If God commands a Christian to do something, should he obey? How does a Christian determine that it is God commanding him to do something? What if God’s command runs contrary to the Christian’s personal moral code? Should the Christian obey, anyway?
According to the Bible, God is holy, a divine being that cannot sin or do anything contrary to his character. However, the Bible also reveals that God can and does do immoral things. Knowing this to be true, shouldn’t Christians worry when God commands them to do something immoral? God commanded Abraham to murder his son, Isaac, on an altar — an immoral act if there ever was one. What if God commanded you, dear Christian, to put your child on a BBQ grill and offer him up as a sacrifice to God? Would you do it? Some Christian apologists suggest that God never intended Abraham to kill Isaac, but when asked to provide evidence for their claim, none is forthcoming.
I listen to several atheist call-in shows that ask Christians to call in and provide evidence for the existence of God, or to defend God’s approval of slavery, or God’s command to commit genocide. The Bible is littered with immoral commands from God, yet countless Christians defend God by saying, If God commanded it, it’s moral. Who are we to call the righteous, holy God of the universe immoral? God’s ways are not our ways, and God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, Christians say when defending the name of God. This, of course, reveals the fact that religious faith can and does make an adherent less moral. I don’t know of an atheist who defends genocide, child sacrifice, or slavery. As a humanist, I believe we should want and desire the well-being of others; that we should support laws and policies that promote human flourishing. Does genocide, child sacrifice, and slavery promote the well-being of others and human flourishing? Of course not. Yet, when God commands such things, all of a sudden, Christians lose all sense of what’s best for themselves and others.
The good news is that most Christians do not obey God. As cafeteria Christians, they pick and choose which commands to obey. That’s why they oppose genocide, child sacrifice, and slavery. Sadly, some Christians think that they should obey God regardless of the morality of said command. In their minds, whatever God commands is moral. How could it be otherwise, these Christians say?
Often, obeying God without question leads to abominable behavior; behavior that can and does land people in jail. Since there is no empirical way to determine whether God is commanding something, Christians should be aware of the fact that God will not be testifying at their trial when they are arrested for committing crimes. That voice in their heads telling them to “obey” is their own, not God’s. How could they possibly know otherwise?
Explicitly following every command in the Bible will land you in jail, as will your thinking the voice in your head is God Almighty. Most Christians have heard the ditty: God said it, I believe it, and that settles it for me. What a dangerous statement, one that leads to all sorts of immoral and criminal behavior.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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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What some Christians do not comprehend is how to think, act, and feel, unless God tells them how. They are utterly dependent on God for a sense of morality, to the degree that they’ll contort themselves with pretzel logic to justify God’s actions. After all, if they cannot justify the violence and murder and genocide of the Bible, they are left confronting the frightening possibility that their moral compass has been painfully flawed the entire time. Without their faith, they cannot compute anything.
It’s interesting that a lot of Christians presupposes that God is omnibenevolent, perfectly moral, is incapable of doing wrong/immoral acts. But a reading of the Bible proves that is incorrect. There are countless times where God is jealous, demands people do what we would consider immoral acts, commits genocide. I cannot understand why Christians could possibly READ the Bible and come away with the notion that their god is all-good, all-loving, and completely moral. He’s actually kind of a d1ck.
I have run across some Christians who seem to like the fact that their god is kind of a d1ck – they admire the wrath, the displays of power, and the “get sh1t done” attitude. These are the same Christians who think all government programs should be tied to work requirements, have a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality, who are xenophobic, and who show little compassion for people with real-world problems.
I’m not a deity, but I hope I would be a more moral and just deity than the one depicted in the Bible.
Bruce, I love that term “Cafeteria Christians”, I gotta remember that one!. A couple weeks ago, these two women at work tried to interest me in their christian healing services. Personally, i’d rather have ingots shoved into my eye sockets than go to some wacky healing church! But…Hey, I was trying to be nice so I patiently listened to their amazing spiritual stories. Neither of them knew, of course, that I grew up as a baptist preacher’s kid that has pretty much seen and heard it all before. Anyways, after a while I got bored and said “hey, which one of the synoptic gospels is your favorite?” They looked at me like, ” Oh, Oh, this freaking guy might actually know something”, and then said the same thing that I have heard a million times from other bumptious Jesus Krispies over the years. “Well, we don’t actually read the bible”. The hell you say. You’d think that since they’re so excited about their beliefs and stuff that they would want to learn what’s really in that book that Trump holds upside down. But, I guess not. Cafeteria Christians, that’s a good one. Maybe more like Restroom Christians!
The same folks who want to ban abortion for any reason and have the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality are the very same people whose God is a hit-and-run father.