In a recent post on Medium.com Shawn B Swinger stated this:
“For Christians to support their faith in God, He must always be good. If He isn’t, even once, then He can’t be the embodiment of absolute goodness. So, when God commands Joshua to kill all the people in the land of Canaan (Deuteronomy 20:16, Joshua 6:17–21 and much more), which includes killing babies and pregnant women, God is good.”
The problem here, is that God isn’t God. The god ordering the ethnic cleansing of the Canaanites is not the same god as the god which is now declared to be “all good.”
Hang with me here.
The concept of this god has changed over time. I do not say it evolved, because it isn’t an evolution but a deliberate changing of the nature of the god involved by the people in charge of worshipping it. And it happened many, many times.
If you start from the beginning, the Israelites were Canaanites. The Canaanites had a whole panoply of gods: El, Asherah, Ba’al, Yahweh, and more. Sound familiar? All of these gods ended up in the Bible and the one with the strongest archeological record is Asherah, often referred to as the Queen of heaven. There have been literally thousands of clay idols of Asherah found in the region.
Yahweh was assigned the region we would refer to as Judah and Samaria and part of Israel. Over time, the religious leaders of his region wanted Yahweh singled out as the chief god and Judaism morphed from being polytheistic to being henotheistic (many gods, but one chief god). Over the entire extent of Hebrew Bible we see a slow transformation of Judaism into a monotheistic religion. (This process continued well into the Current Era.)
Christianity adopted Judaism as a foundation for a new sect/religion based upon a supposed “Son of God.” (The phrase “Son of God” was used to describe every Israelite/Judahite for centuries. It was not an exclusive title within that group.)
The new sect then, carried on the tradition of slowly changing their god into a more acceptable form. It ended up becoming “all-powerful,” “all-knowing,” and “all good.” These were things one would be hard pressed to find in Judaism, very hard pressed.
So, the god of the Old Testament (aka Hebrew Bible rearranged) and the god of the New Testament are really different gods, shaped to fit the people who worshipped them, but the problem comes with the claim that they are one and the same.
More than a few branches of early Christianity had the two gods being actual different gods, but these people got wiped out because politics, not scripture or anything else. The “winners” write the histories, if I recall correctly.
So, if you read the “Old Testament” and try to apply the “God is good” principle, you will end up with a decidedly warped morality. Slavery becomes a good. Rape becomes a good. Genocide becomes a good. And don’t think there aren’t apologists/excusigists on the Internet right now making these points as being valid theology today. You do not have to search hard to find folks talking about killing babies is a net good, etc.
So, as a sometime debater of what constitutes Christian religion, one who gets frustrated by Christians who cherry pick their own scriptures, it is now more easily seen that they must cherry pick their scriptures. Their claim that their god is unchanging and mistake free is just not supported by anything in reality. Their Bibles have god saying the creation of human beings (and all other stuff) is “good” and then shortly thereafter decides that there is so little good to be found in humanity that it has to be talked out of wiping the slate clean by Noah. How is this “all knowing”? How is this “all good”? How can an “all good” god fuck up the creation of a sentient species so badly that the only option an “all-powerful” god can find is “wipe them out; wipe them all out.” They couldn’t be magically changed for the better? No gentle reboot was available? Just “wipe them out”?
“Cherry pick, cherry pick, cherry pick,…” a lost chorus to “The Vatican Rag” by Tom Lehrer.
Lyrics to The Vatican Rag by Tom Lehrer
(for those not born in the last millennium)
First you get down on your knees
Fiddle with your rosaries
Bow your head with great respect
And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect
Do whatever steps you want if
You have cleared them with the pontiff
Everybody say his own Kyrie, eleison
Doin’ the Vatican Rag
Get in line in that processional
Step into that small confessional
There the guy who’s got religion’ll
Tell you if your sin’s original
If it is, try playin’ it safer
Drink the wine and chew the wafer
Two, four, six, eight
Time to transubstantiate
So get down upon your knees
Fiddle with your rosaries
Bow your head with great respect
And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect
Make a cross on your abdomen
When in Rome do like a Roman
Ave Maria, gee it’s good to see ya
Gettin’ ecstatic and sorta dramatic and
Doin’ the Vatican Rag
Tom L. was a mathematician! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blArJj5ST3g)
Uncommon Sense 