1 Then I heard him call out in a loud voice, "Bring the guards of the city here, each with a weapon in his hand." 2 And I saw six men coming from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with a deadly weapon in his hand. With them was a man clothed in linen who had a writing kit at his side. They came in and stood beside the bronze altar. 3 Now the glory of the God of Israel went up from above the cherubim, where it had been, and moved to the threshold of the temple. Then the LORD called to the man clothed in linen who had the writing kit at his side 4 and said to him, "Go throughout the city of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in it."
5 As I listened, he said to the others, "Follow him through the city and kill, without showing pity or compassion. 6 Slaughter old men, young men and maidens, women and children, but do not touch anyone who has the mark. Begin at my sanctuary." So they began with the elders who were in front of the temple.
7 Then he said to them, "Defile the temple and fill the courts with the slain. Go!" So they went out and began killing throughout the city. 8 While they were killing and I was left alone, I fell facedown, crying out, "Ah, Sovereign LORD! Are you going to destroy the entire remnant of Israel in this outpouring of your wrath on Jerusalem?" 9 He answered me, "The sin of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great; the land is full of bloodshed and the city is full of injustice. They say, 'The LORD has forsaken the land; the LORD does not see.' 10 So I will not look on them with pity or spare them, but I will bring down on their own heads what they have done."
I was under the impression that the people in these verses were slain for idolatry, but it says they were slain for bloodshed and injustices committed in the city, and the innocent ones who greived and lamented over the detestable things were spared. It doesn't mention babies but it does mention children, who could have been over the age of accountability. Its not mentioned what the children did exactly, they could have participated in things which a child of their age and situation would know is wrong.
"I will bring down on their own heads what they have one" suggests that the ones who were killed were guilty of killing and bloodshed themselves.
Again Life as we know it is interpreted by us very one dimensionally. Life in the eyes of Lord is not so one dimensional. Life this life is simply a state in which the person in question has been blinded to the Presents and Glory of God. Life continued (Life after this life) is the same life, but only we know, or at least can not deny who God is anymore.. So Why would He lament this transformation Only those who wish to hide themselves from the Lord will truly mourn the passing of this life.
Dying well or dying with dignity (Or pride) is something we strive for, and with that said, it is not high on the list of priorities of God.. Look at how Jesus died, most of the apostles, and a lager portion of the early church. God knows we fear death, more than we fear Him, and that Death will motivate the weak into selling their integrity, principles, and beliefs all for the sake of another day's worth of breath.
This life was intended to be about your final destination, and not so much about the journey..
so christians believe that we were created with eternal life in the presence and glory of God and that man chose sin and death. Our current lives are just a consequence of choosing sin where we are subject to death and are blinded to the presence and glory of God. Death is our responsibility not God's, so we can't blame God for death. The wages of sin are death and yahweh enforces that in the old testament, but death is not his responsibility. That makes sense, but why is every individual responsible for death? It was adam and eve who chose sin, what about us, do we choose this life before we're born? why are we held responsible for death?
The only thing that will over come this fear of death is Love. A true love for God.. This is what allows those who truly believe, to face a terrible death and continue on.. Because we know Life is more than this life.
So Destroying people can be used as a tool to separate wheat from the weeds, and sheep from the goats. If we know God is capable of such destruction then we are forced to look at Him for something other than protection of this life. Or we simply choose to go our own way.
If you had a winning lotto ticket and had to get to lottery Headquarters in your state's capitol city, would it matter how you got there
Would your ticket some how be less valuable if you took a bus rather than flew first class What if you hitch hiked
No, but why was it neccessary for some people to be killed by yahweh's command if the way you die doesn't matter. If it was punishment for sin, why was it neccesary for the ones who couldn't sin to be killed?
The problem with this ideology, drich, is that it is a world veiw which neglects the here and the now for the sake of the hereafter. Terrible things are done to others, making the world a bad place for this sake. This is the mentality that religious extremists like islamic terrorists have.
I didn't say scripture was untrust worthy, just your/our interpretation of it.. To which God is not bound.. For the humble man, He see His own understanding in error, for the proud it is the source material..
ok so the interpretation of scripture which would lead us to think that God killing a baby is contradictory is incorrect, given this going back and reinterpreting the bible with this in mind would make more sense then just saying our interpretation of scripture is untrustworthy and leaving it at that. That the bible says we are appointed to live once is what makes the idea of God killing a baby seem contradictory, but how else can we really interpret a statement as straightforward as "it is appointed for men to die once ..." Hebrews 9:27. Or are there some other things in the bible we should look at for this? If it's the common interpretation of scripture which is untrustworthy, and not scripture itself, we should be able to refine this interpretation. If the answer is that a person who is killed in infancy is not appointed to live, this begs the question
why was the soul sent into that life in the first place.
Is this what you fear? Is this what makes an "early" death so unfair to you?
any sane person with a moral conscience is disturbed by violence against a child especially an infant, and finds life cut short at a young age tragic, the younger the age, the more tragic and disturbing. I hope you can see that, I'd be suprised and disturbed if you aren't bothered by it like some posters have suggested they aren't. If a person dies at 80 or even 40 thats different to a child dying especially when they're killed. Surely you're disturbed when you hear about a child being murdered, or anybody being murdered, and would be very disturbed to see. It's things like that which make the world a bad place, who wouldn't want the world to be free of murder. Everybody understands that the perpetrator must be either insane or depraved.
So yeah, an early death is unfair to me because a life is cut short, its especially unfair when its at somebodies hand and when its done in a brutal way, its not just depraved and sick to take a young life its also depraved and sick to commit violence against a child. Its tragic for the family.
Its especially unfair for an infant to be killed, and its unfair and irrational to kill for accountability an infant who can't be held accountable. It feels weird to explain this, I'd only expect to be explain this to an amoral person or an alien from another world
Why do you assume sentience automatically confers the right not to be treated "unethically"? Where does this right originate?
wow another bizarre sentiment. Can you understand why a sentient being should be treated differently to an inanimate object, why we wouldn't do to a sentient being certain things we'd do to an
inanimate object? If you don't understand that I don't think we can get very far in discussing morality. Are you asking me why I assume sentient beings deserve to be treated ethically or do you actually disagree that sentience automatically confers the right to be treated ethically?
Sentient
1. having the power of perception by the senses; conscious.
2. characterized by sensation and consciousness.
I believe sentient beings deserve to be treated ethically because I'm a sentient being and I know there are ways I wouldn't want to be treated, so I know its unethical to treat other sentient beings those ways.
"Universal ethics and morality" are the standards by which you judge God? Where do these "universals" come from? How are they arrived at?
Universal means applicable everywhere or in all cases, characteristic of the whole. Universal ethics and morality come from universal characteristics of sentient beings or in other words the nature of sentient beings. Sentient beings suffer when they are harmed and treated badly, so sentient beings understand that it is wrong to treat other sentient beings in this way.
Human morality is ultimately self-serving and relative.
human morality is characterized by a degree of selflessness in that humans understand it is moral to restrain certain behaviour that might serve themselves. We see a reason to restrain that behaviour because although it might serve yourself, it would harm others. It also ultimatley doesn't serve yourself. So in both these ways morality is about looking past the differences between ourself and other people and seeing ourselves and other sentient beings as equal or as one. For example its morally wrong to rip someone off for our own financial gain or to commit violence against them to make ourselves feel better. Although we know we could gain something out of doing both, we restrain ourselves from doing it because we know that we would be doing something to another sentient being which we wouldn't want done to ourselves. And if we did it, it would ultimatley not serve us because it would provoke a reaction of the same nature from our victim/s. It's a reciprocal thing which takes place between humans beings, people get back from other people what they put out to other people, a third party, non-human being isn't involved and doesn't need to be involved.
Sometimes people have a code or standard of behaviour which they believe is acceptable, and these codes of behaviour can differ with time and place. Sometimes in that code of behaviour things can be done which harm or exploit others. Those codes of behaviour are amoral, and codes of behaviour are often relative and vary with time and place. The one thing that always stays the same though is sentience and human nature. For vikings in the middle ages it was acceptable to raid people in other countries and kill innocent women and children indiscriminatley. That is an amoral code of behaviour. It's an apparently self-serving code of behaviour at the expense of others.
Where does the human moral conscience come from? Depends who you ask. Some will tell you altruism, it originates in evolution. There is a mathematical equation for human altruism.
Beleivers say we come from God, God created man in his image. Non-believers say God comes from us, man created God or gods in his image. Either way, God and man are intricatley related and fundamentally similar. They're both conscious, self-aware sentient beings. The question is which came first. Humans have a nature, a moral conscience and rationality which if we are created by God is given to us by God. The bible says the commandments are written on our heart. You said that if I believe my moral conscience and rationality was given to me by God, it would be logically inconsistent to use it to decide God is immoral, since its source is God and so God must be the embodiment of that morality. Now you are saying that human morality is relative, humans don't really have a moral conscience. Or if there is a universal human morality, God doesn't share it. You've written unethical with inverted commas.
God doesn't conform to human morality because He is God. We are, as His creatures, to conform to His morality. And the morality God lays out in His Word for us to follow He is consistent with in His own conduct. God is also much more than human, however, so His application of His standards and His freedoms far exceed our own.
God and humans are intricatley related whether God made humans in his image or its the other way around. Whatever intrinsic morality and nature we have, its given to us by God. Whats the point of believing that God has nothing to do with that nature which he gave to us anyway? Who wants to believe that? How can man and God be related in that case? We've got a God with a nature which is alien to our own, ruling our universe and judging us. Or maybe, his nature is not alien to us, but his constitution and situation is different to ours, he's eternal, infinite, and we're finite, thats what the difference between human beings and God is. Is that what you believe? Christians certainly believe that human nature is different to God's nature in that humans have original sin, but that's inherited and man made, God didn't create us with original sin.
