How does this God make you feel?

[o_mlly]

You’re right! That’s true. God’s love is unconditional no matter what. My point was not to discount that aspect rather it was to highlight how people create a god of their own preference rather than the one in scripture.

HOWEVER:
Jesus was not recommending that people literally gouge out their eyes or chop off their hands. He was emphasizing the seriousness of sin and the importance of taking whatever steps necessary to repent, or turn away from a sinful life. Nor is he a “door” or a “vine” or a “gate” nor are we supposed to be eating his real “flesh”. But that’s a whole separate kettle of fish. Let’s not go down that rabbit hole.

Again, I cannot stress this enough: Jesus was not commanding Christians to physically mutilate themselves!

Sounds like you’re violating your own rule: “… people create a god of their own preference rather than the one in scripture. … who absolutely hates evil and will purge it any way he sees fit.”

But I think you miss the larger point. The just deserts of sin is physical pain, even the pain of death, if it is only death that will stop the sinning. It is better to suffer here for awhile than there forever.

The genocide of the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15:3) and Canaanites (Deuteronomy 20:16-17) stopped idolatorus infanticide. The Romans (pagans) later finished the job on the Canaanites who escaped to Carthage.

 

[StrawberryJam]

yet the difference between Jesus and the God of the Old Testament is night and day. The God of the OT was vengeful, spiteful, jealous, and had different qualities depending on the source that was writing about him

If you read the Torah you will see that its authors believed in heaven on earth. It is all about reaching the promised land. There is no concept of the possibility of eternal life in heaven. Hence, if you disobeyed God you got your comeuppance here. In the OT it is not until the Book of Wisdom that there is some idea of an afterlife as Christians see it now.
Jesus is seen as a nice guy because in many ways we are like the OT people who look for heaven on earth. But, consider these:

Matt 5:22 “if you are angry with a brother or sister you will be liable to judgment”
John 3:36 “whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God’s wrath”

You can find all sorts of examples like separating the goats and sheep, etc. Jesus is no softer than the OT God, but the emphasis is on what happens after this life.

There goes the idea that these writers were inspired by God. The writer’s belief in something or being unaware of something that is Truth should have no bearing on God’s ability to inspire them to write the Truth. This seems to be one of the worst arguments for the truth of the bible I have ever seen to date.

 

[Think_About_It]

1. All texts in the bible are written by men. They are inspired by God and are a key source of our faith, but they present truth from the perspective of men.

I agree with everything here except the middle statement, which seems, in cases of such extreme terror, not to be true.

This verse is an example of sin having consequences.

And what do you suppose were the sins of the children and infants?

I would be appreciative if you would comment on the specific questions I asked. I think there are many ways to avoid confronting what’s looming in our belief system

I won’t bother to go into a long writ about questioning what Almighty God can or cannot say or do to anyone because God has no need to justify His actions to anyone no matter how we imperfect humans try to rationalize them.

This is a big problem. By failing to confront it in purley rational terms, you’re not really doing a justice to your God. The statement this makes to anybody, believer or unbeliever, is that, sure, our God makes a few blunders here and there, but he doesn’t have to answer to the likes of you.

Perhaps the Amalekites were godless savages if you read the Old Testament and the history of that time with the Isrealites whom God favored as His chosen race and the course of wars with other human races whereby God brought His people into the Promised land.

At the expense of infant lives?

My simple explanation is that it didn’t happen. Neither did Sodom and Gomorrah or the great flood. God doesn’t directly tell people anything now, so why would he have thousands of years ago?

Haha indeed, though I think there are subtler ways to approach this conclusion. I’m not trying to excite peoples’ defences so strongly that they won’t listen to reason.

Whether or not God directed people to slay others or if his angel swept through Egypt and killed all those cute Egyptian babies has nothing to do with salvation…I think that the Church position is most reasonable.

It has everything to do with salvation. If the God of the bible is a a monster (as indeed he is in the OT) we must agree either that he contradicts the supposedly loving Jesus of the NT or that the God-inspired reflections of the bible are completely man-made. They appear to be completely man-made, unless we can imagine an all-loving God ordering the slaughtering of babies (another blatant contradiction; let’s not pretend). If we cannot know in what way any of these horrors can be reconciled, it may be the case (indeed it is the case), that salvation is a mere wish - a wish we had before we understood anything about reason or theology, and a wish we maintained despite the assaults to our reason the bible makes daily.

 

[Think_About_It]

Unless one is an Amalekite from a few thousand years ago, one need not worry.

One need worry. If such tales completely contradict our idea of God and morality, it has implications for the beliefs we treasure so dearly today. You’re avoiding the scenerio, even toying with it for a moment, because it makes you uncomfortable. I challenge you to reply to any of the questions I posed and see that, in your discomfort, you won’t come to think differently and for the better.

…an all powerful almighty creator with full authority who absolutely hates evil and will purge it any way he sees fit.

Infants are evil? The infants must have deserved death in order to consider this a morally just act. God does not punish people that don’t deserve it, does he? Can you even imagine how that’s possible?

This is an oooooold heresy called Marcionism, folks, and has been around since… oh… the second century or so.

It’s a worthy heresy. The NT needed OT “prophecies” in order to be legit. Of course, scholars have discovered the forged nature of such prophecies, but those writing the New Testament knew the importance of maintaining belief, in part, by maintaining tradition. Unfortunately, the OT God is blood-thirsty, nepotistic, tyrant, and the NT God, less so.

How does this God make me feel? WONDERFUL!

Even when he orders the slaughtering of babies? That history of God makes you feel good? Nice piece of Christian romanticism though.

When one considers the behaviour of many of these tribes and nations, actually no it’s really not so disturbing. Particularly as it relates to the Amslekites, as they were followers of Moloch. Part of this faith entailed seasonally going to the metal statue of Moloch, lighting a fire at the base and stoking it to a very great temperature. This statue had outstretched hands to receive gifts, when the “God” was ready (the hands had heated up) you would put an infant in his hands as an offering to the “God” for a good harvest.

The Amslekites were an end stage civilization, they were better off to the world dead than alive. So no, I don’t particularly think that Gods judgment was overly harsh. The Amslekites where completely depraved.

More cheesy justifications. Why didn’t God send a prophet to depraved nations to teach them his statutes? Why kill them instead of teaching them? Nepotism is an unspeakable evil too. It’s God prefering blood over peace. An all-powerful God could have brought about the latter, but decided a bloody holy-war was better (Either that, or the great and terrible God was acctually the work of bigoted, ignorant, men of iron-age palestine, writing God into their conquests because to believe otherwsie, at the time, was not so much an option - they didn’t know anything about the world).

 

[Think_About_It]

I don’t reject the wisdom of the OT, but I do reject the historical aspect of most of it.

True enough; there’s scarcely a shred of archaeological evidence in favour of the events that transpired in the old testament; but the content is more horrific than the level of validity, whatever the case.

Sounds like you’re violating your own rule: “… people create a god of their own preference rather than the one in scripture. … who absolutely hates evil and will purge it any way he sees fit.”

But I think you miss the larger point. The just deserts of sin is physical pain, even the pain of death, if it is only death that will stop the sinning. It is better to suffer here for awhile than there forever.

The genocide of the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15:3) and Canaanites (Deuteronomy 20:16-17) stopped idolatorus infanticide. The Romans (pagans) later finished the job on the Canaanites who escaped to Carthage.

Don’t you find it odd that all of these wars and cultish decrees could have taken place without God? Don’t you find it odd that the barbarism of the God in the OT matched the barbarism of the time. Barbaric men, barbaric thoughts, barbaric writings of God.

There goes the idea that these writers were inspired by God. The writer’s belief in something or being unaware of something that is Truth should have no bearing on God’s ability to inspire them to write the Truth. This seems to be one of the worst arguments for the truth of the bible I have ever seen to date.

Agreed.

Finally, there is a very obvious evasion of my initial questions by Christians on here. You seem very quick to explain away my inquiry without addressing my concerns. If you are secure in your faith, you ought to be able to reply with relative ease. I’m curious to know. So please, anybody that is feeling confident enough to address the opening post, please do so. It would be greatly appreciated.

 

[hellopeople]

Finally, there is a very obvious evasion of my initial questions by Christians on here. You seem very quick to explain away my inquiry without addressing my concerns. If you are secure in your faith, you ought to be able to reply with relative ease. I’m curious to know. So please, anybody that is feeling confident enough to address the opening post, please do so. It would be greatly appreciated.

In my opinion the event you are quoting never happened. That is how I see it.

 

[crazzeto]

True enough; there’s scarcely a shred of archaeological evidence in favour of the events that transpired in the old testament; but the content is more horrific than the level of validity, whatever the case.

Don’t you find it odd that all of these wars and cultish decrees could have taken place without God? Don’t you find it odd that the barbarism of the God in the OT matched the barbarism of the time. Barbaric men, barbaric thoughts, barbaric writings of God.

Agreed.

Finally, there is a very obvious evasion of my initial questions by Christians on here. You seem very quick to explain away my inquiry without addressing my concerns. If you are secure in your faith, you ought to be able to reply with relative ease. I’m curious to know. So please, anybody that is feeling confident enough to address the opening post, please do so. It would be greatly appreciated.

What part of my previous reply to you do you suggest is an evasion?

 

[crazzeto]

More cheesy justifications. Why didn’t God send a prophet to depraved nations to teach them his statutes? Why kill them instead of teaching them? Nepotism is an unspeakable evil too. It’s God prefering blood over peace. An all-powerful God could have brought about the latter, but decided a bloody holy-war was better (Either that, or the great and terrible God was acctually the work of bigoted, ignorant, men of iron-age palestine, writing God into their conquests because to believe otherwsie, at the time, was not so much an option - they didn’t know anything about the world).

There’s nothing cheesy about it, they were too far gone. This would happen to Israel it’s self later on in fact, it would get so bad that God would tell his prophit “Israel will be destroyed, and prophit claiming otherwise is a false prophit so stop praying for them”. Like the Amslekites, the Israelites them selves had become followers of Maloch, among many other false Gods. When the destruction comes, the King of Israel him self had converted and started trying to turn things around but they were too far gone, that generation of Isralites would simply not be converted and God knew it. So like the Amslekites, they were destroyed, and in their specific case only a remniant would remain, because the messiah was already promised to come through them.

There’s nothing cheesy about this, God knows the hearts of men. The Amslekites were not to be converted, they were to be destroyed.

 

[o_mlly]

Don’t you find it odd that all of these wars and cultish decrees could have taken place without God? Don’t you find it odd that the barbarism of the God in the OT matched the barbarism of the time. Barbaric men, barbaric thoughts, barbaric writings of God.

Nothing takes place without God. He created all things. He allows evil, moral and physical, and always brings good out of it.

In the 25th century, Christians could very well wonder how the barbaric men of the 21st century could slaughter millions of children in their mothers’ wombs.

 

[St_Francis]

You’ve no doubt come by his a number of times. Let’s be earnest about how it makes us feel to be placed into the verse [1 Samuel 15:2-3] - In my inflated opinion, the most unsettling verse in the entire bible (though it’s difficult to choose):

“This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”

Please comment on:

Whether or not the wrath is excessive
Does it remind us of God’s perfection, or is it a source of intellectual difficulty?
Is it ever right to lay waste to an entire nation?
Is it ever right to murder infants?

More specifically, how do you feel being placed within the verse? Let’s imagine that God still defeated entire clans for the benefit of some and to the detriment of others. If you are an unfortunate member of that wayward clan, but don’t know in what way or to what extent you’ve strayed, do you consider your annihilation (as well as your infant children’s) to be a morally just thing?

Please comment on:

Whether it would be of moral virture to model our behaviour after God’s
Whether we would contend that God’s ways are perfect if our relationship with him was still as it was in the OT
If the bible did not eventually extend beyond barbarism (as perhaps it does in the NT), would you think it a good book, holy and perfect?

(I understand this will be a heated topic for many, but I’m curious as to peoples’ responses, so please be cool, patient, and above all, thorough)

Any additional comments or questions would be greatly appreciated

If I go into a potter’s shop and start breaking his works, then I would be doing wrong. If the potter himself were to decide that some of the works were no good and destroy them, that would be well within his purview. or even if he said for me to do so.

What is immoral is if we humans decide to destroy God’s work without adequate reason. It is not immoral if He decides to do so, as we are His.

 

[LilyM]

If I go into a potter’s shop and start breaking his works, then I would be doing wrong. If the potter himself were to decide that some of the works were no good and destroy them, that would be well within his purview. or even if he said for me to do so.

What is immoral is if we humans decide to destroy God’s work without adequate reason. It is not immoral if He decides to do so, as we are His.

Amen!

Let me tell a story from my childhood. My father gave me a cigar once when I was a youngster (he’d received some as a Christmas present). The effect, which he was counting on, was that the cigar made me cough, choke, turn green, puke and decide never to smoke again, which I haven’t.

God is quite capable of doing this sort of aversion-therapy on a cosmic level.

Quite likely the best option was to eliminate one nation of human-sacrificers (who in His ominiscience He knew were in any event doomed, to a man woman and child) in order to teach billions of followers of the Abrahamic faiths down the millennia that such things were wrong.

The alternative was to allow the Amalekites to live and further taint our fathers in faith - who were in any event prone to abandon God and return to the worship of Moloch and like deities that they learned from their neighbours.

Risky strategy for my father, sure, but God on the other hand knew it would pay off.

 

[bleh_confused]

You’ve no doubt come by his a number of times. Let’s be earnest about how it makes us feel to be placed into the verse [1 Samuel 15:2-3] - In my inflated opinion, the most unsettling verse in the entire bible (though it’s difficult to choose):

“This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”

Please comment on:

Whether or not the wrath is excessive
Does it remind us of God’s perfection, or is it a source of intellectual difficulty?
Is it ever right to lay waste to an entire nation?
Is it ever right to murder infants?

More specifically, how do you feel being placed within the verse? Let’s imagine that God still defeated entire clans for the benefit of some and to the detriment of others. If you are an unfortunate member of that wayward clan, but don’t know in what way or to what extent you’ve strayed, do you consider your annihilation (as well as your infant children’s) to be a morally just thing?

Please comment on:

Whether it would be of moral virture to model our behaviour after God’s
Whether we would contend that God’s ways are perfect if our relationship with him was still as it was in the OT
If the bible did not eventually extend beyond barbarism (as perhaps it does in the NT), would you think it a good book, holy and perfect?

(I understand this will be a heated topic for many, but I’m curious as to peoples’ responses, so please be cool, patient, and above all, thorough)

Any additional comments or questions would be greatly appreciated

hmmm…this raises a few questions, and sorry if you feel you haven’t been getting direct responses, ill try my best to put this idea of a vengeful, arbitrarily punishing God to rest. Obviously that is not what He is.

1. God cannot change, if He changed that would imply that at somepoint He was imperfect. therefore, at no time was He hateful or veangeful, because those motives contradict His perfect nature.
2. the early OT as a historical source is very shaky…like using genesis for the basis of science (NO ONE START AN EVOLUTION DEBATE). also as someone said above, these tales may have been written down at a much later time from the actual occurence, so they may have been slowly embellished.
3. TRANSLATION ERRORS, TRANSLATION ERROS, TRANSLATION ERRORS!!! i doubt anyone here is an expert in ancient Jewish language, so perhaps the original words wouldn’t have sounded as harsh to the Jewish people as they do to us.
4. you seem to be very concerned with the infant sacrafice thing, however, you don’t need to be so concerned about this. These children are obviously innocent; therefore, if they were to be killed that does not automatically mean they will be condemned, God is LOVE, what purpose would He have for condemning infants?
5. one main rule for interpreting Sacred Scripture is that that portion of Scripture must be interpreted within the context of all scripture. one verse isn’t going to contradict what we obviously know to be true…that God is fair and loving.
6. a nice little note: the most common word to describe God in the OT is merciful

and to fiberzilla: firstly i’d like to point out that yes, the Eucharist is the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ…look at the various Eucharistic miracles of the Host becoming flesh.

secondly, why is it you seem to have such a negative view of God? you make Him seem like someone who hardly wants us around, HE LOVES US!!! you say He’s not some cosmic ‘buddy’ but actually He can be. One of the great things about sanctifying grace is that it makes us pleasing in the eyes of God and helps us to become His friends. im not personally attacking you, your view just seems somewhat depressing to me…id just like to show you that God can be your friend. i mean i’d like to think He’s my friend.

 

[cynic]

The genocide of the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15:3) and Canaanites (Deuteronomy 20:16-17) stopped idolatorus infanticide. The Romans (pagans) later finished the job on the Canaanites who escaped to Carthage.

And what of the souls of those who didn’t take part in that practice?

 

[hellopeople]

If I go into a potter’s shop and start breaking his works, then I would be doing wrong. If the potter himself were to decide that some of the works were no good and destroy them, that would be well within his purview. or even if he said for me to do so.

What is immoral is if we humans decide to destroy God’s work without adequate reason. It is not immoral if He decides to do so, as we are His.

It is just completely unnecessary. God has shown the ability to effect the goodness in people’s hearts (eg: hardening the heart of the pharaoh so he would follow the Israelites) yet he decides to just destroy certain groups of people. And if he kills people for being bad, why not the devil, the most evil of all creation?

 

[St_Francis]

It is just completely unnecessary. God has shown the ability to effect the goodness in people’s hearts (eg: hardening the heart of the pharaoh so he would follow the Israelites) yet he decides to just destroy certain groups of people.

God has the ability to see into people’s hearts, so anything He does would be just.

(And my own personal question is, is “God hardened his heart” analogous to “She made me angry”?)

And if he kills people for being bad, why not the devil, the most evil of all creation?

The devil is spiritually dead by his own hand.

 

[StrawberryJam]

God has the ability to see into people’s hearts, so anything He does would be just.(And my own personal question is, is “God hardened his heart” analogous to “She made me angry”?)

The devil is spiritually dead by his own hand.

Why so?

 

[Schn]

Genocide is still immoral, even if supposedly ordered by God. That anyone would condone the actions of the attackers is alarming.

 

[AntiTheist]

This paticular story of this god makes me feel relieved that there is no evidence that such a monster exists.

 

[o_mlly]

And what of the souls of those who didn’t take part in that practice?

I do not have the “wheelbase” to judge others’ souls. Saving my own is a full time job.

 

[hellopeople]

This paticular story of this god makes me feel relieved that there is no evidence that such a monster exists.

lol, how have you written 500 posts of nonsense, with a name like antitheist, and not been banned?