Does God Ever Take Life or Order Its Taking?

[PaulSacramento]

If only Bart were here . . . he would give you a like for sure, Paul. (and no, I'm not at all poking fun at him!)

The differences between MY view of scripture and Bart's are so vast.
That said, I am probably more in line with Metzger's and others like him.

[PaulSacramento]

PaulS wrote:


Only 66 books?
Not 73?

All scripture is inspired.
Maybe this will make it clearer:
All scripture is inspired by the HS.
In some cases the HS speaks directly, as in the case of prophetic writings and in other cases He speaks "indirectly" through the writers.

Does that sound better?

I can agree with that.

And that is what I meant by "degrees of inspiration".
You can't really read the bible with an open mind and NOT see that.
Remember where I am coming from, I was never TOLD what the bible is suppose to be, I was never told HOW to read it.
I came at it from simply an academic and historical context.

[PaulSacramento]

Although the issue of 66 books as opposed to 73 CAN be viewed as people choosing what is and isn't inspired scripture, so...

[Jac3510]

[melanie]

I think everyone has brought up really valid points.
It's not easy to tackle.
I do understand where Neo, DS, Philip, K, Paul and Rick are all coming from.
These are hard questions and as Neo has said we can't white wash them.
Is it fair to kill children?
Now I personally can honestly say that God does as He sees fit. I trust Him.
But there are parts of scripture that I do not understand. I do not pretend too.
It does not make sense to me.
Whilst I find comfort in knowing that God wills according to His purpose, I understand that parts of the OT just seems so inconsistent to the God that Jesus portrayed and the God I understand.
I get that it is quite possibly my understandng that is flawed.
But people, atheists and Christians alike, for centuries are asking the same questions.
For that reason alone, it's an extremely relevant discussion.
It's uncomfortable.
Ask me about the gospel of Jesus, the Acts of the Apostles and I am in my comfort zone. I can answer questions in relation to salvation, grace, The resurrection ect, but I have had people say, but Mel, why was this okay? In regards to OT stuff.
I can refer to a whole range of 'reasoning' but the truth is.
I don't understand it,
I understand it biblically. I have been reading the bible since I as a kid. I am familiar with the verses. I have argued as a youngster with my Nan (miss you), with myself, with churchies and ultimately with God. And I still do not 'get it'.
I have reconciled but I don't claim for a second to understand.
So if I struggle then I completely get why others do. People are confused, they are angry.
Everyone has felt injustice. It's crap.
It is an honourable part of the human condition to detest unfairness.
It makes us better, it makes us strive for a better outcome.
So when people genuinely ask, why is that fair?
I wanna listen.
I may not have all the answers but the best I can do is accomodate the question because I have been there.

The relevance of the argument that 'every man, women and child' is a metaphor and does not really mean women and children are killed but merely a military term that doesn't really mean the complete destruction of a people comes undone in light of Numbers 31:15-18
15 “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. 16 “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people. 17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

The Israelites have destroyed the Midianites and they brought back with them after destroying the cities the children and woman. Moses is angry and asks why they have been spared, he the instructs that all the boy children be killed and women but spare the virgins for yourselves.
The virgins numbered 32,000. We know this cause scripture tells us.
So keeping these figures in mind tens of thousands of infant, toddler, and child-age boys were killed, along with non Virgin women. Many probably mothers of these children.
Can you imagine this scene?
Not ten, a hundred or a couple hundred but thousands of children and women being systematically murdered.

After this occurs the cattle, sheep and virgins as 'booty' are distributed. Women and beasts counted alike. Half to the soldiers, half to the community, a small percentage to the Levites and a smaller percentage to Eleazar the priest.


Now I undestand that God had His purpose. I understand that the Midianites were immoral. I get that this was lineage that Christ our messiah was to born into, and God had to preserve it. I get that God forsore a future for His people that may have been tainted had this not occurred.
But as a Christian I cannot reconcile the deaths of thousands of children and women.
Nor the enslavement, by forced marraige, sexual or otherwise of 32,000 virgins, to have 'for themselves'.

Answering this question by well, God doesn't have to answer to anyone'
Is not good enough.
These questions drive people away from the love and beauty of God.
So we need to talk about it.
This type of misunderstanding is causing people to turn away from God.
We need a better answer.
Even if it's we don't really know or understand 100%, then that's fine.

[RickD]

Please explain Jackie. Yo no comprendo!

[Jac3510]

In hockey, a hat trick is scoring three points in one game. By extension, on forums, a hat trick is three consecutive posts by the same poster.

[Philip]

Should we talk about and try to understand very difficult and disturbing things in Scripture? Absolutely! Should we seek answers that we can utilize so as to not make such passages a roadblock to belief in unbelievers. Yes! After thousands of years of recorded thought on searching for such answers, I've seen little that is ultimately satisfying or calming. So that tells me that I just have to trust God on these things. He is GOD and I am but wormfood with a not much more than a worm's brains in comparison to the mind and knowledge of God. Is just saying "we'll have to trust God on such things" a satisfying answer? No, it's often a frustrating and difficult-to-accept one. But one thing is for certain, the problems or anxieties presented by difficult Scipture passages do NOT lead me to simply dismiss it - to assert it 1) either never happened; 2) that God has not always maintained total control over His Word; 3) Or that He allowed outright fictions to become co-mingled with His Word without A) making us able to be aware of this or B) having Jesus or an Apostle emphasize such things; 4) Or that an ALL-Powerful Creator Who fanatically and unfathomably created from the microscopic level to the galactic one, Whom has left absolutely NOTHING to mere chance, got sloppy with overseeing how His Word was transmitted, assembled, preserved, protected or that ANYTHING was allowed to be included in it that was not true, not what He wanted in there - none of that - certainly not without giving us ways to detect anything He has seen as untrue that is connected to His Word.

To me, if you take a LOW view of Scripture, then you are also taking a low view of God, His faithfulness, His power, ability and love. IS WHAT IS WRITTEN ACTUALLY TRUE AND/OR IS IT WHAT GOD WANTED US TO HAVE IN HIS CANON OF SCRIPTURE - to me, that is the first most important aspect of all of this, as all other questions and responses flow from the answer to that. From there, we can research, pray, speculate, diligently search - all of these important things - but ALL of the questions begin with, "Is this God's Word and collective writings which He wishes us to have, consider and live from?"

I also like what Bruce Metzger has to say, from a leading scholar's point of view!

[PaulSacramento]

One of the things that is the hardest for US to understand is the whole concept of a "theocratic war", a "holy war", typically because OUR understanding of that is tainted by the events of the 20th and 21st centuries.
A war that God approved was approved NOT on the basis of "territory" per say BUT, as in the case of the Midianites, because a people had allowed themselves to be lead astray by a evil and then influenced the Israelis to do the same.
A war with them was a war for the very soul of Israel.

All that said, it is very hard to reconcile that kind of killing and then to add passages about the "dividing of the spoils of war", all that adds up to is basically justification of genocide for gain ( precious metals, livestock and female slaves).
It most certainly is easy to read it this way.

I wouldn't pay too much attention to the numbers in the OT ( the qty of people or animals) that said there is no doubt that many women and children were killed on Moses' command.

How does one reconciliation such a horrific event by Christian standards?

Some say it was an accommodation that God allowed because of the times and that may be the case ( it is clear in the bible that people will do whatever they will do regardless of God and the Israelis were notorious for such).

Still, there are no easy answers to this very EOMOTIONAL issue BUT we must be clear that it is an emotional one.

There are very sound tactical and rational reasons for this kind of warfare in those days BUT we are dealing with the emotional pain of reading passages such as these.

[Jac3510]

I just don't think it has to be reconciled. There is an underlying assumption of necessity here that I find disturbing, that God can or can't do this because of this or that reason, as if God is somehow under some standard.

Again, it isn't our job to reconcile anything with Scripture, much less with what God does. It's our job to read Scripture and see what God has done and see how we ought to view the world in light of the reality that God has decreed. To suggest, or to allow the suggestion, that God ought to or ought not to have done this or that is to suggest that God is under some standard, and that is the real absurdity. It's an incorrect understanding of God and an elevation of humanity to at least be on par with if not above Him. (edit: and that, in turn, presumes the aforementioned notion of theistic personalism, or as Geisler put it, neotheism; that idea is wrong and ought to be rejected. God is not a person along side of us anymore than He is a being alongside of us, as if God were under the genus of "person" (credit to Ed Feser for that point); God is much, much, much more than that, and we reduce Him when we talk in these limiting terms.)

No, the answer is to move away from necessity and look to fittingness, and I think it is there, and only there, that we can give our emotional reactions to such things full voice. What does the loss of women and children in war--by God's decree, no less--teach us about the nature of humanity, of what those people had done, of their sin, of its consequences (both personal and extended), and of God Himself. What does our revulsion tell us? What does our hatred of the facts of reality tell us about ourselves, about what ought to be, about where to place blame for something that has clearly gone wrong? Or is it all just a cosmic accident. If it is, why be revolted at all? None of it matters.

No, our revulsion and anger are based in an ought, and if we know the ought does not apply to God, then we have at our disposal a great way to learn not only about God but, more importantly, about ourselves.

edit:

And refer to my previous substantial post, I think on the last page. I'm making a straightforward attempt to address all three levels of the conversation here. It's not the final word, obviously, nor is it intended to be anything like it. But I do want to offer the beginnings of a more full orbed if not more biblical answer than just trying to justify the logic of holy war.

[neo-x]

that God has not always maintained total control over His Word;

For the record, God has never maintained total control over his people either. He lets his people die, burn, hanged, beheaded, raped, mugged, murdered etc. He does that. It is an ugly fact. He seldom steps in. If God truly maintained control, ISIS would not be able to kill anyone, nor Hitler and etc. etc.

So I am to believe that he lets millions die but his sole effort is on the preservation of his word? Can't he do both? Or he does neither?

He can save his book but not his people? Is that his choice?

Does he not care? if so then why not care for both? And if he cares, we know from evidence that he usually never steps in actively. That is why there is suffering in the world.

I just don't see the logic of this argument.

[PaulSacramento]

One can also argue that God created the universe and the universe is indeed "God breathed" BUT it is no perfect and, at least on this planet, it is subject to human tampering.
Why not the bible ?

[neo-x]

I just don't think it has to be reconciled. There is an underlying assumption of necessity here that I find disturbing, that God can or can't do this because of this or that reason, as if God is somehow under some standard.

Again, it isn't our job to reconcile anything with Scripture, much less with what God does. It's our job to read Scripture and see what God has done and see how we ought to view the world in light of the reality that God has decreed. To suggest, or to allow the suggestion, that God ought to or ought not to have done this or that is to suggest that God is under some standard, and that is the real absurdity. It's an incorrect understanding of God and an elevation of humanity to at least be on par with if not above Him. (edit: and that, in turn, presumes the aforementioned notion of theistic personalism, or as Geisler put it, neotheism; that idea is wrong and ought to be rejected. God is not a person along side of us anymore than He is a being alongside of us, as if God were under the genus of "person" (credit to Ed Feser for that point); God is much, much, much more than that, and we reduce Him when we talk in these limiting terms.)

No, the answer is to move away from necessity and look to fittingness, and I think it is there, and only there, that we can give our emotional reactions to such things full voice. What does the loss of women and children in war--by God's decree, no less--teach us about the nature of humanity, of what those people had done, of their sin, of its consequences (both personal and extended), and of God Himself. What does our revulsion tell us? What does our hatred of the facts of reality tell us about ourselves, about what ought to be, about where to place blame for something that has clearly gone wrong? Or is it all just a cosmic accident. If it is, why be revolted at all? None of it matters.

No, our revulsion and anger are based in an ought, and if we know the ought does not apply to God, then we have at our disposal a great way to learn not only about God but, more importantly, about ourselves.

edit:

And refer to my previous substantial post, I think on the last page. I'm making a straightforward attempt to address all three levels of the conversation here. It's not the final word, obviously, nor is it intended to be anything like it. But I do want to offer the beginnings of a more full orbed if not more biblical answer than just trying to justify the logic of holy war.

Jac, my original point is perhaps lost, as all have chimed in and there are multiple threads of the discussion going about.

My issue is simpler than what is now a plethora of issues. God killing someone is something I can at least understand, the Bible is filled with it and I have had no problems with that, but people saying God told them to kill someone is something I question. This isn't an attack of God's nature or sovereignty but on the margin of error we humans have time and time again, demonstrated.

Further I don't hold God to any rules, but I do expect a certain familiar pattern of acts that may help in establishing whether its the same God I worship or not. If something falls out of line of those expectations than I have to question that. Otherwise no one can hold anyone responsible for any murder they do in the name of their God. Hey! if our God can command such, why not their God does the same? Then we either accept there is nothing wrong with this principle or we know this isn't right. To borrow Rick's words, "somethings are just wrong".

[neo-x]

One can also argue that God created the universe and the universe is indeed "God breathed" BUT it is no perfect and, at least on this planet, it is subject to human tampering.
Why not the bible ?

Some people are very much vested in the inerrancy of scripture that its very difficult to reconcile contradictions. I know for myself it was the hardest thing to admit that there was a problem in Genesis and it didn't stand in light of modern genetic evidence.

[RickD]

In hockey, a hat trick is scoring three points in one game. By extension, on forums, a hat trick is three consecutive posts by the same poster.

Aha! I understood the 3 goals is a hat trick. But those goals don't have to be consecutive. So, why do posts by the same poster have to be consecutive to be considered a hat trick, under forum lingo?

As a hat trick in sports is 3 goals by the same player in one game, it would seem three posts in the same thread, by the same poster would be a hat trick. Even if they weren't posted in a row. I think a better analogy would be:

In bowling, 3 strikes IN A ROW is a turkey.