Last week, I posted to facebook a link to a page on our church website introducing my new series of messages. It’s a series where I promise to tackle some of the biggest questions of life and faith. However, an atheist friend of a lady in our church saw the post and posted a number of questions of her own. I thought I would take some time to write one or more blog posts about the questions she posed.
You can see the first post in this series here: Questions from an Atheist: Part 1.
Question 5
How can I believe in the God of the Bible when I am better than he is? (specifically in light of the brutality and violence in the Old Testament, the irrationality of God holding us responsible for things he did to us, the incompatibility of God being both judge and savior, and the incomprehensibility of Hell, Heaven, and who goes where)
In the days since our original facebook thread was posted and the comments originally showed up, I have become facebook friends with Karen, and I have carried out an extensive conversation with her through facebook messaging. During those chats, she identified this question as her most important question, the one she really wanted me to deal with. It’s the question of whether God is actually good when his morality seems to be so atrocious compared to our own morality today. This was her final issue pushing her out of the church, away from faith, and into atheism. She had come to believe that the God of the Bible is a moral monster, that she is more moral than He, and that therefore the God of the Bible is a fabrication of immoral people from a more immoral time.
This is an incredibly complex issue to deal with, so I will have to deal with it in many different parts. I will need to deal with the apparent brutality in the Bible, the apparent injustice of God holding people morally responsible for our actions when he is sovereign Creator, the apparent inconsistency of God being both judge and savior, and the apparent irrationality of God sending people to an eternal Hell. Before I tackle those items, I want to take a step backward to address something important whenever we talk about God and morality.
What is the relationship between God and morality?
Before dealing with the exact question posed here, I want to take a brief detour into the philosophy of morality and God. Every intro to philosophy student in any college in the country will have been introduced to a famous piece of philosophy called Euthyphro in which Socrates asks the question:
The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.
The question is clear: Does God declare something is good because he likes it, or does God like something because it is itself good? To most people, this question makes no sense until you think of the implications of it. You see, if God declares that something is good just because he likes it, then moral values are not absolute. God could change his mind and morality would change. God appears like a dictator in that scenario. However, if God approves of something because it is itself good, then that admits there is a morality outside and above God. If there is a morality outside of God, then we might also find times when God fails to measure up to that morality. Neither picture of God seems all that good to us.
However, there is a Christian response to all this that has satisfied theistic philosophers for centuries. God doesn’t choose the good, nor is he constrained to some external morality. The Christian view of God is that He is Good. He himself is the definition of good. If an attribute can be applied to God, then that attribute is by definition good.
Of course, this idea is meaningless to an atheist. The atheist doesn’t believe that God actually exists, so his existence cannot be the basis for morality, and that’s why I bring this up before tackling the question at hand. Our question presupposes the existence of an absolute morality against which both God and humans can be evaluated. To say that God in the Old Testament is brutal is to say that there is an absolute notion of “brutality” that God meets. However, who gets to determine what is meant by “brutal”? In one sense, the question cannot be answered without understanding some absolute sense of morality, but without the notion of God as the absolute standard of morality, whence does that absolute morality come?
That’s why, in one sense, this question is impossible to answer in God’s favor. The cynic who asks the question has already determined that some notion of morality exists outside of God but in the absence of God has no foundation for that morality. The only way to evaluate the morality of God is for the cynic to compare God to himself, and for some reason, every human has an oddly inflated sense of his or her own morality. In asking the question, the cynic takes the role of an adolescent who is critical of the morality of his parents.
Nevertheless, for the non-cynics, the non-atheists, the people struggling with what belief in God really means, this question describes a real emotional roadblock, so I want to offer a few thoughts in an attempt to answer the question. I will tackle it one little piece at a time.
Is God immorally brutal?
The accusation has been levied against God on multiple occasions that God is brutal and bloodthirsty endorsing slavery and immoral violence. Even theists and Christians can read the Old Testament and come away with the idea that God is like this. But for those who dig deeper, they realize that the God of the Bible is not portrayed that way at all.
Examples of God as violent and brutal are tossed out frequently. Here are a few of the common ones:
- God wiped out everyone on the planet in a flood sparing only one man and his family.
- God had the tribe of Levi randomly kill their Israelite relatives because they had a party in front of a golden cow.
- God had the nation of Israel commit genocide against the people who lived in Canaan before them, slaughtering even the innocent women and children.
- God is always demanding that another animal be killed in sacrifice to him.
The third one is the most commonly cited one because “genocide” is a very emotional word and it sounds immediately immoral to our modern ears. However, two things must be noted: (1) violence and bloodshed do not always mean immoral brutality and (2) reports of God’s “violence” have been exaggerated.
Violence and bloodshed are not always immoral.
First of all, everyone in modern society believes that bloodshed is sometimes beneficial. Every year, millions of people donate their own blood for the benefit of others, and every year, organizations ask people to take that step of donating blood. You might call the Indiana Blood Bank “bloodthirsty” but you would be wrong to characterize them so. They are providing a vital service to people and the only way to provide that service is to have someone “shed” blood for someone else. Furthermore, every year men and women give their lives in sacrifice for the defense of the country either through military service or police enforcement or firefighting. They do so both because they are convinced it benefits others and also because their government has asked them to. Is the government “bloodthirsty” for asking men and women to risk their lives in this way? Some might say, yes, but I would disagree. My point is that bloodshed even to the point of death is not intrinsically immoral or brutal.
Secondly, the same can be said for violence. There are many instances in recent memory when an incredibly violent act was perceived as being the most moral course of action. For example, when it was reported in the United States that Osama bin Laden had been killed, shouts of joy rang out in nearly every American home. Certainly, the killing of bin Laden was a violent act, but at least in the eyes of most Americans, it was also seen as the right thing to do. Violence is not intrinsically immoral.
But what about violence against innocent people? Isn’t that always immoral? Actually, I can’t answer that question and neither can anyone else because none of us is ever truly able to identify who is or is not “innocent.” On an abstract moral level, I might be able to agree that violence against innocent people is immoral, but it is impossible for me to make a judgment of anyone’s innocence. Did the Navy Seals have the right or the authority to determine if bin Laden was actually innocent? No! The government determined his guilt and the Seals were commanded by their government to execute its judgment. They didn’t have the authority to determine the guilt or the judgment on their own in that instance, and as a matter of fact, neither do I in almost any instance.
Therefore, since I cannot by myself determine the true innocence of anyone else, I do not ever have the authority to act with violence unless I am commanded by one who has such determinative authority. The question isn’t about the innocence of the “victim” but rather about the moral authority of the one who decides violence should be done. Unauthorized violence is immoral, and authorized violence is only as moral as the one who authorized it.
Therefore, because God alone can determine the true innocence of a person, God is the only one who has the moral authority to authorize violence, and the violence he authorizes would then by definition be moral.
Reports of God’s “violence” have been exaggerated.
It’s also important to note that the violence reported by critics of the Bible and cynics of the morality of God is often reported incorrectly. As one example of the way the Bible actually portrays violence, consider this incredibly violent passage in the book of Numbers:
(7) They fought against Midian, as the LORD commanded Moses, and killed every man…. (15) “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them…. (17) Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, (18) but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man. — Numbers 31:7, 15, 17-18 NIV
This is one of those passages that seems incredibly violent. Every man in the land of Midian was killed, every woman and child was killed, and every virgin was preserved to be a wife or slave of the people of Israel!? That sounds repulsively violent!
Of course, our repulsion comes from taking this ancient story out of its context and putting it into the context of modern life. If something like this happened today, we would go to war against this despotic Moses and attempt to eradicate his tribe of enslaving, genocidal terrorists. However, this fails to recognize two important points of context. First, according to the story, this was God issuing divine judgment against the people of Midian after God had proven himself time and again in dramatic miraculous fashion. By the time we make it to Numbers 31, God had proven himself to be the sovereign authority over the earth and therefore, he alone had the right to issue such a sweeping judgment against the Midianites.
But put that aside for a moment. If you don’t believe God exists, then you also don’t believe he has the right to issue such a command and therefore, your only conclusion is that “God” is a concept manufactured by Moses to justify his despotic genocidal tendencies, but to conclude that, you would have to also disregard the second point of context, the verses that immediately follow the battle account:
(19) “Anyone who has killed someone or touched someone who was killed must stay outside the camp seven days. On the third and seventh days you must purify yourselves and your captives.—Numbers 31:19 NIV
Unlike battle accounts from other cultures, the soldiers who killed people in this battle are not heralded as heroes of the community. They are not marched into the camp and cheered. Instead, they are ostracized from the community for a full week. Because they had shed blood, even though the command had come from God, they are still considered in some sense guilty or impure and must remain outside the camp until a time of “purification” has happened.
The significance of this is too often overlooked but should not be. God is not a bloodthirsty sky dictator who is eager to eliminate those who oppose him. He is a reluctant judge who will enact judgment when its time comes but who always takes bloodshed seriously. Later in the book of Numbers, God similarly creates rules for times when someone is killed accidentally. Even accidental death is considered bloodshed, and the perpetrator of the accidental death must live out his life in exile or be killed by vengeance.
(33) “ ‘Do not pollute the land where you are. Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it. — Numbers 35:33 NIV
I could go on with each Old Testament or New Testament example. In every case where violence is done, the dual picture is clear in the description of God: He acts with judgment when judgment must come, but he never enjoys it.
To summarize, then, the reports of God’s violence are exaggerated and they miss the point that sometimes violence is the most moral thing to do.
Is God morally justified to judge me?
This question shows up to criticize God’s morality from a number of different angles:
- If God is the Creator, it’s not fair for him to blame us for how the world turned out!
- If God is the Creator, he shouldn’t judge me for being the way he made me.
- It’s not fair for God to judge me for the failings of my ancestors.
In some ways, this question is more difficult and more complex than the previous question, but I am going to answer it much more briefly.
God has created people to be morally responsible individuals in a world of moral options and therefore can hold them morally responsible for their actions.
But if God is the Creator, then this is the way he made me, and this is the world he created. He can’t hold me responsible for what he did to me! That line of reasoning might work if being the Creator means assembling perfectly programmed robots. Whatever the robots do is actually the fault of the one who made them and programmed them. But that line of reasoning fails if the Creator chooses to make robots with the ability to deviate from their programming, to learn, to grow, to experiment. However, if these robots have any measure of “freedom” at all, it is reasonable to assume that at some point one or more of those robots will do something that the Creator wishes to correct. When that happens, who is to blame—the robot that deviated from its programming or the Creator who gave the robot its freedom? Well, a good case can be made for each, but even if both are to blame, the Creator, because He is the Creator, still has the right and authority to dismantle the deviant robot.
Furthermore, if the Creator designs the robots with the ability to replicate themselves, he is fully justified in pre-emptively dismantling not only the deviant robot, but also all the robots that came from it. Does anything fundamentally change if the robots are made out of meat and have the ability to be self-aware? No. Morally, the Creator still retains full authority to judge what he has created and to determine if that creature is fulfilling the purpose for which it was designed.
And that’s the real reason this question even shows up in the heart of a human: Humans don’t like to think of ourselves as creatures. We don’t like to think of ourselves as the insignificant things we are. We think because we can think that we are somehow special and that God owes something to us for our greatness in his Created world. We can accept that a potter might want to destroy his misshapen pot or that a programmer might discard his buggy software or that a painter might burn a deformed canvas, but for God to destroy a morally malformed human seems outlandish to us!
We think too much of ourselves.
Nevertheless, if God actually is the Creator, then of course he has the moral justification for eradicating whatever creature doesn’t operate according to its intended purpose!
Is it moral for God to be both “judge” and “savior”?
No. Morally, God should only be Judge. The fact that he has chosen to also be Savior is not a moral act. It’s an example of “grace.”
Is it moral for God to send people to Hell?
Again, this is one of those questions that has seen entire books written on it. Christians for centuries have debated whether the concept of Hell is “moral” or not. The basic argument against the morality of Hell goes like this:
- During life, humans can at maximum produce only a finite amount of wrong.
- Hell is torment that lasts forever.
- To send a human to Hell is to infinitely punish a finite amount of wrongdoing.
- Therefore, Hell is morally unjustifiable.
Because Christians have had to wrestle with this for centuries, many theories have arisen to offset the problem. Here are a few of those theories:
- Hell isn’t actually everlasting conscious torment but a metaphor of the eternal consequences of earthly wrong. Instead of everlasting conscious torment, sinners actually end up either annihilated or rehabilitated perhaps after a finite period of “punishment.”
- Hell is just a theory to scare people into moral behavior. No one will ever actually be sent there.
- A sentence in Hell is actually finite, but while in Hell people continue to be moral beings and can continue to rack up sins of attitude and/or behavior thus prolonging their Hell sentence ad infinitum.
- God doesn’t actually send people to Hell, but for people who do not wish to be forever in God’s presence, Hell is the place to which God allows them to go. Hell therefore, is actually the preferred destination of all who would end up there.
- For a finite human being to reject the infinite goodness of an infinite God is an infinite wrong and therefore actually deserving of an infinite punishment.
Which of these perspectives is right? To be honest, I don’t know. Christians through the centuries have disagreed on them all, and sadly for those of us who are theological nerds, the Bible doesn’t actually say. Jesus talks about fiery eternal torment for those who don’t faithfully follow him, but he never goes into the details of the morality of such torment or whether that torment is never-ending and conscious or if that torment is eternal in the sense that it is fully and finally decisive like annihilation. I personally lean toward the traditional interpretation that combines the last three bullet points above, but I find myself tempted by the thoughts of the first bullet point.
Nevertheless, the point isn’t what I believe. The point is that there are good ways to understand the concept of Hell even from our limited human perspective on morality.
Does the morality of God have bearing on whether he exists?
Finally, I want to move beyond the questions posed at the beginning to address the bigger picture. The morality of God is completely independent from his existence.
If your friend claimed to have a cat, it would be ludicrous for you to declare that you wouldn’t believe it unless she could prove it were a good cat. The personality and behavior of the cat are independent of the cat’s existence. The cat can exist even if the cat is a bad cat, as in fact, all of them actually are! (My apologies to cat people.)
The same thing is true about God. Sure, the God of the Bible is incompatible with the idea of God as a morally corrupt despot, but that incompatibility does not disprove his existence.
Furthermore, if the Creator of the universe were a morally corrupt despot, that would not get us off the hook for living in submission to him. As a matter of fact, most cultures have believed that deities were morally corrupt despots, and they used that fear of the divine to keep everyone in line, but the abuses of those cultures would not invalidate the existence of those deities if they really existed. Even if the gods in question are evil, your accusation of their immorality will not get you out of the responsibility to do what they say.
It so happens that the teaching of the Bible is of a gracious and loving God—unique in the history of the world. This kind of God is far more likable and far more winsome than the other notions of God put forth by history, but that also doesn’t have any bearing on whether he actually exists.
If God exists, then whatever he is like is what he is like, and our job is not to “understand” him or “defend” his morality but to receive what he says if he chooses to communicate and to live as he says we should.
Conclusion
So to wrap all this up, let me summarize what I have been trying to say throughout this article:
- The Biblical notion of God is that he himself is the definition of good.
- In light of the nature of God as the ultimate being, any honest human will recognize his own inability to make definitive moral judgments without the authoritative communication from that supreme God.
- The problems we have with God’s morality stem from our own arrogance and ignorance. Either we have misunderstood him or we have misunderstood ourselves.
- No matter how many problems we might have with God’s morality, that does not absolve us from wrestling independently with the question of his very existence. If he exists, his morality describes the moral fabric of the universe and is the one I should personally adopt.