The God of the Holy Bible is a Monster!

The PRO has yet to SUPPORT THEIR CLAIMS. Simply asserting God is a loveless monster without providing support based on the context of scripture leaves the door wide open for a very bland debate. Despite this, The CON will continue refuting the PRO's claims. How can we justify this with blaming the devil? People are inclined to blame the devil in order to remove their guilt, justify their actions, and ignore their responsibility but this does not mean the blame is valid. In Genesis, Adam blamed Eve and the Lord, "the woman made me do it, the one you gave me"(Genesis 3:12). Certainly, as the deceiver and liar, Satan instigated the temptation, but Eve responded with negative volition, unbelief, and disobedience, and Adam failed to stay true to his responsibility as the leader in his family. Likewise, David failed as the leader of Israel. But should he have died? Consider this modernized parable: Suppose Bob owns a factory and in the factory there are 100,000 workers. Bob, the owner, gives a tour of the factory to his new manger Tom. Bob instructs Tom by explaining, in no uncertain terms, that if he ever pulls a certain lever in the control board room without consent from him, all the workers must immediately put on hazardous material suits, or some of them will get extremely sick. Several years later, after Tom has settled and become sure of himself in his position, he decides to pull the lever. Now, whenever the lever is activated, an automatic electronic message is sent to Bob in his office many miles away. Immediately, Tom gets a call from Bob. Bob asks Tom why he has done this. Regretful Tom apologizes seeing that many workers will get sick, and feeling like a complete failure asks Bob to fire him hoping that the workers will not get sick. But Bob does not have control over them getting sick at this point; he gave that control to Tom. Additionally, the lever was designed and set to work the way it works a long time ago. So, despite the terrible mistake, Bob takes into account that Tom has been a great manager. If Tom were not so humble about his failure, he would definitely fire him, Bob thinks. Bob also reasons that firing Tom accomplishes nothing given that activating the lever directly affects the workers, not Tom. That is, Bob is going to lose enough productivity for awhile and cannot afford to lose Tom as well. As a result, 70,000 of the workers get sick and go on disability. Forgiving Bob lets Tom keep his Job. END OF STORY To close the CONS debate on the census issue, it must be stated that God allowed the devil to tempt David to take a census that would harm Israel in order bring judgement on Israel because they were sinning, "Once again the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and he caused David to harm them by taking a census" (2 Samuel 24 1-2). God's allowance of Satan to cause temptations is sometimes referred to as God's own actions, but they are not. God is a God of love, but he cannot overlook sin and thus, must judge it according to his precepts by allowing Satan to have his way. This fact must be accepted or there is no hope in understanding the terrible things that fall upon people in the bible. Finally, we see here that Israel, in a addition to David, was not innocent, and many men apparently deserved the death penalty for crimes committed prior to David's census blunder. David's disobedience was merely a means to end, in order for God to display his wrath and judgement on the nation of Israel. ************************************************************************************************** We move on to the PRO's statement: "The god of the bible also destroyed 60 cities including men, women, and children (Deuteronomy 3:6)." Response: First, the challenge is often about a God who orders genocide in respect of the occupants of Canaan. Genocide, I would suggest, is the purposeful wiping out of a tribe, nation or people. A careful reading of the Bible text will show that that was NOT God's intention - it was to drive the occupants out of that land.To understand this apparent situation we need to understand: a) the nature of God b) the nation of Israel and the surrounding nations c) the options of the inhabitants. a) The Nature of God The Bible"s descriptions of God are not at variance between Old and New Testaments. For example in the Old Testament we find God saying, "The soul who sins is the one who will die." (Ezek 18:5) In the New Testament, we find the apostle, Paul, writing "the wages of sin is death" (Rom 6:23). However, in the Old Testament we also find God declaring, "I take no pleasure in the death of anyone" (Ezek 18:32). Similarly in the New Testament, we find the apostle, Peter, writing about God, "He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish." (2 Peter 3:9) Now in both testaments, the way to avoid death was quite clear:"Repent and live!" (Ezek 18:32) and "not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9). For the moment that will be enough about God: sin will be punished by death, God doesn"t want death to come to man death is avoided by repentance, turning away from the sin. b) The Nation of Israel and the Surrounding Nations Israel were a nation created by God, starting from Abraham, then through Isaac and finally through Jacob, who was renamed Israel by God. While in Egypt the families grew over about four hundred years to become the equivalent of a nation of well over a million people. At the Exodus (see Exodus, chapter 1 to 12) God took them out of Egypt and meeting with them at Mount Sinai created a new nation out of them who would be a special people, specifically related to God (see Exodus 19). The objective of this was to show the world the possibility of a nation being led and guided by God, i.e. to act as a light to the rest of the world, revealing the goodness of God and His plan for His world. To achieve this possibility God instructed them to remove all the existing inhabitants of the land in order to create a new national identity. ii) The Surrounding Nations When we look at the people that Israel were told to destroy, we are told they were to be destroyed because of their wickedness (Deut 9:4), and because they worshiped idols and would turn Israel to those idols and away from God (Deut 7:4,16). The picture we are given is of nations in possession of the land God had promised Israel, who were totally established in worshipping idols and all of the practices that went with that (e.g. sacrificing children). From the beginning of the Bible we are shown mankind that has a propensity to turn away from God and turn to all kinds of foolish life styles that can only be described as pagan and uncivilised in the extreme! This propensity to turn away from God is what the Bible calls "Sin" and because Sin is living contrary to the design of the Creator, it means that such people live utterly destructive life styles. Because mankind seems to be tainted with this tendency, it also spreads like a virus unless checked. If it is left unchecked, the moral direction of any society is downwards, as our own society is showing at the beginning of the twenty first century. iii) Israel"s folly God knew that if Israel simply went into the land and mingled with the idol worshipers there, they would soon be led astray by them. Hence the objective of removing all the existing inhabitants. A number of the wars fought in the last century and, indeed, in this century, have been those fought to prevent something worse happen. This is what was behind God"s instructions to Israel additional notes: Children were included because God can judge the adult version of the child before the child becomes an adult. For example, suppose Hitler were a child, and a crazy person pointed out that the child is a genocidal maniac and should be put to death while the child is still an infant. Would that crazy person be a loveless monster? I don't think so.