PunkofNice: Jehovah...is so benevolent and wonderfully merciful. So much so he kills children without so much as a ‘by your leave’.
It’s comments like this that reflect a unique combination of bitterness, hatred, ignorance and acute lack of cognizance regarding both God and history. On a discussion board such as this, I wonder if you’re simply reacting to a religious organization that has hijacked your thought processes first in one direction and now, through opposition, the other.
Jehovah...is surely the greater child abuser. All hail the imaginary sky daddy that says ‘Thou shall not kill.’ And then slaughters mercilessly.
Actually, the commandment says, “Thou shalt not murder.” Murder, in this context, means to shed innocent blood. And though you accuse the great creator with merciless slaughter, perhaps you’d care to give us a few examples. In the scriptures you promiscuously throw at us, Yahweh does not order the slaughter of children but, through his prophets, foretells it. But he lay the fate of the people on the people. He says, if you do this, this will happen; and if you do that, that will happen.
In situations such as the Canaanites, they were initially offered peace in exchange for staying out of Moses’ way Moses was being guided by the Lord. And later, when the Israelites were told to, “go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them; but kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.”
In such a situation, is God actually murdering? If Yahweh doesn’t exist, the discussion is moot; however, if he is the God of Israel, the great judge of all nations and peoples, and knows all things from the Beginning, having power over the bodies and spirits of all men and holding their eternal destinies in his hands, then isn’t it his right to bring judgment upon the nations as he deems it just and right?
Perhaps you can tell us what you know about the Amalekites, what kind of people they were, how they worshiped, treated the poor and strangers, lived their lives. And when their animals, and their women and children were dispatched, were they still not in his hands? Or do you suppose they just ceased to exist? In short, you don’t know the answers to any of these questions. And whose judgment are we supposed to follow? Yours? Or should we trust in him who knows and controls all things? It reminds me of what a friend of mine jokingly said once: “I’ve SEEN a Boeing 747, and I’m telling you, there’s no way they can fly!” And looking at one, I can almost agree with him that something that big and heavy can get off the ground and fly from coast to coast over the ocean! But once someone learns about propulsion, fuels, electronics, aerodynamics, thrust and materials, one begins to understand that it is possible.
No wonder the GB abuse children so willingly.
Here you’re failing to make the classic distinction between the Jehovah's Witnesses as a religion and assuming that if it isn’t true, then neither is God. Since the Jehovah's Witnesses are Yahweh’s people, you reason, they’re inseparately connected. If the sect is wrong, there is no Jehovah, no Christ, no God of Israel.
It is, of course, a non sequitur. Whether individual members of the Governing Body of the Jehovah's Witnesses are guilty of child abuse or whether they simply cover it up, I don’t know. But their abuses have nothing to do with God.
