Its election time. For many Christians a candidate’s position on abortion is the most important issue. Up and down the roads near where I live are signs that say, Vote Pro-Life. Many Christians are convinced the Bible supports their pro-life view and that God himself is pro-life.

Most Christians believe that God is the giver of life and only God can take a life. Interestingly, they seem to forget these beliefs when it comes to executing criminals and killing innocent men, women, and children in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was a Christian president and a Christian Congress that authorized the World War II bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children died from the atomic bombs that Christian America dropped on their homeland. Evidently the God who takes life gives Christian politicians the freedom to kill whoever they want. (after all God does “speak” to them. George Bush said, God would tell me, “George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan”, And I did. And then God would tell me “George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq”,  And I did.)

Forgetting, for a moment, these glaring contradictions in thought, let me accept as fact the notion that God is the giver of life and only God can take a life.

In the book of Genesis we find the story of Noah and the flood. If you were raised in church and spent any time in Sunday school you heard the story of Noah and the flood.

Humans had become so wicked (human women were having sex with fallen angels and having children)  that God decided to kill everyone but Noah and his family. Genesis 6:1-7 states:

And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

God had Noah build an ark to provide a safe haven from death for Noah, his family, and the animals that God planned to spare from the flood. Genesis 7:23 states:

And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.

I consider the story of Noah and the flood to be a clear example of the fact that God is not as pro-life as many Christians say he is. It is likely that millions of people died in the flood. Men, women, and children… all of them drowned by God himself.

Many Christians make a distinction between the child a the womb and a child already born. (the child in the womb is often described as innocent life)  Many Christians believe that life begins at conception. They believe that the moment the egg and the sperm unite a new person is created and that person is just as much a human life as someone who is 50 years old. They believe that abortion is murder and that any doctor who performs an abortion is a murderer.

What then does that make God? God killed millions of people in the flood, and I think it is safe to assume that there were pregnant women among the people who died. These women were carrying a human life in their womb and, based on the pro-life view that killing an unborn child in the womb is murder, this makes God a murderer.

I see no way for pro-life Christians to successfully discredit my conclusion. I suppose a Christian might say, God’s ways are not our ways and God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. Some might even go Apostle Paul on me and say that the created person has no right to question the Creator. This is the Christian’s way of telling me to shut up.

Shouldn’t we expect God to have the same moral and ethical beliefs as Christians do?  If the Bible is the inerrant, inspired word of God and the standard for Christian morality and ethics, shouldn’t we expect the actions of God to be consistent with the Bible he divinely gave to Christians? If, as Christians say, the Bible is the roadmap for life or God’s divine handbook for living, shouldn’t God be expected to act in accordance with the very handbook he gave humans to live by?

It seems to me that God is one of those do as I say not as I do parents. He is the kind of person who expects people to live and act a certain way but does not live and act that same way himself. There is one word we use to describe people like this… hypocrite.

I am well aware of the mental gymnastics that Christians must perform to get around what I’m suggesting here. However, the bottom line is this… If God were a human being we would consider him the worst mass murderer in the history of the universe. If one sets aside their Christian theology and their presuppositions about God and reads the Bible like they would read any other book, it is hard not to conclude that God is a bloodthirsty, murdering monster.

Some Christians get around this by suggesting that the Old Testament God, the God of the Old Covenant, is now the God of love. While I have great sympathies for their viewpoint, I do not think that such a view can be sustained intellectually or theologically. Most Christians believe that Jesus is the son of God, that Jesus is God himself. The Bible says of Jesus that he is the same yesterday, today, and forever. (Hebrews 13:8)

Malachi 3:6 states:

For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.

It is clear that God does not change. How could he? Since God is perfect in all his ways, how could God change? Changing would suggest that God had done something less than perfect. God always gets it right on the first try, right? (of course a careful reading of the Bible reveals God DOES change his mind but I will leave that to another day)

Christians are stuck with the God of the Old Testament. Unless they’re willing to get out their Thomas Jefferson scissors and cut the Old Testament from the Bible, they must live with the fact that their God, the God of love, is also a bloodthirsty, murdering monster who killed innocent men, women, children, and unborn babies.

Some Christians might argue that since all human beings have a sin nature and are naturally the enemies of God, God has every right, as their Creator, to do whatever he wants. Since God doesn’t owe anyone salvation, he is free to act anyway he wants to. Since God knows beforehand who will be saved and who won’t, and knows beforehand everything we will ever say and do, his actions are simply in line with what he already knows. Since God knows you won’t be saved and  that you will end up in hell when you die, there is nothing wrong with God helping to send you there.

I suppose such a view can be sustained theologically but, as a human being, as a man who has great capacity to love and care for others, I have a hard time believing a God that drowns children and unborn babies is good. In the human realm we would call such a person a serial killer or a psychopath.

You who are former Christians know well the arguments I have raised here. I see no way of getting around the conclusions I’ve come to here. But, the comment section is open, and maybe some Christian will try to show me that there really is a way to get around the fact that God, their God, the Triune God,  is a bloodthirsty, murdering monster.