Daily Archives: March 4, 2009
Mass Genocide in the Bible
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Although it is rarely taught in Sunday School, there can be no doubt that mass genocide occurs with alarming regularity in the Old Testament. Just crack open a copy of Michael Earl’s self-published wonder Bible Stories Your Parents Never Taught You and read a few chapters. Over and over again, Israel kills not just the soldiers of the territory they invade, but the women and children, too.
All of this takes place at the behest of God himself, who is the one that orders the killings to take place. God very often indicates that he wants no survivors left.
This, according to our most scathing critics, leaves a huge moral dilemma: how can we continue to call the Bible the “Good Book” if it contains more violence than the average video game? Was the bloodshed and violence necessary?
Can You Sue God?
Ernie Chambers attempted to sue God in 2007. The Nebraska Court of Appeals has recently thrown it out on the grounds that courts don’t decide “abstract, hypothetical, or ficticious” issues.
Can a person sue God? I would say that the answer lies in Scripture:
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. (Rom 13:1, emphasis added)
What that means is that, no matter what anyone may say, our courts exist because God instituted them, and they have only the authority that he has given them. All authority derives first from God.
That means that God isn’t subject to the rule of any court, since they derive their authority from him in the first place. How quickly we sinful humans forget our place before the Lord. And what hubris to say that this is an “abstract, hypothetical, or ficticious” issue! This is an issue of authority, and who is subject to whom.
Josiah Concept Ministries 