Do you subscribe to the idea of Biblical inerrancy? Do you think you’re an inerrantist? Let’s examine for a moment what that means. Open the Word and illuminate your mind:
That means that you agree that the Great Flood was a righteous act on the part of your God.
That means that when God carries out his wrath he has instigated such calamities and atrocities as infants’ heads being dashed upon rocks, women being violated, men being thrust through with swords. (Isaiah 13)
That means that when you are continually found in violation of God’s commands he is well within his rights to make you eat your own children as punishment. (Lev. 26)
Are you comfortable with that? Don’t you agree that God is God and he has the right to give life and take it as he sees fit? Don’t you agree that these judgements are righteous and always good?
No? Then you aren’t an inerrantist. I hadn’t thought of it this way before. I’m reading The Human Faces of God by Thom Stark and he makes this distinction. Oh, that’s Old Testament, you say. This is what you believe your good God has done in the past. And you call it righteous. Sure, as a Christian you may try to sanitize this by saying that God no longer is vengeful in this manner because his blood lust has been satiated for all eternity by the blood of his own child. Think about that for a moment. He was satisfied by blood.
This is the God who, in your inerrantist view, is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. When a pregnant woman ran her van, carrying her three children, into the ocean in Daytona Beach she said Jesus told her to do it. People, including believers, think she’s crazy. No sane person, inerrantist or not, would ever believe that God told her to do this. Inerrantists are the same people who believe that God once told his people he would make them eat their own children but now think this is abhorrent behavior. This is the same God you claim when you want to celebrate the sanctity of life. 😯
Even if this god of yours exists, he isn’t good just because he declares himself to be. He isn’t good just because you are breathing air. He isn’t good because he changed his mind about us needing to kill animals and burn them up to satisfy his fetish for the scent of burned flesh. Are you still an inerrantist?
Are you satisfied to call this God good just because you believe he/she/it exists?
I’m not. Thanks, but no thanks.
Out From Under the Umbrella 
March 26, 2014 at 9:17 am
You’re taking it all out of context!!
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March 26, 2014 at 9:21 am
Let’s just say that this God doesn’t abide by the Geneva Convention, regardless of context!
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March 26, 2014 at 9:27 am
And there’s a very good reason for that, according to Pastor Ezekiel:
http://www.landoverbaptist.net/showthread.php?t=89360
“Let me begin by stating that Christian God approves of and enjoys warfare (Exodus 15:3, Numbers 14:12), and throughout the Bible, He has given us some very specific rules how to conduct warfare. Sometimes, God even participates in the battles Himself (Exodus 14:27-28, Joshua 10:10-11). Although the warfare descriptions are found mainly in the Old Testament, we know that Jesus agrees with all of them (John 10:30). However, warfare is also mentioned briefly in the New Testament (Matthew 10:34, Revelation 19:11, Revelation 19:18-21).
Unfortunately, in the 20th century, these Godly rules of warfare have been overturned by the so called Geneva Conventions.”
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March 26, 2014 at 9:32 am
I have a follow up post planned to this one which will involve some of the points you and others(specifically Ignostic Atheist) have made about morality and ethics. But it kinda goes to his hindsight 20/20 theory).
It’s a sad state of affairs when we realize that us fallible human beings realize that we should be more compassionate than the Christian God.
Oh, and Landover Baptist – gotta love it! 🙂
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March 26, 2014 at 9:47 am
Oh cool, looking forward to it. 😀
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March 26, 2014 at 9:27 pm
777 has been here! Oh, the humanity!!!
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March 26, 2014 at 9:45 am
But but but… the moral argument!
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March 26, 2014 at 2:31 pm
But but but…what argument?
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March 26, 2014 at 3:18 pm
You know, the moral argument for the non-existence, wait, I mean existence, of God.
1. A human experience of morality is observed.
2. God is the best or only explanation for this moral experience, because we’re not apes, am I right? (God is the cause of our moral experience.)
3. The parts of the Bible that detail reprehensible acts by God are just mysteriously good, so they don’t count. (We defined God as good, which really helps us get around our God-granted revulsion of God’s acts.)
3. Therefore, God exists.
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March 26, 2014 at 9:29 pm
Oh, good god! That argument!
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March 26, 2014 at 10:11 pm
I… see what you did there.
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March 26, 2014 at 9:58 am
To avoid cognitive dissonance, Christians of all flavors have been schooled/developed the art of Compartmentalism.
The atrocities of the OT are often justified by the Divine Command Theory.
William Lane Craig is a believer in this.
He can, therefore, “Move right along” when non-believers critics etc try to pin him down with the heinous acts of Yahweh in the OT.
At schools such as Biola pupils(?) and staff are obliged to sign an inerrancy clause, which effectively states that the original texts are without error, divinely inspired etc etc. and this is what everyone art the school acknowledges and will state.
The other type of Christian will patiently explain the OT story is largely analogy and metaphor and an other term they can toss out simply to avoid a direct confrontation with this aspect of their faith simply because Jesus is the Man and the OT was for them darn pesky Jews and what have you.
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March 26, 2014 at 2:41 pm
Ah, yes, the good old God said to do it, so it must be good theory. What about the woman who thinks God told her to run her van into the ocean?
I’ve heard all that tripe about the original texts. Does anyone know where I can get a copy?
Wasn’t Jesus one of them darn pesky Jews? And didn’t he talk about OT events as if they really happened? I guess he didn’t get the memo about it being metaphor and what have you.
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March 26, 2014 at 9:59 am
An aseitic being cannot change its mind, or have a change of heart. It contradicts aseity. Yahwehists, though, believe Yahweh is aseitic, therefore they’re accidentally proving their god cannot logically exist.
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March 26, 2014 at 2:47 pm
Well, yes. God, himself, declares he is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. He cannot change. Somehow Yahwehists seem to have twisted it so that the God of the NT really hasn’t changed. He’s still the same old wrathful God, his wrath has just been satisfied…..for now.
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March 27, 2014 at 2:57 am
some argue that god changing his mind does not change his nature. that he remains god, always unchanging. I don’t know how this is possible so don’t ask me
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March 27, 2014 at 9:36 am
Well, the good book says: “The effectual fervent prayers of a righteous man availeth much.” James 5:16
There must not be very many righteous men praying. Not much seems to change, really.
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March 27, 2014 at 10:35 am
Well, I hear they always have an explanation.
Maybe they don’t have enough faith
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March 26, 2014 at 1:19 pm
Most Christians also like to point out the fact their God “sacrificed” his only begotten son for our sins. What sacrifice ??? Let’s take a moment to accept this story as being true. God sent his son Jesus to earth. Jesus gets crucified and dies for our sins . Jesus comes back to life again in 3 days. Jesus ascends into heaven to be with his father forever.
Huh???? You call this a sacrifice ????
Parents whose sons and daughters go off to war and die for their country never to be seen again…… Now there’s a sacrifice !!!
What person wouldn’t sacrifice a loved one to save the world , knowing they would get their loved one back in 3 days ? Could you really call this a sacrifice ???
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March 26, 2014 at 2:50 pm
That is a conundrum, isn’t it? And it’s recently been pointed out to me that maybe Jesus, in human form, didn’t know everything. But he did seem to know he was going to prepare a place, and that he’d be hanging out there. So, that would make the torture a bit easier to bear.
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March 26, 2014 at 3:14 pm
Except it appears he had forgotten this part at the crucial moment.
”Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani?”
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March 26, 2014 at 9:30 pm
He was only human, after all.
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March 26, 2014 at 7:48 pm
Correct Ark. And to reply to Ruth about Jesus not knowing everything, CS Lewis admits this in his scathing comments from his book , “The World’s Last Night” . But he knew enough and really wanted no part of it. He did ask his daddy god to ,”Remove this cup” from him (spare him from crucifixion) 3 times to no avail. I will paste a quote from Lewis in my next comment.
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March 26, 2014 at 9:31 pm
Yeah, but didn’t he also say the he was going to prepare a place for his followers and that he was going to come back to get them so they could be there also?
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March 26, 2014 at 9:45 pm
Correct again Ruth . Many current day fundamentalists believe he is still coming and that the book of Revelation points to this. I think we talked about this earlier on your blog. All one has to do is read the first 3 verses of Rev chapter 1 to know the writer of Revelation is not pointing 2,000 years into the future.
1 The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, 2 who testifies to everything he saw—that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. 3 Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.
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March 27, 2014 at 10:36 am
Here’s a guy who think the second coming has already happened. ‘Cause Jesus can’t be wrong.
http://www.blogforthelordjesus.com/2009/12/23/jesus-christ-has-already-come-again/
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March 27, 2014 at 10:51 am
I visited the site, unbelievable and there are people who agree with him
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March 27, 2014 at 10:55 am
Amazing what lengths people will go to to rationalize, and compartmentalize, and justify their belief.
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March 27, 2014 at 7:36 pm
Ruth,
Here is a favorite CS Lewis quote ,”Perfect love, we know, casteth out fear. But so do several other things—- ignorance, alcohol, passion, presumption, and stupidity”.
You probably won’t hear this quoted from the pulpit. 🙂
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March 28, 2014 at 5:46 am
No, Ken. This is the one we got from the pulpit:
“I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.” C.S. Lewis
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March 27, 2014 at 2:55 am
and we still have to believe or be damned! What was the point of the sacrifice if there ever was one?
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March 27, 2014 at 9:33 am
So it could be dangled over our heads? Behave or be a crispy critter!
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March 27, 2014 at 10:34 am
Yes and they can say you have chosen to reject their god under threat of hell fire
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April 13, 2014 at 4:54 pm
You call this a sacrifice ????
Right? Not only that, but if Jesus’ “sacrifice” on the cross was to get us off the hook for a punishment that we all (presumably) deserve, then it seems to me that when Jesus went to visit “hell” for a few days that he’d still be there. You know, since that’s where we deserve to be for eternity if we don’t accept his, um, “sacrifice”.
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April 14, 2014 at 9:44 am
Righto!
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March 26, 2014 at 7:52 pm
CS Lewis, “the first Christians have been proved to be false. It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the Second Coming in their own lifetime. And, worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarrassing. Their Master had told them so. He shared, and indeed created, their delusion. He said in so many words, ‘this generation shall not pass till all these things be done.’ And he was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else” (p. 97).
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March 26, 2014 at 9:32 pm
And yet he still concluded that Jesus was Lord? Not liar or lunatic?
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March 26, 2014 at 9:33 pm
Or something else altogether. As if there were only three choices…ever.
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March 26, 2014 at 10:55 pm
He was an atheist at one time too. I think Lewis fought with his faith continually. Just my humble opinion .
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