Moses Orders the MURDER of defenseless non-combatants AFTER a battle is over... the excuse, the people showed themselves morally weak in a previous encounter with pagan people.

Then Moses orders the Murder of any child a parent could not brainwash, I mean train up, in the ways of Jehovah.

both of these are part of the PERFECT law according to Paul...

So many will find excuses to justify murdering children to maintain their faith...but is it really possible that a true religion can be built upon such a foundation as this??

If you can justify the murder of children, what is beyond your ability to justify?

Sincerely,

District Overbeer

No there is never justification as far as I can think at this moment -- the god of the old testament was sure blood thirsty -- no wonder we needed Jesus to come and put things straight -- that is by the way to drift off thread for a moment -- why the Trinity is such a sick doctrine -- Jesus and God can not be the same

This whole thing confuses me.....really

morty

Would that qualify as Genocide? I guess Hitler felt justified knowing that the Jews had already done the same thing and recorded it proudly in the bible.

 

All right, let me stir the pot a little. 

Is there ever a justification for killing children? Our society actually believes so, as there have been a staggering number of abortions legally performed on MILLIONS of children since 1972.  This is one of those emotional topics, of course, but it surely seems that when a woman's freedom is on the line, then YES, there IS justification for killing children.   (Of course, from the pro-choice position, there is no 'child' involved so to them the question is moot...   Yet that declaration is, to me, another amazing display of the extent of our denial.  Certainly denial is necessary for electing to kill an unborn child.)  

(Let me continue on about the dilemmas in abortion a little, then I'll move on.)

I knew a man who hated abortion--yet defended it when women prisoners in Romania, raped by guards, let a fellow prisoner (a doctor) perform abortions on them.  The doctor was a Christian. The women were aware that the children would die of starvation, if not killed outright by the guards.  Was this kind of abortion merely 'convenience', too, and worthy of moral outrage from pro-lifers of today?... I soften here, thinking.   

Or, other situations:  medically necessary abortions.  That is, when the mother's life is at stake due to an ectopic pregnancy or other unusual medical condition... Should therapeutic abortions also be outlawed?  Is moral rage commanded?  ...  Or, what about when the child is a product of rape?  Or, what about if the child is aborted at 8 months as opposed to 3 months--or vice versa? 

OR, What about pulling a plug on a machine that delivers food or air to a brain dead or comatose child--especially if such an action that would absolutely result in the child's death? 

Or, if we look in history at groups that preferred to kill their own children to spare them rape, torture and slavery (eg, Masada, but there are others), what kind of emotions do we deal with, if we know more details?  Are ALL of these types of deliberate endings "murder", and worthy of outrage?  These are all hard questions.  They are hard to answer. 

Is it always a black and white answer? Or does something else affect the answers? 

I realize that I'm not quite addressing the moral outrage that you are feeling at God.  But I am trying to point out something important that is quite related:  it is possible to imagine a scenario where a child might be killed and there would be no shock or moral outrage in even this "advanced" society, because we believe there is a valid justification.   And if there is such cases among us, then perhaps we could reflect that God also determines when the killing of a child may be a tragedy due to the circumstances, yet not be 'morally outrageous' on God's part.  There is, it seems, that possibility.

As for me, I learned long ago that addition as well as the "edition" of details affects my opinon. Surface information rarely gives me enough for a solid opinion on important matters.  And digging deeper is a commitment.  

bebu

Wanna hear the most HORRIBLE reasoning told to me by an elder in the 70's about this very subject? "A farmer kills off nests of baby rats in his barn as they grow to be BIG VERMIN, don't they?" Ewwwww-I just felt the same shiver I did when I heard this......reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

Good point Blondie - circular logic indeed.

bebu - the scenario I should have included would be one in which a war was fought and the world would come to know of children being carted off or pulled away from their parents and killed, or slaughtered with their parents. In my mind, that's what happened in Caanan when the Isrealites invaded.