No, it wouldn’t apply to rape; that’s an invalid extrapolation. The assertion isn’t one of absolute license (“I made you, so I
own you”), but one of the nature of creation and the giving of life. If it were the former, then rape would be fair game; but it’s not. Yes, God is Lord and Master; but that doesn’t imply that He’s cruel. Rape is sin that’s about usurping power that does not belong to one – it’s a sin that says “I have no rights over your body, but I’m going to take them for my own anyway.” That is
not something we’d ascribe to God.
They are, if the line of reasoning were valid; but it’s not. As an example, it’s like saying, “a parent has the right to discipline his child, based on his responsibilities as parent”, and then countering, “well, if the parent has that right, then the parent has the right to discipline through sexual exploitation.” No way! The former does not imply the latter! The attempt to assert that a parent doesn’t have the right of discipline because he does not have the right to exploit the child is just poor logic.
This is correct and, I think, an appropriate approach to the fundamental issue in question, which seems, on the surface, to be whether God has the moral right to command that innocent children be killed, but, I suspect, the real issue is whether we, as believers, could find a way to have faith in or be subject to a God who would command that innocent children be killed. This is fundamentally a question of the object of faith. Do we have faith in God or in ourselves?
For that answer, and this is why punting to metaphor doesn’t cut it, we have to look at the man who is considered the “father” of faith - Abraham. In fact, God issued this very same command to Abraham, that he kill an innocent child - his own innocent child - to precisely determine whether Abraham finally had faith in God rather than in himself.
This is why the question is so vexing. It puts THAT issue on the line. It would seem that contending that God would NEVER issue such a command is NOT having faith in God but, rather, having faith in the restraints that we place upon God. If we can hold him accountable and humane, then we can determine what he will or will not command and, thereby, hold him accountable to our standards. Under those conditions, we might be able to muster a modicum of trust in him. Yet, the faith is in our own capacity to be moral instead of in God to be God.
This might appear to endorse a kind of free-for-all permission principle where to do whatever one can conjure up as a ”God command" will be right and good, but that isn’t so. To have faith IN God, it is necessary to KNOW, TRUST and LOVE God. Merely making a claim with regard to what God commands is not sufficient. Abraham knew God, he also loved and trusted God. He knew that God and not some wild imagining was where the command to sacrifice Isaac came from. God commanded the act and Abraham knew HE commanded the act - that is what makes Abraham the father of faith. Not that he was willing to kill in God’s name, but, rather, that he trusted in God without reservation and demonstrated that trust by his faith.
The problem with the contention that God would never command the killing of innocents is patently false. God did command Abraham to kill Isaac, who was innocent as far as Abraham was concerned, and Abraham’s willingness to carry out the command showed his trust in God, not in himself. He could not deny the source of the command and he knew he could not override the demand precisely because THAT would NOT be faith in God, but, rather, faith in his own ability to determine the good.
Abraham was not a bloodthirsty callous fellow. He loved Isaac more than he loved himself. The question was, did he love and trust God more than he loved and trusted himself - or Sarai?
There is far more at stake here than answering atheists who neither know nor trust God. Who is ultimately in command? Do we know him? Love him? Trust him?
Jesus was innocent. Yet, he knew that it was God the Father’s will that he be crucified. “Not my will, but yours be done.” Abraham would much rather have killed himself than Isaac, his son whom he loved.
Who do we trust? is the salient question - God or our own conceptions of morality? Who is the source and summit of our faith? A moral code or the Living God? To trust the Living God we must first know the Living God. That is the problem for non-believers who neither know nor trust him. It is also a problem for jihadist types who claim to love him but neither know nor trust him because they, too, can only cite a moral ideology because they believe God is their master rather than their Father. They don’t dare get close enough to God to find out, nor do they permit others to do so by threat of the sword. The distance from God is enforced by threat of the sword.
Atheist types fear coming to know God because they fear that their autonomy will be put into jeopardy, which is why they cite the problematic passages as a way of keeping others and themselves from coming to know God. The passages instill fear and distrust which keeps the distance between God and man viable. Perfect love, however, casts out all fear.
