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God can take a life, you can not! You can save a life; but God can not?
In other words, Humanity has higher moral values? Perhaps you will explain why anyone would say:
"Love your enemies, and do good to those who spitefully persecute you?"
It seems that when it comes to the obvious contradiction between what God says we are to be and what some people have attributed to God, it becomes a matter of "Do as I say, not as I do".
Janelle, God's ways are higher than humanity's ways, not lower. If you can't, in good conscious, treat other human beings the way that you believe God does, then how can you, "be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect?"
1. Apart from any covenant promise made by God, He owes us nothing, including continued existence. For we forfeited any claims we may have had, with original sin and personal sin. And since such peoples of OT times were not in covenant with God, He owed them nothing, including natural life.
2. We must not think that God is bound by the commands He imposes upon us. Simply because we cannot take the life of a person or a people without due cause does not mean that God is bound by the same rules, such as the just war theory.
When it comes down to it, all of us must die by one means or another. If one can call into question the goodness of God for commanding the death of a people, cannot the same question be raised with regards to a good God allowing the following to happen, when He could stop it in a moment:
-a plane to crash filled with “innocent” people, killing them all -a baby to be born crippled and deformed -a mother of seven children to die at a young age of cancer -a sexual predator to torture, rape, and kill a young child -a tornado to wipe out a town and kill inhabitants
The list can go on, but all of this deals with the problem of evil and suffering in the world. Such things happen and God in His omnipotence could stop it, but this and the battles of the OT are part of the fallen human condition, which we are all subject to. For all we know, some or all of those put to death in the OT may ultimately have been saved, and so the passing through death they endured pales in the face of this. We must trust in the justice and mercy of God.
I do not assume that God would, or even could, stop anything in defiance of the natural laws that govern our existence without destroying our physical existence, or the reason for it.
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But a final question is this: if one cannot accept the physical condemnation of a people or person by God, whom He judges to death, can one accept the reality of the existence of hell and the damnation of a soul? In other words, can a truly good God damn someone to an eternity of suffering, whatever the nature of such suffering is? The answer is “Yes” and we know this for a fact, both as to the existence of such an eternal state and that there are some damned even now, namely, the fallen angels. So you see, we must get past this notion that God is unjust in any manner and that the destruction of human life at the command of God is somehow immoral. In a sense, the physical destruction of those OT peoples who were not in covenant with God and were actually enemies of God, as enemies of His people, prefigures the ultimate destiny that awaits the enemies of God and those who live outside His eternal covenant: final judgment and eternal death.
Can a truly good God damn someone to an eternity of suffering? The answer is a resounding, "NO!"
I do not accept that God condemns anyone. We are "condemned already", not by God but by ourselves ... in our own minds we are separated from God. But God is holding no one's sins against them, and God's purpose is to save us from our self-imposed condemnation and the separation that we feel.
"Be transformed, therefore, by the renewing of your minds." Stop thinking that God is a wrathful, vengeful enemy and realize that God loves us all and has our best interest at heart.
Except no child is unwanted with all the people lined up begging for a child.
You are oversimplifying the problem. Many children remain in homes where they are unwanted, are abused and neglected. Some of them eventually end up in foster care and somewhere around 20,000 a year reach adulthood still in the foster care system.
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WE still aren't God and that is the bottom line.
Christians believe that they are the "body of Christ" -- in other words, the hands and feet of God -- who are supposed to be treating others as God would want them treated. If you believe that God's will is that sometimes children be killed to save them from suffering neglect, then why do you work so hard to prevent others from killing the unborn?
It seems that when it comes to the obvious contradiction between what God says we are to be and what some people have attributed to God, it becomes a matter of "Do as I say, not as I do".
Have you looked around lately? You do know more than 50,000,000 babies have been killed by abortion in 40 years. That is man killing babies, not God.
God is the creator and only God. God gives life and only God can take life. Sorry if that bothers you.
If you want to help God be pro-life and work to decrease the number of abortions and while you are at it feed the poor and cloth the naked and do all that God commands us to do. Don't sit there and whine how evil God is, you are His hands and feet here on earth.
More wrongs don't make a right. Abortions are irrelevant to the argument.
It wasn't even God killing babies in the OT. It was MEN who were trying to rationalize and justify their actions with their LAW and concept of what they "thought God wanted."
Again...God didn't kill all those people and children...men did. And it was murder. Sorry if that doesn't bother you.
More wrongs don't make a right. Abortions are irrelevant to the argument.
It wasn't even God killing babies in the OT. It was MEN who were trying to rationalize and justify their actions with their LAW and concept of what they "thought God wanted."
Again...God didn't kill all those people and children...men did. And it was murder. Sorry if that doesn't bother you.
How did men cause the flood?
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