Do you think that torturing a baby is ever justified?

Perhaps you are fighting a battle that should not have been created. Regardless of the technical definition of torture, it is pretty clear that there are substantial moral issues surrounding the concept of making a baby sicken and die to punish the parent or parents. We would not tolerate a secular authority that made such a judgment, yet many people seem to accept a story in which God is described as doing such a thing. I spent some time searching Christian response to this story, and frankly I found many of them expressed quite appalling sentiments.You could probably easily have gotten the debate you wanted without the theatrics. But of course you specialize in that kind of BS. At least this time your OP is not a blatant non sequitur.

jar quoted the story in Message 7. There is no mention of suffering at all. For all we know, the baby was unconscious for a week. Then why don't you use a good example instead of a bad one?

jar15 And Nathan departed unto his house. And the Lord struck the child that Uriah's wife bare unto David, and it was very sick.Is intentionally striking someone with a killing illness not torture to you?What word would you use if not torture?Regards
DL

NoNukesThanks. I think.Regards
DL

ringoI think it a perfect example as it is putting it one on one.True that we do not know the details to firm up the condemnation against God for his actions, but we do know enough to see what a real vile demiurge his is.Seems we Gnostic Christians had him pegged right from the beginning.Regards
DL

I'm an adult.I would use the term plot device.

jarThanks for your best.Fail.Regards
DL

There's still a chance you might learn something so I will continue teaching.At the time the story was likely written a child was not even considered as a person until they had lived at least a week. But even then, children like women were property. The author of the story was not writing from the point of view of people today. The story is about the God character, the prophet character and the David character. Uriah, his wife and the child born to Uriah's wife are just plot devices.The story was not written for an audience today and those who read it through 2015 Point Of View are simply ignorant and so fail to learn anything from the story.But ignorance can be cured.

Or maybe there was a King David who became remorseful after doing away with his friend and taking his wife, after he discovered that his advisor, and who knows who else were aware of what he had done.Perhaps the point of the story is the contrition and great lengths the King went to in order to regain God's favor. Maybe David and everyone else did attribute the baby's death to God even though such deaths were not uncommon.If so, what can be learned from the story? Isn't the story, like many of the Old Testament stories about David and his relationship to God? We see that David does not blame God despite his belief and eventually we might understand that David's contrition was real.

The Bible is given to reveal God to us, and reveal His hand in all the experiences of life, so we will understand something of spiritual cause and effect. Babies and people get sick and die in this life all the time and for the most part we're completely blind to any spiritual causality in those events or any events we experience at all, both good and bad.David's sin with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband had horrible repercussions on his family, not just the death of the first baby with Bathsheba but also the rape of his daughter Tamar by her half brother Amnon, and the murder of Amnon by the other brother Absalom, and then Absalom's challenging his father to be king and Absalom's own death. Scripture is clear that all that was the result of David's sins. We are to learn from such examples that our own sins have consequences, in our own families as well as our own lives.It's not some arbitrary thing God does, it's about cause and effect in the spiritual realms. Scripture says God does it to give us a way to picture how it all works and of course He does do it but not in some arbitrary way, it's to be understood as how His perfect moral law operates. ("The mills of God grind esceeding fine") It's scary and depressing to think your own sins can cause misery for your children but that's what we're supposed to learn, and the suffering of our children is acute suffering for us too, in fact we'd rather take the suffering ourselves. David suffered horribly from all the miseries that came upon all his children.Often there is not a clear cause and effect and sometimes the cause is a few generations back and beyond our ability to make the connection. Again this is not some arbitrary or whimsical thing God does, it's in the very nature of spiritual reality, it is a matter of inexorable laws built into the universe being played out. (This is how we can know if a nation commits a legal violation of God's law that the nation will also suffer judgment for it).In any case it's childish to talk about it as GIA has been doing on this thread.ABE: The death of the baby was part of David's judgment but it didn't stop there:2Samuel 12:10-11 Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife. Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Faith"In any case it's childish to talk about it as GIA has been doing on this thread."You believe in talking animals and a water walking God so I don't think you are fit to judge what is childish or not.------------------Strange that you do not want to talk of all the times God punishes the innocent instead of the guilty. That is what is childish here."We are to learn from such examples that our own sins have consequences, in our own families as well as our own lives."What was the babies sin and if it had none, was God torturing and killing it a just punishment?Regards
DL Edited by Greatest I am, : No reason given.

Whether He's vile or not is not the issue. You don't get to call a murderer a torturer just because he's vile.

ringoCorrect but we would if, like God in this story, it took him 7 days to finish up.Regards
DL

Not at all. As I said, the baby could well have been unconscious the whole time. There is no hint of torture. Your embellishment says more about your faults than God's.

I do not torture babies.Regards
DL