Problems with God part 3...
You know, it's amazing how little most critics seem to actually know about God before they pose a question. We've looked at hypocrisy and the problem of evil (why bad things happen to good people), but today we'll tackle my favorite: how can God say He is good and do the things He has done (like the Flood, the Israelites Canaan slaughter, etc.)?
This question attacks the heart of faith itself. If God isn't good why would we follow Him? That is where many people get hung up. Especially reading through the Old Testament, we see God as seemingly capricious and extremely brutal. There is not much grace extended in the Old Testament while grace is the overriding theme of the New. How does all that make sense? Let's start in the beginning...
First, we see God making everything and caring for it (sounds like a "good" and loving God to me!) with only one caveat: don't eat from this ONE tree. Sounds simple, right? But man eats from the one tree and is henceforth banished from paradise and cursed: man to toil to bring forth food and woman to pain in childbirth. Doesn't sound so good or loving, does it? However, consider this: as a father when my children do things wrong, I correct them and punish them. It's not easy, in fact seeing them cry is an extraordinarily painful process (I'll admit, every time I have ever spanked any of my children and they cry, I cry with them). God had to be who He is, just and loving. His punishment isn't anything too much to handle, it's harsh but it teaches and trains. Unfortunately that's the easy part. As Scripture moves on, we see Noah, a man "a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God" and God looks at everyone else and says, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth." Now, looking at that contrast it doesn't look like a very kind, loving God. God says He is going to destroy everything. Utterly wipe out everything and destroy His creation. God claims it is because they were SO utterly evil that it all came down to that. I can't tell you because I don't have a record, but if we take it at face value, how evil would they have had to been? Think about it... If we aren't evil enough today to take the same punishment how bad would it have had to been?
But, let's keep going so I can make my point. As biblical history moves on we see God commanding the Israelites to destroy (wipe out, annihilate, leave no trace) of tons of people. All kinds of "-ites" are commanded to be destroyed: Amalekites, Amorites, Canaanites, etc. Were they so evil as the people in Noak's day? I don't know, but what we do know with 100% certainty is that they practiced child sacrifice, which I find extremely disgusting (I think anyone who commits a crime against a trusting young child/baby should have to die the most horrible death we can come up with [no easy outs like injection, but something literally cruel and unusual], but...). How can we justify the wiping out of cultures at large? I can't and I can honestly say that I believe God had to have His reasons, but it seems so cruel and capricious and utterly vindictive. How can a God who does this be loving, forgiving, and kind?
Well, here we go with my answer. Would you have issues with God commanding people to kill Adolf Hitler and his Nazi supporters? Would you have an issue with God telling people to wipe out the Communist revolutionaries in China or Russia who killed more people than anything else in human history? Or would we have an issue with God commanding people to eradicate radical Islamic terrorists? Would we have an issue with God sparing the world from things like that? I sure wouldn't, because it would mean that millions upon millions of good and innocent people wouldn't have had to die. Is that really so different from what God did? He spared the world from worse things, judging by what we know historically (I sure wouldn't like a world that grew up with child sacrifice, it would've completely destroyed most of the good and beautiful things out there) and what the biblical text says... How then can we view it as unkind? Or when a father disciplines his children, is it out of malice or love? We had a moment in Hutchinson where my eldest was running towards the car and wasn't about to stop and look for cars. I saw a car coming and instead of thinking, "Oh well, he can make the choice on his own." I reached out and yanked him off the ground by his arm (it was the best I could grab and pull on). It hurt him and left my finger sized bruises on his arm, but was a lot better than watching as my son was run over by a car because he wasn't thinking.
So what I think it comes down to is how we view evil and how we look at the way God makes choices as Father. Discipline is never fun, but it is absolutely necessary. Sometimes hard choices must be made and the bigger picture considered. I don't like war, but it is sometimes necessary to prevent a greater evil (I can't think of anyone who would say that US involvement in WW2 was an "evil" thing, instead it was doing the right thing despite the distasteful fact that it is war). Even Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a committed pacifist, saw action against Hitler as something that was necessary and joined himself to the resistance cause. The question becomes, can the ends justify the means? I think that often they can, as in the case of a war to stop a greater injustice. But, as to how it applies to God, I think it comes down to the idea of God as a father: He makes the judgment calls that are necessary to discipline His children and to keep us safe from ourselves as much as possible.
This question attacks the heart of faith itself. If God isn't good why would we follow Him? That is where many people get hung up. Especially reading through the Old Testament, we see God as seemingly capricious and extremely brutal. There is not much grace extended in the Old Testament while grace is the overriding theme of the New. How does all that make sense? Let's start in the beginning...
First, we see God making everything and caring for it (sounds like a "good" and loving God to me!) with only one caveat: don't eat from this ONE tree. Sounds simple, right? But man eats from the one tree and is henceforth banished from paradise and cursed: man to toil to bring forth food and woman to pain in childbirth. Doesn't sound so good or loving, does it? However, consider this: as a father when my children do things wrong, I correct them and punish them. It's not easy, in fact seeing them cry is an extraordinarily painful process (I'll admit, every time I have ever spanked any of my children and they cry, I cry with them). God had to be who He is, just and loving. His punishment isn't anything too much to handle, it's harsh but it teaches and trains. Unfortunately that's the easy part. As Scripture moves on, we see Noah, a man "a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God" and God looks at everyone else and says, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth." Now, looking at that contrast it doesn't look like a very kind, loving God. God says He is going to destroy everything. Utterly wipe out everything and destroy His creation. God claims it is because they were SO utterly evil that it all came down to that. I can't tell you because I don't have a record, but if we take it at face value, how evil would they have had to been? Think about it... If we aren't evil enough today to take the same punishment how bad would it have had to been?
But, let's keep going so I can make my point. As biblical history moves on we see God commanding the Israelites to destroy (wipe out, annihilate, leave no trace) of tons of people. All kinds of "-ites" are commanded to be destroyed: Amalekites, Amorites, Canaanites, etc. Were they so evil as the people in Noak's day? I don't know, but what we do know with 100% certainty is that they practiced child sacrifice, which I find extremely disgusting (I think anyone who commits a crime against a trusting young child/baby should have to die the most horrible death we can come up with [no easy outs like injection, but something literally cruel and unusual], but...). How can we justify the wiping out of cultures at large? I can't and I can honestly say that I believe God had to have His reasons, but it seems so cruel and capricious and utterly vindictive. How can a God who does this be loving, forgiving, and kind?
Well, here we go with my answer. Would you have issues with God commanding people to kill Adolf Hitler and his Nazi supporters? Would you have an issue with God telling people to wipe out the Communist revolutionaries in China or Russia who killed more people than anything else in human history? Or would we have an issue with God commanding people to eradicate radical Islamic terrorists? Would we have an issue with God sparing the world from things like that? I sure wouldn't, because it would mean that millions upon millions of good and innocent people wouldn't have had to die. Is that really so different from what God did? He spared the world from worse things, judging by what we know historically (I sure wouldn't like a world that grew up with child sacrifice, it would've completely destroyed most of the good and beautiful things out there) and what the biblical text says... How then can we view it as unkind? Or when a father disciplines his children, is it out of malice or love? We had a moment in Hutchinson where my eldest was running towards the car and wasn't about to stop and look for cars. I saw a car coming and instead of thinking, "Oh well, he can make the choice on his own." I reached out and yanked him off the ground by his arm (it was the best I could grab and pull on). It hurt him and left my finger sized bruises on his arm, but was a lot better than watching as my son was run over by a car because he wasn't thinking.
So what I think it comes down to is how we view evil and how we look at the way God makes choices as Father. Discipline is never fun, but it is absolutely necessary. Sometimes hard choices must be made and the bigger picture considered. I don't like war, but it is sometimes necessary to prevent a greater evil (I can't think of anyone who would say that US involvement in WW2 was an "evil" thing, instead it was doing the right thing despite the distasteful fact that it is war). Even Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a committed pacifist, saw action against Hitler as something that was necessary and joined himself to the resistance cause. The question becomes, can the ends justify the means? I think that often they can, as in the case of a war to stop a greater injustice. But, as to how it applies to God, I think it comes down to the idea of God as a father: He makes the judgment calls that are necessary to discipline His children and to keep us safe from ourselves as much as possible.
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