Friend

This may have been questioned before.

If one is to accept the belief that God (Christian god) is love, then how can one justify the brutal slayings and murders in the Old Testament that were commanded and led by God?

If the definition of love applied to God is agape (non-self seeking), how can that be applied to the God killed children, men, and woman because they accepted a different god? Isn't that action out of jealousy and self interest, which is opposite the what I have heard the N.T. talk about?

Thanks

~ Friend ~

diana

Hi, Friend.

I readily admit, I saw your username, the title of your thread, sighed deeply to myself, and popped in here to give what I was sure was Christian spam, then whisk it off to Elsewhere.

The guidelines for what issues may be discussed in this forum are a bit fuzzy, but I think you chose the right place to rap about this. Part of our mission in this room is to attempt to define what we mean by God and what characteristics we may assign to him.

In that respect, your OP makes the cut.

I haven't seen this particular question asked here before, but I've only been here a few months. I think it's an interesting angle.

Welcome to II.

d

DBrant

Well, the typical Christian response to this would probably be an appeal to fear or appeal to authority, like:

- Who are we to question what God considers "love"?
- "Love," as it applies to God, is different from "love" as it applies to humans.
- God doesn't have to follow the same rules for "love" that we do.
- God is unknowable.
- God exists outside of creation.
- God lives in the spiritual realm.

And so on.
:banghead:

Jamie_L

To be honest, I don't really know what it means when someone says "God is love."

As best I can tell, this is one of those equivocating sayings that is supposed to evoke feelings about the word "love" and asign them to God, even though, when thoroughly explored and explained, this statement really has little if anything to do with the usual definition of "love" that people use in every-day conversations.

Jamie

Deke

Friend,

Your question is a very good one, and the replies you'll get from more fundamental Christians (trust me, you'll get some) illuminate the lenghts people will go to resolve such paradoxes.

In the OT, God kills people either directly (e.g. the Flood) or by directing other humans to do so - for example, and if I'm not mistaken, I think the chapter of Joshua is full of Joshua killing volumes of people with the Lord's approval.

Any rational person can see the glaring problem here. But, and this is a big but , many people have labored for many years to create explanations and/or justifications as to why all the Lord's killing is a GOOD thing. Reasons like: the people killed were wicked/evil and so they deserved it, the Lord was setting an example of what can happen if you don't love Him, He's testing faith...that kind of thing. It all seems rather obviously contrived, even silly.

Anywho, use Yahoo or Google and search for "Biblical contradictions" and "Biblical atrocities"...there's some illuminating information to be found. Oh, and search for "rebuttals to bibilcal contradictions"...you'll find lots of commentary like: "one must understand the full context of what was happening if one is to understand why it was a good thing that the Lord killed [insert killed group here]". It's actually kinda funny :-)

MHO,

Deke

Tyler A DiPietro

The idea of an all-loving God is incompatible with the teachings of traditional Christianity. A God cannot, at the same time, love all people and indiscriminitely murder people. It's also incompatible with the idea of hell and "eternal torment", I know I couldn't condemn anyone I loved to an eternity of suffering.

I think Thomas Jefferson said it best when he called the Christian God a three- headed monster.

sourdough

no,God is an imaginary being,
love is an emotion,a feeling,
those are two completely different things imo,

Jobar

Friend, I can remember (dimly- I'm 47) singing a little ditty in Sunday School to the effect that "God is Love, God is Love!" Even then, I remember being uncomfortable with this, because I had also heard about Moses, the Pharaoh, and various plagues. Even at age 6, I wondered why God didn't love the Egyptian first-born (the question was important to me, as I was a first-born child.)

I think that a similar question is "Does God = good?" Again, there are huge volumes of apologetic arguments trying to prove that yes, God *is* good- and will send you to Hell if you don't think he is.

WWSD

That one often confuses me as well.
I'd be interested in hearing some explaination of this phrase.

Inconnu

Love = like, cherish.
Pray he likes you or crispy death will ensue!
I think god has special dispensation as its his ball and he makes the rules. The correlation between good god killing and the good west killing in Iraq or any war fighting evil is interesting to say the least, did god teach us that killing and war can be a good thing?