AChristian writes to SixofNine,
In all seriousness though, I know the gripes you have with some of the contents of the Old Testament. But you know very well that the message Christians preach today is one of "Love thy neighbor," and you know that the Christian scriptures neither encourage nor condone behavior that is harmful to anyone. That being the case, why are you so opposed to Christianity?
I cannot speak for Six, but the reason some people oppose the
literalism that extremist Christians espouse is that it requires that one believe that every story in the Bible is true. Few people have the stomach for the actions attributed to the all-loving god of the Bible who the author of 1 Samuel 15:1-3 said ordered the killing of infants and suckling babes, babes who surely had done nothing to warrant being killed.
They furthermore find it impossible to reconcile this passage with teaching elsewhere which hold that the innocent children must not be punished for the sins of their fathers.
Samuel was elder statesman to Saul, the King of Israel. In the first days of Saul's reign, he told Saul that the Lord wanted the Amalekites--who hundreds of years earlier had been in conflict with Israel--destroyed utterly. Here are the words of Samuel:
The LORD sent me to anoint thee to be king over his people, over Israel: now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the LORD. Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. (1 Samuel 15:1-3)
If Samuel is correct, God urged the slaughter of suckling babes--infants feeding at the breasts of their mother. Of course, this wasn't the first time God sent innocents to their deaths. The God most people believe in would never order the death of infants and sucklings (1 Samuel 15:1-3) because of something their ancestors did four centuries earlier. Did the Lord forget that he inspired the Kings and Ezekiel authors to command that the sins of the fathers should not be visited on the children?
Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sins. (2 Kings 14:6)The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. (Ezekiel 18:20)
Which is more likely? That Samuel was told by the Lord to have Saul murder infants and sucklings, or Samuel was mistaken about what the Lord wanted? Thomas Paine expressed well his objection to Samuel's story in a letter from Paris to a Christian friend in 1797:
"What makes this pretended order to destroy the Amalekites appear the worse, is the reason given for it. The Amalekites, four hundred years before, according to the account in Exodus 18 ...had opposed the Israelites coming into their country, and this the Amalekites had a right to do, because the Israelites were the invaders, as the Spaniards were the invaders of Mexico. This opposition by the Amalekites, at that time, is given as a reason, that the men, women, infants and sucklings, sheep and oxen, camels and asses, that were born four hundred years afterward, should be put to death"
Those who prefer to believe that the 1 Samuel writer was right about God ordering the killing of the babies, rather than concede that not all of the Bible stories are correct, seem to be terribly misguided. Thus, it is not
Christianity that people are against; it’s the
foolishness taught by those Christians on the lunatic fringe that they’re against.
Now, which do you think is more likely, AChristian:
1. The 1 Samuel writer was correct: God did order the killing of the suckling babes.
or
2. The 1 Samuel writer was mistaken?
Joseph F. Alward
"Skeptical Views of Christianity and the Bible"
http://members.aol.com/jalw/joseph_alward.html
