I’m a man with a hundred questions and I’m never satisfied with canned answers that are supposed to silence the foolish. When I converted to evangelical Christianism back in 1994, I was so certain that God himself has called me into his grace and so I accepted his offer to make him my lord and savior. For years, I happily - without any hesitation whatsoever - spent my life in service to God. I studied the bible, listened to Christian leaders and politely asked questions about certain sections of the bible that either I couldn’t understand or that appears to be in conflict with the supposed nature of God. Answers poured in and slowly I realized one thing.
One of the questions that I asked God and fellow Christians was about the genocide committed by the Israelites in the Old Testament wherein Israeli soldiers were commanded by God to slaughter nations - men, women and CHILDREN. Indeed, this has been an age-old question to which no satisfactory answer (at least one that would appease the way we modern humans think) was given. There is however one ultimate answer that kind of ends the discussion, not because it is satisfactory but merely because the discussion becomes pointless after this answer is given and it’s called GOD’s PREROGATIVE.
WordNet defines prerogative as a right reserved exclusively by a particular person or group - wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
If you understand what the above definition means (which I believe you do) then you would certainly acknowledge my sentiment in saying that any discussion after such an answer would be pointless simply because it puts God above any law - even those that he himself gave. One Christian once told me that “after all, these laws were given to man for man to obey and not to God for God to obey” and another one even said, “So what? He is God, he can do whatever he pleases.”
This brings me to my next point. Would you obey a God who doesn’t practice what he preach? Would you follow a God who gave Moses the Ten Commandments saying “Thou shalt not kill” and eventually told the same Moses to slaughter the Canaanites - men, women and children? In fact, even the cattle were to be killed. Would you give your life to a “loving God” but cannot at least spare the children so they can be taught the ways of God?
No, I’m not trying to disprove his existence here (that’ll be something for some other time) but merely trying to offer you a thought - one that has bothered me for quite some time already - to obey a God who kills the innocent. I can easily tolerate the idea of killing the men and women because they would most probably have lived “evil lives” (evil relative to the God of Jews and Christians). I cannot however swallow the thought of killing children whom have not even made a decision on whether or not they would follow the footsteps of their parents. But well, it’s God’s prerogative to do so. After all, you might say, he gives life and he has the right to take it back but that my friend to me is a very weak answer. Why give someone a gift if you’d just HARSHLY take it back?
At this point in my life, all I can say is that I won’t serve such a God. Perhaps, God owes us (or maybe just me) an explanation about this matter. Am I being arrogant here? Why would I, a mere human, would demand an explanation from God? I don’t think it’s arrogance nor is it demanding to ask God a question about something that I don’t fully understand. If he is indeed God then he can easily give us the right answer. Wouldn’t you want an explanation too? After all, what’s wrong with asking? In fact God gave us the prerogative to ask and to seek to which he answered that we shall receive and find. If he can use his prerogative, then I’m simply using mine.
Cheers!
