GOD COULDN’T ABOLISH BRUTAL LAWS HE GAVE IN THE BIBLE

God in the Bible hated sin so much that he demanded that grave sinners be put to death by his people. It is obvious that God commanded these cruelties out of hatred for sinners.

The Law of Moses covers the creation and the flood and God rescuing the people of Israel from Egypt.  He gave savage laws to govern them.

Christians invent excuses for not following the brutal laws.  Every single one of them is speculation and thus no good.  Plus the Bible refutes them. 

Could God repeal any of his cruel regulations in the Law?

God clearly gave Israel the Law but was not its head of state but its legislator.  That is why we must dismiss the excuse that the laws cannot apply now for God runs no country directly.

Let us look at ways people try to get out of feeling the laws are binding on them.

Let’s answer this complicated question in a dialogue.

CRIMINALS HAD TO BE PUNISHED AND SINCE ISRAEL WAS WANDERING IN THE DESERT IT WAS FORCED TO EXECUTE THEM BY STONING THEM TO DEATH AND DO ALL THE OTHER TERRIBLE THINGS JUST FOR HANDINESS AND BECAUSE THERE WAS NOTHING BETTER TO DO WITH THEM FOR THE JOURNEY CAME FIRST. ONCE THEY SETTLED IN THEIR LAND THEY DIDN’T NEED TO KEEP THE LAWS ANY MORE. AND NEITHER DO WE.

REPLY: This is false for the same laws were promulgated as valid by God long after Israel settled into Canaan (Deuteronomy 4:5; Joshua 23). Numbers 35 permits the murder of people who have committed manslaughter when they leave their refuge cities. And besides there was no need for such punishments in or out of the wilderness. The Law claims to be fair. And how could they be out of date when crimes can fit the conditions the Law says must be fulfilled before the death penalty becomes lawful today?  The argument infers that if we are wanderers then we are to keep the laws. Thus it supports the laws in spite of itself!

Jesus said you must follow the laws teaching that you are to love your neighbour.  The text in its Old Testament context refers to neighbour as being  your fellow countryman.  So if you were Israelite you have to love your Israelite neighbour.  But do not forget that the God of the law speaks of excommunication or cutting off.  Some Israelites were made ex-neighbours and those sentenced to horrid deaths were also ex-neighbours by default.  So Jesus was not civilising the law but affirming it.

THE EXECUTED DESERVED TO DIE. ALL WHO SUFFERED BY THE LAW DESERVED TO. THEY WERE PUT TO DEATH BECAUSE IT WAS JUST. NOW GOD PREFERS TO KILL THEM HIMSELF FOR HE KNOWS WHEN TO BRING ABOUT WHAT IS BEST. THE LAWS ARE STILL IN POWER BUT IT IS NOT OUR JOB TO KEEP THEM ANYMORE. WE ARE NOT BREAKING THEM BY NOT OBSERVING THEM.

REPLY: God could do this.  God taking care of the law himself is not doing away with the law but sustaining it.

It seems that God does not pay back wrong for wrong but forgives so he has not reserved the privilege of being cruel to himself.  He will not give it to us either. Some think the reason is that he waits for the bad person to change and to ask for pardon and a new start.  But when he enacted the capital laws which would led to many dying unrepentant and going to Hell he made it right to send people there. If he retains the privilege to slaughter to himself now to prevent souls being damned then he must have commanded wrong before. If he was right the first time he cannot change.

Scripture says we merely have to leave vengeance to God in non-legal affairs. See Romans 12, 13. It never says that God will administer all the retribution himself from now on. He is evil if it does for he should always have done it himself for leaving it to us has meant that many innocent people have suffered and died through being wrongly executed. The Bible says that God wants the law of the land respected for it punishes people (Romans 13) obviously showing that God is not going to do it all.  Remember this law that the Bible wants respected for punishment was terribly harsh and cruel and the Jewish Law was not the only dreadful law out there.

In Acts 25:11, Paul defended the Roman laws right to put him to death if he committed a capital crime. He said he would not refuse to die then meaning he would approve of his death. Because he was talking to people who would execute him if he wanted it or not he was not giving them a possibly grudging permission to slaughter him but telling them they would be right. He does not specify what crimes he would approve being legally murdered for so he certainly agrees that murder alone is not a capital crime there are more capital crimes than that and the law of the land has the right to decide what else to apply capital punishment for. This was after the Law of Moses was supposedly abrogated according to the lies of liberal Christians.

IT WAS WORSE TO SIN THEN THAN IT IS NOW. GOD HAS MADE SIN LESS SERIOUS SO IT NO LONGER MERITS BEING PUT TO DEATH OR SEVERE LEGAL PUNISHMENT.

REPLY: God cannot change good and evil if they really exist. Sin is supposed to be worse not better since Jesus came with his salvation and his enlightening gospel for we know better now. Read Hebrews 10 which says that sin is now worse than it was before Jesus was heard of.

THE CRIMINALS HAD TO BE KILLED BECAUSE THEY ASKED FOR IT. RULES ABOUT WHAT WE WILL BRING ON OURSELVES BY BREAKING THEM CAN BE CHANGED.

REPLY: Asking for trouble does not mean that it is right to receive it. It is unjust to kill anybody that asks to be killed. It is unjust to cut the hand off a woman who grabs a man by the private parts and God commanded that presumably because he believed she asked for it. If the objection is valid then it follows that we can restore the Jewish Law if we want to for the Law is always just for if people are put to death for missing Mass on Sunday they have nobody to blame but themselves.

THE RULES WERE CIVIL LAWS AND WE CAN CHANGE CIVIL LAWS AND SO CAN GOD.

REPLY: It is a mistake to assume that the execution laws were merely civil or political laws. The Bible never says that they are. A civil law can also be a moral law.  We have no right to assume then God could abrogate them. Even if they were civil laws God made them so they are the wisest laws ever and we should move our civil law as close to them as possible. If we cannot stone gays to death we can put them jail forever. When God tried to keep Israel away from bad influences and they still went into apostasy many times as the Old Testament says then how much worse will we be living in this modern age? We need the harsh Law of Moses more than they did. Sometimes a moral law can become a civil law like when you legally prohibit adultery. There is no evidence that the execution laws are really just civil laws. God wouldn’t have wanted his people to say that they were. If they said that or thought that they could have had an excuse for changing them or ignoring them or completely rejecting them which was the one thing he said time and time again in the Law that must never happen.

THE BLOOD LETTING WAS DONE TO DETER OTHERS FROM FOLLOWING THE EXAMPLE OF THE CRIMINALS. GOD CAN CHANGE HIS METHODS OF DETERRENCE.

REPLY: God could never abolish his draconian laws when they are for this because it would mean being against deterrence now. Some might see the mere threat of vengeance from God as deterrence enough. If it were then he wouldn’t have made those laws. And how could it be enough when there is forgiveness?

Deterrence never works to a large extent. It often makes the criminals craftier and more secretive. It boosts the number of people who are happy to cover up for crime and protect the criminals. Though deterrence is a part of the need for making people pay for crime it can only have a small part. To give it too much importance is dangerous. The Torah rejects the idea that it was just about deterrence. It says that in the case of homosexuals caught together that both have to be killed, to use one example out of many, to purge the evil from the midst of the people and that their blood is upon them meaning they deserve to die. Christians have tried to make out that capital punishment is the state practicing self-defence (page 351, Moral Philosophy) which is total lunacy. If the bloodletting under Moses was motivated by deterrence and the Law says it was a main motive then we need it more today than ever.

Jesus forbade anything that might encourage sin so if the Torah’s capital laws were about deterrence then he hinted that they bear full force even in our times.

To say the Law of God through Moses authorises deterrence is to imply that it could be right to crucify a man for shoplifting.

Incidentally, even the anti-war Christadelphians admit that nothing in the Bible expressly prohibits military service (page 6, The Christian and War, J B Norris).  This religion does not fight but at least it admits there is no block in the Bible to killing.

GOD HATED THE PERSON PUNISHED UNDER THE LAW OF MOSES BUT HE HAS STOPPED HATING THEM NOW SO WE MUST NOT KEEP THE PUNITIVE PRECEPTS.

REPLY: God did hate them for he had no decent reason for having them slaughtered. But the Bible forbids this deduction for it says that the Law is love. Presumably, it means that God hates not because hate is good by itself but because hate is good under the circumstances and it would be unloving of him to refrain from it. The Law was love according to the warped and superstitious ideas about love rife at that time which saw cruel murders as love for God’s morality was above reason. The latter is the proper understanding.

If you suffer from a compulsion to hate, it follows that if you have a choice you must hate the bad person not the good one.  The Church lies that it loves people unconditionally.  In principle it cannot.  The love principle is not and cannot be binding in all circumstances as we have seen from our hypothetical example.

It is either perfect or imperfect to hate. So if God is perfect he cannot start loving who he used to hate. Both the Old and New Testaments state that God does not change (Numbers 23:19; Hebrews 13:8). If he hates an adulterer for adultery once he hates him forever and all who commit the same sin forever too. His laws might change in different circumstances for example he will not command animal sacrifice if the priesthood dies out but the values underlining the rules cannot change. For example, in this case the priesthood and animal sacrifice are still good and not to have them is bad. God hated the Amalekites for harassing Israel as they left Egypt for he decreed an unnecessarily harsh revenge against them. If God is good then hate is good and it cannot be made not good. By loving and accepting the God Jesus knew was capable of hate Jesus was declaring that hate can be a virtue.

GOD MADE THE EXECUTION LAWS FOR A MYSTERIOUS PURPOSE THAT WE CANNOT UNDERSTAND. THEY ARE ABROGATED NOW FOR THE CIRCUMSTANCES HAVE CHANGED.

REPLY: This contradicts the claim of the Torah to be wise in the eyes of the world (Deuteronomy 4:6,8). This tells us that the Torah is the reflection and expression of God’s own holiness and wisdom so it has to be relevant to other nations too for it is morality it proclaims (page 12, Not Under Law).

If this reason were right then nobody would know if it were right or not for it is a puzzle to finite minds that cannot be solved in this world.

If the Almighty is perfect like the Bible teaches then if he tells us to cast rocks at idolaters and the rest to snuff out their lives that is the perfect thing to do and he can’t change his mind without becoming imperfect. The Lord did not and could not change his Law.

Some say that God had to be rigidly strict so that Israel would still be around and not destroyed by him before he would have a chance to send his Son, Jesus. That is really saying that since the Jews didn’t know about the Jesus element, that it is right to kill people at the behest of prophets who say there some unknown good in it. Isn’t that what all fanatics say and doesn’t that encourage murder carried out by cults and fanatics today?

If God is sensible he will want us to forget this purpose stuff and hold that stoning of mediums and blasphemers to death is right in itself and not because of any good consequences. He said the stoning to death was to purge the evil out of the midst of the people – he wanted the evil people dead and was not just interested in stopping them for that could be done without killing them. The mysterious purpose suggestion is heretical.

GOD MADE THE LAWS TO BE KEPT WHEN IT MADE SENSE TO LIVE THEM, THE OBLIGATION TO OBEY DEPENDED ON THE CIRCUMSTANCES. HE WAS NOT SAYING THAT THE HEBREWS HAD TO KILL ALL ADULTERERS OR WHATEVER. IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE FOR US TO OBSERVE THEM NOW FOR TIMES HAVE CHANGED.

REPLY: The fact that the conditions are not laid down disproves this. And God forbade hurting people over what might never happen and since he says it is bad for capital criminals to live he is telling us we can’t let them live over what might never happen.

Some people have got it into their heads that God could never have made such laws in the first place. Dreadful! Since God creates life and takes it, it follows that God can authorise a person to take the life of another. God lets people get hurt so it follows he can permit us to do harm for him. The Christian claptrap about people having no right to execute criminals or to mutilate them is according to their scriptures just that – claptrap. They can’t even give you a good reason why their God who kills would not want us to kill.

By the way, if marring the image of God in yourself is so intolerable that you should be put to death then a main reason for executing you is to make sure you never do it again. Therefore you have to be kept under ball and chain after being found guilty and preferably killed as soon as possible. The Old Testament is not against killing the person as soon as the trial is over so it is for it. How do we know this? What a law as tough and strict as the law of Moses allows it commands. The tougher the law of the land the more one can take it that what it doesn’t expressly forbid it allows. To delay the executions would be too kind for such a brutal body of Law.

PAUL SPOKE ABOUT THE DUTY TO OBEY GOVERNMENTS (ROMANS 13) AND NEVER MENTIONED THE OLD TESTAMENT LAW. IN 1 CORINTHIANS 5:12 HE SAYS HE HAS NO BUSINESS JUDGING THOSE OUTSIDE THE CHURCH SO POLITICS WAS NOT PART OF HIS PROGRAM. SINCE THIS WAS THE CASE IT FOLLOWS THAT HE CONSIDERED THE JEWISH LAW TO BE ABROGATED.

REPLY: If  you take the Law of Moses as a legal system as it was when Israel was free, then Paul is affirming that if it is the civil law then obey it.  Jesus like Paul said that you give to Caesar what belongs to him.  This was outrageous as Caesar had no right to anything when his empire was occupying Israel and oppressing it.

The 1 Corinthians 5 text makes the common sense observation that if people enroll in a church they consent to be judged and disciplined by that Church.  Outsiders then are not to be held to the same standards and treated like believers in Christ.  That does not mean they should not learn and have similar standards.  It only means the Church can only deal with its own.

The New Testament doctrine that if a person won’t stop sinning seriously you must hand them over to Satan to kill their bodies in the hope that their soul might be purified before God (1 Corinthians 5:5) is usually read as simply putting a curse on them for their own good. But it can be read as a command to ritualistically murder them. Whatever it means, the teaching that the body matters not a bit as long as the soul harbours God is telling you that “love your neighbour” means love your neighbouring soul.  That is not a good teaching.  It is religious fanaticism.

CONCLUSION

It is hypocrisy to call the Bible the word of God and then to invent justifications for ignoring its teaching.  The Bible even if it did no longer command those things is saying, "Be the kind of person who would obey them if they were."  The Bible God is a God of violence.  He commands murderous hate.  The teaching of love of neighbour is not a core doctrine - the core doctrine of the Old Testament is the duty of obedient and complete and exclusionary love of God.  Love of neighbour is mentioned in passing somewhere but the Bible and Christianity are not the only entities that talk about neighbourly love but heap so much stuff around it that it means little.  Whatever you think about the laws, you are still asking the Bible believer to read the Bible and wonder if they should obey the terrible laws.  That is the sick intolerable reality.

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