Is God Unfair?

Some I communicate with on another social media site groused about the killing God commanded Israel to do when they entered the Promised Land. Men, women, children- God commanded that they be slaughtered. He also wanted to know what is the big deal about same sex relationships (and by logical extension, other sexually immoral practices). I responded in part this way:

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It seems ironic to me that so many who find fault with the morality (or, as they would call it, the immorality) of God’s dealing with humanity in the Old Testament see no conflict within themselves when they support – and vote for those who support – the slaughter of nearly 3,000 babies every day in American abortion clinics. (Yes, that occurs every day. I suppose even on Sundays).

So to find fault with God who ordered the destruction of the nations occupying the Promised Land – men, women, and children – while we give hardly a passing thought to what happens every day in our own cities and towns. Seems kind of hypocritical, doesn’t it?

What God said to Job seems most fitting here: “Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Let him who reproves God answer it.” . . . “Will you really annul My judgment? Will you condemn Me that you may be justified?” (Job 40:1,8)

I will not get into a discussion of the morality of same sex relationships because I consider it unnecessary, given the larger questions – those being: Does God exist? If He exists, is He omnipotent? Is He the Creator of all that is seen and unseen – including you and me and every person ever to be born and die? If He is, then does He have the right to make the rules by which we must live if we hope to please Him? And if so, does He not also have the right to forgive those who sin against Him. And if so, does He not also have the right to judge eternally those who persist in their stiff-necked rebellion against His rules?

And if God is omnipotent, is He not able to ensure His instructions and commandments and promises and warnings be transmitted without error from the days when Moses wrote the first books of the Bible to the time John sat down to write the last book – Revelation – before the close of the first century?

Of course, if the answer to the first question (or even to the second) is ‘no’ then the rest of our ideas of God are simply moot.

It is important that all of us recognize that from the moment Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they and all their progeny are quite literally spiritually dead in our trespasses and sins. (One of the New Testament writes said as much in Ephesians 2).

And since all humanity is spiritually dead, we all need to become spiritually alive. Otherwise, like those who are physically dead and therefore insensate to sights and sounds and touch and so forth –those who are spiritually dead cannot – cannot – hope to ever understand what God does and why He does it.

That is why there is so much ignorance when it comes to reading and teaching the Scriptures. It is ONLY through the grace of God that ANYONE – including God’s children born again through faith in Christ – it is only through God’s grace that anyone can begin to hope to understand what God has done, what He does, and what He promises to do.

Let me pause for a moment – I do not mean to imply that Christians have full knowledge of God or His word. It is undeniably obvious that we do not fully know all that He wants us to know.

But it has always been true that those who choose to walk in the light He has given will receive yet more light. That has been my experience and the experience of a bazillion Christians through the millennia who diligently set themselves to know God through His written word.