EVIL GOD OF JUDEO-CHRISTIANITY

One too many atimes we as Christians are reminded of the “several atrocities” committed by a "loving" God on a people He created! Skeptics are quick to attribute good fortunes to “chance and luck” but when something negative happens all of a sudden the "great sky daddy" exists and is to be blamed for it.

Just recently I was drawn to a post where a pastor in South Africa offered DETTOL to his church members to drink for reasons best known to him, I engaged the post and got entangled in a written war regarding evil and God.

To start with I’ll post verbatim from a website dedicated to ‘exposing’ the God of the bible and his heinous crimes against humanity!

"For far too long priests and preachers have completely ignored the vicious criminal acts that the Bible promotes. The so called God of the Bible makes Osama Bin Laden look like a Boy Scout. In total, God kills 371,186 people directly and orders another 1,862,265 people murdered. This type of criminal behavior should shock any moral person.” EvilBible.com

Quite a quote that is, and really any Christian with no scriptural backbone would fall for the theatrics engaged, now I do not claim those things didn’t occur neither am i claiming to understand every motive behind divine decision, but instead I want to show why almost all cases can be logically defended, in fact, if God was human he won’t lose any case with a good lawyer. Also some very important factor often missed or avoided is specific context and God support, in the Bible there are places where several incidences happened which God didn’t specifically command implicitly or explicitly, nonetheless it is still recorded in the bible, a very good example is Simeon and Levi attacking the city of Shechem and killing every man (Gen 34:25-30), this was condemned by Jacob their father; he cursed them for that. Another good example is warning against having multiple wives as the King of Israel (Deut 17:15-17) but we notice most kings went against this warning and had several wives.

PERMISSION DOESN’T EQUATE APPROVAL, just because God permits/allows certain acts doesn’t mean he approves of it, Moses killed a man in cold-blood but without God’s approval, David killed Uriah and married his wife Bathsheba also without God’s approval. While evil bible adds these as “God crimes” just reading the bible and taking PROPER context into consideration would show HE clearly shouldn’t be included in the actions by these men and that is one of the major flaws of evil bible’s criticism.

They attempt to ascribe everything negative to God and forget “creaturely freewill” while simultaneously wanting all good things to be ascribed to "luck, chance and individual decision" by the man who has shown constantly that he is deeply flawed.

Initially I wanted to defend and show a logic based defense and justification for some decisions God took in the bible which is considered "evil/immoral" by "today's standards" but I realized it is a deep subject so I'll do so in parts( one for each case), for today's op-ed I'll be talking about murder.

By today's standards, MORALITY IS RELATIVE but for reasons best known to moral relativists they employ 21st-century morals to judge the 1st century; quite the hypocrisy but what do I know?

In the Bible, the old testament is replete with incidences of God ordering genocide of nations, cities, people even animals associated with those people, while much of it sounds gory and utterly immoral there are still solid justification in each case, I'll focus on major incidences in the OT and discuss them in detail.

1. Genocide of Canaanites: Canaan a land of promise, given to descendants of Abraham by Divine decree, God specifically gave the directives to wipe out everything in the place he gave to the Israelites for inheritance and live nothing to breathe, this directive though very harsh and difficult to go through even the Israelites many times refused to follow through with it, but God who gave the directive is way intelligent, knows the future and understand humans more than any man/woman would; knows exactly what why He made the call.

In the Bible, we know the ways of God are higher and His thoughts deeper than men, His judgment justified and fair, His mercy enduring forever and His motives pure. When God gave the harsh command in Deuteronomy/Exodus the Israelites feeling they were wiser than God disobeyed, they having no foresight of why the command for extermination was given(to prevent a future evil) decided to take Canaanites as slaves. 

Deut 20:16 But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: 17 But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the HITTITES, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee: 18 That they teach you NOT TO DO AFTER ALL THEIR ABOMINATIONS, which they have done unto their gods; SO SHOULD YE SIN AGAINST THE LORD YOUR GOD. 

Right there in the same chapter/verse the reason for the command to THE ISRAELITES was given
A) To prevent abomination of those nations B) To prevent the Israelites from sinning against God C) To prevent polytheism and paganism as though nations were neck deep into paganism.

  Amazingly the Israelites went against this directive probably because they felt the command was harsh and they paid dearly for it as seen in several verses in the OT. In the book of Kings Kings Ahaz/Ahab/Solomon were influenced by paganism of these people who God asked to exterminate

1Kings 11:1 But king Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and HITTITES; 2 Of the nations concerning which the LORD said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in unto you: for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods: Solomon clave unto these in love.

2Kings 16:3 But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, yea, and MADE HIS SON TO PASS THROUGH THE FIRE, ACCORDING TO THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE HEATHEN, whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel.

For disobeying the direct command of God, a curse was placed on them as recorded in Judges 2: 3 Wherefore I also said, I will not drive them out from before you; but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare unto you.

2. Ammonites: They refused to allow Israelites pass, even after MOSES offered to pay for any cost incurred in feeding animals and consuming water but they still refused probably due to fear and they took this to another level by paying Balaam to curse the Israelites, when this backfired he came up with a genius plan to intermarry and It worked like charm, for this reason, God specifically told the Israelites to avoid them not before plaguing the Israelites for their disobedience in marrying with heathens.

3. Genocide of Amalekites: The Amalekites are an interesting bunch, historically they can be traced to Esau, Bible students know of the history between himself and Jacob(Israel), this feud was epic and lasted for a very long time until the last lot of them were eliminated by King Xerxes/Ahasuerus of Persia. In Exodus, God in his omniscience ordered the Jews to wipe out every living descendant of Amalek for the evil they did and he reminded them in the books of Deuteronomy and Samuel through Prophet Moses and Samuel respectively but the Children of Israel, as usual, refused to listen to God; although most people who were in the wilderness on the journey to Canaan died there again due to disobedience and murmuring; apparently they infected their offspring’s with the spirit of doubt and disobedience.

Exodus 17: 14 And the LORD said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: FOR I WILL UTTERLY PUT OUT THE REMEMBRANCE OF AMALEK FROM UNDER HEAVEN. 15 And Moses built an altar, and called the name of it Jehovahnissi: 16 For he said, Because the LORD hath sworn that the LORD will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.

1Sam 15:2 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I REMEMBER THAT WHICH AMALEK DID TO ISRAEL, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. 3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.

The Amalekites launched a premeditated attack on the Israelites at the lowest point in their lives, when they were weak and weary from thirst, the brutality was what made God to remind them of what transpired how the Amalekites attacked the Israelites who were most likely women and children and feared not God; therefore God gave the command to exterminate them completely. The Israelites, of course, didn’t obey this command and in years they found out exactly what disobedience to God can lead to.

{(Deut 25:17-19) 17 Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt; 18 How he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary; and he feared not God.}

CRIMES OF THE AMALEKITES

• The Amalekites joined the Canaanites to attack Israel(Numbers 14:45),
• they teamed with the Moabites to oppress Jews(Judges 3:13),
• they also collabo with Midianites to attack the Jews(Judges 6:3),
• they stole the wives of David and his men in Ziklag(1Sam 30:1-31),
• they plundered the food supplies of the Jews and were responsible for killing most Jews.
• Haman in the Book of Esther was an Amalekite, a descendant of King Agag whose life King Saul spared (Esther 3:1-6, 13) and he had an agenda to wipe the children from the surface of the earth {Esther 3:13 And the letters were sent by posts into all the king's provinces, TO DESTROY, TO KILL, AND TO CAUSE TO PERISH, ALL JEWS, BOTH YOUNG AND OLD, LITTLE CHILDREN AND WOMEN, IN ONE DAY,} but God in his infinite mercy saved them through Mordechai and Esther while Haman with his sons were hanged on the gallows thus effectively ending any trace of the Amalekites from the world.

To understand how God took this disobedience seriously, first he rejected King Saul because he spared the life of King Agag of Amalek (1 Samuel 15:20-23), next He promised the Children of Israel that they would pay dearly and they did, but since He made a blessing to curse anyone who curses the descendants of Abraham, God in His infinite mercy still rescued them and protected them from their oppressors even though sometimes He allowed their oppressors to gain the upper hand.

Time and space would fail me to write about the destruction of cities of Ai and Jericho, the 42 "children" torn by 2 she-Bears when they mocked Prophet Elisha, the killing of 450 prophets of Baal by Elijah and his men(God didn’t tell him to do so), death sentences for wide variety of offense ranging from sorcery, to blasphemy, homosexuality, and all the way down to false prophesies{Mosaic sentences which are now obsolete under the New Covenant}.

Probably the most heinous aspect/view of this command is that of killing everything and this includes babies, how can the killing of babies be justified? Isn’t this the height of wickedness one might be forced to say but then we would be falling into an error; THE ERROR OF EVERYONE IS INNOCENT/good as claimed by secularists. There are good and justifiable reasons why this happened:-

A) No one is born innocent, we all are shaped in iniquity from inception to conception(Original Sin) and all have sinned.

B) These kids would likely grow up with revenge in their mind and resentments of Jew and they actually did. e.g Haman the Agagite who plotted to eliminate Jews; come to the 21st century most terrorists are sons of parents or sympathizers killed by military operations.

C) The possibility of these kids following exactly the path that led to the extermination of their parents. Even in modern 21st century warfare this is used e.g. Abdulrahman Anwar al-Aulaqi (the son of Islamic Cleric and operational leader of al-Qaeda Sheik Anwar al-Awlaki an American) was killed in a drone strike, officially the story is that he was killed by mistake, however unofficially the story is that he was killed as he might be a potential terrorist after what happened to his father in quest for revenge.

What skeptics and skeptics dedicated sites do is they pick a passage with violence and attribute it to God while removing preceding or successive verses that explain the rational decision for any action, they automatically assume everything immoral in the bible means God approved it when it is clear that there are decisions many people took without consulting God e.g. Abraham lied Sarah was his sister(technically true) instead of his wife, now skeptics would pick up on this and say God approves of lying but if you read further you would see God reprimanding him for lying. In 2017 I'll expand more on this very important topic by dealing with God's view of Mercy, Love, Justice, and Judgement and how skeptics misunderstand them. In the meantime compliments of the season; have a great weekend!

Lesson of the Day: God's ways are infinitely greater than anything the best human mind (s) can fathom; therefore absolute trust should be placed on Him and His word for He never fails in His Promises.

#Sunday_Sermon #MOTD #Stay_Blessed

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