These people, you might have noticed, actually believed in God. For the rest of the world it was business as usual. It doesn't suddenly become unfair because God is mentioned. God is mentioned because these people experienced something that threatened to separate them from Him. or perceived how other people were separated from/reconciled with Him.tiassa said:It's more than mere separation of authority. That God has executive privilege is not problematic here. But that God uses a different dictionary? For God so loved the world? Ask Adam and Eve. Ask Job. There's even a preacher or two out there who say God planned the necessity of redemption from the outset, so ... there's that, too.
God's judgment certainly seems harsh to people who've experienced two World Wars that killed more people than probably existed in the ANE, but there was no global morality like we have today, and no comparative justice. If that was the way God intended it to go on, He would not have promised to restore peace even while delivering those judgments. Even while judging the guilty Amalekites, God commanded that the innocent Kenites among them be spared. Genocide kills indiscriminately, God does not.I mean, it's clear enough that, while we shall not murder, genocide isn't murder if God says so. This is something else entirely. This is the equivalent of telling someone to crouch down in order to be taller.
Death set in the moment Adam sinned. God did not lie. He may not have keeled over immediately, but was that what God meant? If we are to believe the serpent, yes. If we believe God, no. That he didn't die and wake up in hell may be attributed to God's love, instead they were exiled into a land ruled by death and suffering, which we still inhabit.That God lied at Eden is God's prerogative. But we can't call it honest, and we can't call it loving any more than we can call a circle a square.
At no time did God approve of any sin, but neither did the concept of sin have it's present "enlightened" definition since the beginning. Sin describes man's position before God, not any action per se. Sin in man is not god-ordained, it is man-created: the abuse of a good thing, turning truth into lie, and perverting justice to serve ourselves.I don't see how Stretched jumped on any bandwagon. After all, it is our judgment that makes God's ordination of sin hateful. Remember that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. It's not hateful. The ordination of sin in man according to God's will is a manifestation of His love.
Or like Jenyar's explanation: "Having been a witness to the destruction sin leaves in its wake is one way to realize that salvation doesn't only offer hope for the sinner, but also for his victims."
It's all love. The rapes and murders, the wars and starvation, homosexuality (which God hates) ... all that seeming conflict is just one big warm fuzzy, a radiant expression of love.
There's nothing inherently wrong with conflict, but it occurs on different levels. The interpersonal level, where our behaviour shows our true nature and we have a measure of control, and the global and spiritual levels, where we have little else than our beliefs about them. What we think of one nation attacking another lies on the the belief level - which applies to what most of the Bible describes - and what we think of the person next to us, whether a homosexual, rapist or murderer. We are accountable for what we do on a personal scale, and are judge by how we judge. God's collective judgements over nations and languages are outside our authority, no matter how we feel, but his judgement over sin is clear. Jesus said if you have something against your brother, fix it before you even try to please God.
There's nothing inadequate with your life because God blessed it. If you move out from under that blessing, you move away from his purpose, and you bear the consequences. We all start out as Adam, and soon find ourselves sinning among the Amalekites, while complaining how God "ordains sin".That God has chosen this route is only to give us one more reminder of how much God loves us. After all, He blessed our conceptions and births, despite the fact that we're all inadequate for His purposes despite his green-lighting our lives.
What is wrong is not that we are in exile, or in a war, but that we judge our enemy even while we cut off our neighbour's head. The scale of suffering and violence often fools us into thinking that one side is guilty and the other innocent, but the truth is that on both sides there are people who are guilty of some things and innocent of other things. And when it comes to us vs. God, "Let God be true, and every man a liar", so that God may be proved right when He speaks and prevail when He judges.