Well, I’m going to say something controversial that will absolutely delight atheists, ’cause they like to take… not all atheists… some internet atheists… like to take things out of context and use it to make me look bad. I don’t care… You’ve already hated me anyways. It’s not like anything changed. If anything, I’m just glad people, like, hate-follow me. Like, at least that’s there. You know, maybe they’re hearing the Gospel. Maybe, God willing, there’s, like, some truth of Christ that will eke through there…
So I’m gonna say something here: If God really told them to do it, then they were right.
If God didn’t tell them to do it, then they were wrong. And they were just a murderer. And a delusional murderer who’s blaming God, which just makes it worse.
God does have a right to tell… now, let me now let me give an analogy that might help people swallow this better, because I feel the rejection that people would have to this naturally.
Let’s say that… America gets involved in a… just war… Or… let’s just say that you have a police officer who is getting involved in… some kind of, like, school… horrible school shooting-type thing, right? And he gets permission from the government, and from the local police department and all that, that when he sees a person on campus with a gun, he just opens fire.
And so he shoots them. And then someone’s, like, “How dare you shoot that person?” And he goes, well, like, “The government told me to.” There’s an element of this that… really is the facts, like the government actually just gave him a badge and a gun and approved him and gave him policies that he’s supposed to operate by. And so, in a sense, the government just told him to, and that is an actual defense. Like, if that wasn’t in place, then you’d have to have other legal justifications other than… the government told him.
Maybe in court, they would say “No, no, this was urgent enough” or “We would we would break the normal rules,” that kind of thing. Military is the same way.
Now, the government’s flawed. So the government might tell you to do something, and they’re wrong. Like in military, there could be a war that’s unjust, and saying the government told you to isn’t a good enough excuse, because there is a God in Heaven who disapproves.
But if God Himself actually tells you, and He’s like, “Hey, I am the ultimate governor of all of life, and I have judicially said that person is going to die, and I’m telling you to do it,” yeah.
Now, historically, as a Christian, do I expect this to happen? Not really.
Biblically, does it happen? Do we have, like, is the Apostle Paul, like, every few years, he’s just, like, turns into Jason Bourne and he’s, like, “God told me to kill Simon the Sorcerer”? No. No, the worst thing the apostles have done was to tell someone you’re not part of our church anymore if you’re going to keep living in sin like that. You know, God takes care of them.
Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world, otherwise my servants would fight, so we don’t fight to establish the Christianity… to establish the kingdom.” Like, this is “God told me not to.” In other words, I don’t, because God told me not to.
So, as a Christian, in principle, if God tells you to kill someone, yes, you should. It’s God.
But in practical reality, I really don’t expect this to happen. Not that there could never be an exception, but if anybody comes up to me, and says, “God told me to kill so-and-so,” my default is to think they’re probably wrong, because there’s a lot more weirdos out there than there are people that God is telling to do something like that. There’s my answer.
— Evangelical Apologist Mike Winger via Hemant Mehta, October 7, 2022
You can listen to Winger’s comments in the video below, starting at the 1:28:45 mark.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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This guy should be locked up for the good of society. No doubt he’d plead First Amendment but, conversely, he’s inciting people to kill. He says that the voice inside your head telling you to kill someone may actually have a point. He’s justifying 9/11.
Mike is quite the cultist.
This feels depressingly familiar (SoM springs to mind). I like how he says God can tell someone to kill, and then says to be wary of people hearing God telling them to kill! I wonder what this guy makes of the barbaric commands of the Old Testament?
What a way to say, “I don’t think God tells people to kill others anymore, but my religion tells me I have to justify the stories in the sacred book even though they’re pretty reprehensible, so I am going to say that if God tells you to kill someone he has a reason and you have to obey him, but I don’t think he is going to say that….atheists are bad!”
Winger is really winging it this time ! He has a geranium in his cranium.
Yulya, you definitely got that right!
Yulya–You delivered the right rhyme at the right time!
“if God Himself actually tells you”. Uh huh, and how would God himself tell him to kill somebody? An audible voice? If he hears an audible voice telling him to kill somebody, he needs to see a psychiatrist, and certainly should not do it. Or if all he hears is just the feeling in his mind that God wants him to kill somebody, uh, no, that would certainly not be a reliable reason to kill somebody.
I am unaware of any place or time in which “God,” or whatever is believed to be the supernatural or Almighty, is conflated with the government or some other secular authority. (That is why, to my mind, every church, synagogue, mosque or other religious institution is corrupt.)
Even before I became an atheist, even while I was an Evangelical Christian, I was skeptical of people who talked about “God’s will” or “what God wants.” Too often, I realized, that “God” was simply echoing what a secular authority–say, a military commander or government leader–or voices in their own head were telling them.