Was the God of the Old Testament cruel?

Post Reply New Topic

I always find it funny that Christians find a need to question their beliefs.

"We all know who Jesus is. He was a great teacher, a rabbi, but was he really the Son of God?"


That would be like me asking: "Is the sun out? I see light, but I'm not too sure."

I don't know. Maybe he just decided at some point to let people go and see what happens. For instance the Puritans said that God hates you automatically and he might be willing to save you if you do everything right.



I'm not saying it changed completely, but change a few passages at a time, and who will notice? Maybe someone manipulative corrupted a vital detail along the way, and everyone who's followed that as God's word is being punished because they missed that detail.





But then there are all these "God hates x" types who say if you don't follow a certain path you're toast. What if they're right? What if God really is strict about specifics? I've probably committed so many sins already, if that's true.

Well, I doubt that is what the Puritans said, as most of them were hardcore Calvinists from what I remember from the history books, and Calvinists believe it is the holy spirit that allows men to do things right. They were worried if they were chosen by the holy spirit though, and this is often considered a flaw in their beliefs, but works don't save an individual and Calvinists know that, they worked hard to prove that they were saved based upon how much they were blessed with success based upon the idea that God works all things out for the elect according to their theology: Romans 8:28 " And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose"


Well, the issue is why a God with a plan would allow for such a terrible change. Frankly, if such an act were to be done it would have been done by the Catholic church to prevent a Protestant reformation. A protestant reformation happened though.


Ok, and most of them are idiot nutjobs who don't really practice their holy books. What if they are right? Will doing nothing actually increase your chances of forgiveness/salvation/whatever? No. Not only that, but the notion of "too many sins" is really so non-Christian that it is funny that Christians are associated with it. Their messiah spent time trying to save prostitutes, and one of the major authors in the Bible spent a lot of time trying and succeeding at killing Christians. I mean, if Jesus tries to save prostitutes, and the apostle Paul who wrote like half of the New Testament once went around killing Christians, what could you do that is worse than that? Frankly, it is very funny that Christians seem to put so much effort on being good when their doctrine says that they are saved by grace through faith and that it was not through their efforts. Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, (9) not a result of works, so that no one may boast. I mean, really, if you think the idea is stupid then don't take interest, but if you are curious you can get some background on theology so that way you can understand the thought processes better. It would help you understand the thinking of the radical right, some historical philosophies, and stuff like that. Heck, one argument says the following about the Christian Bible "According to the collective authors of The Postmodern Bible, it is a 'truism' that the bible has exerted more influence on Western culture than any other book (The Bible and Culture Collective 1995: 1). In art, literature, politics and religion, biblical thought-forms, narratives and quotations are all-pervasive. As Western culture becomes globalised, so too does the bible. It is said that between a quarter and a third of all Japanese households possess a bible, in a country where only one or two percent of the population have any Christian adherence. This is because it is regarded as essential background for a proper understanding of Western culture. One effect of the spread of western culture through trade, conquest as well as missionary activity has been the spread of a collection of ancient Hebrew and Greek texts to every corner of the globe. Where Western culture goes, the bible goes too."
http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/Memetics/bible.html

Last edited by Awesomelyglorious on 08 May 2008, 8:10 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Will you follow those who harbor hate or those who harbor love?


That's the thing though, if you are to be punished, then you are going to be punished. How can you change the Will of an Omnipotent and Omniscient being? You cannot. No matter if you prayed for a thousand years.


I highly doubt people have removed phrases from the bible throughout the centuries. Errors would have shown up. The problems lie in the translations and applications of the Word. Not the Word itself. As I posted earlier. Search. Look beyond what people are telling you. Ask questions to people with authority. Be not a hypocrite in your path. (note that I'm not trying to insult you)


In my personal experience, I do not want happiness. I want Truth. I recall hearing a story from Deepak Chopra of a disciple who met woman that lived a simple life, yet ignorant of Enlightement and its path. The disciple ran back to his teacher angry, telling him that he has wasted his time searching for "Liberation" while the ignorant woman, and her children, were happier than he has every been. The Teacher responded "Yes, they are happy, but I do not want that happiness."

I am not sure if you understood that. To me it just reinforced my beliefs. The path to Truth is difficult, but one mustn't question their path unless they know they are in error. If something tells you "This is wrong", will you go to the Bible to search for the answer? I truly believe that not everyone will be free from this world, but that doesn't mean that we should throw ourselves to the vices she has to offer. A step in the right path is worth more than a lifetime walking in the wrong.

You should really stop worrying yourself. Instead, let it guide you.

umm...well I'd say overall against him
I felt he was a fool and ruined Lenin's ideals

read my signature... 'nuff said.

Just a bit, in the bible the Devil is responsible for a handful of deaths, god is responsible for thousands (that's not including "the flood", which would probably put it up to millions or something)

I noticed you omitted their sins. Just an observation.
I mean, Sodom was not actually Smurfville, with everyone just being jolly and good.

Yeah, what is wrong with executing murderers and rapists? I see nothing bad about that.

It's true that God has super-high standards for behavior,
but it's also true that we're not required to meet them.
How could that be, you ask?
Well, take it by historical time period:
Since Jesus's death and beyond, salvation is free, permanent, and irrevocable, regardless of future sins.
Before Jesus's death, the substitutionary sarcificial system God instituted allowed Him, with His innate and irrevoble demand for perfection, to look past Israel's sins, because they were covered.

But in referrence to God's kindness, does he punish you every time you do something wrong?
No, of course not. Many people get away with many sins everywhere you look, because
He's "slow to anger" (Neh 9:17), and thus patient enough with sinful people to first gently
influence them to decide to turn around their behavior of their own volition.

If you place God's harsh-sounding OT judgments over hundreds of years side-by-side,
they can make Him look violent. But if you realize how rarely, in the actual flow of time,
He majorly punished Israel, it was actually quite rare.

God rewards deliberate evil with punishment.
Where from that do you get cruelty?



He temporarily does, yes.
Before He finally and without exception punishes the wicked who refuse to repent of their evils.
That, specifically, is promised over and over again throughout Scripture,
that repentence is the only way out of God's judgment,
and that He will reward the righteous and punish the wicked.
That's a just God.
A cruel God would punish the good and the evil people equally.



God destroying the wicked people? That's what you call cruel?
Is it that He enjoys the justice of it?
Evil is willful disobedience of God. Therefore, those who earn God's wrath do just that: they earn it.



That's God's perogative, is it not?
But I see what you mean, and that you're coming from a standpoint of human ethics -- counting God as human.
Not only is there that fallacy of anthropomorphizing God and thus judging Him by our human standards,
but you're also, as you are in both the previous and the first examples, discounting the evil of the people God punishes.
Pharaoh cruelly enslaved the people of Israel, and made them do hard slave labor for him.
So, AG, you completely discount the fact that God was playing games with a very cruel man.

If God played games with Hitler's mind, would you think God was being cruel?
Or would you see it as God's executing justice on an evil man?
That evil befalls evildoers is justice, not cruelty. Yes, for humans to attempt
revenge in the name of "justice" is wrong.
But God is far, far above humans in His rightful purvue.



Hehe!

But again, you repeatedly ignore or negate the evil of the people God has punished.
But you can't cancel a variable on one side of the equation without also
canceling its equal on the other side. Otherwise, the equation is false.
You can't pretend clearly-sinful people, like Pharaoh, were guiltless
when God just came along one day and gave them hard times.
Is it cruel to punish a criminal? Or is it justice?

Last edited by Ragtime on 09 May 2008, 1:10 pm, edited 21 times in total.

As though there weren't any babies, pregnant mothers, or children to young to be rapists and murderers!

I'll be back later. This is a marker.

Smurfville? Everyone knows that the smurfs are evil!!

http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2005/ ... tedAtBirth
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Cine ... smurf2.htm

Now, unless, you think that Comrade Marx, who said that religion is the opiate of the masses, is a sign of virtue, obviously you have to admit that Smurfville was a land of evil.

Um.... have you read it? It is 2 pages long about all of the terrible things that God would do. Punishments can be considered cruel or unusual.


Yes, but he still *does* punish him. Frankly, cruelty does not say anything about the relative levels of punishment but rather the absolute levels of punishment.


He's having people smash BABY skulls and having them enjoy it!! That is not a small thing but rather sadistic from most perspectives.


Um.... Ragtime, the ENTIRE POINT of your thread is to judge God by human standards as you are asking humans "Do you think that these actions seem cruel". You are asking us, as humans, if his actions are cruel. I also never discounted the evil of the punished as I did not call him cruel for killing. I did this on the basis of excessive punishment, for extreme punishment against a loyal follower for no apparent reason, for taking joy in smashing baby skulls, and for pushing a man and nation to destruction for his glory. None of those are instances of plain killing or anything like that. I never denied what Phaoroh did, I simply made the claim that playing games with a man, no matter how cruel, is still a cruel act by human standards.


Yes, I would think God was being cruel, especially given the fact that there were others under Hitler who would also have to suffer for the choices of Hitler. Ok, well, Ragtime, do you not recognize that you are basically pushing for a view of morality that comes close to "Divine Command Theory" and thus making it so that for God to be good, or just, simply relies on God being consistent?



Hehe!

But again, you repeatedly ignore or negate the evil of the people God has punished.
But you can't cancel a variable on one side of the equation without also
canceling its equal on the other side. Otherwise, the equation is false.
You can't pretend clearly-sinful people, like Pharaoh, were guiltless
when God just came along one day and gave them hard times.
Is it cruel to punish a criminal? Or is it justice?[/quote]
The arguments I made were not on the basis of ignoring the terrors of the opposition, but rather based upon the actions of God himself, and saying that those actions were excessive and cruel from my own perspective.

Look, all you have to do in order to justify Sodom and Gomorrah is to state verses such as Genesis 18:32, and Genesis 19:5, as that is enough to show the city as pretty evil, at least if you explain what "knowing someone" means in the biblical sense.

Conocere un hombre... o Sabere Dios?

As for the whole city... who's to say the omniscient God didn't know the future of the children... such justifications are used to murder babies today if we are to compare some "human" standards with that of God's; who's to say they are innocent? Abraham argued with God on the issue, and the two angels who went there sent the righteous away, namely Lot's house, but who knows who else because the Bible didn't specify "only" AFAICR.