The other day I was speaking with a friend who had recently returned from a trip to Germany. The trip to Auschwitz was certainly not the “high point” of his trip, but it was undoubtedly the most emotionally arresting, memorable part. Since I’ve never been I could only listen to his chilling description and imagine […]
genocide
Did God accommodate genocide?
In his 2008 book The God I Don’t Understand Christopher Wright makes the extraordinary suggestion that God commanded the Israelites to commit genocide against neighboring peoples as a form of accommodation to ancient near eastern standards of war. In the theaded discussion to my article “A Few Shades the Other Side of Silly” Jerry Shepherd suggested […]
How will the Christians know when to commence the killing?
A few months back in my essay “Might God call Christians to participate in a future genocide?” I pointed out that Christians who believe that God commanded genocides in the past are forced to consider the possibility that he might command a genocide in the future. I pointed to Revelation 19:11-18 which describe a cataclysmic […]
Is rape worse than sacrifice?
Like other people, Christians react with horror at the idea of a divinely commanded rape. “God would never command rape!” they insist. So you might expect that they would be equally incredulous to the prospect of God commanding the killing and mutilation of a child as a sacrifice. But no. On this point many believe […]
The Problem of the Faulty Moral Perception Faculty
Many Christians apparently believe that an act like killing and mutilating a child as a devotional act toward a deity can be morally virtuous (i.e. if God commands it, and God can command it because he has commanded it) but raping a child as a devotional act to a deity cannot (because God never would […]
Christian moral schizophrenia and psychopathy
In “Might God call Christians to participate in a future genocide?” I pointed out that Christians who believe God commanded genocides in the past should be open to the possiblity of God commanding a genocide in the future. I gave, as an example, Revelation 19 which seems to narrate a future war when a population […]
Might God call Christians to participate in a future genocide?
Christians who endorse the biblical genocides (e.g. Joshua 6-11) are fond of pointing out that these were exceptional circumstances which were necessary for Israel to maintain her purity in preparation for her role to be a light to the nations. However, they aver, the time for genocide is now over. Today we are called to […]
Allowing a genocide is not commanding a genocide
John asks: If a genocide that is allowed is moral, can it’s being commanded also be considered moral? I mean, of course there is a difference between allowing and commanding, but if it is moral to allow X, then does that make it moral to command X? If not why not? Let’s consider an example […]
What’s splitting your church? Worship music or genocide?
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:35 Suburban North American Church As everybody rose to sing Al stayed seated in the pew, arms crossed defiantly. He never stood during the choruses. Driving drums, distorted guitar and vacuous lyrics. “They make it sound like Jesus is […]
If “The Bible is not a children’s book” then why do we have children’s Bibles?
Steve Hays of Triablogue wrote a response to my discussion of teaching biblical genocide to children called “Scout’s Honor!” It includes all the hallmarks of Hays’s critical analysis (or lack thereof) including the claim that I accept the UN as my “moral authority”. (How’s that supposed to work exactly?! “Hmm, has the UN addressed whether […]
How do you teach God’s genocide to children?
In this “classic post” from my CP days I explore the thorny issue of how Christians introduce the darker parts of the biblical narrative — in particular the Joshua genocide — to a young readership. The answer seems to be: not very well. *** I recently bought my seven year old daughter her first complete […]
Inerrancy by induction?
In “Can N.T. Wright save Paul the Apostle?” I identified an assumption that guides the way many Christians read the Bible. I called it MIS: Moral inerrancy standard (MIS): While the human authors of scripture were fallen, morally errant beings, the process of inspiration protected the authors from writing down any morally errant sentences which […]
“Is God a Moral Monster? A Review (Part 4)
Paul Copan. Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2011. ISBN 978-0-8010-7275-8. 252 pp. The time has come to draw this review to a close. In this final installment of the review I’ll focus on Copan’s treatment of human sacrifice, genocide and ethnic cleansing in scripture. […]
Did God raise up Bin Laden?
The question is repugnant not only on the surface but all the way down to its very core. It presumes a moral framework that is utterly alien to my way of understanding the universe. And yet it is a question that kept bubbling to the surface as I read Clay Jones’ essay “We Don’t Hate Sin […]
