No need to hunt. The OT is positively riddled with such ghastly occurrences.
Do you want to hear my top 10?
First go get your kids and let me ask them about the top 10 lousy things you did to them in their lives.
Maybe the head of the list will be you ever disciplined any of them for anything at any time ??
@sonship saidAlas, your brilliant (and slightly creepy) diversion is torpedoed by my lack of children.
@Ghost-of-a-DukeNo need to hunt. The OT is positively riddled with such ghastly occurrences.
Do you want to hear my top 10?
First go get your kids and let me ask them about the top 10 lousy things you did to them in their lives.
Maybe the head of the list will be you ever disciplined any of them for anything at any time ??
@sonship saidIs that really all you have to bring to the thread, uncouth remarks about children I don't even have? Is that what Christianity does to a person?
@Ghost-of-a-DukeAlas, your brilliant (and slightly creepy) diversion is torpedoed by my lack of children.
That might explain a lot.
Have some and let's check back with you in about 18 years.
We'll check and see if you let them run wild after their worst impulses every time.
What with the maggot comment in the other thread, this has not been a very dignified evening for you.
Make references to family members I do actually have and I will alert your post for moderation.
Edit: You peculiar fellow.
@chaney3 saidA Kingdom as I said are under the leadership of that country and the leadership can bring down on the people great judgment. It happens with good leads and bad!
The judgement fell upon children.
Are you aware of the 10th plague?
Edit: in fact, ALL 10 plagues affected innocent people.
@ghost-of-a-duke saidPlease God created a very good world and we screwed it up! Personal responsibility goes a long way in seeing the root cause of many errors and crimes. If you are going to take scriptures to look for crime you have to take them all.
To 'a Christian', all morality originates with God.
And that's the problem I am raising in this thread. 'If God did it, it must be good.' - To borrow a favorite expression from Becker, if the OT contained a story where God 'tortured babies for fun,' Christians here (like sonship) would be robustly explaining why such an occurrence didn't compromise God's righteousness.
@kellyjay saidAgain, you miss the point. If, as individuals, we both read a factual story in a newspaper about bears being sent to kill children, we would both be rightly appalled. We would both say that such an occurrence could never be justified.
Please God created a very good world and we screwed it up! Personal responsibility goes a long way in seeing the root cause of many errors and crimes. If you are going to take scriptures to look for crime you have to take them all.
Place that same story in the OT and suddenly Christians are scrabbling around to find justification.
@sonship saidWhat a creep. Too often, sonship, you are an online Christian creep. KellyJay isn't much better with his attempts to pretend - dishonestly - that I disrespected a deceased family member and his attempt to leverage my family for the purposes for trying to peddle his ludicrous torturer God ideology, which he wants me to apologize for taking exception to. His current prolonged huff indicates that, on some level, he realizes how creepy he was.
Have some and let's check back with you in about 18 years.
We'll check and see if you let them run wild after their worst impulses every time.
@ghost-of-a-duke saidThus says the Lord God: Enough, O princes of Israel! Put away violence and oppression, and execute justice and righteousness. Cease your evictions of my people, declares the Lord God.
Again, you miss the point. If, as individuals, we both read a factual story in a newspaper about bears being sent to kill children, we would both be rightly appalled. We would both say that such an occurrence could never be justified.
Place that same story in the OT and suddenly Christians are scrabbling around to find justification.
I'm telling you that morals are things we live by, and judgments are when we don't. You are looking at judgments while ignoring all reasons why, if you don't care why it isn't morals you are looking at. A Holy God is just that, and when an evil people act against Him, bad things happen to the wicked people. You are taking a look as to what has occurred due to sin without looking at the cause. When all of creation who owes itself to its creations acts as if the One who created and sustains all things including life isn't worth obeying or acknowledging bad things occur, we were created by Him for Him.
@chaney3 saidAll of creation was made for His purposes; none in it can stand before God innocent within this fallen world. You want to accuse God, for God being God, there isn't a single life that does not have an end date He sets, the rules on life and when He calls anyone out of this life He created and maintains to what it next, it is because He is the One, and the only One who sets it all up, not for our selfish desires but His glory and purposes.
The judgement fell upon children.
Are you aware of the 10th plague?
Edit: in fact, ALL 10 plagues affected innocent people.
@kellyjay saidLet's examine more closely what I wrote Kelly. - 'If, as individuals, we both read a factual story in a newspaper about bears being sent to kill children, we would both be rightly appalled. We would both say that such an occurrence could NEVER be justified.' - Here I am saying Kelly, outside of religion, you and I (as moral human beings) would be united in condemning such a horrific act, irrespective of the cause.
Thus says the Lord God: Enough, O princes of Israel! Put away violence and oppression, and execute justice and righteousness. Cease your evictions of my people, declares the Lord God.
I'm telling you that morals are things we live by, and judgments are when we don't. You are looking at judgments while ignoring all reasons why, if you don't care why it isn't morals you ar ...[text shortened]... ncluding life isn't worth obeying or acknowledging bad things occur, we were created by Him for Him.
However, 'place that same story in the OT and suddenly Christians are scrabbling around to find justification.'
Moral fortitude is weakened the moment you accept such OT abominations as morally just. - YES an all-powerful deity can do whatever he wants. That doesn't make him righteous. That renders Him tyrannical.
@Ghost-of-a-Duke
I don't mind appearing peculiar as a lover of Christ in the midst of this crooked age.
To tie up some lose ends.
God in the Old Testament often showed His hatred for sin. What you don't appreciate is that He also instituted the atoning sacrifices like the sin offering, the peace offering, the trespass offering, the meal offering, the paschal lamb as symbolic pointers to the Redeemer to come - Christ. So God's mercy accompanied the Law and its penalties in that atoning offerings anticipating Christ were provided.
That some of the harsher punishments are seen near the Exodus is understandable to me. These generations were closer to the miraculous delivery. They or their parents and grandparents had witnessed astounding proof of God's reality.
So I can see that close to those events His examples of swift or harsh punishment are strong. They should have known better.
God gave the Canaanites 400 years to get SO BAD that He could make an example of:
1.) Just how low a society can sink into immorality.
2.) Both divine forbearance and divine justice.
We have to add another 30 years of God's tolerance as He led the Israelites for 30 years in the wilderness before the Canaanite conquest.
It hardly qualifies as genocide because after the conquest the Jews themselves were sorely punished for doing the same things as those they had dispossessed. THAT was their presumptive mistake, that JUST because they were God's people they would be exempt from judgment.
The land "vomited out" (says the Scripture) the very Israelites when they fell into the same sins. Sometimes the Bible says they were worse.
Both "the kindness and severity" of God are seen in the Old Testament and His justice.
There are 150 Psalms in the OT. If you can see no tender love, patient forbearance, pardon, forgiveness, salvation, and loving help in any of those 150 Psalms, I think it is more your problem. There is quite a lot of love. You are looking for infinite permissiveness perhaps.
That is why I mentioned your own children (which you don't have). Then think on your father and mother. Probably if they truly loved you they sometimes had to discipline you.
No?
God is called the heavenly Father. Maybe you expect the heavenly senile grandfather instead.
@sonship saidNo, you attempted to use children (you were unaware I didn't have) to make a creepy attack.
@Ghost-of-a-Duke
I don't mind appearing peculiar as a lover of Christ in the midst of this crooked age.
To tie up some lose ends.
God in the Old Testament often showed His hatred for sin. What you don't appreciate is that He also instituted the atoning sacrifices like the sin offering, the peace offering, the trespass offering, the meal offering, the paschal lamb as ...[text shortened]... God is called the heavenly Father. Maybe you expect the heavenly senile grandfather instead.
There is nothing Christ loving in that. Nothing at all.