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Responding to a Critic of the Post, Should Christians ALWAYS Obey God?

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love and obey

Recently, Dr. David Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, responded to my post Should Christians ALWAYS Obey God? I suspected one of my Fundamentalist critics would respond, and Thiessen was the first one to respond. What follows is my response. All spelling, grammar, and punctuation in the original. Thiessen’s response is in bold font.

There are many factors that play into our not taking a break. Right now, we have had a rainstorm and are still waiting for a project to be sent our way. So we need something to do. The question in the title is not ours. It comes from BG’s website, and it reflects the attitude of MM and his question: would we kill him if God commanded us to?

Thiessen, as he is wont to do, drags my friend Ben Berwick into the debate. While Ben and I agree on this issue, I will leave it to him to defend himself. Is it fair to ask questions about whether an Evangelical Christian would kill someone if God commanded him to? Absolutely. It is, after all, in the Bible. God repeatedly commanded his chosen people, the Israelites, to commit violence and murder against individuals and people groups. If Thiessen has a problem with our observations and conclusions, his real problem is with God, not BG and MM (as he likes to call Ben and me).

Both are ridiculous questions because the answer to the title question is yes, and the answer to the annoying second question is that God does not give that command anymore.

Wait a minute, I thought the Bible says that Jesus (who is God) is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is a deity that doesn’t change his mind, though other passages of Scripture say he does. On what basis do we conclude that God doesn’t expect his followers to obey everything he commands them to do? Is Thiessen saying God changed his mind; that he figured out bloodshed, violence, and murder are not effective ways to get your point across — especially when innocent people get caught up in the carnage — including women, children, babies, and fetuses?

I asked in my post:

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?

The answer to the first question is, yes, he should, as the Bible teaches us that to obey is better than sacrifice. The second question is a bit more difficult to answer, as confirming God’s command takes several steps.

Thiessen’s position is that Christians should, without exception, obey God’s commands. Never mind the fact that he doesn’t practice this himself, He’s more of a “do as I say, not as I do follower of Jesus.

The first step is to confirm that the command is in line with God’s word

Thiessen believes the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God. He believes every word of the Bible is straight from the mouth of God. Thus, in his mind, if God commands it, obey!

The second step would be to confirm that God is sending that command. The Bible tells us to test the spirits, and we should test that command to make sure God is giving it.

How could someone possibly know it is God commanding him to do something? How does a Christian determine whether it is God, Satan, or self telling him to do something? As far as I am aware, there’s no empirical test that can be used to confirm it is God giving a believer a command. As far as I know, all that Evangelicals have to go on are their feelings. How do Evangelicals know God is speaking to them? They allegedly feel it in their heart of hearts.

Third, the nature of the command must be analyzed to make sure the Christian is not being commanded to violate God’s other commands, laws, and instructions. Murder and rape etc., are certainly not commands coming from God.

And here is the crux of the issue. The Bible does indeed make moral claims. However, the Bible also records not only God, but his followers, ignoring and violating these moral claims. What’s up with that? Surely Thiessen is aware that God commanded the Israelites to murder and rape those he determined were his enemies. If Thiessen wants to debate me on this issue, I’m game.

Fourth, one must be careful not to confuse the commands given in the OT as commands to be followed today. For example, God commanded certain activities to be done as punishment for the other people’s sins. Those commands are very people and era specific and are not in force today.

Does Thiessen really believe that every act of violence God commanded Israel to do is moral? What did the innocents murdered and raped by the Israelites — as commanded by God — do that deserved such punishment?

Thiessen wants us to believe that God went to anger management classes, and now he behaves differently. However, the book of Revelation reveals a God who is still very much a vicious monster. Richard Dawkins was right when he said:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

As far as we know, God does not command anyone to kill others as punishment for their sins in the modern age. Those types of commands come from evil, and we know they come from evil because they violate God’s laws, instructions, and so on.

If these commands “come from evil,” logically God and the Israelites committed evil acts. I conclude, then, that the God portrayed in the Bible is evil.

Thiessen has no evidence for this claim. We humans cannot know God’s mind, the Bible says, yet Thiessen thinks he can discern and know the mind of God.

Then, we have NT instructions to guide us in how we obey God. Galatians 5 tells us:

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

Thiessen might want to meditate on these verses and change his ways. My interactions with Thiessen suggest that he doesn’t think these verses apply to him.

We are also told in Romans to obey the laws of the land and murder, rape, pedophilia, etc., are against the law of the land and a Christian cannot disobey those laws. As you see by the quoted verse above, we are instructed to live according to the Spirit, which does not have any evil or evil doing in it.

Evil is evil, right? So if certain behaviors today are evil, those same actions were evil in the Old Testament too. Thiessen cannot have it both ways.

As for the question, if God commands something against a Christian’s personal moral code, would that person obey God? First, a Christian should not have a moral code that contradicts God’s or his instructions. etc.

But, every Christian does. No two Christians have the same moral code, and that incudes Evangelicals who claim that the Bible is their rulebook.

Second, it is better to obey than sacrifice, so the Christian must always obey God, as long as it is God giving the instructions. Disobedience is sin and wrong. Third, we do not go by the unbelieving world’s standards for commands or obedience . . .

Again, how can an Evangelical Christian infallibly know that it is God commanding them to do something? They can’t.

….

I wrote:

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.

This is another ridiculous thing to say, as the unbeliever takes them out of context and misapplies them to whatever troubling thought they have on their minds. The unbeliever writing those words has no concept of what human flourishing means as he wants sin and corruption to abound at the expense of those doing what is right and moral.

Contrary to Thiessen’s assertion, I know exactly what human flourishing means and what we can do to make our world a better place to live. Again, I am more than happy to debate him on this issue.

I find it funny coming from a man with a sordid past that he says “sin and corruption to abound at the expense of those doing what is right and moral.”

I wrote:

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.

That is not good news but bad news. Christians are not free to pick and choose what they will obey. As Jesus said, ‘Why do you call me Lord yet do not do the things I say’. People need to look at what Jesus says honestly and implement  his instructions correctly.

All Christians, including Thiessen, pick and choose the commands they want to obey. If someone obeyed every command, teaching, and precept in the Bible, you know what would happen? He would be arrested and thrown in prison.

At no time does Jesus teach to own slaves, commit genocide or do child sacrifice. Those activities are practiced by the unbelieving world as the sinful world aborts innocent children, keeps sex slaves, and kills people just because they do not like them.

Thiessen forgets the fact that Jesus is God. I have challenged him on this point before. I have concluded that he is heterodox on the nature of Jesus and the Trinity.

Everything that God commanded in the Old Testament, was also commanded by Jesus, the second person of the Trinity. Thus, Jesus commanded the Israelites to murder, rape, and commit genocide. To say otherwise is to deny the divinity and nature of Jesus.

We can point you to Hamas, Boko Haram, and other examples that show it is not the Christians that is doing this. Abortion is the biggest genocide taking place,e yet the unbelieving world practices it without guilt or shame.

The Christians are the ones trying to stop these things. But the unbelieving writer of those quoted words does not care if he writes the truth or not. He just wants to justify his departure from God. He also wants to misdirect people’s attention away from what the unbelieving world is doing.

Thiessen does what he always does: he attacks my motives and says I am a liar. I will leave it to readers to decide if I am a truth teller.

Anything that the writer accuses God of doing, his side of the world is doing with less than holy and pure motives, and on a far grander scale. He and other unbelievers are in no position to accuse God of anything.

It is best that he refrain from speaking, as his world is far worse than anything God has done.

Is this the best argument Thiessen can offer? God and his followers may have commited sinful, evil acts, but Bruce and his fellow atheists do worst things. Really? Whom have I murdered or raped? What immoral, evil acts have I committed. No, Thiessen objects to the fact that I speak my mind about Evangelical Christianity and people agree with me. His only response is to attack my character and lie — both of which, if the Bible is to be believed, means Thiessen is not a Christian.

What say ye readers? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section.

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.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Rebellion and How an Authoritarian God Deals With It

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rebellion

Rebellion is a common word in the vocabulary of Evangelical Christian pastors, church leaders, husbands, and parents.

Here’s what the Bible says about God’s view of rebellion:

For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king. (1 Samuel 15:23)

Those who practiced witchcraft were to be put to death (Exodus 22:18, Deuteronomy 18:9-11), so it is clear that God considered rebellion a serious matter.

God commanded a harsh punishment for a rebellious son:

If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them; Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you and all Israel shall hear, and fear. (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)

The Old Testament is the written record of how a thrice Holy God dealt with a rebellious people, Israel. Page after page details God’s judgments against his people and those who got in his way.

When we get to the New Testament, the word rebellion is not used. Does this mean that God has changed? Of course not. How is it possible for a perfect God to change? Malachi 3:6 says:

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

The Bible says, speaking of Jesus:

Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever. (Hebrews 13:8)

It is clear, from the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God that God is immutable. He doesn’t change (though there are a few texts that seem to suggest otherwise).

Evangelical churches and pastors generally believe that both Testaments are authoritative (especially those Old Testament verses about tithing). Granted, Evangelicals are quite contradictory in their interpretations of the Old Testament, picking and choosing what they want to believe, but they do say all sixty-six books of the Bible are authoritative.

The key word is AUTHORITATIVE.

Evangelicals take seriously the matter of rebellion because they believe that the Bible is an authoritative text, and from that text they deduce an authority structure.

It goes something like this:

  • The Christian God is the supreme authority over everything. He is the sovereign King and Lord over everything. He is the creator. He is in complete and absolute control. Even with salvation, no one can be saved unless God permits them to be saved. Both Calvinists and Arminians alike believe God is the final arbiter when it comes to salvation.
  • The Christian God has established an authority hierarchy in the church. Under Jesus Christ, pastors (elders, bishops) are the head of the church. They have been called by God to teach, correct, lead, and direct the church. They are to initiate discipline when necessary to ensure the church is a pure, holy body (though many churches have a pretty low standard for pure and holy).
  • The Christian God has established authority hierarchy in the home. Again, under Jesus Christ, the husband is the head of the home, and his wife is to submit to his authority. Children are to obey their parents, and submit to their authority.
  • The Christian God has established an authority hierarchy for nations. All nations are to bow to the authority of the Christian God. Their laws should reflect God’s law. Better yet, theocracy, God rule, is the best form of government.

Evangelical Christians believe God rules over everything. There is no King but Jesus, and no God but the trinitarian deity of Christianity.

The problem here, of course, is that Evangelical Christians are human. Contrary to all their talk about being saved and sanctified, Christians are pretty much like the unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines of the world. For all their praying and confessing sin, they live and talk just like everyone else. Simply put, like all of us, they do what they want to do.

And that is a big, big problem.

You see, the authoritative God of the authoritative Bible demands absolute obedience. God expects Christians to implicitly and explicitly obey his commands. All of them. God will have none of this picking and choosing that American Christians love to do.

So everywhere you look you have Christians in some form of rebellion against God, their pastors, their parents, or their husbands. No matter how much they pray, read the Bible, go to the altar, and promise to really, really, really obey God this time, they continue to lapse into sin and rebellion.

This is what Jesus told his followers in Matthew 5:48:

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

It seems “nice” Jesus didn’t lower the standard when he came to earth. God expects and demands perfection. God will have none of this “I am not perfect, just forgiven” cheap grace Christianity. Jesus expects his followers to walk in his steps. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, they have been given everything they need pertaining to life and godliness. (2 Peter 1:3)

The difference between atheists and Evangelical Christians is guilt. Evangelicals live in a constant cycle of living right, rebelling, feeling guilty, repenting, and going back to living right. This cycle can go on numerous times a day. Atheists can feel guilty at times, but since they are not encumbered by a long list of Biblical laws, commands, rules, regulations, precepts, or standards, they are less likely to feel guilt. With no God hovering over them and no pastor preaching at them, the atheist is pretty much free to enjoy life. Generally, atheists try to live by the maxim: don’t hurt or cause harm to others, and when they fail they are likely to make restitution and ask for forgiveness from the people they hurt. No need for a God, Bible, church, or pastor. As humans, atheists have all the faculties necessary to be a good person.

What makes it worse for Evangelicals is that when they go to church on Sundays, their pastors remind them, from the Bible, of course, of how rebellious they are. These fallible, frail, sinful men of God point out the sins of their congregants, reminding them that God hates sin. These whitewashed sepulchers call on rebellious church members to repent. You would think that people would get tired of all this, but each week they dutifully return to church so their pastors can remind them of their sinfulness and need of repentance.

Children, especially teenagers, get this same treatment from their parents. When children don’t obey their parents, they are chastised and reminded that God hates rebellion. But kids will be kids, as every parent knows, and in most homes, it seems that children are either starting into rebellion or coming out of it.

Parents are commanded by God to beat the rebellion out of their children (Proverbs 13:24). God provides himself as a good role model to follow.  Hebrews 12:5-10 says:

And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.

The Bible records how God goes about chastising rebellious Christians. He maims them, makes them sick, kills their families, takes away their possessions, starves them, and, if necessary, kills them. God goes to great lengths to make sure a Christian seeks after the “peaceable fruit of righteousness.” (Hebrews 12:11)

Here’s how God expects Evangelical Christian parents to respond to the rebellion of their children:

Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him. (Proverbs 22:15)

Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell. (Proverbs 23:13,14)

Let me tie this all together.

A divinely authoritative text from an authoritarian God establishes authority structures (hierarchies) for the church, family, and nations. Disobedience to God-ordained authority is to be punished.

For those of us raised in this kind of Christianity, we well know how this works out practically. The Bible, in the hands of God’s man, the pastor, is used to dominate and control people. Individuality and freedom are discouraged, and, in some cases, severely punished.

Pastors remind their churches about “pastoral authority.” Parents remind their children that they are to be obedient, and threaten them with punishment if they don’t. Husbands remind their wives that they are the head of the home and their word is f-i-n-a-l. Collectively, Christians warn government officials that Jesus is the Lord of Lords and King of Kings, and God demands they submit to the authority of God, the Bible, and his people (this is the essence of the theocracy movement in this country).

Some readers are likely weeping by now. Their minds go back twenty years or more to a time when they were teenagers. Their parents considered them rebellious. Often their rebellion consisted of things such as listening to rock music, smoking, getting pregnant, talking back, having sex, or smoking marijuana. Their parents, needing to show them that they were in charge, sent them off to group homes to get their “rebellion” problem fixed. What really happened is that they were cruelly misused, abused, and debased. Years later, their lives still bear the marks of the Godly “rebellion” treatment they received.

It is hard not to see cultism in all of this. I am sure Bible-believing Christians — people of the book — will scream foul, but the marks of a cult are there for all to see if they dare but open their eyes. Millions of people attend churches that believe the things I have written about in this post. This is what Bible literalism gets you. How could it be otherwise?

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.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.