An interesting question was posed at church last week by our pastor. He asked the congregation to break up into small groups for a few minutes and discuss this question: How could a good God command Joshua to massacre the entire population of Jericho. We are working through the book of Joshua in church and obviously this is an issue that it's not easy to just skip over. After we discussed the question for a few minutes we had an open mic time for people who wanted to share what their group had come up with.
Obviously I shared my opinion and predictably my thoughts sounded much better as thoughts in my head then they did as words coming out of my mouth for the whole church to hear. Anyway, I've thought more about the question and am hoping that perhaps I can put my thoughts better into a blogpost then I did into what I said on Sunday.
Question: How could a good God command the Israelites to kill everyone in Jericho? (Joshua 6:21)
A difficult question for sure and one which often pricks sensative nerves. To answer it properly and to answer most important questions we must first be able to acknowledge the sensativity of the question but not let fear of being wrong, or of emotional pain be a hinderance to us finding the truth. When we have put our reason in authority over our flesh to gurantee our questioning won't be undone by improper feelings we can proceed. After thinking about it it seems that the question itself is nonsensical. By this I mean the question answers itself. Because if God exists then He must be good. He must be good because an absolute good can not exist outside of God. Therefore if good exists then God must exist and God must be the source of good. Try figuring out where an absolute standard of good can come from if God does not create it. You can't, the best you can come up with is a human standard of goodness that seems right based on your personal experiance and what you know about the world but ultimately it contradicts itself.
In essence the quesiton is asking, can a good God do something evil. This is simlar to asking can you be you and not you at the same time. So in summary I think its simply a bad question that non Christians have invented to confuse Christians who aren't confident enough to say the question is a lame one.
Now I'm not trying to ignore the issue, I'm simply saying that specific question is not a fair question to ask because of the wording. To try to answer it is like to try and fight someone with your hands tied and blindfolded. Some Christians are fit enough that they could still win such a fight but for the rest of us we need to change the question. Questions I think we should ask relating to this topic are these, " What are some reasons why a good God might destroy Jericho?", "Why is God good?" "Did God really tell them to kill everyone in Jericho?" Was killing everyone in Jericho an evil action?" These are questions that have clear answers. Which I'm not going to give because I'm already bored and if I'm bored of writing I'm sure you're bored of reading.
If none of that made sense then the most important thing I learned from thinking about this question is this, sometimes when a quesiton is too hard to answer, rewording it often makes it easier. It's like math, oftentimes the fastest way to solve a problem is to simplify it first.
Obviously I shared my opinion and predictably my thoughts sounded much better as thoughts in my head then they did as words coming out of my mouth for the whole church to hear. Anyway, I've thought more about the question and am hoping that perhaps I can put my thoughts better into a blogpost then I did into what I said on Sunday.
Question: How could a good God command the Israelites to kill everyone in Jericho? (Joshua 6:21)
A difficult question for sure and one which often pricks sensative nerves. To answer it properly and to answer most important questions we must first be able to acknowledge the sensativity of the question but not let fear of being wrong, or of emotional pain be a hinderance to us finding the truth. When we have put our reason in authority over our flesh to gurantee our questioning won't be undone by improper feelings we can proceed. After thinking about it it seems that the question itself is nonsensical. By this I mean the question answers itself. Because if God exists then He must be good. He must be good because an absolute good can not exist outside of God. Therefore if good exists then God must exist and God must be the source of good. Try figuring out where an absolute standard of good can come from if God does not create it. You can't, the best you can come up with is a human standard of goodness that seems right based on your personal experiance and what you know about the world but ultimately it contradicts itself.
In essence the quesiton is asking, can a good God do something evil. This is simlar to asking can you be you and not you at the same time. So in summary I think its simply a bad question that non Christians have invented to confuse Christians who aren't confident enough to say the question is a lame one.
Now I'm not trying to ignore the issue, I'm simply saying that specific question is not a fair question to ask because of the wording. To try to answer it is like to try and fight someone with your hands tied and blindfolded. Some Christians are fit enough that they could still win such a fight but for the rest of us we need to change the question. Questions I think we should ask relating to this topic are these, " What are some reasons why a good God might destroy Jericho?", "Why is God good?" "Did God really tell them to kill everyone in Jericho?" Was killing everyone in Jericho an evil action?" These are questions that have clear answers. Which I'm not going to give because I'm already bored and if I'm bored of writing I'm sure you're bored of reading.
If none of that made sense then the most important thing I learned from thinking about this question is this, sometimes when a quesiton is too hard to answer, rewording it often makes it easier. It's like math, oftentimes the fastest way to solve a problem is to simplify it first.
No comments:
Post a Comment