God's violent ways

[OnceConvinced]

The god of the bible tends do deal with sin and evil in very violent ways. Ie, wiping out cities, sending floods, ordering violent deaths, ordering the slaying of animals for sacrifices, sending curses and plagues, etc.

Can you point out any instances in the bible where God deals with sin and evil in non-violent ways?

And I mean God here. Not Jesus.
And there are times God showed mercy and didn't deal with the sin and evil, sure. But when he did, were there non-violent methods used?

[SallyF]

The early propagandists ALMOST have the mythological Jehovah forgive King David his adultery with Bathsheba, and his arranging the death of Bathsheba's husband:

11 “This is what the Jehovah/Lord says: ‘Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity on you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight. 12 You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel.’�

13 Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Jehovah/Lord.�

Nathan replied, “The Jehovah/Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die. 14 But because by doing this you have shown utter contempt for[a] the Jehovah/Lord, the son born to you will die.�

But THEN …

David comforted his wife Bathsheba, and he went to her and made love to her. She gave birth to a son, and they named him Solomon. The Lord loved him; 25 and because the Lord loved him, he sent word through Nathan the prophet to name him Jedidiah.

Not a soul demonstrates that any of this stuff ever came from genuine history, let alone "God".

However, the Jesus character in the newer propaganda is supposedly descended from these characters. These characters are the deposed David royal family, and it looks very much to me that the nasty little stories here are the defamatory propaganda of the people who deposed the Davids.

No "God".

Just nasty human politics.

And the Jesus propaganda is all about the Davids trying to get their guys back into the palace.

[SallyF]

We DO have:

“The Jehovah/Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever, he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.� - Psalm 103:8-12

Which SOUNDS all very lovely …

But I can't actually think of an instance where the writers write of their mythological Jehovah withholding violence.

But they do write that their imaginary deity is an emotional creature.

[Wootah]

[Replying to post 1 by OnceConvinced]

I was reading Malachi recently and God says to Jacob and I paraphrase: You ask how i have loved you well look I have not destroyed you.

You won't see God as love until you see fairly apply your views of justice are applied uniformly.

[Tcg]

[Replying to post 1 by OnceConvinced]

I was reading Malachi recently and God says to Jacob and I paraphrase: You ask how i have loved you well look I have not destroyed you.

Are you describing God's love as him withholding his violent tendencies? If not, what does this mean?

You won't see God as love until you see fairly apply your views of justice are applied uniformly.

This is a very hard claim to decipher, perhaps you can restate it.


Tcg

[SallyF]

Just remembered …

When Jehovah fluttered down from the ceiling of the Dome he created in the first creation myth, and he played that game of peek-a-boo with Adam and Eve, following that unfortunate incident with the magic apple and the talking serpent, the mythological deity did not institute and physical violence.

The ethnic god just evicted THE ADAM from the Magic Garden and deprived the planet's first two human of physical immortality …


… which is still pretty harsh, and an unfortunate precedent to set for Christian parenting.

I didn't throw my kids out when they swiped my favourite cookies.

But then again, I was an Atheist by the time I had children.

(We can mention drowning the children we don't like any more in another thread )

[bjs]

Nineveh in the book of Jonah. Jonah was sent to Nineveh because of their cruelty, violence and sin. Jonah preached there for three days. The people repented. There was no violence done to Nineveh.

[Tcg]

Nineveh in the book of Jonah. Jonah was sent to Nineveh because of their cruelty, violence and sin. Jonah preached there for three days. The people repented. There was no violence done to Nineveh.

This overlooks the fact that God used violence to coerce Jonah into his mission:

• Jonah 1:3 But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.
  
  4 Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. 5 All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship.
  <Bolding Mine>

• 15 Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. 16 At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him.
  
  17 Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

[Tcg]

Nineveh in the book of Jonah. Jonah was sent to Nineveh because of their cruelty, violence and sin. Jonah preached there for three days. The people repented. There was no violence done to Nineveh.

You are overlooking the violence God used to coerce Jonah into his mission:

• Jonah 1:3 But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.
  
  4 Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. 5 All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship.
  
  <Bolding Mine>

This violence effected not only innocent Jonah, but also the innocent sailors who gave him passage.

God's violence doesn't end there. Jonah suffered violence at the hands of the sailors and due to the great fish God provided to swallow him:

• 15 Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. 16 At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him.
  
  17 Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Against Jonah's will, he is violently deposited on a land he didn't want to visit:

• Jonah 2:10 And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

The fact that God repented of the violence he planned to execute against Nineveh doesn't negate the violence God used against innocent Jonah and the innocent sailors.


Tcg

[Divine Insight]

The god of the bible tends do deal with sin and evil in very violent ways. Ie, wiping out cities, sending floods, ordering violent deaths, ordering the slaying of animals for sacrifices, sending curses and plagues, etc.

Can you point out any instances in the bible where God deals with sin and evil in non-violent ways?

And I mean God here. Not Jesus.
And there are times God showed mercy and didn't deal with the sin and evil, sure. But when he did, were there non-violent methods used?

We are being asked to believe in this theology and its God on pure faith because there's certainly no credible or rational evidence to believe it otherwise.

So this is just yet another negative thing we are being asked to place our faith in.

We are being asked to place our faith in the idea that a supposedly omnipotent all-wise omniscient and all-intelligent God responds to all his problems in a way that we would expect an uneducated barroom drunkard to behave.

I can't understand why anyone would want to place their faith in the idea that they had been created by a God who has the mentality of an uneducated barroom drunkard.

Clearly these tales were written for a culture where the masses were still under the naive belief that angry gods were responsible for deadly storms, volcanic eruptions, diseases and plagues, etc, etc, etc.

Now that we know what causes all these natural events, isn't it time to move beyond blindly accepting the angry gods hypothesis?