How could God kill 70,000? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
After yesterday’s piece on Andrew Handley, it occurred to me that I had left something out and something important. It was in his last entry on the piece saying that God had outrageous morals. Let’s see what he said.
We’ve seen commands for rape, religious genocide, the killing of children, and human sacrifice. What we haven’t seen are the burning of whores, a ban on crippled people, or the killing of 70,000 men. There are 136 words in this paragraph, and if we linked a verse on every single word, it wouldn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the acts committed either by God’s hand or under his command that would be considered immoral—or blatantly insane—by today’s standards. But that’s the thing, right? Today’s standards are held to a different moral code than the standards of the 800 years or so before the birth of Christ. But, then again, how does that make any sense?
Frater, Jamie. Listverse.com’s Epic Book of Mind-Boggling Top 10 Lists: Unbelievable Facts and Astounding Trivia on Movies, Music, Crime, Celebrities, History, and More (p. 543). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.
Here we have a condemnation of the killing done by God. Note that it is just assumed that God has to abide by a moral code, which I said yesterday was false. There is nothing God is subservient to. God is good and that goodness is His nature. He is what it means to be, to exist. (If you want more information on the meaning of good, I recommend getting Edward Feser’s Aquinas which is on sale on Kindle as of this writing.)
Now let’s compare this with another statistic. Abortion. See the information here.
If you look at that chart, the positive is abortions do seem to be going down. Why is that? There are a number of factors, but one I can easily think of is that Americans are becoming more and more pro-life, Those who kill their own children tend to have less children to raise with that belief. Those who believe children are sacred tend to have more children to raise with that believe. It’s why I think the problem with leftist ideology is it is often a snake eating its own tail.
Let’s put aside even the idea of abortions done for rape, incest, or saving the life of the mother. Regardless of where you stand on those, everyone should agree they are the minority. What this means is that most women are getting their abortions for other reasons and also, claiming it as a moral right.
Woman kills a life in her womb for her own personal reasons? A moral right we must defend.
God, the author and source of life who owes no one anything, takes the life that He provides and can resurrect even if He desires? A great evil that must be condemned.
Also, note that Handley ends this by saying it is repugnant to our morality. Okay, but who says our morality is the right one? Do we have some things right? Yes. Do we have some things wrong? Absolutely. This is true of EVERY time and place and culture. There is not one moral system that gets everything wrong.
Now as a Christian, I can say that morality has a goal of getting us to be good people and that there is a real and objective good. Yet if Handley takes a place of moral relativism, as he seems to in this piece, then there’s no such thing as the Bible having outrageous morals. They just have different ones. On moral relativism, there can be no grounds to really condemn them. You cannot like them, but you cannot call them wrong.
While I think Listverse does tend to try for accuracy, this list is one that was a failure across the board. Hint. If you’re going to study an ancient culture and people, you need to study the culture and the people themselves.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
Support Deeper Waters on Patreon!
