If you would just end chapters or read a full passage and not cherry pick statements. I don't need to cherry pick those verses you quoted for a bumper sticker. I can see His goodness in literally every action He performs in scripture.
- Swift destruction of the extremely wicked and cruel = mercy and not repaying evil with evil
- Brutality of the cross = Lamb to the slaughter / not cheating by calling 1000 angels to protect Him / setting a clear precedent in His dealings with us
- Cross = Greatest act love in that He lays His life down for us John 15:13.
- All children go straight to heaven = sensible God
- Nobody predestined for hell = impartial God Acts 10:34 = good God
I could go on all day!!!!
It is because David grasped God that he tells us all ''GUYS, REJOICE, because GOD IS GOOD''!!! Psalm 136:1. It is not uncommon to see evil and assume God is evil.
What you are ''missing'' when you read scripture is the fact that God wants us to judge Him. He ''GIVES'' us our brains as you noted. He ''GIVES'' us the knowledge of good and evil Gen 3:22. He gives us time and space to exercise our free will. He tells us that we must judge better then the world 1 Cor 6:1-9. He tells us that we can and must discern all matters 1 Cor 2:15. He wants us to grasp the love that God has for us in Christ Eph 3:18. He wants us to interrogate Him. When Abraham interrogated Him in Gen 18, He did not say to Abraham ''silence, I am God, dare you question me''.
Imagine I miss-represented you. Lets say you wanted to date my sister. I know that you do charity work at an orphanage. You chose to help with the pigs as nobody wanted that job. You are a smart, kind and caring man. You have a good day job that pays well. You live in slight poverty though as you donate most of your money to charity. Now what would you do to me one-day if you discovered I told my sister that you were a poor man who smelt like a pig most of the day.
I hope you can be honest with yourself and rebuke yourself for bias and cherry picking scriptures. You, like many atheists I know, '''KNOW'' the scriptures that debunk most of what you espouse. You just hold on to certain statements with ferocity.
Please forgive me pestering, King J.
My request for ameliorating context concerning Num 31:17-18 and Deut 22:28-29 was not rhetorical. My aim is not to continue inflating the scope of our conversation. For my part, I see you did ask for clarification on a certain point a few exchanges back regarding God’s acceptance of blood sacrifice, my understanding of Noah’s application of the practice, and what I see in it as a clear indication that God evolves morally over time.
I await your thoughts on the passages in Numbers and Deuteronomy.
Regarding blood sacrifice, I did not mean to suggest Noah’s blood sacrifice was in some way CAUSE for punishment by God. Nor even that blood sacrifices were necessarily the be-all, end-all favorite among God’s preferred forms of worship. My point is God clearly found blood sacrifice acceptable in those days. Even, on occasion, mortal HUMAN sacrifice. (For example, as I have said, Jepthah’s daughter. As well as circumcision standing as God’s marker among male Jews, like a brand on a head of cattle, attesting their lives are ALL forfeit to him, on demand.)
I see no cause for controversy in this. God might have chided that the blood of an animal sacrifice may not absolve Man of any manner of sin. That is not the same as, “Commandment #11: Thou shalt not offer blood sacrifice.”
In the specific case of Noah’s burnt offering, its presentation in Genesis after the Flood prompts God to forge his new covenant with Man, vowing never to wipe out all terrestrial life in a single flood ever again. In other words, Noah has shown, through his obedience AS WELL AS his blood sacrifice, that he’s a good chap and, in deference to him, God won’t ever haul out the “big guns” of punishing deluge again.
I don’t recall any estimates for what global antediluvian human population may have been. But let’s stipulate it was something less than today’s near-8 billion (if only thanks to antibiotics and vaccines). Forgive me assuming, but you’ll agree that people today are at least as wicked as antediluvian Man. (Maybe I’m wrong? Don’t let me put words in your mouth.) Even if modern Man is, on average, “only” just as wicked as antediluvian Man, in light of the larger population, there is more wickedness today, in absolute quantities, than there was in those days. Yet religious people are not overwrought worrying about whether another Flood is on its way. Why not? Because God promised he doesn’t go in for that kind of thing anymore. I.e., moral development.
If you came across me in the park on a Sunday and I was about to sacrifice a goat, or a human child, to God, would you offer to help? Again, stop me if I’m assuming too much, but I hope you would not. I HOPE you would seek to dissuade me from performing so barbaric an act. I hope PART of your rationale would be that God, today, would take no pleasure in such grizzly rites of veneration. Yet the closest he came to disputing Abraham’s sacrifice of Jacob was to stipulate the dispatch of a ram, instead.
CUT TO:
One Testament, and a thousand years, later, and the only literal blood sacrifice which finds any favor with him at all is that of Christ. Indeed, in the guise of Jesus, he enjoins mercy in the face of capitol crimes such as adultery. Again –– moral evolution.
I contend God matured, morally, between the Flood and the Crucifixion. Forgetting my issues with both those momentous events, what can you tell me when I say, if he exists, his moral standards and his preference for mercy has likely evolved, as well, a further 2,000 years since then?
