Question for Christians

[Cearbhall]

Then your reasoning is fallacious.

I disagree.

If God wants someone dead he can do it himself. He's God.

Then why do religious people feel the need to enforce his will on others at all?

 

[Yamaha06R6Guy]

I disagree.

Why?

Then why do religious people feel the need to enforce his will on others at all?

You are asking the wrong people.

 

[Tinker Grey]

I do not believe He has taught OSAS to one group and another to another.

Do you have any good reason(s) for supposing He has actually done this?

Do you mean you have never met a Christian who doesn't believe in eternal security, or do you mean that you don't think they are led by the Holy Spirit?

If they were to say that they were lead by the HS and your position is not of the HS, how would an disinterested bystander decide who was right?

As a non-believer, I don't believe the HS has led anyone to do anything.

 

[Cearbhall]

Why?

I see nothing fallacious about my reasoning.

I'm a representative of God's love to man. But how can I answer no to the OP?
Hell yes I'd do as God told me to do and so would you. Come on if the God of the universe who set the stars in their course and created the sun to rule by day and the moon to rule by night took the time to speak to little you or me, we'd tell him no?

I didn't actually expect anyone to say "Yes" to the OP. That's terrifying.

 

[Rhamiel]

You confuse diversity for division. There is no problem with a multitude of denominations. The whole church still confesses the Apostle's Creed which embodies the essentials of Christian doctrine. Anything not confessed in the creed is secondary and open to disagreement. This is not an issue at all.

it kind of is an issue

Christians do not agree on
free will,
the number of the Sacraments
the books of the Bible
how to deal with people who backslide
what the effects of Baptism are
is praying to saints acceptable
even what books should be in the Bible

not to mention about two dozen other doctrinal differences
this stuff matters, to just say "well we believe in the Creed" is just like pushing those other differences under the rug

 

[Crandaddy]

If God told you to murder someone, would you? Why or why not?

This was brought up in another thread, and I think it deserves some serious discussion. Christians claim to have a personal and loving relationship with God/Jesus/Holy Ghost, and are instructed to communicate via prayer on a daily basis (without ceasing), and to cultivate a sensitivity to that still small voice of the Holy Spirit. Christians also claim that to not follow the will of God is a sin. So, my question is this; if during your conversations with God, and he instructs you to murder someone, would you?

Additionally, is one's willingness to commit murder as a direct order from God, directly proportional to their spiritual maturity and devotion?

Forgive me if I'm covering old ground here, but as I don't have time to read through 23 pages of posts, I'll just answer the OP directly...

I don't believe that God's "commands" are literally extrinsically-imposed orders, as a military officer would give orders to the troops under his command. Rather, I believe that (in their most basic sense, anyway) God's "commands" are built into our nature as human beings and are learned naturally as moral laws. Thus, what God "commands" us to do is, at its most basic level, built into the Natural Law that we learn via natural reason.

Now, I suppose it might be the case that God would literally command us to do this or that, but he would not command us to behave in such a way that fundamentally violates his own more basic set of laws that is written into the natural order. We can therefore be certain that any order commanding us to do something that is obviously morally evil (such as murder) cannot come from God.

 

[HitchSlap]

Forgive me if I'm covering old ground here, but as I don't have time to read through 23 pages of posts, I'll just answer the OP directly...

I don't believe that God's "commands" are literally extrinsically-imposed orders, as a military officer would give orders to the troops under his command. Rather, I believe that (in their most basic sense, anyway) God's "commands" are built into our nature as human beings and are learned naturally as moral laws. Thus, what God "commands" us to do is, at its most basic level, built into the Natural Law that we learn via natural reason.

Now, I suppose it might be the case that God would literally command us to do this or that, but he would not command us to behave in such a way that fundamentally violates his own more basic set of laws that is written into the natural order. We can therefore be certain that any order commanding us to do something that is obviously morally evil (such as murder) cannot come from God.

How do you reconcile god's directive to Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, then?

 

[Cearbhall]

I don't believe that God's "commands" are literally extrinsically-imposed orders, as a military officer would give orders to the troops under his command. Rather, I believe that (in their most basic sense, anyway) God's "commands" are built into our nature as human beings and are learned naturally as moral laws. Thus, what God "commands" us to do is, at its most basic level, built into the Natural Law that we learn via natural reason.

This is very interesting to me, as I've never heard this exact view before. What do you make of the fact that everyone seems to have a different opinion of what's moral and what's not?

 

[Crandaddy]

How do you reconcile god's directive to Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, then?

I think Abraham knows all along that God does not intend for him to actually kill his son. What we see in Genesis 22 is a foreshadowing of Christ's one, perfect, and all-sufficient Sacrifice, and Abraham understands this from the get-go. Notice that he tells Isaac in v. 8 that “God will provide himself the lamb.” So where's the lamb? In v. 13, we see that God provides a ram for that particular sacrifice, but a ram is not a lamb. So where else in the Bible do we see a Lamb being provided for a Sacrifice (hint: John 1:29)?

So basically, this isn't at all just some voice out of the blue telling Abraham to go off and murder his son. Abraham is acting out a prefiguration of the ultimate Sacrifice--the Sacrifice of the Lamb of God that would abolish the need for all other sacrifices.

This is very interesting to me, as I've never heard this exact view before. What do you make of the fact that everyone seems to have a different opinion of what's moral and what's not?

There are differing moral views because morality is learned. It's not learned by being instructed in arbitrary injunctions, but it is learned by studying nature (and especially human nature). And because morality is something that is learned, not everyone will have the same degree of understanding of it, much like not everyone has the same degree of understanding of mathematics or the physical sciences.

But still, I don't think that differing moral views are that radically different from each other (although heated ethical debates might make it seem so). The golden rule, for example, has been expressed in one form or another by almost every human culture that has ever existed, and everyone who has even a shred of sanity understands that torturing babies for amusement is monstrously evil. So I think that our minds are basically configured to discover moral truth (if they're functioning properly, that is), despite the fact that we might be mistaken in some of our moral beliefs.

 

[juvenissun]

This is very interesting to me, as I've never heard this exact view before. What do you make of the fact that everyone seems to have a different opinion of what's moral and what's not?

By the definition of morality, there is only one moral code. So, there is a black/white situation and has no confusion.

 

[KCfromNC]

By the definition of morality, there is only one moral code.

But in reality, there are lots of them. Why are you proposing a definition of morality which contradicts what we observe in the real world?

 

[Eudaimonist]

By the definition of morality, there is only one moral code.

I'm not familiar with that definition. Would you share it with us?


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[fishing]

This is a very important question and I believe it touches on one of the fundamental inconsistencies that many Christians have in how they conceptualize God and how they read the Bible.

For one thing, they say the Bible is the inerrant Word of God; for another thing, they get to cherry pick how they read the Bible in accordance to how they feel the Holy Spirit to be leading them. Because the Holy Spirit leads most of them away from a conceptualization of God that would ever ask them to kill, the story of Abraham and Isaac is distanced and enters a lower tier in the Bible than other stories; i.e., they don't pay it as much attention as the stories that tend to promote love and whatnot. What people don't realize is that I believe what we term the 'Holy Spirit' is in fact largely defined by environment and culture. Because many of us grow up in a loving, peaceful environment, we are inclined to have the loving and peaceful elements of the Bible emphasized, and we also tend to have a loving and peaceful character encouraged and cultivated. That's why many Christians can't even imagine the idea of the God that they've had revealed to them ordering them to kill someone, but if you look at Scripture from outside the parameters of culture and environment, and take the stories at face value, the God depicted there could very well make such a command.

I believe the spectrum of a literalist Christian runs from the extreme pole of Christians of emphatic love, caring, compassion and a joy for life to the opposite extreme pole of Christians of a punitive, bigoted, and closed-minded nature a la Westboro Baptist Church, etc. (Those people probably would murder on command from God.) Anyway, there is no ideological safety net between the two extreme poles - where a literalist Christian falls on the spectrum, I believe, is entirely culturally / environmentally determined, which proves that such a reading of the Bible and understanding of God doesn't hold much water.

That said, in the context of my own conception of God, and in the context of what I believe any modern conception of God ought to be, your hypothetical question cannot even exist. God would not make orders to us in the sense that you are suggesting; God would be more like a ground of being, a process of becoming, a benevolent energy of connectedness, the 'space' between molecules - all leading toward some purposeful Whole. If one conceptualized God ordering them to murder under that sort of God-paradigm, one would very easily see that one is in fact experiencing psychological distress and would admit oneself to a hospital.

If any of you atheists (or Christians, for that matter) have time, I would suggest reading a bit about John Shelby Spong's encompassing and panentheist (yet also Christian) conception of God. I believe it's worth anyone's while.

Here's a particularly interesting video:

whatifitreallyworks.com/2013/06/17/episcopal-bishop-john-shelby-spong/

 

[brightlights]

If God told you to murder someone, would you? Why or why not?

This was brought up in another thread, and I think it deserves some serious discussion. Christians claim to have a personal and loving relationship with God/Jesus/Holy Ghost, and are instructed to communicate via prayer on a daily basis (without ceasing), and to cultivate a sensitivity to that still small voice of the Holy Spirit. Christians also claim that to not follow the will of God is a sin. So, my question is this; if during your conversations with God, and he instructs you to murder someone, would you?

Additionally, is one's willingness to commit murder as a direct order from God, directly proportional to their spiritual maturity and devotion?

/resurrect thread

I've been thinking about this question more. How does the OP define murder? Murder usually has the implication that it is entirely unjustified.

 

[brightlights]

There are also some misconceptions in the OP about how Christians believe God communicates. We believe God communicates in four primary ways. Each media builds upon what came before and provides more clarity:

1. Through the created world and the general flow of history.
2. Through God's mighty acts in history.
3. By God audibly and visually communicating with prophets.
4. By his son Jesus Christ.

We access 2-4 through the Bible.

Prayer is not God communicating with us but it is us responding to God's revelation of himself by lifting up thanksgivings and petitions.

All that to say it's difficult to answer the OP because it makes some assumptions that Christians don't believe. A better question might be: if the Bible told you to murder would you do it? Or: if God audibly spoke to you and told you to murder would you do it?

 

[Arcwood]

No. I wouldn't.

I would only consider killing someone if:
they were sex traffickers who threatened my life and spoke a foreign language.
or
they were in incredible pain and I was relieving them.

I would likely undergo the trials of Gods wrath for disobeying him. Those trials being the natural chain of events to follow Gods word without the chosen action.
for a similar reason stated prior to my post. "I wouldn't believe it was the word of God."

in which care if I did believe I presumably would kill.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

If God told you to murder someone, would you? Why or why not?

This was brought up in another thread, and I think it deserves some serious discussion. Christians claim to have a personal and loving relationship with God/Jesus/Holy Ghost, and are instructed to communicate via prayer on a daily basis (without ceasing), and to cultivate a sensitivity to that still small voice of the Holy Spirit. Christians also claim that to not follow the will of God is a sin. So, my question is this; if during your conversations with God, and he instructs you to murder someone, would you?

Additionally, is one's willingness to commit murder as a direct order from God, directly proportional to their spiritual maturity and devotion?

Uh...no because by the presence of such a request, I would KNOW that this is not the God of the Old Testament with whom I was speaking.

[You can go ahead and bring up Abraham and Isaac, along with the Israelite conquest now. 'Cuz I know you will. ]

Peace

 

[HitchSlap]

/resurrect thread

I've been thinking about this question more. How does the OP define murder? Murder usually has the implication that it is entirely unjustified.

For the purposes of this hypothetical, I would define murder as killing someone for reasons you do not understand.

Would you obey God under those circumstances?

 

[HitchSlap]

Uh...no because by the presence of such a request, I would KNOW that this is not the God of the Old Testament with whom I was speaking.

[You can go ahead and bring up Abraham and Isaac, along with the Israelite conquest now. 'Cuz I know you will. ]

Peace

This wasn't my question. Suppose that you knew god was asking you murder/kill another human for reasons you did not understand. Would you?

 

[2PhiloVoid]

This wasn't my question. Suppose that you knew god was asking you murder/kill another human for reasons you did not understand. Would you?

Kill, yes. Murder, no.

And since Christ hasn't shown up asking anyone to kill anyone for the last 2000 years, I'm fairly sure I won't be seeing him do so.

And is there a moral problem with God showing up and asking someone to enforce capital punishment? Being that God has the authority and the wisdom, I don't see how this is a moral problem.

Peace