Paidion wrote:
You find it absurd? Absurd to state that God is not a killer...
Absolutely absurd (Wildly unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate).
Paidion wrote:How about yourself? Can you go ahead and kill people, and still be a good, loving, and righteous member of your community?
Another absurdity from you, as if I condone indiscriminate killing, as you seem to imply.
Here's a correct description of my position:
An armed man has killed several hostages and is threatening to kill others if his demands are not met. A police sharpshooter manages to kill the man. The officer's action was good and justified.
A seven-year old girl is being held at knife point by a man attempting to kidnap her from her bedroom at night. Her mother hears the commotion, grabs a pistol, and rushes into the bedroom. Startled, the man releases the girl and charges at the woman, who fires and kills the would-be kidnapper. The woman's action was good and justified.
Several Jews incarcerated in an extermination camp, knowing their doom, attempt to escape over the fence at night. A guard encounters them. A scuffle ensues during which one of the Jews is killed while managing to break the guard's neck. The other Jews escape and the guard dies. The Jew's action was good and justified.
Under certain circumstances, killing another human is a good thing to do and is justified. God allows man to perform justifiable killing, but never to murder. When God kills it is always justifiable, and never murder.
Some Christians have developed the doctrine that it is never justifiable for man to kill. Being overwhelmed by squeamishness, they seem compelled to that conclusion. Because all killing is repulsive (to the sane and decent mind), they feel it must always be wrong. Further, they conclude, based on their self-righteous feelings, that God also opposes all killing and that He never indulges in it. Their giant problem, however, is that Scripture repeatedly describes God as a killer. Sometimes of one, sometimes of a few, sometimes of many. To overcome the many Scriptural proofs that their feelings about God
not being a killer are wrong-headed, they simply twist those proofs until they don't say what they say, for them. For instance, they imagine that the Biblical writers were under the inspiration of Satan, not God, when they reported times when God killed. "It wasn't God," they say. "The Bible's wrong. The Devil did it, not God. The Father never kills. That's the start and finish of it."
But their doctrine actually starts with their soft-hearted squeamishness and leads them to conclude that, like them, God is too sweet to kill anyone. That is flippant theology. It allows those who believe it to flip the blame from God to someone else whenever Scripture says that God killed. That way, they figure, God is never liable. They're like Flip Wilson who said, "The devil made me do it." God, they assume (because of their squeamishness) cannot do what they personally find repugnant (like drowning the earth's population), so they concoct a way that He didn't. They slander Moses by conjecturing that he was under the influence of Satan, and dismiss him as an unreliable historian. In the process, they also dismiss (and slander) Jesus as unreliable, because He validated Moses. So goes the way of those who cannot read Scripture without trying to find ways to make it more comfortable for themselves.
Whenever God kills, it's a good thing. Those who have a problem accepting the Scriptural doctrine of justifiable killing need to get over it. But especially they need to stop slandering God by describing Him in ways other than how He describes Himself, by trying to conform Him to an image based on their own self-honoring view of themselves. The Father kills. He knows what He's doing. Praise God.
Samuel wrote:The Lord kills and brings to life;
he brings down to Sheol and raises up. (1 Samuel 2:6)
Please, Paidion, don't tell me you think Satan inspired Samuel to say that.