How do Christians deal with the violence in the Bible?

This aspect of the Bible has always confused me and even more so in light of many fundamentalists talking about the evils of "moral relativism". I've been thinking lately that belief in a God that is good no matter what He does is the ultimate form of moral relativism. For instance: If God had not stopped Abraham from killing his child, Abraham would have been "good" for obeying God to the ultimate extreme. It's weird.This message has been edited by docpotato, 08-02-2005 09:46 PM

God in the Dock is a collection of some of his essays. One of them was also called God in the Dock.

That's what I thought I remembered. So look in that one essay, GDR, to see if it addresses this topic.

It isn't relative to this discussion. It is mainly about belief. The part that referred to "God in the Dock" is about the reversal from what Christianity has historically been and what it is now in modernity the view is that man is on the bench and God is in the dock. (On trial) The judgement concerns suffering in the world.

Oh yeah, the complaint that a good God shouldn't allow suffering. Actually, though, it's the same complaint, just slightly refocused, as in "a good God shouldn't allow violence or murder or death".

The thing is Faith, untold millions have given their lives to Christ, (including myself), and have come to quite different conclusions than you have. I'm not clear what you mean when you make this statement, but it does make me feel very uncomfortable. God didn't cause this to happen to see if the Langs could pass some kind of evil test. (I don't think that you believe that.) God suffered with them and for them. It is part of the price we pay for having free will as opposed to being robots incapable of knowing either sorrow or joy.I just don't see this life as a test. We make choices and the biggest choice of all is do we choose to live for our own needs, (Self), or do we choose to live for God and others.(Love) Out of curiosity did you read "The Great Divorce" by Lewis?

I think I read everything Lewis wrote but it's been a long time. The Great Divorce pictures a busride to another dimension or do I have that mixed up with something else?The word "test" was simply used as a parallel with my previous post to show that what you had posted about the people who had lost their son was not different from what I had said about getting the strength from God to have the self-denying response in difficult circumstances. You put the spin "evil" on it.

So then you don't believe that God tested Abraham's faith by commanding him to sacrifice his son?

but why does he need to test his faith? I thought that the christian godhead was all-knowing (or was that a later tack-on by later writers?).This message has been edited by Charles Knight, 03-Aug-2005 01:50 PM

Not literally I don't. I contend that it is metaphor for the fact that our children are not our's to own but a gift from God and that we are to acknowledge they are His and not ours.As CK says, God doesn't have to test us. He knows our hearts better than we do ourselves.

Similar belief here.And how could a God who demands the sacrifice of your only son be good? Killing your child is justified if you do it for God?

It's for us, not Himself. He does it to establish the point in Abraham's mind and especially ours reading about it, starting with teaching us that true faith is absolute surrender of everything we have and are to God. Absolute life and death surrender. It makes undeniably real the "acknowledging" that our children are His and not ours. If it's only a metaphor where's the life-and-death cutting edge of faith Christian martyrs have always been called to meet? I think it helps to cure us of a too-soft idea of faith to read about the martyrs. Missionary stories and biographies of other Christian greats are often good for the same reason.Also, the sacrifice of Isaac is full of prophetic implications. It is a foreshadowing of God's sacrifice of His own Son. It was in fact done on Mt. Moriah, the very location which later was the threshing floor that David bought from Ornan the Jebusite, and yet later the location of the temple mount in Jerusalem. The substitute of the ram in the thicket for Isaac is also prophetic of the Lamb of God, the sacrifice provided by God Himself in our place; and a threshing floor also has symbolic prophetic meaning -- the sifting of the grain from the chaff in the final Harvest which begins with the crucifixion of Christ. Reality in the Bible IS metaphor that actual de-reifying metaphor only destroys. There are many things in the OT that must be taken literally if one is to fully appreciate the reality of other things, especially the redemption, the resurrection, the second coming.

quote:

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It is a foreshadowing of God's sacrifice of His own Son

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What sacrifice? Didn't God know how that would turn out?

No.. actually, it isn't. A prophecy is only good if it is KNOWN to be a prophecy before hand. Trying to shoehorn an incident that was written in the bible to mean a prophecy after the fact is just trying to 'shoehorn' a prediction that isnt there.The way the story of Issac and Abraham is read by the Jews is a promise by god never to need human sacrifices again.That is one reason the concept of "Jesus sacrificed on the cross" has no meaning for those of the Jewish faith.

True martyrdom is not invited or sought after by the martyr. If so, we are testing God, not the other way around. A suicide bomber is testing God. Someone who deliberately puts themselves in danger - such as poisonous snake handling during worship - is testing God, not testing their own faith. Likewise if Abraham really did set out to sacrifice his son he would have been testing God. God expects us to use our brains. If we put ourselves in danger for no good reason (or even worse, put a child in danger - such as not seeking medical attention for a sick child but using prayer INSTEAD) we are testing God.Faith is not expecting that God will keep us from having bad things happen to us, it is believing that he will give us the strength to endure the bad things and be the stronger for it. Bad things happen to both good and bad people. Some bad things are just accidents or diseases (caused by germs, not God), some are because of bad choices (ours or someone else's).