Those of us who have open minds are already aware . Please don't lump Christians together .. There are many different kinds of Christians , the only thing we have in common is a love of Christ . I think you would be amazed at how many followers of Christ believe this is biblical . I personally believe God is tired of the evil . Jesus told us hurting children was an affront to God and everything these monsters do is to offend him. . John calls himself Catholic and is doing everything he can to destroy our church . It would be hard to ignore this if you have an IQ over 100 .
If God was tired of the evil and if he is ALL powerful he would end the evil. If he can make a heaven where there is no evil and that is good, then he can do the same on earth. If he is the creator of everything then he created evil. And over and over in the Bible he approves of what we would deem evil as per the verse below
Deuteronomy 20:10-14New International Version (NIV) 10 When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. 11 If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. 12 If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. 13 When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies.
What exactly is the problem here? The Canaanites, whom the Israelites were given licence to exterminate, were a wicked people who practiced things like child sacrifice etc. What is evil about destroying such people? The men were to be killed, the children and women kept alive as slaves. Besides God has a right to do what he wants with his own creations. Fortunately he is supremely just so he only allows the destruction of the evil, which the Canaanites were. Furthermore, he wanted to place the Israelites with whom he made a covenant, in a new land of their own. The Canaanites were ripe for extermination and so they might as well make room for God's chosen.
So what is evil here, pray tell?
Furthermore, the only way you could say that God allows evil is to say that it was evil for him to create humanity, but I would assume that you like most people are happy to be alive, no? God gave humans free will. If he had not done so, humans would be like robots and not living beings at all. Now it's a human's own decision to do evil. God never taught them to do evil and indeed he punishes each human for their evil deeds. Humans have the possibility to do wonderful and beautiful things, but many use their cognitive abilities to do evil. The only way to rid the world of human evil is to wipe humans out completely, which God nearly did thousands of years ago. But then many would call God evil for doing so. Heathens will forever rage against the Lord and whatever he does in his perfect rectitude, there will always be complaining and ingratitude.
Hmmm so the children are to be taken as plunder and used as plunder. Somehow I thought people on this site were concerned about children and their welfare. Are children considered to be guilty if their parents are guilty? Are they to be enslaved for the sins of their parents?
Perhaps you don't understand what plunder is. When one country defeats another country they feel they have a right to take anything that belonged to those people and to make those people slaves. Plundering is what pirates did, what the Vikings did, etc. It is not considered a noble thing to do. Pillage is a synonym for plunder
As for free will, for free will is what makes evil possible. Children are raped, tortured and killed by people exercising free will. I would be glad for humans to have no free will to stop all the evil. So I would then be a robot, so what. Is my having free will more important than kids being raped. BTW humans seem to have no problem removing people's free will once they have abused it. That is why we have jails. Could God not remove at least those who abuse kids from the mix while letting the rest of us muck around with free will concerning telling lies or stealing pens from work. Humans understand that some crimes need to be stopped by removing the free will of the worst criminals. God if all powerful could do that too. Let us play out our free will on lesser crimes and not let kids have their minds and hearts scarred because of the free will of others.
Parents regularly restrict the free will of their kids. Good parents do not allow one child to beat up another child. They do not let infants use knives or give the keys to the car to 10 year olds. Yet God stands back and watches this horror on planet earth and claims to be a good loving parent.
Yes, the Israelites destroyed and plundered their way through Canaan. Too bad they didn't do more of it, but they were too weak to follow God's clear and severe commandments. The men were killed and the women and children kept alive. You might have a distorted view of what slavery usually meant throughout the millennia, but it was often not that bad at all. It varied a lot. For example, you and I are slaves. Yes, we are slaves of our governments and the power brokers of this world. You may not know it or feel it, but trust me, you are. The biggest problem is that most people actually think they are free and not slaves. Not good. At least past slaves knew what they were. Now, being a slave itself is not necessarily even that bad if you have a benevolent master. Our masters today are not benevolent, but psychopathic scumbags. Fortunately for the vanquished Canaanites, the Israelites were generally, I am sure, benevolent and good masters. After all the Israelites were in covenant with the supremely just God of this world, and so the vanquished Canaanites too partook of the blessings of the Father.
I don't think plundering and violence is generally good, of course not, in fact it's evil when perpetrated against the innocent. But when the creator of this world commands you to do so at the expense of a sinful people, who am I to protest? Now you probably don't believe in my God so you couldn't care less, but to me he is very real and his word is the law.
So you would rather be a robot then? Then there is no you, you never existed, nor did any other human. If you were not a human you could've never had this conversation or lament the fact that there is evil in the world (due to the sinful nature of humanity). Weird of you to think this way, but to each his own. At any rate, that is not how things are and we humans do exist as cognitive beings. You can't do anything to change that. That being the case, we should do our best to behave and use our existence to further good things. You are right when you say that good humans should stop bad humans! Exactly! That is our job. We should prove ourselves worthy of being God's singularly unique creations by fighting against evil. It's not God's job to go around fixing things that humans should be able to fix.
However, there have been times when God has very directly affected things. He wiped out most of humanity already thousands of years ago (you almost got your wish, heh!). Then, since humans remained exceedingly sinful even after this, he made a covenant with the Israelites. They too mostly degenerated over time and then came Christ to share the gospel with the world. No one can anymore claim that they don't have the key to living a good and moral life, or that they can not escape the evil of this mortal world by going to heaven through their trust in Christ. But anyway, don't worry, I don't think the evil in this world will be going on for much longer. The wicked are picking up the pace. The Bible tells us that a time will come when humanity will become so weak and degenerate that God will put a final end to it. That is when the wicked will be destroyed and the good will ascend to heaven. As you can see, God is no passive party in all this. Once humanity has filled the cup of its iniquity to the brim, that is when God intervenes one last time.
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dipedo57 ago
Those of us who have open minds are already aware . Please don't lump Christians together .. There are many different kinds of Christians , the only thing we have in common is a love of Christ . I think you would be amazed at how many followers of Christ believe this is biblical . I personally believe God is tired of the evil . Jesus told us hurting children was an affront to God and everything these monsters do is to offend him. . John calls himself Catholic and is doing everything he can to destroy our church . It would be hard to ignore this if you have an IQ over 100 .
Kacey ago
If God was tired of the evil and if he is ALL powerful he would end the evil. If he can make a heaven where there is no evil and that is good, then he can do the same on earth. If he is the creator of everything then he created evil. And over and over in the Bible he approves of what we would deem evil as per the verse below
Most Christians don't read the whole Bible.
Hagen18 ago
What exactly is the problem here? The Canaanites, whom the Israelites were given licence to exterminate, were a wicked people who practiced things like child sacrifice etc. What is evil about destroying such people? The men were to be killed, the children and women kept alive as slaves. Besides God has a right to do what he wants with his own creations. Fortunately he is supremely just so he only allows the destruction of the evil, which the Canaanites were. Furthermore, he wanted to place the Israelites with whom he made a covenant, in a new land of their own. The Canaanites were ripe for extermination and so they might as well make room for God's chosen.
So what is evil here, pray tell?
Furthermore, the only way you could say that God allows evil is to say that it was evil for him to create humanity, but I would assume that you like most people are happy to be alive, no? God gave humans free will. If he had not done so, humans would be like robots and not living beings at all. Now it's a human's own decision to do evil. God never taught them to do evil and indeed he punishes each human for their evil deeds. Humans have the possibility to do wonderful and beautiful things, but many use their cognitive abilities to do evil. The only way to rid the world of human evil is to wipe humans out completely, which God nearly did thousands of years ago. But then many would call God evil for doing so. Heathens will forever rage against the Lord and whatever he does in his perfect rectitude, there will always be complaining and ingratitude.
Kacey ago
Hmmm so the children are to be taken as plunder and used as plunder. Somehow I thought people on this site were concerned about children and their welfare. Are children considered to be guilty if their parents are guilty? Are they to be enslaved for the sins of their parents?
Perhaps you don't understand what plunder is. When one country defeats another country they feel they have a right to take anything that belonged to those people and to make those people slaves. Plundering is what pirates did, what the Vikings did, etc. It is not considered a noble thing to do. Pillage is a synonym for plunder
As for free will, for free will is what makes evil possible. Children are raped, tortured and killed by people exercising free will. I would be glad for humans to have no free will to stop all the evil. So I would then be a robot, so what. Is my having free will more important than kids being raped. BTW humans seem to have no problem removing people's free will once they have abused it. That is why we have jails. Could God not remove at least those who abuse kids from the mix while letting the rest of us muck around with free will concerning telling lies or stealing pens from work. Humans understand that some crimes need to be stopped by removing the free will of the worst criminals. God if all powerful could do that too. Let us play out our free will on lesser crimes and not let kids have their minds and hearts scarred because of the free will of others.
Parents regularly restrict the free will of their kids. Good parents do not allow one child to beat up another child. They do not let infants use knives or give the keys to the car to 10 year olds. Yet God stands back and watches this horror on planet earth and claims to be a good loving parent.
Hagen18 ago
Yes, the Israelites destroyed and plundered their way through Canaan. Too bad they didn't do more of it, but they were too weak to follow God's clear and severe commandments. The men were killed and the women and children kept alive. You might have a distorted view of what slavery usually meant throughout the millennia, but it was often not that bad at all. It varied a lot. For example, you and I are slaves. Yes, we are slaves of our governments and the power brokers of this world. You may not know it or feel it, but trust me, you are. The biggest problem is that most people actually think they are free and not slaves. Not good. At least past slaves knew what they were. Now, being a slave itself is not necessarily even that bad if you have a benevolent master. Our masters today are not benevolent, but psychopathic scumbags. Fortunately for the vanquished Canaanites, the Israelites were generally, I am sure, benevolent and good masters. After all the Israelites were in covenant with the supremely just God of this world, and so the vanquished Canaanites too partook of the blessings of the Father.
I don't think plundering and violence is generally good, of course not, in fact it's evil when perpetrated against the innocent. But when the creator of this world commands you to do so at the expense of a sinful people, who am I to protest? Now you probably don't believe in my God so you couldn't care less, but to me he is very real and his word is the law.
So you would rather be a robot then? Then there is no you, you never existed, nor did any other human. If you were not a human you could've never had this conversation or lament the fact that there is evil in the world (due to the sinful nature of humanity). Weird of you to think this way, but to each his own. At any rate, that is not how things are and we humans do exist as cognitive beings. You can't do anything to change that. That being the case, we should do our best to behave and use our existence to further good things. You are right when you say that good humans should stop bad humans! Exactly! That is our job. We should prove ourselves worthy of being God's singularly unique creations by fighting against evil. It's not God's job to go around fixing things that humans should be able to fix.
However, there have been times when God has very directly affected things. He wiped out most of humanity already thousands of years ago (you almost got your wish, heh!). Then, since humans remained exceedingly sinful even after this, he made a covenant with the Israelites. They too mostly degenerated over time and then came Christ to share the gospel with the world. No one can anymore claim that they don't have the key to living a good and moral life, or that they can not escape the evil of this mortal world by going to heaven through their trust in Christ. But anyway, don't worry, I don't think the evil in this world will be going on for much longer. The wicked are picking up the pace. The Bible tells us that a time will come when humanity will become so weak and degenerate that God will put a final end to it. That is when the wicked will be destroyed and the good will ascend to heaven. As you can see, God is no passive party in all this. Once humanity has filled the cup of its iniquity to the brim, that is when God intervenes one last time.