How to Believe When We Find Some of the Beliefs Repugnant?

How can we have a mature, honest, and sincere faith when certain aspects of the package – eternal judgment and the destruction of the Canaanites, for example – are confusing or even repugnant? One faith-wrestler confessed, “I’d like to be able to believe in Christ, I don’t see how I can believe in the things He endorsed.” This is understandable. Jesus affirmed the eternal judgment more than anyone else.

The Pick-and-Choose Option. Many simply choose those aspects of Biblical faith that feel right to them. Today, this usually amounts to taking the loving teachings and rejecting the judgmental teachings. While at first, this faith might be comforting, in the long run, it fails to deliver. Essentially, this tactic places us in charge. We become the authors of our own faith. This undermines any sense in a genuine trust in God and places it on our own judgments. How can we choose some of Jesus’ teachings and reject the others? Doesn’t this amount to saying that we don’t trust Him? Instead of trusting in God’s judgments, we require God’s words to submit to our own judgments. We’ve made ourselves the captains of our own ships, where we’re in charge and not God.

This option also stands in opposition to the Biblical warnings against adding or subtracting from the Word (Deut. 4:2; 12:42: Rev. 22:19) and abiding in all the teachings of Christ (John 15:14; 14:21-24).

The Rejecting the Mind Option. Many simply will say, “I’m just not going to worry about these things. I know what I believe, and nobody is going to take that away from me.” Both positions represent denial. This position represents a rejection of our God-given minds (instead of rejecting some of His teachings) and leaves us vulnerable to rational attacks. As a result, we respond with defensiveness to questions or opposing opinions and also fail to maturely integrate the faith into our lives. This can only happen as we deal honestly with the challenges.

Besides, this option also violates many Biblical teachings. Jesus taught that we have to love the Lord with all of our minds (Matthew 22:37). Furthermore, we have to be able to make a defense of the faith (1 Peter 3:15; Jude 3). Thought is also the doorway to renewal (Romans 12:2) and just about everything else in the Christian life (2 Peter 1:2-3).

A Responsible Faith. Essentially, Christians need to be rational and consistent in our use of the Bible. We therefore can’t pick and choose to suit our own prejudices and tastes. Nor can we do this in regards to our faculties and just close one down – the mind – because it presents us with problems. Instead, we need to look squarely at this problem of God’s alleged evil – the toughest problem of all.

The atheist Robert Ingersoll (1833-99) had boldly proclaimed, “Eternal punishment must be eternal cruelty…and I do not see how any man, unless he has the brain of an idiot, or the heart of a wild beast, can believe in eternal punishment.” We can place Ingersoll’s charge into a logical form:

1. If God is perfectly good, just, and omniscient, he must have adequate reasons for doing those things that seem to be morally repugnant – the destruction of the Canaanites and eternal judgment.

2. There are no adequate reasons for God to do these things.

CONCLUSION: This idea of God is incoherent and needs to be modified!

The only questionable premise is #2. If it stands, then the conclusion is logically established. However, it faces several formidable challenges. For one thing, making this assertion exceeds our ability. Philosopher Alvin Plantinga had reasoned that if he was sent to determine of a horse was inside a tent, he would be able to confidently say that it was. However, if he instead was sent to see if there was a microscopic spider mite inside, he would not be able to make such a judgment with any confidence.

This is precisely the problem that we encounter when we come up against God. One seeker asserted, “I will not sign on the dotted line of any statement of faith until I understand all of its stipulations and find them all satisfactory.” This is certainly a good policy when entering into human contracts, but is it so when we’re dealing with God?

Even when engaging science, this policy proves unrealistic. While I believe in science, my knowledge of it is very limited. However, my faith in science doesn’t depend on understanding and approving everything about it. Instead, my trust in science is based upon my very limited experience and understanding of it, even though science has confronted me with some very counter-intuitive conclusions – relativity, the indeterminacy of sub-atomic particles.

Likewise, my faith in Christ need not depend upon my full understanding or comfort with all His teachings. Also, consistent with my faith in science, my faith in Christ can rationally find its basis upon what I do know about Him, even if many things remain unknown.

At this point, the seeker may well counter, “Well, science doesn’t impose on us any offensive moral judgments, as your God does! Besides, if we have a duty to judge Hitler, why not also your God?” This is true. Science doesn’t declare what ought to be, but simply what is! However, there is an element of logical incoherence here. While we do have a duty to judge Hitler, judging God presents additional problems. God is the only possible source of moral absolutes. Without God, each of us is left with our own subjective and pluralistic moral standards and inclinations. Only if there exists a standard of judgment higher and truer than Hitler’s own judgments can we judge him. His actions don’t simply violate my personal standards; they violate truth itself!

Without God, we lack any basis upon which to conclude objectively that we’re right and Hitler is wrong. We’re left only with molecules-in-motion and a multiplicity of moral judgments, none any more authoritative than the others. In other words, we need the God of the Bible in order to judge the God of the Bible. This realization should prevent us from rejecting God.

Besides, if we are truly concerned about countering what is morally repugnant, we can only confront it if we come armed with the moral absolutes that only our God can make available. The poet and atheist, W.H. Auden moved to Germantown in NYC from his Ireland in the early 1930s. While he was watching a news clip in the movie theater about the Nazi invasion of Poland, he was horrified to see the audience rise to its feet, applaud and cry out, “Destroy the Poles.” Auden wanted to take a strong moral stance against their response, but he realized that, as an atheist, his values were merely self-constructed. This sent him into a moral tailspin, resulting in his becoming a Christian.

His conversion and the cognitive rest that it brought not only required a faith in a God with absolute moral standards, but also a God who cared enough about these standards to do something about them. It required that God also be a God of judgment. Only a God of judgment is able to provide an adequate moral basis and foundation for our own punitive and corrective response against injustice.

Perhaps God does have good reasons for those things we find morally offensive? Sometimes, we find that there is a good reason for many things that we thought possessed no value. Baboons need fleas and tics. Without these “valueless” tormentors, baboons wouldn’t groom each other; without grooming, baboons wouldn’t bond and develop social cohesion.

Butterflies require the life and death struggle entailed in attempting to escape their cocoons. One gentleman, observing this struggle, helped the butterfly from his cocoon. However, the butterfly died because it had been deprived of its struggle.

Perhaps we also need death and other severities of life so as to not take life and our relationships for granted. Do you remember the great joy and tears shed when their loved ones had been subsequently rescued from the rubble of an earthquake? Such joy depends upon the reality of death.

Of course, against whatever reasons I might give to justify God’s judgments, the skeptic can always respond, “Couldn’t your God have done things in a better, less painful way? Couldn’t He have created humans who don’t sin?” However, this objection fails to appreciate the limitations of our knowledge. Even in questions restricted to this material world, we are severely limited in our understanding. We are unable to understand the essence of things, although science might be able to describe how they respond relative to their circumstances. However, we can hardly begin to fathom the nature of light, mass, time, space or the laws of physics, no matter how many experiments we might run.

While we are very accepting of the limitations of our knowledge regarding this created world, we become very demanding when it comes to a justification of God’s ways. We indict Him when His behavior doesn’t conform to our standards, our culturally determined tastes. We deem that eternal punishment is something that is simply unacceptable, although there is so much about our own comparatively small lives that we fail understand or even see.

At this point, the seeker might respond, “OK, I realize that my knowledge is very limited, but this doesn’t mean that I have to jump into the arms of your God either.” The Psalmist answers,

• “Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you.” (Psalm 9:10).

I know God. I might not know everything about Him, but I know enough to know that He isn’t a sexist, a racist, or a sadist. I know that He is just and will reconcile everything into a just and merciful conclusion, when every knee shall bow and confess that “Jesus is Lord.”

Similarly, I know my wife. If the police call and inform me that she was arrested in a sex-slave trafficking scheme, I know that there must have been some mistake, even though there are things about my wife that I don’t know.

Well, how can we know Him? He’ll reveal Himself:

• “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13)

At least, give Him a try:

• “Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.” (Psalm 34:8-9)

Biblical Slavery was Egalitarian and Humane

Biblical slavery was egalitarian and humane. It was so humane, that many slaves were given the option of remaining slaves – think servants – or taking their freedom when they had the opportunity (Deut. 15:16-17).

However, the skeptics point out that there is a great distinction between being a circumcised Hebrew slave and a foreign slave. Nevertheless, foreigners always had the option of conversion to become an Israelite under the Mosaic covenant and to receive all of the privileges this entailed. However, one skeptic denied that this was an option for slaves and cynically challenged: “Any examples of property being allowed to convert, Daniel?”

In fact, the first command regarding circumcision and inclusion into the covenant specifically mentioned those “bought with money from a foreigner”:

• “This is my covenant with you [Abraham] and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner--those who are not your offspring.” (Genesis 17:10-12)

Israel was to be a model of inclusiveness. Abraham had been forbidden from maintaining a class distinction between circumcised and uncircumcised. All could and should come, all were to be under the covenant of God, and none were ever turned away! However, there was one holiday – and only one – in which the foreigner couldn’t partake unless he was first circumcised:

• “Any slave you have bought may eat of it after you have circumcised him, but a temporary resident and a hired worker may not eat of it…An alien living among you who wants to celebrate the LORD'S Passover must have all the males in his household circumcised; then he may take part like one born in the land. No uncircumcised male may eat of it. The same law applies to the native-born and to the alien living among you." (Exodus 12:44-49)

Interestingly, Passover was the only holiday that required those partaking to be circumcised. It was also the only holiday that commemorated a specific past event. The other holidays are strangely peculiar in not having a similar commemorative focus. It has therefore been widely recognized that the other holidays are instead prophetic – pointing to a future time when circumcision would no longer be an issue, and not to the past.

There was no indication of any racial superiority in any of Israel’s legislation. Instead, Israel was always reminded that they had been slaves so that they would be gracious to their slaves and that a single egalitarian set of laws would suffice for all – whether Jewish or not. Instead, Israel was to be a model society for the surrounding nations:

• “See, I [Moses] have taught you decrees and laws as the LORD my God commanded me, so that you may follow them in the land you are entering to take possession of it. Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him? And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?” (Deut. 4:5-8)

Sadly, Israel failed to live up to their laws and their righteous God, and perhaps we fail to see the righteousness of these laws because we never objectively examined them.

Knowing Why We Believe

Many TV evangelists proclaim, “Just believe,” but they never tell us “why” to believe. This is very important because we want to be sure that we believe the right beliefs!

Richard Bonnie, a University of Virginia law professor, states that Andrea Yates, the Texas mom who drowned her five children in a bathtub in 2001, believed they "were 'stumbling' into the throes of the devil and were going to burn in the fires of eternity…By killing them, she would save them from this fate. … Satan would be vanquished."

For Yates, her beliefs might have felt as real to her as ours feel to us. How do we know that Yates had been deluded, while we are in touch with spiritual reality? We have to take a step back from what we are feeling and invite our minds to play their ordained role. This is just what the Bereans did. They didn’t simply believe in their heart what Paul was preaching. They checked everything against the truth of Scripture:

• “Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” (Acts 17:11).

Jesus also warned against thoughtless faith: "If I testify about myself, my testimony is not valid” (John 5:31). He then clarified that he should be believed because of all of His confirmatory evidence – miracles, Scripture, and the testimonies of the Father and of John the Baptist.

The Biblical faith was never a faith that was to be accepted blindly. It not only required a change of heart, but also a change of thinking based upon the evidence:

• “One witness is not enough to convict a man accused of any crime or offense he may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses” (Deut. 19:15).

This principle especially pertains to the things of the faith. It is no wonder therefore that Jesus taught that we had to love God with all of our being, including our minds:

• “Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind'” (Matthew 22:37).

If we only have the evidence of the heart – perhaps like Andrea – it is difficult to talk to others about our faith. They too have evidence of the heart for whatever they believe. They may ask you, “Why is your experience any more valid than my experience?” Without the evidence of the mind, there is little more that you can say. Besides, the adroit skeptic will charge you with arrogance for suggesting that you have the truth based on your subjective experience.

Therefore, Christian maturity isn’t just a matter of love but also of wisdom. Paul wrote:

• “Brothers, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults” (1 Cor. 14:20).

Becoming an adult requires that we can not only explain what we believe but also why we believe it (Jude 3; 1 Peter 3:15). Without this necessary ingredient, we are not only depriving ourselves of assurance, but we will also be defensive in the face of skepticism and doubt.

Biblical Interpretation: Making the Correct Distinctions

It is not hard to point out verses that appear to contradict one another. One skeptic, who protested against my essay in defense of God destroying the Canaanites, pointed out this “contradiction.”

• Deut. 24:16 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 sin.

• Exodus 34:7 "maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation."

While the first verse seems to indicate that God’s form of justice is in line with our own – only the guilty party is to be punished – the second indicates that He punishes the children and grand-children…for the sins of their parents.

This apparent contradiction is easily resolved by simply recognizing that the first verse mandate how we humans are to do justice, while the second is a revelation of how God does justice.

However, this raises another question – “Why should God’s way of doing justice be different from ours? Isn’t He supposed to be our role model?” This is true. However, there are areas – some forms of judgment – where we can’t act in the place of God. We are only capable of seeing the outer man, while God can judge the inner man. He’s also omniscient. Therefore, it was God who chose David to be the next King of Israel and not the wise prophet Samuel:

• But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." (1 Samuel 16:7)

Biblical interpretation requires that we make the right distinctions, but how do we know what are the right distinctions. Well, often we find these distinctions in the verses themselves. For instance, in Exodus 34:7, it reads, “Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished,” signifying that God is the Judge here. From the context of the Deuteronomy 26:14 passage, it is clear that God is giving instructions to Israel for how they must do justice. However, sometimes making the right distinction depends upon an overall understanding of Scripture.

(If you are interested in these types of questions, I will be giving a course on Thursday evenings starting in February on Biblical Interpretation: Controversial Verses.)

An Atheist Responds to the "Genocide of the Canaanites"

One atheist responded to my essay on the “Genocide” of the Canaanites this way:

• “Could there have been a better way to approach the issue other than genocide?The answer should be an obvious "yes". You're deity, if it existed, is supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. The fact that you seem to think that the massacre of people by people is the best option available to such a being makes your entire argument ridiculous in the extreme. Your deity could have ceased their existences, caused them to repent freely (he would know exactly what that would have taken), kill them all with a thought, not have set things up such that they sinned to begin with.”

Basically your argument goes like this:

1. God could have chosen a better solution than the destruction of the Canaanites.
2. I can even think of better solutions.
3. Therefore, your concept of god is incoherent and even sub-human!

Here are some of the problems with your reasoning:

1. Your understanding of “omnibenevolence” isn’t a Biblical one. Clearly, God has presented Himself as a judge of wickedness, and I suspect you would be the first to complain if there wasn’t any punishment for the criminal who mugged and raped you.

2. Once again, you position yourself as if you have a true moral standard by which to judge God, and because He hasn’t performed up to your standard, He can’t be God. However, as an atheist, you lack any basis for an objective moral standard. You fail to realize than you need God in order to judge God! (I love the way He set things up!)

3. To conclude that God could have chosen a better solution to deal with the Canaanites would be like a first grader concluding that his math teacher could have chosen better materials. The first grader lacks the knowledge to make such a judgment, and perhaps you do too! We can’t even comprehensively answer the simple questions about God’s workings – “Why is the grass green or the sky blue; why does water boil at 212F?” In fact, it is easy for us to naively question about any aspect of this world, “Why couldn’t have God done things better? Why does there have to be pain, loneliness, disease and death?” You can make any of these questions into an indictment against God, if you lack the humility to understand the limitations of your own knowledge?

4. Meanwhile, you think that your solutions are better! You think that you would make an excellent Creator! Do you really know enough? Can you define the nature of light or time or even matter? Can you explain where DNA comes from, or life, or freewill, or consciousness, or the laws of physics? Can you explain how it is that the universe is so incredibly fine-tuned? Yet you believe in all of these things, but you deny the God who so clearly made them (Romans 1:18-32)!

5. The source of Christian assurance doesn’t rest upon the fact that we understand everything that God tells us. Instead, we recognize that if the Bible is truly His Word, there will be many things that we don’t understand. Likewise, our belief in science isn’t based upon our ability to understand everything about His world. We certainly can’t! How much less so the Creator Himself! However, there are many other reasons upon which to base our faith in science.

6. You suggest that God could “kill them all with a thought, not have set things up such that they sinned to begin with.” Perhaps His glorious plan depends upon visual and profound reminders of judgment and the price that sin exacts? Maybe we first need to learn about the consequences of our hatred of truth? How can you conclusively rule out this possibility? Perhaps instead, your objections are not a product of rationality but your aversion to God and His promised judgment? This is Jesus’ conclusion:

• “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.” (John 3:19-20)

I pray that you will seek so that you will find (Matthew 7:7-11). I sincerely pray for this!

University Censorship

Ottawa’s Carleton University (CU) announced that its student pro-life group now faces decertification unless it “renounces the pro-life beliefs expressed in the club’s constitution.” (November 16, 2010, LifeSiteNews.com)

Now why would a university – and universities pride themselves on their open examination of ideas – demand that their student pro-life group renounce their ideology, especially one upon which Western Civilization rests? If they were advocating violent jihad or the forcible imposition of shariah law upon its unwilling university staff, its prohibition might be more easily appreciated. However, this isn’t the case:

• “Khaldoon Bushnaq, Vice-President of Internal Affairs for the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA), wrote the club by e-mail on Thursday saying they would not be recertified because their constitution violates CUSA’s Discrimination on Campus Policy, which purports to uphold ‘a woman’s right to choose.’”

Increasingly, universities, both in Canada and the USA, are adopting positions of intolerance – “If you don’t agree with us, we’ll shut you down!” This stance is problematic in many ways:

1. Recertifying its pro-life group doesn’t remove a woman’s right to choose. However, she might have to listen to speech she finds unpleasant, but that should be part of the university experience.

2. This stance contradicts the very purpose of the university – to demonstrate that reason and argumentation should prevail over brute force and suppression of unwanted ideas. Instead of opening the mind, it narrows the domain of acceptable thought and speech.

3. While CU bases its case on anti-discrimination, they are acting in a hypocritical manner by discriminating against its pro-life student group.

4. Every political or religious group – any group standing for a cause – necessarily takes a stance discriminating against other stances. They believe that they’re right and their opposition is wrong. Well, that’s just life, and you can’t legislate against life.

5. Recently, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hastings Law School in their refusal to recertify a Christian Law student group. Hastings argued that this group had a religious test for membership and leadership and thereby violated the school’s policy against religious discrimination. However, the Court’s decision was based upon domain confussion. While the University of California Hastings Law school must act in a just and a non-discriminatory manner, the essence of student groups is one of discrimination. It is perfectly legitimate for students to form a women’s support group or the “Young Democrats” and discriminate against males and Republicans. Likewise, a judge must be impartial and just in the courtroom, but when he throws a party, he is free to invite whomever he wishes. While CU might not have the freedom to discriminate in certain matters, it shouldn’t deny this freedom to its student groups.

The “Genocide” of the Canaanites

In The Age of Reason (1794), Thomas Paine wrote, “Whenever we read the obscene stories…the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which…the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent if we called it the work of a demon, than the word of God.”

Now, “genocide” has become the word of choice of almost every “new atheist,” especially in regards to God’s instructions to totally annihilate the Canaanites residing in the land promised to Israel. Even the "Christian" evolutionist Karl Giberson parrots this indictment:

• “In The God Delusion [evolutionist and New Atheist Richard] Dawkins eloquently skewers the tyrannical anthropomorphic deity of the Old Testament—the God that supposedly commanded the Jews to go on genocidal rampages and who occasionally went on his own rampages, flooding the planet or raining fire and brimstone on wicked cities. But who believes in this deity any more, besides those same fundamentalists who think the earth is 10,000 years old? Modern theology has moved past this view of God.” http://biologos.org/blog/exposing-the-straw-men-of-new-atheism-part-five/

Therefore, it’s imperative that the believer is prepared to respond (1 Peter 3:15; Jude 3; 2 Cor. 10:4-5), rather than to fearfully flee and avoid any further contact.
In the Christian Research Journal, Clay Jones responds,

• “The ‘new atheists’ call God’s commands to kill the Canaanites ‘genocide’, but a closer look at the horror of the Canaanites’ sinfulness, exhibited in rampant idolatry, incest, adultery, child sacrifice, homosexuality, and bestiality, reveals that God’s reason for commanding their death was not genocide but capital punishment.” (“Killing the Canaanites,” vol.33/#4, 31)

Indeed, God had nothing good to say about them. Instead, He continually warned Israel against their practices:

• “Do not have sexual relations with your neighbor's wife and defile yourself with her. Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the LORD. Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable. Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion. Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled.” (Leviticus 18:20-24)

Jones’ own research agrees with the Biblical assessment of the Canaanites:

• “Like the Ancient Near East (ANE) pantheons [of gods], the Canaanite pantheon was incestuous. Baal has sex with his mother Asherah, his sister Anat, and his daughter Pidray, and none of this is presented pejoratively…There should be no surprise that bestiality would occur among the Canaanites, since their gods practiced it…There was absolutely no prohibitions against bestiality in the rest of the ANE.” (32)

If their Gods were their role models, we shouldn’t expect that the Canaanites would rise an iota above them, either sexually or according to any other moral measure. These revelations also support the Biblical account of the entire male population of Sodom attempting to rape Lot’s two male visitors (Genesis 19). In Genesis 18, we were told that if God had found just 10 righteous people in that town, He wouldn’t have destroyed it. Evidently, they weren’t present! (The blinding and numbing power of sin is so powerful that when Lot tried to warn his “sons-in-law” regarding God’s immanent destruction of Sodom, they thought he was “jesting” (Gen. 19:14). Evidently to them, Sodom wasn’t such a bad place, which would warrant divine judgment. It was home! Indeed, we eventually become complacent, even to the most blatant and destructive forms of criminality!)

However corrupted the Canaanites might have been at this point, God had informed Abraham that He would give them an additional 400 years, “for the sin of the Amorites [Canaanites] has not yet reached its full measure" (Genesis 15:16). Meanwhile, despite all of the miraculous evidences that this just and righteous God had manifested to Canaan and the surrounding nations, none of these nations ever confessed and repented of their ways.

God had performed wondrous miracles in Egypt “that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” (Exodus 9:16). And the whole “earth” did hear about what had taken place and also of the Israelite conquests before entering into the Promised Land. However, rather than leading them to reassess their sinful lives and the God of Israel, they formed military alliances to resist the Israelite onslaught. However, one prostitute in Jericho did respond appropriately to the evidence and was rescued:

• “We have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed.” (Joshua 2:10)

Jones is right. It wasn’t a matter of genocide but of capital punishment meted out to a hardened and unrepentant people. In fact, there is no account in the entire Bible of an individual or a people who sought God’s forgiveness, and it was refused! Israel’s God had another reason to not wait any longer in bringing judgment upon the Canaanites:

• "Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices. And when you choose some of their daughters as wives for your sons and those daughters prostitute themselves to their gods, they will lead your sons to do the same.” (Exodus 34:15-16)

Sadly, Israel didn’t always take this danger seriously, even after seeing God’s judgments, and brought upon themselves what had happened to the Canaanites, as their God had warned:

• “Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD. They served the Baals and the Ashtoreths, and the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites and the gods of the Philistines. And because the Israelites forsook the LORD and no longer served him, he became angry with them. He sold them into the hands of the Philistines and the Ammonites.” (Judges 10:6-7)

Generally, at this point, the atheist will complain that a real god wouldn’t be so punitive because human beings don’t deserve such punishment. But how can we blame God, when we too have our punishments and jails. How can we blame God for being judgmental as long as we are judgmental! Perhaps, once we find a better way of dealing with unacceptable behavior – bringing criminals to court, or failing students, or firing employees – that we can point the finger at God.

There is also another reason that the skeptic scoffs at the judgments of God. Peter explains that the scoffers of his day “deliberately forget” about God’s judgments (2 Peter 3:3-8; 2:4-9), sensing in them their own doom. If they forget or dismiss these as myth, then the skeptics can assuage their troubled conscience regarding any future prospects of divine judgment against them (Romans 2:14-15; 1:18-32).

However, there’s a more difficult problem. The Canaanites had babies, who hadn’t yet done evil. Doesn’t their destruction violate God’s claims of being a just God? I’ll try to make some suggestions:

1. One theologian suggested that if God created them, He has every right to take them away, and whenever He wants. He returns us all to the dust. It’s just a matter of when. (In light of this, the skeptic’s beef is against death itself!) In the same way that I can destroy my painting, God has a right to destroy His own workmanship.

The skeptic will respond, “A painting is very different than a sentient being!” Of course, this is true, at least to us. But for the God, who can create innumerable “children of Abraham from stones,” there is little difference in terms of our intrinsic value. Instead, we are valued because our Creator has placed His love upon us, and He has promised to be just. It’s not because we think ourselves so wonderful that we are wonderful, but because He thinks we are!

Again, the skeptic will respond, “How is justice served by killing an infant?” This is the essence of the problem. However, God has a lot of room in which to work – all eternity – to right any “injustices.” Curtailing our lives by 70 years – we all are going to die anyway – is nothing in comparison to a potential eternity. Some theologians have strenuously argued that all children who die before the “age of accountability,” will be in heaven eternally. Although this idea is appealing, its Biblical support is arguable.

2. Nevertheless, we still remain with the question, “How is justice served by killing an innocent infant?” We can respond with another question: “Is justice truly served if God communicates to the Hitler’s of this world that the implications of their crimes will not touch their children?” In fact, life itself teaches us that children have to suffer for the follies and punishments of their parents (Num. 14:33). This knowledge should make us all the more diligent to do right! As a probation officer for 15 years, many probationers would understandably tell me, “I now have a wife and children, and so I have to get my life together for their sake!” Perhaps it is according to the wisdom of God that our children’s fate should be so closely tied to our own! Perhaps our understanding of justice is too truncated.

3. God has promised to lay upon the children the sins of the parents. Anyone can see the consequences of this promise. We inherit the sins and weaknesses of our parents through an invisible process of osmosis (Exodus 34:7). Perhaps we might find that by unlocking the secrets of epigenetics, we will find the mechanism of this transfer. (We now understand that lifestyle- induced changes to our epigenetics will be passed on to our progeny.) If this is the case, then it might follow that the Canaanite children have already been irreversibly tainted with the sins of their parents – sins that would eventually corrupt Israel. (However, I don’t think that this should now be a concern, since, by coming to Christ, we are cleansed from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9; Titus 3:5) and also our children (1 Cor. 7:14)).

These are not explanations of why God had also ordered the destruction of infants. I must admit that I don’t fully understand and can only hope to offer possibilities. However, those who have learned to trust in our Lord, trust Him enough to know that He will reconcile everything justly and lovingly!

Our Savior wouldn’t be so punitive if there was no hope, no remedy for evil. One pastor, Carlton Pearson, claimed that he had turned away from the Biblical God because He thought that God lusted after the destruction of the wicked. Instead, the opposite is true:

• “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11).