.org/apologetics/killergod.html
Here, the author attempts to balance god’s love with god’s ‘righteousness’.
God destroyed entire cities because its occupants were evil.. well, first of all god actually doesn’t do the dirty work himself sometimes, he tells his people those people are evil and they have to kill them.. so my first question is why is the most high omnipotence who can bat an eyelash and create at whim not just do it himself??? He’d rather dominate you gangs-of-ny style and send his thumb breakers? Anyway..
The author continues to argue one of god’s people goes to bat for the evil city and says if there was anyone righteous in the city would he spare it? To this god says yes, even if there was but ten righteous people he would spare it.. so upon further review they god changes his mind???? What’s really disturbing is the how wishy washy this guy is.. you mean to tell me god OVERLOOKED something? That his sentiment is subject to reproach?
You also mean to tell me the all seeing eye of god has to physically travel to a location to know whether it’s as evil as his subjects report? Does god read the paper on the can too? I couldn’t believe what horse s#@$ is in this story till I actually read it over in an online bible.
There’s too many things that fly in the face of gods supposed all encompassing manner for it not to become ludicrous not to at least question at most burn as rubbish.
Projecting his justification from a stand point that attempts to mix water & oil in intertwining the idea that love and hate share the same mechanics. Posing that one can be acted upon thru the tenets of its polar opposite. It’s true love and hate have a large gray area in between them, but the in between is really a form of convoluted egoism of one or the other to justify ones own interests. In reality love is love.. if you operate from a state of pure love (which most still understand to be some point of that gray area), real universal love, you wouldn’t even pass that sort of judgment on another to begin with (tho this directly contradicts gods image as the almighty judge), let alone turn someone to a pillar of salt for turning their head in a moment gripped by fear. Love is a force of nature as much as any measure of gravity that unifies with a compassionate gentility not fiery brimstone… to argue from that stand point is to travel into that gray area of what love actually is.
I’ve voiced what I have to say long enuf, I’m curious with that being said, what christian’s L-O-G-I-C-A-L explanation is. How is it you’ve come to overstand these important anecdotes in light of who god is or what he claims to be? Because my bet is you haven’t settled much of your inquiry at all, and believing something that doesn’t make sense to you is just sheepish, so at the least I hope my questions require you to think for yourself.
Best answer:
Answer by jus’ sayin’
yeah man it gets my panties all in a wad when i think about that stuff too.
What do you think? Answer below!
If you don’t want to believe, you won’t. It’s as simple as that. The whole point of the Old Testament & the “old” covenant is that we see how wonderful the New Testament & New covenant are. Jesus came so that we could stand before God, made spotless. Does that mean we don’t mess up? No, at times we will, just that God looks at us and sees Jesus. Sorry if I’m being more confusing. *sigh* Old Testament is physical. The enemy was without. God had set apart the Jews to be holy to Him, & so He knew if any of the enemies were left alive, they would pollute His chosen with their idol worship & ungodly practices. Now with Jesus, the enemy we battle is not flesh & blood but evil, & the battlefield is now in the mind. So now it’s the “Spirit realm” if you will.
Again though, I read the Bible before I became a Christian, and it never really made sense or came alive to me until I became a Christian. All I know is that the God I serve IS a God of love. That’s what drew me in & I’ll never be the same.
We have thought for ourselves and do not view the Bible as a textbook to be picked apart with academic scrutiny. It is a book that describes God, the history of his dealings with humankind, the way to salvation, and how to live the Christian life. These are not always presented in a literal sense. Moreover, when we question God’s motives and integrity, are we not placing ourselves in the position to judge him–the sovereign creator of the universe? Who are we to do that?
The Bible is true and everything that it says has come true that can possible come true up to this point. Everything that we are told to do also has been tested and found to be true. Therefore, the whole thing is quite logical.
hmm…ur sentence structure and grammar kinda fell apart a bit towards the end, so forgive me if I don’t understand your question exactly. but based on what i read, you seem to focus on the contradiction of a loving God killing people. i think the main point is that God is not just about love. The Bible said that God is also to be feared and respected. how can a loving God be feared if he’s all love? obviously God has the power to kill us and has done so in the past. Does this make God imperfect? no. just because God’s merciless actions may make him seem imperfect to us, but really, in the end, who are we to judge? an analogy for this is imagine we are just a bunch of dogs obeying a master. The master is eating a piece of chocolate. we want to eat it too. we beg and whine, but the master just won’t let us. we think the master is being unfair, and that if he is a loving master, he will share the chocolate. but there’s no way we can understand that if we eat the chocolate, we will die (dogs can’t eat chocolate). so i think even if we think God’s actions are too crazy, who are we to judge? our brain capacities just ain’t enough to understand God. it’s the same thing with evolution (which I believe in btw). you can’t see evolution if you look at a time span of a few hundreds of years. you need to go thousands, millions of years to see an effect. same thing here. if we just judge God based on our understanding and our limited lifespan, we miss out the big picture
we have all the proof we need God is alive and living his life in and through us all we do is abide in him and in his word daily and he is always leading us in all truth,and he make our paths stright because he take care of all who have come to him through faith in his Son. we are heirs to his new covenant hebrews 10:16,18 receiving the offer of life 1 john 5:11,13 read it.
Excellent question and to be honest there are several points in here that you make I feel need to be addressed. I will make it easy and section off your points I want to address proceeded by you comment and followed by my response.
1. ‘first of all god actually doesn’t do the dirty work himself sometimes, he tells his people those people are evil and they have to kill them’
You raise an interesting point here in that you do note that the bible provided examples of God’s wrath being exacted in various forms, 1. through is own actions and 2. through the use of human proxy. Obviously many people are aware of the great flood God sent to destroy the world safe Noah and his family (God’s own action) and some people also know about the examples of David and Goliath or Joshua and city of Jericho (God’s action via proxy). (if you are unfamiliar with these examples please feel free to look them up)
Now if you really pay attention to the stories and read them not as an anecdote or fictional story but more as examples of moral guidelines and advise on how to live then you will understand that the purpose is quite clear. When God destroyed the earth with a flood he did this with great lament, he didn’t want to kill thousands upon thousands of people however we gave him no choice. We all have free will and the ability to choose right and wrong but many of us chose wrong and then deny accountibility for our actions. We choose to live sinful lives. When we are approached with the idea that we are accountable we go even further to deniy or denounce the wrongness of our actions. So what is God left to do, allow everyone to keep living terrible lives filled with hate, anger, rape, murder, theft, and everything that is wrong with humanity or offer the option to repent and recieve forgivness? What happens when no one wants to repend but they want to keep doign bad things? What do we do with criminals who do very bad things don’t want to admit they are guilty? do we allow them to walk the streets with everyone else or do we put them to death or lock them away forever? When left with no choice God will act with rightious vengance of which only he can act and clean the slate. Other times he will use his rightous proxies to act on his behalf like when David slue Goliath. There was no need to come down and smite Goliath when God could use David as an example of what rightousness is and how you are empowered by God when you live rightously. Could any man have taken down Goliath, no it was God acting through David. So really it is God’s actions and decision enacted through people whom he choses.
Continued in second post
Interesting, First of all, You do not want a Logical explanation, You do not or are not Curious at all what our explanation is, No matter what we say in any conceivable way known to man is going to be dismissed out of hand, You pretty much stated that at the end by saying that you Hope your questions will require us to think for ourselves, Well Mister, I have Thought for myself and any evidence you have to the contrary is rejected.
I know why God Commanded such Violence in the Old testament, and if you did diligent study in an Honest Open minded research without a negative agenda or with Bias, you would see that, Now if You say you did ? I will call you a Liar to your face.
Tribes of People who Split off early in the Old testament were allowed to grow and become evil, and The Children of Israel allowed it to happen, so when God command the Israelite s to put an end to it, it was as if God were telling them, “This is your mess, you clean it up”
Unlike us, God knows the future. God knew what the results would be if Israel did not completely eradicate the Amalekites. If Israel did not carry out God’s orders, the Amalekites would come back to “haunt” the Israelites again and again. Saul claimed to have killed everyone but the Amalekite king Agag (1 Samuel 15:20). Obviously Saul was lying…just a couple of decades later there were enough Amalekites to take David and his men’s families captive (1 Samuel 30:1-2). After David and his men attacked the Amalekites and rescued their families, 400 Amalekites escaped. If Saul had fulfilled what God had commanded him, this never would have occurred. Several hundred years later, a descendant of Agag, Haman, tried to have the entire Jewish people exterminated (see the book of Esther). So, Saul’s incomplete obedience almost resulted in Israel’s destruction. God knew this would occur, so He ordered the extermination of the Amalekites ahead of time.
In regard to the Canaanites, God commanded, “However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them — the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites — as the LORD your God has commanded you. Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the LORD your God” (Deuteronomy 20:16-18). The Israelites failed in this mission as well, and exactly what God said would happen occurred (Judges 2:1-3; 1 Kings 11:5; 14:24; 2 Kings 16:3-4). God did not order the extermination of these people to be cruel, but rather to prevent even greater evil from occurring in the future.
Probably the most difficult part of these commands from God is that God ordered the death of children and infants as well. Why would God order the death of innocent children? (1) Children are not innocent (Psalm 51:5; 58:3). (2) These children would have likely grown up as adherents to the evil religions and practices of their parents. (3) By ending their lives as children, God enabled them to have entrance into Heaven. We strongly believe that all children who die are accepted into Heaven by the grace and mercy of God (2 Samuel 12:22-23; Mark 10:14-15; Matthew 18:2-4).
Again, this answer does not completely deal with all the issues. Our focus should be on trusting God even when we do not understand His ways. We also have to remember that God looks at things from an eternal perspective, and that His ways are higher than our ways. God is just, righteous, holy, loving, merciful, and gracious. How His attributes work together can be a mystery to us – but that does not mean that He is not who the Bible proclaims Him to be.
Because of God’s righteous and holy character, all sin—past, present, and future—must be judged. Yet God in His infinite love has provided a payment for sin and a way of reconciliation so that sinful man can escape His wrath. We see this wonderful truth in verses like 1 John 4:10: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” In the Old Testament, God provided a sacrificial system whereby atonement could be made for sin. However, this sacrificial system was only temporary and merely looked forward to the coming of Jesus Christ who would die on the cross to make a complete substitutionary atonement for sin. The Savior who was promised in the Old Testament is fully revealed in the New Testament. Only envisioned in the Old Testament, the ultimate expression of God’s love, the sending of His Son Jesus Christ, is revealed in all its glory in the New Testament. Both the Old and the New Testaments were given “to make us wise unto salvation” (2 Timothy 3:15). When we study the Testaments closely, it is evident that God “does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17).
Show Them No Mercy: 4 Views on God and Canaanite Genocide
By: Stanley N. Gundry
http://www.christianbook.com/show-them-mercy-views-canaanite-genocide/stanley-gundry/9780310245681/pd/45688?event=AFF&p=1011693&
Knowing God
By: J.I. Packer
http://www.christianbook.com/knowing-god-j-i-packer/9780830816507/pd/1650X?event=AFF&p=1011693&