I used the bloke up the road to beat my child Or I allowed the bloke up the road to to beat my child. God used rain water to kill on a mass scale, or God allowed rain water to kill on a mass scale, is there really a big difference Dave ? :- am i really accusing God of mass murder ? Or is the bible telling me God kills on a mass scale ?
This is going to be my last post on this
this thread. For me personally there is
far to much in the biblical writings that affirm God punishes by way of destruction and killing. I have no problem with anybody
who feels they can explain away Gods involvement, by deeming Moses writings
to be in error on theses specifics of Gods character. Having said that, I can’t help but reason that Moses is being used as a scape goat, for those who perceive God incapable of such atrocity. Yes I see Moses at fault on the subject of unlawful divorce, yes Christ challenged eras of Moses teachings for the better of his people, but to say Moses ordered mass genocide by falsifying Gods approval is taking things to a whole different level, meaning I would have no choice but to except Moses as being a false prophet. Christ upheld the integrity of Moses writings concerning him, I find it very difficult to believe that Christ would Point his people to the writings of a false prophet, that purposely brought shame on his own father and Gods character with in those same writings, the very character Christ came to make manifest before a watching people, which he executed Perfectly by teaching love and his fathers righteous Judgments. Again, christ did challenge areas of Moses writings [for reasons we all may differ on] but it is also more than evident to me that christ also upheld his fathers most horrific, coming judgments - judgments that he said
he would administer himself, on both those outside the faith and the unfaithful from
with in the faith, judgements that those he taught/Apostles also clearly understood. For someone like myself who feels overloaded with biblical texts, which almost force me to accept that God dose have the main hand in such events, I genuinely have a hard time understanding how any one can even begin to try and explain away all the biblical writings that exist to the contrary. Finding myself in this position doesn’t fill me with joy, trust me,i wish I could make them disappear, it would certainly make me feel a lot more at ease, they trouble me as much as they trouble many on here. Finally:— I am not a person adverse to change and have made many changes along the way. who knows, Christ through the spirit may very well lead me to a complete different understanding on these issues at some future time, and
maybe it’s my failing at m I don’t see other wise.
What Jesus texts are clearest has often been debated here, especially the notable problem of violence by evil men in Jesus’ parables. He even cites a “dishonest steward,” but need not be commending dishonesty. I see your dismissal of each text I cite on what Jesus explicitly teaches about God and His ways we must follow, by citing a fictional parabolic character’s acts, as another kind of cherry picking.
That God “used” Rome to “kill people,” depends on what you mean by “used.” If I were a Calvinist, holding God directly causes all choices we make, I’d then agree God ‘used’ Rome, such that God in effect did the killing. But I do not hold God is the one who causes every evil deed, but rather works even with wicked choices of men (such as Rome’s blood thirst) to bring good, and to accomplish his ultimate goals. Thus I do not agree God is the one morally responsible for whatever violent men do.
The Bible’s God affirms mass killing & genocide, but I can’t agree Jesus offered no challenge to such.
The bible follows patterns and cycles
where God uses wicked nations / people
to administer his judgments. Christ’s parabolic language fits perfectly well with his Gods past use of the wicked in such cases. I think your cherry picking seeks to disjoint a theme that is carried through the biblical writings, because it doesn’t fit your own perspective of Gods character.
It could be said Jacob was extremely dishonest, did that stop God favouring
him ? Could the overall lesson be that even God can use dishonesty if it favours his greater will and purpose.
Bob, I try my best to reconcile both Christ’s teachings of Gods ways we must follow,
with the most obvious ways of his of his judgmental character. I have my reasons why Christ taught against certain aspects of Torah values, which fit with my understanding of universal salvation, but they would only add to widening the kindly debate. It seems strange your accusing me of using / favouring parabolic language over the text you cite, as if your chosen citation undermines the value of parabolic language - language his chosen disciples came to fully understand by going
on to teach/convert them into their plain language for all future generations to clearly understand.[ie] christ is coming back to usher in his fathers kingdom beginning with harsh judgments. Yes it would seem you are the one cherry picking.
I used the bloke up the road to beat my child Or I allowed the bloke up the road to to beat my child. God used rain water to kill on a mass scale, or God allowed rain water to kill on a mass scale. Either way, God was the authority behind it. God using or allowing certain peoples / nations for his greater purpose, in no way implies he is responsible for every kind of evil.
So much for my last post 
No, but like the parable, neither does God’s sheer grace in electing Jacob prove that God is commending his “extreme dishonesty.” But I’d agree that God can bring good even out of human evil, and use it toward his ultimate will and purpose.
My point stands that Jesus isn’t endorsing every action in his parabolic stories.
I didn’t say Jesus was endorsing every action with in his parables. But returning and cutting people into bits, doesn’t leave a lot to ones imagination and his followers seem to have Understood and interpreted
them pretty Clearly. It seems your trying to cloud such interpretations with your bias outlook of how you deem they should be understood.
You appear to argue that “allowing” an action means the same thing as “using” someone to carry out your desire. But I’d say that my “allowing” others to make their own evil choices, is not the same as saying that I “used” someone to get me cash by having them rob a bank. In the first, while I didn’t prevent crimes, I played no causal role. In the second, I totally orchestrated the robbery!
In itself, this may be a semantic quibble. The theological debate is between those who see God allowing acts as meaning that those actions thus reflect God’s perfect will, and those who believe people have agency to do evils that oppose God’s perfect will. And yet God, as the supreme chess player, can use even that freely chosen evil to bring us to checkmate.
Some will hear Jesus’ warning of what Rome would do, if zealots resisted turning their cheek, and kept provoking Rome, as what God authoritatively ordained or caused Rome to do. Others will perceive that Jesus is warning about the principle of reaping and sowing that is part of the created order which requires no divine intervention, wherein we tend to reap what we sow.
Or as Jesus put it, the kind of bread we cast on the water, is the kind that returns to us.
I believe that is how God’s judgment and wrath typically works, as God simply turns us over to our sins and the innate consequences of continuing in them (as Paul develops in Romans 1).
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Oh Dave, you and I have to work hard to differ on theology! Fortunately, we have other spheres 
I would agree.
Who’s responsible ? the pawn or the one
who Moves the pawn into position to create his desired outcome ?
My whole point in emphasizing people have free “agency” to “freely choose” their own moves and evils against God’s will, is to deny that we are “pawns” whose moves God dictates.
If you are correct that we are simply ‘pawns’ whose moves are dictated by God, then I would agree with your implication that humans cannot choose to do anything that violates God’s perfect will, and that God is the one responsible for all evil, including the slaughters that pagan Rome indulged in.
My view is that when we choose evils, such as refusing to love our enemies, or slaughtering them, the Bible generally sees us as the one to be held responsible, not God, the better chess player.
One can go all the way down the rabbit hole and blame God for ever creating us in the first place, if one wants to. Or, blame God for giving us at least a limited free will. In short, one can blame God for everything. Or one can realize he is after all God, wise, loving, and knows what he is doing.
I like the overview based on Aquinas:
What the scriptures teach is that man failed the gardening task and ruined God’s creation, but that God graciously came, as a friend and cooperator, to help him salvage and recreate. In choosing that way to help man with his original goal God gave man’s life a new goal - that of fellowship with God himself as friend. The journey of this life is no longer simply a journey to the fulfilment of man’s nature, for that journey has been taken up into a journey into the presence of God HImself, into the good and happy state which God himself is.
My use of the pawn example was in response to your analogy of God as the supreme chess player, not as mankind being under Gods forceful acts were he makes a person do something and believe something beyond their free will. A similar responses back to you would’ be, why even bother using the analogy of a chess player, if your chess player doesn’t move pawns. Maybe I took it for granted that you understood I don’t see man as a pawn without choice from our brief conversation on another thread only a while ago. As I said back then, my thoughts are more along the lines that [IF] God wants to achieve a purpose via/through a
human agent, then God can control circumstances/events that will bring about his greater plans/purpose without actually putting compelling motives into their heart. [ie] Apostle Paul’s conversion being a prime example.Paul become a very influential Apostle to the gentiles, which fell neatly into Gods foreknown plans, which would never have happened without Gods intervention. But Gods intervention didn’t violate the use of Paul’s free will. The point being, God can use the same principles with wicked persons to act on his behalf without violating free will by using/ allowing influential forces, that result In the dog seeing the Rabbit, which in itself makes God the controlling factor under both sets of circumstances. Therefore making God responsible for the effects He wanted to be achieved through both sets of circumstances.
No, a winning chess player is not “responsible” for his opponent’s moves, nor does he “Move” the one defeated as if they are his “pawn.” The weaker player is responsible for his own moves.
And as I said, when you instead argue that God’s “influential forces” are “controlling” the moves of evil people, thus “making God responsible” for their actions, my contrary perception (unfair as it may appear) is that the Bible generally holds sinners responsible for their own evil choices.
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An important principle in chess is the concept of the “ forcing move” A forcing move is one which requires the opponent to reply in a certain way, or which greatly limits the ways in which he can respond. Essentially, a forcing move is either a check, a capture, or a threat.
O.K. We are debating Bible! It’s fine you see chess as a game removing any choice from players.
But does the Bible consistently teach that God likewise “forces” sinners to do their evils, such that those perpetrators are not responsible, but instead God is responsible for their evils?
Did evil empire’s choices to carry out predicted brutalizing of Israel mean that God exempted them from responsibility or punishment for such evils? No! God is angry that they fulfilled his prophet’s words!
.
I responded with a bit of Tongue and cheek, hence the wink. I was merely pointing out, an important Principle with in the game of chess, which doesn’t fit your own given Position. But as you correctly point out we are kindly debating the bible.
Something doesn’t always have to be consistent to be correct, having said that,
yes I think their are patterns and cycles through out the bible were God uses/ allows wicked nations to punish his rebellious wicked people. In my above post I have already said I do not believe God forcefully makes anybody do Or believe something against their own free will. However I have said God can use influential forces that result in the dog seeing the rabbit [when he so chooses to].. [ie] Apostle Paul’s conversion. I never said the perpetrators were not responsible of their crimes, I was pointing to the unavoidable understanding, that God at times is responsible for the effects HE wants to achieve, wether we see them as good or bad.
Yes God used wicked nations to bring judgment to his own chosen rebellious/
wicked nation. Yes God did also go
on to punish those wicked nations
most severely. It can also be said God punished a nation with pain and suffering resulting in death for mistreating his own people.
I’m not saying God didn’t become angry with them after, [ that’s Gods business ]
but this doesn’t altar the fact he still
used / allowed them to carry out his judgments.This measuring stick can’t be used in all acts of Gods judgments. God isn’t always angry with his chosen agents.Was God angry with the angel that caused death ? Was God angry with himself for Raining down fire and brimstone, was God angry with himself when he caused the flood waters ? Was God not responsible for the effects these judgments caused ? Or are all theses just poppycock writings to ?
I questioned your semantic : “God” slaughtered Jerusalem and was “responsible” for what Rome did, and argued: No, God “allows” evil folk to choose such things, but they are responsible for such actions, even though God can take such acts and ‘use’ them as a judgment and achieve his ultimate purposes.
So thank you for rejecting the term “force” and embracing my term, “allow.” It appears our remaining difference is who to call “responsible” when sinners violate Jesus’ command to love their enemies, and instead slaughter them. You appear to still insist on saying God is the one “responsible” for such deeds. I see the Biblical emphasis as being that the perpetrators are the ones that God sees as “responsible” and accountable. They freely chose an evil, but I affirm of God, “In Him there is no darkness at all.”
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Bob, Why are you chopping about different parts of my replies, and forming a reply I never gave. Example :——-
Bob says as follows :——
Bob chops Bens replies about and forms the following reply :——
Show me where I replied to your above comment, within the format you have
posted above ??? I think your being a little underhanded Bob don’t you ??? You have purposely chopped my replies to make it look like I am agreeing that God forces sinners to do their evils. Why are you doing
this ?? For clarification’s sake let’s see what Ben actually said in his reply :——-
Again Bob, show me where I have used the word force in my posts, in referring to God forcing people beyond their free will ??? So I am rather puzzled at why you are
thanking me ???
I don’t insist anything Bob, I read Gods
acts of judgments by way of killing from
Cover to cover. One barely gets out of Genesis, without being faced with Gods judgements :—-
Exodus 12:29
And it came to pass at midnight that the LORD struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of livestock.
Gen 19:13
For we will destroy this place, because the outcry against them has grown great before the face of the LORD, and the LORD has sent us to destroy it.”
Gen 7:4
4 For after seven more days I will cause it to rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and I will destroy from the face of the earth all living things that I have made.
Do you deny theses judgments Bob ?
Ben, In juxtaposing my reading of Jesus, I’ve repeatedly agreed Moses sees God as directly killing people and bringing judgments. Your constant repetition of ideas we’ve already addressed seems to leave you unable to deal with next responses. I quoted your immediate response to my question, to emphasize that you do not say God ‘forces’ people, but “allows” them to do evils, yet still prefer to use language that God is “responsible.” You reply that you did not insist on saying that.
I saw this as a key term for our difference since you has repeatedly said, “Jesus taught God will kill the wicked people (AD70)” and “God kills on a mass scale.” I felt you’d used this term I address, in saying, " Who is responsible? the pawn or the One who moves the pawn to create his desired outcome?"
(I took your answer to be: God is responsible, since he supposedly moved the pawn who did the evil.)
I responded, that Biblically, it seems preferable with evil actions that violate Jesus’ commands to love one’s enemies, to say that the one with ‘responsibility’ for it is the evil doer. Linking ‘responsibility’ to the modifier, moral, I cited John’s statement that there is no darkness or evil in God. So I would not put it that God is the one ‘responsible’ or culpable for such perversities, and I’d join Jesus in resisting them.