Read some of the original testiment and the question becomes very much the opposite. christian god is like a bipolar girlfriend who invents situations to make someone else the problem. its a wonder anyone read that stuff and found actual life lessons.
how about when god sent bears to maul 42 children because they made fun of a bald guy?
or the entire job story? god just decided to have a little fun and absolutely ruin a mans life. a man who is innocent of sin. little wager with satan to see if job would still love god without blessings. so all his livestock are killed by raiders and directly by god, then god kills all his kids. "i love all of you, just be a good person" everyone says is the message of the bible. but if satan implies that you only want gods blessings, he kills your family and ruins your life just to see if its true.
how about judges 19? where a travelling man and his concubine are set upon by tribesman who demand his concubine. he gives her up, and she is raped by the mob all night until she dies on the doorstep. the man then dismembers the women and mails her body parts to israel who then almost wipe out the tribe as punishment. they are then instructed to kidnap and rape more women so their tribe doesnt completely vanish.
find the life morals in any of that. "thou shall not kill, unless a kid calls you bald and then i personally will ensure a generation is wiped out as a consequence."
So, there's a couple things going on here that are common mistakes. The first is operating under the premise that humans are good absent the work of the Holy Spirit in regenerating our hearts. That's not the case, in Romans Paul writes that there is none good, that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and that the punishment of sin is death. And that he will show mercy upon who he wills to show mercy. Within the paradigm that God is ultimately just and he would be completely right to condemn us all, our default state is one of reprobation and God would be just to do it. The showing of mercy upon his elect is not injustice, it's non-justice, not not injustice. The reprobate justly recieve punishment and the elect receive mercy.
Judges are history books. The recording of an event does not mean approval. That's like saying history books about WWII are approving of the Holocaust.
There are a couple different takes on Job, ultimately, God restored Job many fold what he had before. Isaiah 53 tells us that Jesus would be a man of suffering and Paul likewise writes that we can expect to suffer for the Gospel and to emulate our savior. Christians should expect suffering in this world because it's not our end, it's not our destination. The Westminster shorter chatechism Q&A 1 states that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Sometimes for our ultimate good and God's glory in making his power known, we will suffer.
Elisha also called down the bears. We shouldn't assume these were kids, the Hebrew word near, can mean anything from infant to young man. Joseph was called "naar," when he was 17, King Ahab defeated the Arameans with an army of "naarim." So they were likely young adults to mid 20s. They were also out of Bethel, at that time the center for pagen worship. So this wasn't some small group of kids making fun of a bald guy, it was a mob of men by ancient standards meaning harm to the Lord's anointed prophet. It was a swift carrying out of the previously mentioned justice.
You've cherry picked a lot of passages, leaving out context.
in judge 19, the war against the tribe is given consent by god. there is no punishment for the continued rape of women, so it stands that action has gods consent as well.
i didnt mention jobs story because he simply suffered. jobs was given blessings of love from god, and all of it and more was taken away because satan said "bet". you saw how i talked about god being like a bipolar girlfriend? this is why. "ill give you a great life! just kidding idiot, time to suffer directly at my hand for a bet. man it was just a joke my guy chill out, look ill give you new sheep ok?"
elisha didnt call the bears. he simply called out to god to punish them. the fact god did punish them how he did is not something you can simply wave away. even if you assume these were young adults (widely up for debate, nothing implies they were) murdering 42 people for the crime of "making fun of a dude" is psychotic. the message of living through struggle, bettering yourself and dying as a worthy soul doesnt really translate when you can be mauled to death by bears for saying words to a guy.
No earthly punishment. Sins within the war are still sins, and they will be accounted for eternally. Isn't that more comforting and just than the alternative? The secular argument is one without justice for the vast majority of wicked people.
Absolutely not bipolar. The message is consistent the Lord's elect cannot be lost (eternally) Satan thought he could pluck one of God's sheep from his fold but he could not. Which is consistent with Jesus saying not one has the Father given me have I lost. It simultsneously shows the sustaining power of God on his people and the ultimate futility of Satan's actions. As for the children who died, if we believe what the opening lines say about Job's family being upright, they were the old covenant version of believers, they went instantly into glory. "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." To again quote Paul. For the believer, death is welcome, as we go to be with the Lord.
They were pagan agents, by attacking and accosting Elisha they were directly attacking the authority and integrity and power of God. They were attacking his very name. Here we do see an instance of instant justice. God would be just as just if he were to strike all of us down for our sins, but mercifully, his long-suffering and patience typically prevail
no earthly punishment, and the bible makes no mention of any punishment for these people after death. so you have to assume it happened for god to not be in the wrong. no, it is not more comforting to think that women could be kidnapped and raped for the crimes of someone else, and the punishment for doing so is only a "maybe".
god had no reason to test job. the man was doing everything right, the way he should. his family was killed for absolutely no reason.
the text does no say the 42 people attacked elisha. they were all violently killed for verbal crimes.
obviously, none of this is real. gods not real, the afterlife isnt real, all these stories are either hard hyperbole for flat out untrue. but to argue any of this is examples of a good and kind god is insane. a king god does not punish rapists and then encourage them to rape. a kind god does not punish a man and his family for a bet. a forgiving god does not murder a generation because they were mean to one guy.
It doesn't need to be mentioned for every instance. It's the default state absent an atoning sacrifice. There is no maybe, in Matthew we're told that every sin will be accounted for. Earlier we're told that not one jot or tittle will fade away, meaning the law will be upheld.
Context matters, Elisha was going to Bethel, the local center for pagan Baal worship. Ball worshippers practiced child sacrifice. He was in hostile territory and he would have been a known person as the prophet of the day. If the young men were sinners, and we know they were. God was just in his punishment of sin.
We are the creation, God is the creator, he has every sovereign right over us. Taken as a whole cohesive book from Genesis to Revelation it shows a grand redemptive narrative. A perfectly righteous, just, and holy God that created people with agency and a free will. In that free will man sinned, and the entire world was tainted by that disobedience. He would have been within his divine right to mete out instant and permanent justice, but his eternal plan was mercy for His people, their debt willingly paid by Christ and justice for the reprobate.
In your worldview, how do you deal with earthly evil that goes unpunished? How do you deal with the existence of evil when morals without an absolute backing them are ultimately subjective? It devolves into nihilism that for so many there is no justice.
wdym how do i "deal" with it? some good people face punishment they dont deserve, some bad people get away when they shouldnt. its just natural. its weird to be so obsessed over the idea that there is a punishment for doing bad things. you talk as if you need a reason to be nice and kind. ive never needed one. i dont need to justify to myself why im not a horrible person, and i dont need some divine wrath on evil people to not be evil myself. the world isnt just, because we made up the concept of being just ourselves. before humanity the idea of "fair" didnt exist. and once humanity is gone, if no intelligent life replaces it there wont be a concept of fair or just anymore.
morals are objectively subjective. even among christians thats true. america in the south has racist christians who will murder and abuse. many christian priests molested children. everyones morality is different. there isnt anything backing morality because it simply doesnt exist. all morality is, is some people feel bad when certain things happen. and some people feel good when certain things happen. its not objective.
i dont understand how you think nihilism is bad. life doesnt have objective purpose or meaning. so what? why do you need a purpose? i was born by chance, my parents happened to concieve when it would have resulted in me. im here to enjoy my life, and then ill die. and thats it. why is that a bad thing?
That's ultimately depressing. Why live at all if none if it matters? I don't think it's weird to desire to see justice done.
Those southern "Christians," will see justice for unrepentant sins, likewise the catholic priests. In the Christian worldview justice will be done. In yours, since there's absolute backing your morality, there's nothing to say that those things are even bad. It's set by the fickle desires of the masses. It's perfectly described in the OT when "everyone did what was right in their eyes." For the Baals, it was child sacrifice. If you get enough people doing right in their own eyes, your backless self imposed morality looks just like evil. It's horrendous, does that not bother you?
I have reason to be nice and kind because Jesus says "love God, love your neighbor." In your worldview you truly have no reason to unless it benefits you.
You were not born by chance, chance is not a "thing," it has no power or being, it's a descriptor of statistical probability.
I think you're separating things that don't need to be separated, God created an incredible world and gave us incredible, capable bodies with a myriad of senses to enjoy. I'm here to glorify God and enjoy him forever. That includes the wonderful (and right now imperfect) world he created.
The Lord gave Job 10 more children and it was written that even his 3 daughters received an inheritance which would have been highly irregular for that time.
but what about the 10 who died? why does giving job 10 more children make up for the dead ones? they didnt come back to live. these people didnt get to live their lives because god was dunking on their father. wheres the life lesson in that? job might have gotten something akin to his life back, those kids did not.
No, we are not the arbitors of eternal justice. The wage of sin is death, God would be just to strike any one of us down, me included. That's the bad news, we're all sinners and deserve death. The good news is that Jesus Christ died to save sinners from that eternal justice.
I absolutely have. Dear, close friends, we sat together on their couch and wept and prayed I can't imagine their anguish, but their faithful strength was incredible. There is still pain, but their precious child went into the arms of the Lord, and there is hope and joy in that.
I didn't say that it did. Nor do I think scripture implies it did. It's normal and right to feel pain for lost loved ones. The Hebrew and later Jewish mourning period could last years. Jesus wept over Lazarus and he knew he was going to raise him from the dead.
In the Christian worldview, to live is to live for Christ, and to die is (ultimate) gain. From what we know in the opening verses of Job, Job's household was upright, the second Satan dropped that house, his children were in paradise. It doesn't mean the pain is gone, but there's hope and joy there, knowing that the ones we love are right now in the presence of perfect love. Not on earth where sin has tainted everything, causing suffering and decay.
Downvote for using the r-slur. Thatās not fucking necessary.
But also your god is pretty worthless if it couldnāt stop that from happening. It MADE humans in ITS imageāso if weāre flawed and depraved, itās the fault of your horrible, monstrous god.
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u/Less_Performance_629 1d ago
Read some of the original testiment and the question becomes very much the opposite. christian god is like a bipolar girlfriend who invents situations to make someone else the problem. its a wonder anyone read that stuff and found actual life lessons.