IS GOD IMMORAL?

Recently I got engaged in an honest but albeit brief conversation by a 100% Atheist. I told him that I’d never met an Atheist who was a one hundred-percenter and quickly drew attention to the fact that even Richard Dawkins didn’t claim to be 100% Atheist. I used the example of Dawkins’s double-decker bus advert: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” That word “probably” betrays a healthy doubt about God’s non-existence. Perhaps God is hiding on the dark side of the moon!

Unfazed by Dawkins’s wimpy equivocations,  my 100% Atheist contender proceeded to enquire after my evidence for God. To which I responded that my evidence for God’s existence was the same evidence he uses to deny God’s existence, i.e., creation and all that’s therein.

Wanting to cut to the chase I quickly dispensed with all and sundry “other gods” by telling my sparring-partner that I am a follower of the Triune God, i.e., the God who has revealed Himself in Scripture.

He wanted to talk about the age of the universe. I told him that I was a “Young Earther.” “Six thousand years old?” he asked. I asked him why not! He mentioned the speed of light from distant planets. I told him that I wasn’t a scientist and neither was he but that, as I had done, he also should read Russell Humphreys' (who is a scientist) book called (Starlight & Time). Humphries has done his sums and gives a good answer rebutting the notion that the speed of light travelling from distant stars seems to suggest a universe very much older the six thousand years.

He entered into the whacky realm of Quantum Physics and Mechanics as he tried to respond to my question of how can something come from nother.

Rather than debate the meaning of stones and bones, Peking Man, Piltdown Man, Lucy, Australopithecus, DNA and Intelligent Design et al, I tried to get back to Bible. I said that he presupposes that the Bible is not God’s Word and that I presuppose it is God’s Word. I told him that the bottom line is that I presuppose that God is and that he presupposes that God is not. Therefore, it’s all about God.

My worthy and intelligent opponent took the bait and told me that he had once been a Christian but had rejected  its worldview on account of God’s immorality. I, of course, at this invitation lunged forward to pierce deftly the heart of his argument! “Atheists, especially 100% Atheists,” said I, “have no basis for morals!” Theirs is a dog eat dog world of no good or evil, a universe with no purpose.

He wanted to talk about God’s Ten Commandments. I said that the Decalogue is an expression of God’s character, His moral character. He said, “Even the one about ‘Thou shalt not kill?’” He then proceeded to make an obvious and perhaps very good point about God’s not keeping that particular Commandment when He sent His people into the Promised Land and told them to kill everyone they came in contact with.

I asked therefore what the difference was between God commanding His people to put a people to death and God putting them to death Himself. We digressed a little when I started talking about the rest of mankind drowning in the great flood in Noah’s day. I added that he could do a scientific study and take a pick and shovel and that he would find evidence for a global flood all over the planet. He would find millions of dead things that had been buried, being rapidly embedded in silt that became sedimentary rock. This is consistent with a global deluge.

I asked what was his biggest problem with God, the Bible and Christianity. From here it was back to the question of morals, God’s morals.

So, what are we to do with God when He seemingly breaks His own moral standards by telling human beings to do something He has already commanded us not to do? True, God has forbidden murder. However, the Bible clearly teaches us that murder is a capital offence. (There are other capital offences in Scripture but let’s stick to the case in hand.)

The whole Bible teaches us what the Apostle Paul under inspiration of the Holy Spirit summed up in the words, “The wages of sin is death.” Romans 6:23a. It’s been this way right from Adam’s sin against God and His Law in the Garden till today. God is the One who gives us life and God is the One who takes it away again.

But meanwhile back to God’s morals and the flood at the time of Noah. After Noah and his family came out of the ark, i.e., after God had put to death every other human being, God said to Noah and his family, eight in all, “And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man. ‘Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made him.’” Genesis 9:5b-6. Thus the death penalty!

From the time of the Reformation in 1517 Western societies began to be built on the rule of law, i.e., God’s Law – with its attendant penalties. The right of kings and queens to put their subjects to death at a mere whim were challenged on Biblical terms. The so-called “Divine Right of Kings” was revoked when the monarch’s authority to rule was placed under God’s rule of law. The Reformation did the same with the papacy. Both Church and State would have authority only to do what God in His Word permitted them to do in their respective spheres of authority. Thus freedom for all!

Freedom in Western democracies comes from, and functions only because of, the rule of law, i.e., laws based upon God’s Ten Commandments. Western judiciary systems were to reflect God’s court of law. In other words, judges were to represent God and His justice on earth. However, let us quickly add that when Cain slew his own brother Abel God did not immediately put Cain to death. Neither did He execute King David when he committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her innocent husband killed. Therefore, though the death penalty is on a Christian-influenced nation’s law books for capital offences, it does not preclude mercy.

So, in answer to my 100% Atheist friend, justice and mercy go hand in hand with God. There is nothing immoral about God! God has condemned us to death for our sins but at the same time He extends to us the hand of mercy. “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23. As Jesus says elsewhere, “Repent and believe the good news.” Mark 1:15. I did! Rahab the harlot did – and she and her family were spared when the people of God under God’s supreme command  and instruction moved into the Promised Land.

Sure, we talked about a whole lot more than this but unlike my 100% Atheist friend I see no contradiction in God saying in the 6^th Commandment, “You shall not murder” and Him Himself or His appointed judges lawfully putting people to death for having broken this Commandment.

(See my ebook "Why I Am Not An Atheist") - http://www.amazon.com/WHY-I-AM-NOT-ATHEIST-ebook/dp/B00JI6U4LW/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
 (See "Russell Humphreys Answers Various Critics" - http://www.trueorigin.org/ca_rh_03.php