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Question Title Posted By Question Date
Does God condone Rape, Murder, Slavery in OT? Matthew Thursday, May 17, 2007

Question:

Brother Ignatius,
I'm writing you again because you've always done a great job in answering my questions before. Thank you so much and praise God for your work!!! Just recently i was reading an interview with a Christian musician who talked all about how Christ changed his life. At the bottom of the interview, there were forum posts from other readers, one of the readers made a remark to the effect of "Why would anyone want to follow a God that condones rape, murder, and slavery in the Old Testament?"
This remark really disturbed me. I've never read the complete Old Testament all the way through, i hear the daily readings at daily Mass, but not all of the little details. Please tell me that this isn't true. Do you know what this guy is talking about??? I did a search on the net to try and see what verses this person might have been talking about and it brought up some atheist site called 'evilbible'. com - that has all of these brutal Old Testament passages where they say God condones all of these "evil" things. Please help me Brother, because now i feel bad for even entertaining these thoughts. God Bless you in your work.

Question Answered by Bro. Ignatius Mary, OLSM

Dear Matthew:

The evilbible website is run by a self-styled atheist who has dedicated his life to express his atheism by attacking the Bible and religion.

A true atheist would not waste his time debunking a God he does not believe exists. An Atheist may spend energies fighting for their interpretation of First Amendment rights and the false interpretation of the Constitution concerning separation of Church and state. But this guy is just a plain 'ol fashion hate-mongering bigot.

In the book of Jude (vv. 10-13) is a passage that applies to this dingaling at the evilbible site:

But these men revile whatever they do not understand, and by those things that they know by instinct as irrational animals do, they are destroyed.

Woe to them! For they walk in the way of Cain, and abandon themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error, and perish in Korah's rebellion. These are blemishes on your love feasts, as they boldly carouse together, looking after themselves; waterless clouds, carried along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars for whom the nether gloom of darkness has been reserved for ever.

On this person's website he has a "retard of the month" -- a person who defends the Christian faith. Well, from what I see on his site I'd have to make him the moron of the decade. He is a real piece of stale cake.

God tells us that there are some things that we cannot understand without the Holy Spirit:

(1 Cor 2:13-14) And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit.

The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. ...

These people cannot understand the Bible because they do not have the Spirit of God within them to understand the things of God. It is useless to even try to help them understand things like this. Their lack of the Spirit combined with their intense hatred and bigotry true make them "I've made up my mind, do not confuse me with the facts."

It would take a whole book to explain the passages in the Old Testament to which they refer. So, I will just make a couple of example to show what is going on.

The hatemongers propose that God supports murder. That is ridiculous. One of the ten commandments prohibits murder. Moses was punished for the murder he committed by not being allowed to cross the Jordan into the promised land. David was punished for his murder of Bathsheba's husband. He paid a heavy price of his own sons.

When God said to Israel to kill every man, woman, and child of Canaan, for example, this was not murder, or even war. This was God judging the nation of Canaan and judging them to be destroyed. God has the right to do that. He is the Judge of us all.

It is also God's prerogative to choose how he will administer His judgment. He choose to use a Flood one time, he used fire of come sort with Sodom and Gomorrah, and he used the Nation of Israel to administer His judgment upon Canaan. This was not a support of murder, war, or the like. This was God doing what He has a right to do, judge a nation and destroy it if they deserve it according to His perfect Justice.

Atheist will never accept this because they cannot accept that a "god" can tell them what to do, or dare judge them. They have a surprise in store.

Anyway, each of the stories that the atheist offer objection can be explained in terms of how I explained the destruction of Canaan. There are reasons.

Secondly, there are stories of murder, rape, slavery, torture, terrorism, tyranny in the Bible. These are examples of the sin of man, not the approbation of God. God will take those sins, those lemons, and try to make lemonade from them, but that does not mean that he approves of it.

We get a glimpse of that in what Jesus said about divorce. He said that Moses allowed divorce because of the hardness of the heart of men. He said that God never intended divorce.

There is much that happened due to the sins and weakness of man. That is not God's fault but God being God can take those weaknesses and use them to show His glory.

The atheist being without the Holy Spirit will never understand these things.

I hope this helps,

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary 


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