This question came up kinda sorta at our last small group. The Babylonian King threw Daniel's conspirators (and their families) into the lions den / pit for trying to set up Daniel to get him killed. The question was why did God allow the women and children of the families to get eaten? Long story short, it was the custom of the Medo - Persian law that if any one of the family members were convicted of something, the whole family was guilty. Nice huh? This got me thinking of some other instances in the Bible where God is seemingly ruthless. The annihilation of the Amalekites for example. He told the armies to go back and kill the women and children also! That sounds brutal to me. The same can be said about the Canaanites, or the "little children" (KJV) that taunted Elisha, and two bears mauled 42 of the "little children" to death! Ouch!
I picked up Lee Stroebel's book "The Case For Faith" and read some super cool things. If you don't know who Lee Stroebel is, he was an atheist that worked for the Chicago Tribune newspaper and set out to write a story on the fallacy of Jesus Christ, and prove him as legend rather than the authentic messiah that He is. Lee became a follower of Christ during his "investigation."
He (Lee) has an interview with an incredibly intelligent Christian man named Norman Geisler and challenges him on some of these tough questions about God being merciful vs. merciless. For example; God calls for the complete destruction of the Amalekites. The Amalekites were so wicked and corrupt to the core, that God chose to wipe the entire nation out so that no offspring could ever reproduce their corruption. They were given 400 years to repent beforehand by the way, but to no avail. Same with the Canaanites. He (God) gives us a chance to repent. He wants us to repent. He wants that all will come to Him.
When someone questions us about the "cruel" God of the Old Testament, we need to know our bibles. There are some really bad translations of Hebrew words in the KJV bibles. The "anti" Christ people out there have really been fed a believable pack of lies by the enemy, and if we don't do our due diligence, we have no effective and correct answer for their questions. God is sovereign and merciful beyond belief. We question His actions and motives?! How dare we! If you can create life, then you may have the power to take it away. God created life, He has the power and the right to do what He wants with it. We think how dare God let bad things happen? No the question should be "how dare we let bad things happen" We need to take care of just ourselves. I think God pretty much has things figured out, and doesn't really need our help. But that's just my opinion.
Anytime you question the mercy and grace of Jesus, dig a little deeper. Who else do you know that willingly chose to die a merciless brutal death for the people that hated Him? I can't think of anyone. Can you? I know I wouldn't. Yet we question God's integrity in dealing with people that He created. Wow! We better be careful. God is great, He is, He just Is!
No comments:
Post a Comment