Hi All,
Some people decided to reject Christianity because of what they perceived as hypocrisy in the Church. However, my questioning with Christianity was in spite of what I saw as a group of people who, for the most part, were good, honest and loving. (Sure, not perfect--who is? And hypocrisy is a common human failing; the greater the striving, the greater the apparent hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue--and how sad it is if we no longer believe in virtue at all!)
No, my questioning of Christianity was because of what I believed the pages of the Bible showed about the character of the God that was the center of worship.
One of the biggest--if not the biggest--problems I have with the Biblical God is commands like 1 Sam 15:3: "Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." Also, God testing a man to see if he was willing to kill his own child to prove he would follow God no matter what.
Here is the paradox: most Christians I have met (and I have met many, from many denominations) are very loving and are horrified at the death of any child. Most that I have met are strongly pro-life. And yet they worship a God who commanded people to kill children.
How do Christians deal with such a paradox? I, for one, could never follow--let alone worship--a God who orders the killing of children. To me, it is reviving Molech worship (what an image! God condemned the Canaanites for sacrificing their children to Molech, so his solution was to have the Israelites kill the Canaanite children!)
No temporary suffering by a member of the Trinity seems to be adequate to cover this astonishing nature. If the killing of children is not evil, then what could ever be evil?
Peace
Some people decided to reject Christianity because of what they perceived as hypocrisy in the Church. However, my questioning with Christianity was in spite of what I saw as a group of people who, for the most part, were good, honest and loving. (Sure, not perfect--who is? And hypocrisy is a common human failing; the greater the striving, the greater the apparent hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue--and how sad it is if we no longer believe in virtue at all!)
No, my questioning of Christianity was because of what I believed the pages of the Bible showed about the character of the God that was the center of worship.
One of the biggest--if not the biggest--problems I have with the Biblical God is commands like 1 Sam 15:3: "Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." Also, God testing a man to see if he was willing to kill his own child to prove he would follow God no matter what.
Here is the paradox: most Christians I have met (and I have met many, from many denominations) are very loving and are horrified at the death of any child. Most that I have met are strongly pro-life. And yet they worship a God who commanded people to kill children.
How do Christians deal with such a paradox? I, for one, could never follow--let alone worship--a God who orders the killing of children. To me, it is reviving Molech worship (what an image! God condemned the Canaanites for sacrificing their children to Molech, so his solution was to have the Israelites kill the Canaanite children!)
No temporary suffering by a member of the Trinity seems to be adequate to cover this astonishing nature. If the killing of children is not evil, then what could ever be evil?
Peace