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How would you respond to this accusation against God? Christians have tried to sidestep the evil deeds that God allegedly commits in the Old Testament by claiming that the New Testament overrides and replaces the Old Testament based on the idea that Jesus supplied mankind with a new covenant. This is objection number five to Christianity in the blog post, 40 Problems with Christianity that we are going through.

In this series, the friendly atheist at petheos.com is trying to dismantle truths of Christianity, trying to lead people away from Christianity with these objections. And so if you were with me for one through four, we're going to start with question five now. It's titled The Evil Nature of God. that's somewhat understandable that Christians have done this, but what cannot be denied is that Jesus himself was a student of the Old Testament.

He firmly believed in it and warned that it was not to be ignored or discarded. The Friendly Atheist blog is actually undeniably correct here. We cannot deny that Jesus was a student of the Old Testament and that he firmly believed in it and that Jesus did warn that it was not to be ignored or discarded. In fact, Jesus said he does not come to abolish the law or the prophets, but he came to fulfill them.

So in this question or in this response by the atheist, he says, given the Christian belief that Jesus was God, that in order for Christianity to be true, Jesus slash God must have performed the evil deeds as documented in the Old Testament. Otherwise, Jesus would have corrected the scriptures and explain that God the Father or he himself did not commit those atrocities. So his point is that Jesus was 100% okay with all of these things that happened in the Old Testament that can be ascribed to God, which is true.

So anyone who tries to say that Jesus is different from the God of the Old Testament. Anyone who tries to apologize for God's decisions in the Old Testament and God's actions in the Old Testament, and then tries to get people to believe in the Jesus of the New Testament as if it's a different God, that person is who this atheist is refuting perfectly here. And it is silly, it's foolishness to imply that Jesus of the New Testament is not the God of the Old Testament.

The problem is when people are ashamed of the acts of God in the Old Testament, or if they just don't understand them. So now, having established the fact that Jesus is the God of the Old Testament, the question is, does the God of the Old Testament have an evil nature? Well, of course, we know the answer to that is no. But let's see what the atheist says.

He says, the following is taken from Steve Wells' book, Drunk with Blood, God's Killings in the Bible. It lists 158 events, killing events, for which God was either directly or indirectly responsible. A partial list is shown for effect, but one in particular deserves a focused look. 1 Samuel 15 3, and he has it quoted here as, Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them.

Do not spare them. Put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys. And the atheist follows it up with, Jesus did nothing to defend or denounce this scripture, and apparently it was consistent with his concept of God the Father. The case can be made that God killed or authorized the killings of up to 25 million people.

This is the God that Jesus looked up to and of whom he was allegedly an integral part. We will deny that part of that. Jesus is not a part of God. He is God. That is to say, Jesus himself, back to the post, that is to say, Jesus himself was an accessory to these massacres. Therefore, Christianity cannot extract itself from these atrocities.

It must own them and admit that their God is, in fact, a serial, genocidal, infanticidal, filicidal, and pestilential murderer. So let's deal with this. He says the case can be made that God killed or authorized the killing of up to 25 million people. He's really going to hate the real God when he knows that God authorized the killing of every person. there isn't a person who's ever died that didn't die because God ultimately took their life.

Everybody that ever gets cancer and dies that was ordained by God, everybody who is killed in any fashion whatsoever, God planned it from the beginning, had complete control over it, and chose not to prevent it. And in fact, God himself sent Jesus to die. And so when we think about people dying, we have to understand that it's God who gives life. So how do we deal with this objection?

I'm not sure what the objection is, because according to the worldview of the atheist, death is just a simple product of life itself in a sense. It's just a part of the way things are. And so there's nothing wrong with death. So he has no moral foundation by which to call God evil. You can't say God is evil outside of believing in God in the first place. but God is not evil God is good And God cannot violate his own perfect character God is not subject to laws that say that we should not kill.

I'm not allowed to go take life because I don't own it. God owns everything. He owns every cattle, sheep, camel, donkey, and he owns every man, woman, child, or infant. and God gets to choose how long those lives happen to live. So God not sparing men and women, children and infants in the Amalekite tribe is God's judgment on them. And God is perfectly right to judge the Amalekites for their wickedness, just as he would be right to judge us for our wickedness today.

The fact that anybody still has breath is an act of God's mercy So rather than see God's judgment on the wicked as evil because God killed and shed their blood, what we should recognize is that blood deserved to be shed because of sin. And if anybody's blood has not been shed, it's actually that God has been forbearing with them and he has been to some extent merciful to them that they haven't yet died. I will add, and we'll get into this a little later, that by God killing the children and infants of the Amalekites, there is theology that would teach us that those children and infants, at least some of them, went straight to heaven with God.

So people who never otherwise would have heard the gospel, people who would have been raised in a pagan nation, a pagan culture, and would have worshipped pagan gods as they grew up to adults, their lives were snuffed out at a point where which they were then forgiven by God for their sins by the grace of Christ. And we'll get into that later, how that happens. that's God's mercy on those children to not be raised up in that pagan nation so God killed or authorized the killings of everybody and we make no apology for that God has the perfect perfect right to do with his creation what he wills everyone in our creation deserves death because we all have sinned. Romans 5 talks about how sin has been passed down to everybody.

It says that sin indeed was in the world before the law was given because sin is not counted where there is no law. And it says, yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. and so sin has pervaded into all of our lives we're all condemned by it we all deserve to die so the fact that any of us have life at all is a gift from god so jesus of course was not an accessory to these massacres jesus himself is god and jesus is sovereign over his creation can do what he wants. And he says, Christianity must own them.

Yeah, I own them. And I admit that my God is responsible for all of it. Ultimately, he is the first cause. But it says he's a serial, genocidal, infanticidal, filicidal, and pestilential murderer. God is not a murderer. God cannot murder.

Murder would be to, murder is in effect stealing the life of someone else. Every life is owned by God and God cannot murder. Only we can murder. Even an animal can't, I think, technically murder in the moral sense. And so God is not genocidal, phantasital, philicidal, and pestilential. He's a God of grace and mercy.

We are the genocidal maniacs. We are the ones that kill one another and hurt one another. We are the ones that kill babies regularly. We are the ones that do these things. We are the ones that wake up on a daily basis and don't love our neighbor as we ought to. And yet God in his mercy has allowed us to continue to live.

Continuing with question six, or objection six. Christians believe that Jesus died for their sins and received the punishment that they would otherwise deserve. It's a good statement. Continuing, at its root, this is unethical. All right, why? It would be as if in a court of law, a murderer sentenced to death finds another person willing to die in his place, and the murderer is then set free.

Why would we accept God's plan of salvation while categorically not using a similar rationale in our own judicial system? He adds, well, because it is ill-advised and it leads to the next problem. Well, our judicial system is not intended to be a perfect model of God's salvation. If God's salvation followed our judicial system, then all of us would be condemned to death, would be deserving of eternal punishment, and would go to hell and be cast into a lake of fire to suffer eternally. because God is full of grace and mercy, God made a way that Jesus could receive the sin of his believers through imputation and grant his righteousness to others by imputation.

This is an act of grace and mercy, and it is above and beyond what any earthly judicial system is capable of. having said that if somehow or other I was able to pay your fine for a crime you would be exonerated at that point you would be released and your punishment would have been satisfied So let say you committed a crime that required a sentence of $150. If I walked into the courtroom and I paid your $150 fine, it would be unjust of the judge or the court to actually hold you longer or to require more of you because your fine had been paid by someone who was capable of paying it. The same happened with the gospel.

Someone capable of paying the penalty that each and every one of us deserves, death, came and died a substitutionary death that was acceptable to God because of Jesus's divine nature. Jesus was able to die in the place of others because he is God. In the case of a murderer in a human courtroom being set free because somebody else comes in to take the death penalty, that is not a valid analogy because there is no one else who can actually pay the penalty that you deserve in that situation.

But if the penalty you deserve is $150, there are other people who can pay it, and it would be acceptable for them to pay it. The court will accept the money from anyone. If your sentence is that you must spend 30 days in jail, no, nobody else can do that for you. so the friendly atheist denies the validity of the transfer of punishment because he hates God this has nothing to do with it being rational or irrational he hates God and he hates that to this point in time God has given grace to others and he says though also it is ill-advised and it leads to the next problem.

So what does he say the next problem is? The next problem he defines as belief versus action. Christianity credits what you believe far above what you do, he says. This idea has caused much misery and suffering over the course of the past two millennia. He says the notion that what you believe can erase your bad deeds is a very attractive idea to someone who wants to take liberties with the lives and property of other people.

And this is exactly what happened during the scourges of the Inquisition and other atrocities committed by Christians. And then he asked the question, how different would the world be if Christianity instead declared that your ultimate reward is based on your actions, what you do, how you conduct your life, how much you help others, etc., instead of offering this exceptionally generous get-out-of-jail-free card? he says what if it said all of the good you do is balanced against the bad and you would be judged based on that comparison well first of all if Christianity did that Christianity would be lying because at some point we don't proclaim what Christianity proclaims because we think it's effective because we think it gets the results in the world that we expect because we think it'll make the world a better place we proclaim it because it's true. And it's that foundation that begins it all.

But let's evaluate what the friendly atheist says here. He says the idea that what we believe is credited far above what we do has caused much misery and suffering. And I just don't see that. I don't see that whatsoever. and so I'm going to deny his premise. The fact of the matter is that our world is not filled with Christians. Our world is filled with people whose religions literally are religions of works.

Our world is filled with people whose actions are what they think are going to take them to heaven and our world is still filled with the evil and misery and suffering that the friendly atheist points out. Interestingly enough, he has a standard for what misery and suffering is. But let's dig a little deeper here. It says Christianity credits what you believe far above what you do.

This is true to an extent that your faith is credited to you as righteousness, even though your righteousness that you have in your flesh is not righteous, is unrighteous in the eyes of God. But the fact of the matter is, is that we all live out what we believe. So although Christianity credits people with righteousness upon belief in Jesus Christ, your life as a Christian is still going to be acted out from your beliefs.

And so although Christianity credits us far more for what we believe than what we do in that sense, all of our doings are the result of our beliefs so the entire world that is filled with misery and suffering is the result of the beliefs of people so it's the beliefs of people that they can take things of others and steal that causes some of the misery and suffering in this world It's the belief of people that raping or fornication or homosexuality or pedophilia is what is going to make them happy that hurts other people. So the actions that people take are the results of their beliefs. So now the idea that you can behave badly in this world and then receive eternal life by faith is what bothers the friendly atheist so much here in number seven belief versus action And what bothers him is the idea that somebody can be a really wretched person and believe in Jesus Christ for salvation and be forgiven And he says, this is attractive to someone who wants to take liberties with the lives and property of other people.

Well, it is. The fact that it's attractive to people who want to take liberties with the lives and properties of other people has no bearing on its validity or truthfulness. Now, the fact that some people abuse good, truthful Christian doctrine for their own evil, let me repeat that, has no bearing on its validity or its truthfulness. So, yes, you can live a horribly wicked life.

You can become a Christian, be forgiven of all your sins, because of the grace of Jesus Christ and his glorious resurrection from the dead. That is true. And yes, there are people who will hear that, who love the wickedness of their sin, and will decide that they are going to live an ungodly life and then believe that later. And there are people who will say, oh, well, I believe that, so now I'm going to heaven, and then they're going to keep on living the way that they want to live.

The fact that there are people like that doesn't change that Christianity is true. It just means there's wicked people. Anyone who presumes that they can somehow believe in Christ in the future is mistaken. And anyone who presumes that they have believed in Christ and yet continue to take liberties with their sin is a deceiver of themselves. And they make God a liar.

And so what we have is we have a situation where we need to understand regeneration and we need to understand how faith is granted. A person doesn't just decide one day to go to heaven because they just decide to believe something apart from their actions. A person is granted faith by God. and this faith is granted along with something called regeneration which changes a person's affections so that they will no longer have the desire to take liberties with the lives of property and other people or with the lives and property of other people a person who has been regenerated and believes in Jesus Christ does not want to steal other people's property and wouldn't want to take their life or hurt them in any way.

And so the whole point here is, is that the people that think that way aren't even really Christians. And so he's judging a Christian religious system based on how people that aren't Christians abuse it. He asked, how different would the world be if Christianity declared that your ultimate reward is based on your actions? well I don't think it'd be any different it would just be a little bit worse honestly because I don't think Christianity has had that big of an impact on the world to cause people to actually not live that way already most people actually think their actions are what will determine their eternity and I don't think that the world would be different in fact I think it would be a little worse if Christianity gave up saying what it said, because Christianity's message, the gospel, is actually the power to save people, which is actually the only thing that has the ability to give people new hearts and desires to actually live out some of these good things.

So the best thing that we can do is actually proclaim true Christianity, proclaim conversion, the need to be born again, and then trust that when we tell people that they should live a better life because God has forgiven them, that they actually, out of gratitude for that, will do that, and the world would be a better place. The world is filled with Muslims, Catholics, Hindus, all sorts of people who are told, live a great life, and you will inherit something for all eternity as the result, and these people continue to do evil. So I hope you've enjoyed this episode as we refute the problems of Christianity brought up by Michael Runyon at The Friendly Atheist.

This has been a blessing to my family. Let me give you an idea here. I've been going through these with my family just as part of our devotions. It's been a good challenge to my teens and it's been something that we've, I think, learned some things from trying to study and try to give credit where credit's due. When this guy says something accurate, try to recognize, okay, well, that sentence actually is accurate.

He, in this case, is portraying Christianity correctly, and he is propping up Christianity the way it ought to be, and then he just doesn't like it. In other cases, he's portraying Christianity in a way that Christianity wouldn't even portray itself. and so it's good to be able to make that distinction so that when you talk to people you can help them these are the kind this is the kind of website that your average atheistic type agnostic kid will find when he was challenged by someone in a Christian way and he'll read through this and be kind of satisfied in his unbelief so these are legitimate questions that people you evangelize and people you encounter may deal with and in a lot of ways people don't think these things through very deeply. They read an article like this and it's like, yeah, that makes sense.

And on the surface, a lot of these things might make sense. And so being able to dig deeper into this with people that you love and care about, or even someone you don't know very well who you're evangelizing, will help to give them the answers that the Bible does provide and hopefully lead them to faith. Until next time.