The Egyptian regarded the touch of the Greek as pollution, and would not kiss him nor use his knife.

T R Glover

How is God Loving When His Ways are Savage?

Abstract

In 1 Samuel, God ordered Saul to punish the Amelekites by destroying them with no mercy. He was to kill “men and women, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass”. The animals were kept by the people as booty and so God punished Saul for disobedience. In Judges, God told the Israelites to massacre the people of Jabesh-gilead by killing every male, and every female that is not a virgin, the four hundred virgins they found being donated to the tribesmen of Benjamin! Loving God?

God’s Savage Ways

In Joshua 11:5, God promises victory over a massive coalition to the Israelites and instructs Joshua to hamstring all the horses, which he does.
In Deuteronomy 20:13-14, God tells the Israelites to slaughter every male of their Canaanite enemies but to keep the women, infants, cattle and goods to enjoy themselves, for God had given it to them.
In Judges 21:10-12, God told the Israelites to massacre the people of Jabesh-gilead by killing every male, and every female that is not a virgin, the four hundred virgins they found being donated to the tribesmen of Benjamin.
In 2 Samuel 12, God told off David for sending Uriah the Hittite to his death in battle while taking his beautiful wife as his own. God did not punish David for this monstrous crime, but instead punished his other wives by letting someone else rape them, and punished his unborn son by death.
In 1 Samuel 15:2-3, God ordered Saul to punish the Amelekites by destroying them with no mercy. He was to kill “men and women, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass”. The animals were kept by the people as booty and so God punished Saul for disobedience.
In Hosea 13:16, God promised that the “little ones” of Samaria should be “dashed to pieces” and “pregnant women ripped open”.
In Ezekiel 9:4-6, God in a vision told a man to mark those to be saved so that the others could be slain, “old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women”.
etc…
etc…

What had the horses done to merit the gratuitous punishment of hamstringing? What had infants and babies done to merit their shocking deaths, even being ripped from their pregnant mother’s wombs? What is God inviting men to do to determine whether women are virgins or not, and was the women’s fate just, either way? How just and how loving is a God who treats human people in such savage ways? It is hardly surprising that such a God would be happy to send some people into perpetual torture in Hell, but He can hardly be described as loving as Christians do. Do these people know what their God is like even according to their own holy book?

Last uploaded: 04 November, 2009.

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Before you go, think about this…

The anthropologist, Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955), has pointed out that religious fear is self-perpetuating. He argues that, for pastors and their sheep, the objective of ritual is to relieve the believer of insecure feelings or danger from evil. But it also serves to remind the worshipper of their feeling of insecurity. If it were not for the existence of rituals and the beliefs associated with them, people would feel less anxious. So, while some think magic, ritual and religion give men confidence, comfort and a sense of security, they are simultaneously inculcating in them fears and anxieties of which people would otherwise be much less conscious.