In contrast, the Bible use of the term reflects a different meaning. A “concubine” in antiquity was, in fact, a wife. What distinguished her from other wives was the fact that she was of lower birth, sometimes even occupying a slave status. Bible scholars recognize this fact. For example, the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament explains the term pilegesh: “A concubine was a true wife, though of secondary rank…. Thus, the concubine was not a kept mistress, and did not cohabit with a man unless married to him.”¹ Professor of Oriental Languages, Biblical Archaeology and Dogmatics in Vienna, Johann Jahn, explains: “[A]lthough this connexion [sic] was in fact a marriage, and a legitimate one, it was not, nevertheless, celebrated and confirmed by the ceremonies [of the higher ranking wife].”² English classical scholar Francis Newman noted: “A concubine, in ancient times, was only a wife of inferior rank, and the union was just as permanent as with a wife.”³ M’Clintock and Strong state that “concubine” “denotes in the Bible not a paramour, but only a female conjugally united to a man in a relation inferior to that of the regular wife…. Concubinage therefore, in a scriptural sense, means the state of cohabiting lawfully with a wife of second rank.”⁴ Biblical scholar, linguist, and Christian apologist, John Haley, adds his voice to the same point: “Moreover, a ‘concubine,’ in those days, was not simply a kept mistress, as the word might now imply, but was a wife of lower rank, who was wedded with somewhat less than the ordinary formalities.”⁵

In a country where social status and barriers are of minimal concern, it is difficult for us to grasp the magnitude of the chasm that existed between classes in ancient cultures, a chasm that stayed with a person throughout life regardless of advancements along the way. Hence, even if a woman of lower social rank married a man of higher social rank, she could still be treated with disrespect as “second class”—though fully a wife.

A good example of the true nature of concubinage is seen in the outrageous and gruesome experience of the Levite during the Dark Ages of Jewish history in Judges 19. A resident of the Tribe of Ephraim, he married a woman from Bethlehem of Judah. She is identified as a “concubine.” Without recounting the details of the chapter, it is noteworthy to observe that the Levite is identified as the “husband” of the concubine (vs. 3). Her father is identified as the Levite’s “father-in-law” (vss. 4,7,9) and the Levite is his “son-in-law” (vs. 5).

In the case of Solomon, the meaning of “concubines” is suggested in the very text where they are mentioned:

But King Solomon loved many foreign women, as well as the daughter of Pharaoh: women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites—from the nations of whom the LORD had said to the children of Israel, “You shall not intermarry with them, nor they with you. Surely they will turn away your hearts after their gods.” Solomon clung to these in love. And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart (1 Kings 11:1-3).

Observe three indicators in the text that aid in understanding the distinction between wives and concubines. First, we are told that Solomon loved many “foreign women”—and the countries of origin for these women are noted. Solomon is not specifically condemned for loving the women—but for marrying them. Second, the reason for the prohibition is that such foreign women would make him receptive to their false gods. Sure enough, the text states that “his wives turned away his heart.” But those who are specifically mentioned as the foreign women/wives are the 700 wives and 300 concubines. Why mention the concubines at all if they were not participants in the religious subversion of Solomon by his wives?

Third, observe the grammar of verse 3. In the NKJV, a comma occurs both before and after the term “princesses.” The word “princesses” is describing the word “wives” in contrast with the “concubines”—who were not princesses. In other words, the distinction being made is not between wives vs. non-wives. The distinction being drawn is between wives of noble birth vs. wives of low birth. Several English translations help to clarify this factor:

CSB/ESV/GNV/HCSB/MEV: “He had seven hundred wives who were princesses and three hundred who were concubines.”

CEB: “He had seven hundred royal wives and three hundred secondary wives.”

CJB: “He had 700 wives, all princesses, and 300 concubines.”

CEV: “Seven hundred of his wives were daughters of kings, but he also married three hundred other women.”

DRA: “And he had seven hundred wives as queens, and three hundred concubines.”

EHV: “He had seven hundred wives who held the rank of princess and three hundred concubines.”

GW/NOG: “He had 700 wives who were princesses and 300 wives who were concubines.”

ICB/NCV: “He had 700 wives who were from royal families. He also had 300 slave women who gave birth to his children.”

LEB: “He had seven hundred princesses and three hundred concubines.”

NET: “He had 700 royal wives and 300 concubines.”

NIV/NLT: “He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines.”

NLV: “He had 700 wives, kings’ daughters, and 300 women who acted as his wives.”

NRSV: “Among his wives were seven hundred princesses and three hundred concubines.”

WYC: “And wives as queens were seven hundred to him, and three hundred secondary wives.”

Additional verses where “queens” and “concubines” are mentioned together, further implying the difference being simply one of social status, not marital status, include Song of Solomon 6:8-9 and Daniel 5:2-3,23.

Keep in mind that Hebrew had no technical term for “wife.” The normal word for “woman” (ishah) did “double duty” so that only context can determine whether “woman” or “wife” is being noted. Observe that it makes perfect sense to understand 1 Kings 11:3 as referring to all of Solomon’s foreign women. In fact, the word translated “women” in verse 1 is the plural form of “woman” (nishah), forms of which also occur in verses 3, 4, and 8. The word “concubines” is clearly intended to be included among the “foreign wives” who subverted Solomon’s heart.

These facts are further substantiated by an incident in the life of King David. When his son Absalom mounted a coup to dethrone his father, he complied with the advice of his counsellor Ahithophel to publicly defile David’s 10 concubines (2 Samuel 16:21-22). When David succeeded in foiling his son’s coup and returned to Jerusalem, the Bible says:

Now David came to his house at Jerusalem. And the king took the ten women, his concubines whom he had left to keep the house, and put them in seclusion and supported them, but did not go in to them. So they were shut up to the day of their death, living in widowhood (2 Samuel 20:3).

By definition, a “widow” is someone whose husband is deceased.⁶ Though the concubines were still alive, David was treating them as if their husband (himself) was dead.

Of course, the teaching of the New Testament, and the accurate application of Christianity to society, results in the elimination of polygamy and concubinage, as well as all other objectionable social institutions that conflict with the character of Deity. Indeed, “Christianity restores the sacred institution of marriage to its original character, and concubinage is ranked with fornication and adultery.”⁷ Nevertheless, awareness of the biblical meaning assigned to the word “concubine” enables the English reader to understand that Bible characters who possessed concubines were not guilty of taking “mistresses,” but were, in fact, married to them—and not merely engaging in extra-marital intimate relations.⁸ In any case, the Bible does not sanction the practice of unmarried sexual partners.

 Endnotes

The post Concubines appeared first on Apologetics Press.

Q:

I read your article titled “Did God Approve of Rahab’s Lie?”¹ but I’m still of the belief that lying for noble reasons is permissible. Don’t parents occasionally deceive their kids for good reasons? Didn’t Elisha lie to the Syrians in 2 Kings 6? Did God not suggest a life-saving deception to Samuel in 1 Samuel 16? Surely lying for noble reasons is okay sometimes.

A:

Since objective, moral goodness is logically rooted and grounded in the very nature of God’s goodness,² the most logical place to begin any ethical discussion is with the very nature of God. What does God reveal in Scripture about His own moral character, specifically about truthfulness and dishonesty?

God is innately pure and holy (1 Peter 1:15-16; 1 John 3:3). “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). Everything about God is true, including His Spirit, Son, judgments, works, laws, and commandments—all are true, 100% true.³ The simple fact is, “God…cannot lie” (Titus 1:2); “It is impossible for God to lie” (Hebrews 6:18). His perfectly truthful nature will not allow Him to lie. Furthermore, throughout God’s truthful Word, honesty is commended, while lying is condemned.⁴ So, if God is always truthful, and if His truthful Word teaches us to be honest and not lie, how can we ever say that God has authorized us to lie in certain situations?

“But What About Elisha’s Lie?”

As Ben-Hadad, the king of Syria, made war with Israel, the prophet Elisha warned Israel’s king (Joram) time and again how to avoid the Syrians. Ben-Hadad eventually learned that Elisha was the one who kept the king of Israel informed, so he commissioned “a great army” to go arrest the prophet of God (2 Kings 6:13-14). When Elisha saw the Syrian army, he prayed that the Lord would strike them with blindness, which He did. The prophet then told the blinded Syrians, “This is not the way, nor is this the city. Follow me, and I will bring you to the man whom you seek” (2 Kings 6:19). Elisha proceeded to lead them to Samaria, the capital of Israel. Only after the Syrians were inside Samaria did God return to them their sight. Undoubtedly, it was here that Elisha revealed himself to the Syrians.

Rather than reveal himself to the Syrians when he first met them, he said, “‘This is not the way, and this is not the city. Follow me, and I will bring you to the man whom you seek.’ And he led them to Samaria” (6:19, ESV). Did Elisha, a prophet of God, lie to the Syrian army?

Bible students must keep in mind that every person who has ever lived, except Christ, has sinned (Romans 3:10,23; 1 Peter 2:22). All of the godly people mentioned in the Bible sinned at various times in their lives. Even inspired penmen, including Moses, David, and Peter, sinned at times.⁵ No doubt, at various times in his life, Elisha also sinned against God. Thus, whether Elisha lied on this occasion or not, he definitely fell short at some point in his life.⁶

Is All Deception Lying?

In any discussion, it is very important to consider the meaning of words, the sense in which they are used, and how some words can have broader meanings than other (similar) words. For example, the Bible condemns murder (Exodus 20:13; Romans 1:29), but condones certain killings. In fact, just one chapter after giving the Sixth Commandment (“Thou shalt not kill/murder—ASV/NKJV; Hebrew ratsach), God commanded that the Israelites were to put to death various lawbreakers, including those guilty of kidnapping, cursing their parents, or premeditated murder (Exodus 21:12-17). In the New Testament, in the very chapter that Paul reminded the Romans, “You shall not murder” (Romans 13:9), he noted that governing authorities do “not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil” (13:1-4).⁷ When the entirety of Scripture is considered, the Bible student learns that all murder is killing, and is sinful, but not all killing is murder. In truth, throughout history God has authorized some killing in certain situations.⁸

Similarly, though all lying is a form of deception, not all deception is equivalent to the sin of lying. The Greek noun “lie” is pseudos⁹—a “conscious and intentional falsehood.”¹⁰ The English word “lie” may be defined as “to make an untrue statement with the intent to deceive.”¹¹ A fake handoff in football is deceptive, but it’s not lying. A no-look pass in basketball is tricky, but not dishonest. Wearing a disguise or camouflage fatigues in war so as not to be seen (or seen as easily) by the enemy is deceptive, but not untruthful. A woman may color her hair to “cover up” her gray so as not to appear as old as she is. That’s not lying, but it is a form of deception. The same thing can be said about a man’s toupee. A “lie” would be for the man to say something like, “This is my actual hair. I am not wearing a toupee.”

What’s more, aren’t many “knock-off” brands a form of honest deception? When I was a child, I wore fake “Air Jordan” shoes. They looked kind of cool (to me anyway), and were only a fraction of the cost of real Jordans, but they weren’t actual Jordans. If people mistakenly thought I had on Jordans, I didn’t mind, nor did I have an obligation to correct every person who may have thought they were real Jordans. But, if I ever actually said, “I have a pair of Jordans,” then I would have been lying.

Back to Elisha

When the Syrians invaded Israel in order to find and arrest the prophet of God, Elisha appeared to them without first revealing himself to his blind enemies. Instead, he said to follow him and he would bring them to the one they sought. He eventually revealed himself to them, but only after he had led them to Samaria and their sight was returned to them. Did Elisha trick his pursuers? Yes. But misleading enemy soldiers, intruders, or others who might want to do us harm is not necessarily the equivalent to lying.

The Scriptures do not clearly indicate whether Elisha lied to the Syrians or not. (Of all the communication that likely took place between them, only one line is recorded in Scripture; 2 Kings 6:19.) If Elisha did lie, such a sin would neither reflect poorly on God or the Bible—“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Still, we must be careful not to presume to know what Elisha did. In a time of war, he strategically led his God-given “captives” to “the city” of his choosing, where he would reveal “Elisha” to them, as he said he would.¹²

Must We Reveal Everything We Know?

Consider the very nature of God: in addition to being 100% truthful and by His very nature unable to lie (as discussed earlier), He’s also omniscient (Psalm 139:1-4; 1 Chronicles 28:9). Are there innumerable things that our Creator and Savior knows that we do not know? Certainly. Does His perfectly honest moral character compel Him to tell us everything He knows, even when we ask? Absolutely not. One lesson to learn from our most upright, moral Maker is that telling the truth is not equivalent to “revealing everything” we know.

When God sent the prophet Samuel to Bethlehem for the purpose of anointing David as the next king of Israel, Samuel mentioned that Saul would kill him if he heard of it. God’s response: “Take a heifer with you, and say,‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.’ Then invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do; you shall anoint for Me the one I name to you. So Samuel did what the Lord said” (1 Samuel 16:2-4). When the elders of Bethlehem asked Samuel if he came peaceably, the prophet said, “Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord” (16:5). Was the sacrifice the primary purpose of Samuel’s visit to Bethlehem? No. But Samuel was under no obligation to tell his questioners the central reason for his visit. He simply revealed to them one reason (a secondary reason) for his arrival into town.

Can We Distract and Divert Attention?

How many truthful, though blatantly illusive, things can a passionate husband and wife say to their child who finds a way into their room in the middle of the night? What do conscientious parents say to a young child who asks somewhat blunt questions about sensitive matters—answers for which innocent children are not yet prepared? The fact is, there may be many wise, truthful (though admittedly somewhat allusive) ways to respond. A dad may use the “distracting technique” and try to divert attention away from the sensitive topic. A mother may use the “Samuel technique” (1 Samuel 16:1-5) and tell the child only a part (or parts) of the fuller answer—the few part(s) that are prudent for the child to know. Parents may also use the “generalize technique” and simply speak in very broad, vague, but truthful generalities. Though parents are not authorized to lie to their children, we may righteously use various creative ways to respond to sensitive questions.

Can We Deceptively Outwit Enemies and Those Who Want to Harm Us?

In Judges 7, God said to Gideon, “By the three hundred men…I will save you, and deliver the Midianites into your hand…. Arise, go down against the camp, for I have delivered it into your hand” (7:7,9). How did God use Gideon’s 300 men to help bring down an enemy with 135,000 soldiers (cf. Judges 8:10)? In the middle of the night, they surrounded the enemy’s camp, blew trumpets, shouted, made loud noises by breaking pitchers, and held up torches (7:16-22). And what did the enemy no doubt think as they were suddenly awakened from a deep sleep? That they were under attack by a great army. But was there really a great army? No, just a great God, Who authorized Gideon to use a tiny army to outwit the enemy. No lie was told, but approved deception was used.

In the often-used, extreme example of someone breaking into our house and asking questions for the purpose of harming ourselves and family members, what can we do?¹³ Many seem to ask this question as if it somehow proves that lying is permissible, yet nowhere in Scripture does God authorize lying. God’s command to tell the truth and not lie, however, does not mean we cannot act cleverly and courageously. The intruder has no lawful right to be in the house, so we are under no obligation to do anything he instructs us to do. We may simply remain quiet and pray that the same God Who providentially delivered many thousands of Jews out of the hands of the Persians some 2,500 years ago will providentially provide a remedy to our situation (Esther 3:1-9:17). We may try to escape. (On more than one occasion, Jesus hid and escaped from His murderous enemies—Luke 4:30; John 8:59; 10:39.) We may (like Samuel) only tell the criminal secondary truths. We may (like Gideon) have a way to outwit the intruder. Or (as odd as this may sound to some), we may attempt to talk to the intruder about the Gospel. (Who knows how God could use such a terrible, frightening situation to His glory? After all, was the greatest missionary the world has ever known not a formerly violent man, who previously “made havoc of the church, entering every house and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison”—Acts 8:3?)

Although human life is an extremely valuable gift from God (Genesis 1:26-27), the most important thing in this life is not merely to live, but to be faithful to God, regardless of the situation. Jesus could have lied and worked things out to spare His own life, but He died (and rose) for a higher purpose. He submissively fulfilled His Father’s will. Jesus and His inspired spokesmen could have instructed the early church to avoid persecution and death by lying for each other or by denying their own faith in Christ, but they didn’t. In fact, to those first-century Christians who were suffering (or were about to face great tribulation), even to the point of death, Jesus declared, “Be faithful until death [“even to the point of death”—NIV], and I will give you the crown of life” (Revelation 2:10). Whatever course of action the Christian takes, it should be done honestly and wisely (Matthew 10:16).

Motivations Matter

Lest anyone think that we are suggesting sinful deception, or “lawful deception” for sinful reasons, we must remember that our motivations matter—in everything we do. Jesus spent a great deal of time exposing the “righteous” Pharisees for their sinful hypocrisy. Although they “outwardly appeared righteous to men” (Matthew 23:28)—praying, fasting, doing charitable deeds, etc.—many of their “lawful” actions were negated by their sinful motives. If we pridefully pray “truthful” words, but for the wrong reasons, we sin (Luke 18:9-14; Matthew 6:5-6). If we do the “right” works, but for the wrong reasons, we will have “no reward” from our Father in heaven (Matthew 6:1). Paul wrote, “And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor…but have not love, it profits me nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:3). God has made it abundantly clear in Scripture—“technically” we may look and sound like we are doing what God authorizes, yet if such things are done without proper, godly motives, then our actions are tragically wrong.

Thus, otherwise lawful deception (such as not telling the “whole story” for righteous reasons—cf. 1 Samuel 16:1-5) may very well be sinful for the teenager who does not reveal to his questioning parents who he’s been hanging out with. If he mentions everyone except the one person whom his parents have forbidden, has he lied? Not necessarily. But did his unrighteous motives make his deception sinful? Certainly. Children are to submit to their parents (Ephesians 6:1-3). If they say the “right” things for the wrong reasons, they are no more submitting to their parents’ authority than any improperly motivated child of God is submitting to the Father in heaven.

Similarly, if an adulterous husband tells his wife “truthful” things, but just not everything, is he lying to his wife? He may not be outright lying in various “carefully worded” (“I-don’t-want-to-get-caught”) specific statements, but is he sinfully deceiving and cheating on his God-given spouse? Certainly! He’s being immorally deceptive by not keeping his original oath and commitment that he made to his wife when they exchanged vows at their wedding ceremony. He’s being untrue in his actions. He’s being altogether unloving to the precious bride that God commands him to love “just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her” (Ephesians 5:25). The man’s unrighteous motivations and “lying life” expose his deception as terribly sinful and destructive.

Conclusion

I may have misstated something in this article, but that would not necessarily be a lie, unless I intended to be dishonest. After all, “to err is human.” Everyone occasionally says things that are wrong, and yet those honest mistakes are not lies. In addition to the actual act of stating an untruth is the motivation behind it. How many times has an honest, conscientious preacher unintentionally cited the wrong Bible verse in a sermon? Or how many times has an honest husband forgotten to get milk on the way home from work after having told his wife, “I will get milk on the way home”? Indeed, lying is a “conscious and intentional falsehood.”¹⁴ What’s more, when we look at the entirety of Scripture (Psalm 119:160), and “rightly divide the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15), we find that, while God never condones the sin of lying, He does authorize righteously motivated, honest deception.¹⁵

The purpose of acknowledging certain examples of authorized deception must never be to rationalize the sin of lying—any more than giving scriptural justification for capital punishment should ever cause us to rationalize murder. The fact is, lying is a terrible sin. It is the first sin that we read about in the Bible (Genesis 3:4). It is of the devil (John 8:44). It is abominable and hated by God (Proverbs 12:22; 6:17,19). It is damnable (Revelation 21:8). And it is very, very tempting at times.

There is never a justifiable reason to be untruthful. Christians must be resolved to “be imitators of God as dear children” in all things at all times (Ephesians 5:1). As we follow the example of Jesus, “the truth” (John 14:6), we must be resolved to put away lying (Ephesians 4:28) and to be fair and honest all day, every day.

Endnotes

¹ Eric Lyons (2017), https://apologeticspress.org/apPubPage.aspx?pub=1&issue=1250&article=2718.

² See Caleb Colley (2010), “Why is Good Good?” http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx? category=12&article=3601. See also Eric Lyons (2011), “The Moral Argument for the Existence of God,” Reason & Revelation, 31[9]:86-95, http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=12&article=4101.

³ 1 John 5:6; John 14:6; Daniel 4:37; 2 Samuel 7:28; Psalm 119:14,151; 19:9.

⁴ Leviticus 19:36; Psalm 15:2; Proverbs 16:11; Ephesians 4:25; Revelation 21:8.

⁵ Inspired spokesmen and writers communicated the Spirit’s supernatural revelation accurately as He “carried” them “along” (2 Peter 1:20-21), but inspiration was not a 24-hour-a-day, supernatural process that protected inspired men from being able to sin.

⁶ Keep in mind that God often did not stop to specify when individuals lied (and sinned) in Scripture (cf. Genesis 3:4; 4:9; 27:24; 37:31-35; 1 Samuel 21:2), any more than He always paused to specify when someone performed a righteous or courageous act.

⁷ “This passage clearly affirms that the state—civil government—has the God-ordained responsibility to keep law and order, and to protect its citizens against evildoers. The word ‘sword’ in this passage refers to capital punishment. God wants duly constituted civil authority to invoke the death penalty upon citizens who commit crimes worthy of death” [Dave Miller (2002), “Capital Punishment and the Bible,” https://apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=7&article=683].

⁸ See Kyle Butt (2009), “Killing, Murder, and the Bible,” http://apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=13&article=2794.

⁹ Frederick Danker, William Arndt, and F.W. Gingrich (2000), Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Chicago: University of Chicago), p. 1097.

¹⁰ J.H. Thayer (1977 reprint), Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker), p. 676.

¹¹ “Lie” (2020), Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lie.

¹² Or is it possible that when Elisha said to the Syrians, “I will bring you to the man whom you seek,” that he meant “the king of Israel” (whether the Syrians understood him or not)? Elisha may have been thinking, “These people are at war with the king of Israel, not me. The king is who they really want, so that’s where I will take them” (2 Kings 6:11, 21).

¹³ This scenario reminds me of the “rape-exception” that is continually brought up in discussions about abortion and the value of human life. Rape, of course, is a terribly repulsive sin, which warrants the most extreme forms of punishment. However, one terrible act (rape) does not authorize another (the murder of an unborn child). Furthermore, the “rape-exception” is used by many in hopes of validating all abortions, not just “the exception.” Similarly, many people seem to think that a violent intruder into our lives gives Christians the “right to lie,” yet again, one wrong does not make another wrong “right.”

¹⁴ Thayer, p. 676, emp. added.

¹⁵ Thus, the condemnation of “deception” in Scripture (e.g., 2 Timothy 3:13) would be a condemnation of dishonest deception or sinfully motivated deception.

Suggested Resources

The post Isn't Lying Permissible in Certain Situations? appeared first on Apologetics Press.

I would only tell the truth if it benefited me. And I would lie whenever I felt like I needed to in order to get what Iwanted, as quickly as I could, with as few repercussions as possible.

If I did ever get caught with the proverbial “hand in the cookie jar” (and I was an atheist), I would justifiably do and say whatever I could to get out of trouble. I would lie. I would use false flattery. I would intimidate. I would use physical force. Depending on the occasion, I might even explain that, logically, there is nothing evil or wrong with what I did, because there is no such thing as objective right and wrong, only what someone might subjectively perceive as such. I would explain that just because someone did not want me to “get in the cookie jar” doesn’t mean I couldn’t or shouldn’t. Nor did it mean it would be wrong—only that someone else didn’t want me to do something. But since I wanted to do it, then it was okay for me.

In school (as long as I didn’t think I would get caught), I would cheat as much as I wanted to in order to make the highest grades with the least amount of work. I would flirt and attempt to curry favor with female teachers in hopes of leniency and better grades. I would never help any of my classmates, since I would want to be valedictorian (unless I thought by helping others, I was actually improving my own situation even more somehow—such as by becoming more popular or attracting girls, which might become more important to me than having the highest grades in school). While a teenager, I would fulfill as many of my adolescent desires as possible, as much as possible, in any way possible (as long as the potential repercussions were worth it).

If I were an atheist, my sole motivation for working would be to get rich—to make the most amount of money, with the least amount of work, and to spend the money on the maximum amount of pleasure for myself. I would do or say whatever I needed to do or say to climb the ladder of success. I would not hesitate to lie and take credit for the work of others if I thought it would help me get what I wanted faster (again, with as few repercussions as possible). I would not make decisions based upon what’s best for others, or even what’s best for the company, but only what is best for me now—and perhaps in the future.

If I were an atheistic politician in a heavily “Christian” district or state, I would claim to be a Christian to get elected—after all, to atheism “the end justifies the means.” Since there is still a far greater number of theists in the U.S. than atheists, I would not admit to my atheism, except perhaps to other atheists behind closed doors. (If they, too, were taking atheism to its logical conclusion, they would clearly see my rationale for lying to the American people.) I would say whatever people wanted me to say in public and in private in order to get their votes and monetary support. Since most of the media seem more friendly to atheism and non-religion than to real, New Testament Christianity, I would count on the media to help cover-up some of my lies and inconsistencies. And, if and when one or more of my contradictory statements needed to be addressed publicly, I would basically do what I did as an unbelieving, undisciplined child—I would lie, flatter, distract, play the “poor me” card, or whatever it took to not take responsibility for my obvious lies (unless there was ever a moment that “taking responsibility” happened to be the best course of action for myself).

Again, I wouldn’t tell anyone exactly how I really felt about all of these things—not my parents, my boss, my friends, or my girlfriend. (I probably wouldn’t see the advantage of getting married.) I also wouldn’t tell my kids. (Actually, I probably wouldn’t want any kids since they cost too much money and energy, and if my girlfriend ever got pregnant I might encourage her to “abort the little blob of tissue”—again, if I were an atheist.) I wouldn’t tell anyone that I would be willing to lie, cheat, steal, envy, and even kill at any strategic moment, because I would want people to think that I was actually an authentic, gracious, courageous, honorable, honest, compassionate, respectable man of integrity.

I am not suggesting that all atheists act this way, but I am suggesting that if atheism were taken to its logical conclusion, it would look this way (and even far worse). And if I were really an atheist, I could see no logical reason not to act in accordance with all of my own fleshly desires. To quote Charles Darwin: “A man who has no assured and ever present belief in the existence of a personal God or of a future existence with retribution and reward, can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones.”¹ If I were an atheist, I would merely act like the evolved animal my school textbooks had always told me I was, and that I thought I was—guided by impulses and instincts to have as much good food, sex, money, pleasure, and power as possible (never really concerning myself with the needs of others). Life would always be about me, myself, and I. I would do whatever I wanted to do, since, to quote 20^th-century atheistic philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, “Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist.”²

Although renowned atheist Richard Dawkins could never prove that life’s sole purpose is to perpetuate one’s DNA, he is right about one thing: in the world of atheism, “[s]o long as DNA is passed on, it does not matter who or what gets hurt in the process. Genes don’t care about suffering, because they don’t care about anything.”³ He went on to expound upon the atheistic worldview, noting: “This universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”⁴ Atheism, taken to its ultimate conclusion, makes for a very, very dark world—full of repugnant vices.

Genuine Christianity

By the grace of God, I’m not an atheist; I’m a Christian. And though I have failed miserably in my life to live up to the flawless standard of my perfect, loving, and just Creator and Savior, by His grace and mercy I’m determined to follow His holy Word and His righteous example (1 John 1:6-10): to love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love my neighbor as myself (Matthew 22:37-40). I’m extremely motivated to be an honest husband, a dedicated dad, a faithful friend, a hard-working employee, and a loving leader because I believe in, and I’m guided by, a power much higher, brighter, and better than myself.

I joyfully live a life of submission to Almighty God:

• Because He created me.
• Because, as the all-knowing God, He knows far more than I do, and thus I should listen to Him and not myself.

I seek to live according to God’s purpose for my life:

• Because He loves me more than anyone else does; even more than my wife and kids, and my parents. (Why not listen to the One who knows me and loves me more than anyone else?)
• And if that’s not motivation enough, consider that eternal life awaits those who embrace God and the salvation that He provides through Jesus Christ, while eternal punishment awaits “those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thessalonians 1:8).

It’s true that many Christians continually live hypocritical lives, illogically engaging in the very acts that Christ condemns (and which the philosophy of atheism, when taken to its logical conclusion, approves). But such foolish, unacceptable, eternally damning hypocrisy⁵ by some so-called Christians doesn’t mean it’s not logical to be real Christians. Genuine followers of Jesus have as their deepest and strongest desire in this life—to live with the Creator and Savior of the world in the next life, and to see as many people as possible (even enemies) choose the same rewarding path, by the grace of God.

Who will you choose to serve in this physical life that we have on Earth? Yourself, or your Creator? How you answer this question will determine where you live forever in the next life (Matthew 7:13-14; cf. Joshua 24:15). [*For information on what the Bible teaches about how to be saved from sin and become a Christian, please read our free e-book Receiving the Gift of Salvation at apologeticspress.org.]

Endnotes

The post If I Were an Atheist… appeared first on Apologetics Press.

On September 14, 2018 Hurricane Florence made landfall just south of Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. Like most hurricanes throughout history, this one left death and destruction in its wake. As shocking and heart-rending as such natural phenomena may seem, many other natural disasters have occurred in human history that exceed Florence, Harvey, Katrina, and even the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami in their toll of death and destruction. For example, throughout China’s history, extensive flooding has occurred countless times as a result of the mighty 3,000-mile-long Hwang Ho River. Several of the most terrible floods, with their ensuing famines, have been responsible for the deaths of more than a million people at a time. The southern levee of the river failed in Hunan Province in 1887, affecting a 50,000 square mile area.¹ More than two million people died from drowning, starvation, or the epidemics that followed.²

In reality, such events have occurred repetitiously throughout the history of the world, and continue to do so—constantly: hurricanes, cyclones, earthquakes, tornados, floods, tsunamis, droughts, and volcano eruptions. In fact, natural disasters kill one million people around the world each decade, and leave millions more homeless, according to the United Nation’s International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction.³

This circumstance inevitably elicits the pressing question: “WHY?” “Why would God allow such suffering and loss of life, inflicted on countless numbers of seemingly innocent people?” Regarding Florence, a five-year-old boy asked: “‘Daddy, where is God during the hurricane?’”⁴ Indeed, the number one argument marshaled by atheists to advocate their disbelief in God is the presence of widespread, seemingly purposeless suffering. They insist that if an infinite Being existed, He would exercise His perfect compassion and His omnipotence to prevent human suffering.⁵ Even for many people who do not embrace formal atheism, the fact that God apparently seems willing to allow misery and suffering to run rampant in the world, elicits a gamut of reactions—from perplexity and puzzlement to anger and resentment.

THE BIBLE HAS THE ANSWERS

But the Bible provides the perfect explanations for such occurrences. Its handling of the subject is logical, sufficient, and definitive. It sets forth the fact that God created the world to be the most appropriate, suitable environment in which humans are enabled to make their own decisions concerning their ultimate destiny (Genesis 1:27; Ecclesiastes 12:13-14). We humans have been provided with the ideal environment in which we may freely accept or reject God’s will for our lives. Natural disasters and nature’s destructive forces are the result of specific conditions that are necessary to God’s providing humanity with this ideal environment.

God is not blameworthy for having created such a world, since He had a morally justifiable reason for having done so. Human existence on Earth was not intended to be permanent. Rather, the Creator intended life on Earth to serve as a temporary interval of time for the development of one’s spirit. Life on Earth is a probationary period in which people are given the opportunity to attend to their spiritual condition as it relates to God’s will for living. Among other purposes, natural disasters provide people with conclusive evidence that life on Earth is brief and uncertain. God has even harnessed natural calamities for the purpose of punishing wickedness.⁶

Christians understand that no matter how catastrophic, tragic, or disastrous an event may be, it fits into the overall framework of soul-making—preparation for one’s departure from life into eternity. Likewise, the Christian knows that although the great pain and suffering caused by natural disasters may be unpleasant, and may test one’s mettle; nevertheless, such suffering is not intrinsically evil. Nor is it a reflection on the existence of an omnibenevolent God. The only intrinsic evil is violation of God’s will. What is required of all accountable persons is obedience to God’s revealed Word (given in the Bible)—even amid pain, suffering, sickness, disease, death, and, yes, hurricanes.

[NOTE: For further study on this thorny issue, see Thomas Warren (1972), Have Atheists Proved There Is No God? available at https://warrenapologetics.org/bookstore/have-atheists-proved-there-is-no-god and AP’s book Why People Suffer available at http://www.apologeticspress.org/store/Product.aspx?pid=247.]

ENDNOTES

¹ “Hwang Ho” (2004), LoveToKnow 1911 Online Encyclopedia, http://32.1911encyclopedia.org/H/HW/HWANG_HO.htm.

² “Huang He, or Hwang Ho” (2004), Britannica Student Encyclopedia, http://www.britannica.com/ebi/article?tocId=9274966.

³ “Disasters: A Deadly and Costly Toll Around the World” (1997), FEMA News, http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/stats.pdf.

⁴ Bruce Ashford (2018), “‘Daddy, where is God during the hurricane?’” Fox News, September 16, http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/09/15/daddy-where-is-god-during-hurricane.html.

⁵ E.g., Roy Jackson (2001), “The Problem of Evil,” The Philosopher’s Magazine Online, http://www.philosophers.co.uk/cafe/rel_six.htm; Jeffery Lowder (2004), “Logical Arguments From Evil,” Internet Infidels, http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/atheism/evil-logical.html.

⁶ See Dave Miller (2005), “Is America’s Iniquity Full?” http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/305.

The post Where Was God During Hurricane Florence? appeared first on Apologetics Press.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: A.P. auxiliary writer Robert Veil, Jr. formerly served as a district attorney for the Washington County State’s Attorney’s Office (Maryland), and previously maintained an active private law practice. He currently preaches in Martinsburg, West Virginia.]

Here’s a quote from the U.S. Supreme Court which may surprise you: “Where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament? Where are benevolence, the love of truth, sobriety, and industry, so powerfully and irresistibly inculcated as in the sacred volume?”¹ That statement, part of the official records of the nation’s highest court, was made by Justice Joseph Story, appointed by President James Madison in 1811. Known as the “Father of American Jurisprudence,” Story had earlier written, “Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as is not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.”²

The interesting backstory to this Supreme Court case involves the death of Stephen Girard in 1831. At that time, Girard was the richest man in America. In his will, he provided for the establishment of Girard College in Philadelphia, PA. But the will was challenged by his familial heirs, who argued that it was void because by excluding scholarly instructors from the various sects, it was adverse to the principles of Christianity. The argument was eloquently presented by Daniel Webster, Esq., but was ultimately rejected by the Supreme Court. Interestingly, while the Court agreed with Webster that Christianity is part of the common law of Pennsylvania, it went on to recognize that support for Christianity is so natural and desirable that it is generally intended and presumed in our legal documents. Statements in a will which could conceivably be understood as opposed to Christianity will not be so interpreted without clear and plain evidence to that effect. In other words, if it is possible to interpret the will in agreement with the principles of Christianity, it must be so interpreted, and allowed to stand.

I find this case fascinating because it provides insight into the mindset of our Founding Fathers, including the Supreme Court in its early days. They not only recognized the principles of Christianity as part of and consistent with the common law, they found it unusual or unthinkable that anyone would question this. They saw it as harmful that documents such as wills should be interpreted otherwise. Justice Story agreed with Daniel Webster as to the honorable and necessary role of Christianity in our nation’s legal system. But he went on to affirm that such recognition is to be presumed as natural and obvious. In 1844, these Founding Fathers and statesmen would not have dreamed of questioning or denying the critical place of Christianity in our laws.

Story’s recognition that Christianity was deeply valuable to society, and that “it ought to receive encouragement from the state” would seem odd or unthinkable to many modern observers. The prevailing view of so many today is that church and state should somehow be “separated” and our country would get along quite well without the principles of Christianity. But that’s not the way the Founding Fathers saw it. They recognized Christianity as part of the common law, critical to our nation’s health and strength. They knew that the principles taught by Christ in the New Testament make for a prosperous and successful land.

Those who deny these truths are like the man who expects fruit from the tree after cutting away its roots. He destroys that which made the tree strong, and which gives it its nourishment and productivity, then demands that it produce as it did before. He cannot understand why the tree appears to be weak and sickly, struggling to match its former glory.

The roots of America’s strength run deeply into the Word of God. The eternal principles of truth and honesty, fair dealing, charity and integrity, sobriety and industry, mutual respect and good will form a bedrock upon which all great civilizations are built.  To the extent that we honor and respect such godly principles, we can look for His protection and blessings. And as surely as we cut off and turn away from them, we need not expect the fruit of His divine approval.

ENDNOTES

The post Cutting the Roots—But Still Expecting Fruit appeared first on Apologetics Press.

Does he [God] accept human sacrifice? In some verses yes, in some verses no. Remember the thing about when Abraham, he asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. By the way, Abraham should have said, “No way, I’m better than you, I’m not going to kill my son.”¹

Ironically, due to the aimless, subjective nature of atheistic “ethics,” atheists have no objective basis or absolute standard by which to evaluate the taking of life—even animal or plant life. Yet, even very liberal thinkers have conceded circumstances under which it might be appropriate to terminate the life of a fellow human being (e.g., if a person were guilty of mass murder). The Bible quite properly identifies a variety of circumstances under which the taking of human life is moral and rational—including God’s own execution of large numbers of people throughout history (e.g., the Flood in Genesis 6-9). The Law of Moses included a minimum of 16 capital crimes.² If at least one instance of taking human life is morally justifiable in the mind of the atheist, God cannot rightly be indicted for stipulating the instance. It becomes merely a matter of determining the ethical appropriateness of any given instance. It is no longer a matter of if it is morally right to require the death of a person, but simply when it is right to do so.

Another factor to consider in ascertaining whether God can rightly order the death of a person pertains to the very nature of human life itself in the great scheme of things. If humans possess an immortal soul, a spirit, then killing the body does not extinguish that life. As Jesus declared: “And I say to you, My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear Him who, after He has killed, has power to cast into hell; yes, I say to you, fear Him!” (Luke 12:4-5). If there is an afterlife, terminating physical life on Earth is not actually a termination of that life, since conscious existence continues in the afterlife. Hence, again, the question is not whether human life may be terminated in this life, but only the conditions under which life may be taken and who is authorized to do so.

The passage in question is found in Genesis 22. The stated purpose of the incident pertains to God’s desire to “test” Abraham (Genesis 22:1), i.e., enable Abraham to recognize and demonstrate the level of his own faith in God. God’s instruction to Abraham is found in these words: “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you” (Genesis 22:2). A series of events then transpire over a period of three days—giving Abraham sufficient time to assess in his own mind the depth of his faith and commitment to God. James spotlights this very feature:

Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” And he was called the friend of God. You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only (2:21-24, emp. added).

Observe that James wrote as if Abraham actually completed God’s directive (“offered”), which shows that the objective was to test Abraham’s willingness to obey—without actually completing the deed.

The Bible clearly affirms that God would never require an immoral act—including child sacrifice (Leviticus 18:21; 20:2). In the book of Kings, God condemned the Israelites for mimicking the abominable practice of the Amorites who offered their children as sacrifices to their pagan gods. He vehemently insisted: “I did not command them, nor did it come into My mind that they should do this abomination” (e.g., Jeremiah 32:35; cf. 19:5). It did not enter God’s mind to actually have Abraham kill his son. Here, then, is the salient question: is it morally wrong for God to test a person’s faith and commitment by ordering him to perform an act,³ while not actually intending to require (or allow) the person to do so?

The Bible is its own best interpreter, and if one honestly desires to arrive at the truth (John 7:17), and will do what the Bible itself insists is necessary to achieve that goal, i.e., apply oneself diligently to studying, examining, and weighing the biblical evidence (Acts 17:11; 2 Timothy 2:15), one can ascertain whether the Bible actually contradicts itself and whether God is morally irresponsible. The inspired writer of the book of Hebrews solves the dilemma posed by Dan Barker. Read carefully his assessment of Abraham’s action regarding his son:

By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, “In Isaac your seed shall be called,” concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense (Hebrews 11:17-19, emp. added).

Observe that in Abraham’s mind, Isaac was as good as dead, i.e., he fully intended to sacrifice his son as directed. However, one cannot successfully maintain that Abraham was guilty of agreeing to commit an immoral act—since he fully believed that the death of his son would be immediately reversed. The strength of this conviction (which is the central feature of Abraham’s great faith) is further seen in the fact that he informed the servants: “Stay here with the donkey; the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you” (Hebrew plural, nasucach, Genesis 22:5, emp. added). Abraham fully recognized that the moral nature of deity would not sanction child sacrifice. God’s prior declaration, that Isaac would be the one through whom He would fulfill His promises to Abraham, was sufficient proof that God would circumvent his action by raising Isaac from the dead.

After a careful evaluation of the textual data, we are forced to conclude that, though God instructed Abraham to offer his son as a sacrifice, the purpose of the command was merely to enable Abraham to manifest the strength of his faith and trust in God, and that it did not enter God’s mind actually to have Abraham kill his son. Isaac was, in fact, a foreshadowing of the coming Christ. Incredibly, the perfect nature of God required that He sacrifice Himself in the person of His Son in our behalf: “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all…demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 8:32; 5:8).

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Greed/Materialism—“I can make money by believing this viewpoint.”

Jealousy—“If I hold this viewpoint I will be held in higher esteem than others.”

Loyalty—“I believe this viewpoint because my parents did.”

Ambition—“I will advance in my career if I believe this viewpoint.”

Selfishness—“I want to believe this viewpoint because it makes me feel better.”

Sensualism—“I believe this viewpoint because I can indulge myself sexually.”

Ignorance—“I’m not sure why I believe this viewpoint, but I do.”

Bias/Prejudice—“I don’t believe that viewpoint because of who else believes it.”

Indifference—“I hold this viewpoint, but it really doesn’t matter much to me.”

Foolish Pride—“The smart people don’t believe that viewpoint.”

If God exists and the Bible is His Word, then what we believe and why we believe it are crucial and eternally significant.

Intellectuals throughout history have considered themselves superior to others based on their alleged intellectual prowess. The atheistic elite of our day ooze arrogance in their condescending dismissal of those who believe in God. They seek to give the impression that they believe what they believe due solely to a rational, unbiased, sensible analysis of facts that have, in turn, led them to the beliefs that they hold. On the other hand, those who do not consent to their infidelity are depicted as ignorant, biased, and stupid. Consider the frantic judgment leveled by prominent evolutionist Richard Dawkins of Oxford University: “It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).”¹

Despite such high and holy self-righteous declarations, the fact is that the very nature of error is such that a person can continue to embrace it only by means of impure motives. If an honest atheist is willing to examine the facts, he will either cease being an atheist or he will cease being honest. Hence, those who have distinguished themselves for their ongoing vociferous defense of their infidelity most assuredly possess one or more motives deep down in their hearts that enable them to dismiss the actual evidence that disproves their viewpoint.

Interestingly, atheists occasionally divulge their inner motives without particularly intending to do so. For example, in a makeshift “debate” conducted in 2010 on the campus of Caltech between atheists Sam Harris and Michael Shermer on the one hand, and Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston on the other, Sam Harris made the following observations:

Most of our neighbors believe in…a personal God who hears our prayers and occasionally answers them…. The God that our neighbors believe in is essentially an invisible person. It’s a Creator deity who created the universe to have a relationship with one species of primates. Lucky us. And He’s got galaxy upon galaxy to attend to, but he’s especially concerned with what we do, and he’s especially concerned with what we do while naked. He almost certainly disapproves of homosexuality.²

While we humans often constitute a hodge-podge of conflicting motives and inclinations, nevertheless, in our conversations we often unwittingly expose one or more of our hidden motives for believing what we believe. To ridicule Christians for holding to an ethical framework that was authored by the Creator of the Universe (Who created human sexuality) implies that the accuser disagrees with those restrictions on sexual behavior. But notice further that Harris implied something else: his belief in atheism enables him to not be concerned about his sexual behavior. The same motives that infected pagans throughout history in which their heathenism enabled them to be released from sexual inhibitions—from the Moabites³ in 1500 B.C. to the Ephesians⁴ in A.D. 60—are the same for atheists. Unbelief allows a person to be free to engage in whatever sexual activity he desires, whenever and with whomever. The intellectual sophistication and academic elitism that accompanies modern atheism is nothing more than a smokescreen to indulge the flesh. The reason Hollywood hates Christianity is because they want to be able to give full vent to their illicit fleshly appetites without feeling the guilt that comes from flaunting the moral restraints given by the Creator. Christians in Ephesus in the first century fully understood these ulterior motives that underlie one’s belief system. They lived in a city that hosted one of the seven wonders of the ancient world—the Temple of Artemis—dedicated to the goddess with her vulgar adornments.⁵ Paul spoke right to the soul of the population when he penned the following inspired words to the church—an apt evaluation of the unbelief that grips both atheism and much of the religious error of the world:

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ! (Ephesians 4:17-20, ESV, emp. added).

Endnotes

¹ Richard Dawkins (1989), “Book Review” (of Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey’s Blueprint), The New York Times, section 7, April 9, p. 3, emp. added.

² Sam Harris (2010), “The Future of God Debate: Sam Harris and Michael Shermer vs. Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston,” Nightline Faceoff, ABC News, March 14, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E99BdOfxAE; See also Dan Harris and Ely Brown (2010), “‘Nightline’ ‘Face-Off’: Does God Have a Future?” March 23, http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/FaceOff/nightline-face-off-god-future/story?id=10170505.

³ Numbers 25:1-2.

⁴ Acts 19.

⁵ James Edwards (2016), “Archaeology Gives New Reality to Paul’s Ephesus Riot,” Biblical Archaeology Review, 42[4]:28-30, July/August.

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[NOTE: The following assessment by A.P. board member Frank Chesser is excerpted from his upcoming commentary on Ezekiel.]

Ezekiel 16 is a treasure house of nuggets of truth that Americans need to heed, ten of which will be addressed in this article. First, only divine revelation can enable a man to “know” his sin (vs. 2). Only by knowing God can a man know his sin. The Bible commences with God: “In the beginning God” (Genesis 1:1). It ends with God: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen” (Revelation 22:21). In between these bookends of divine truth is a library of sixty-six books that paint portraits of the nature of God, from whom all spiritual truths flow. Three words sum up the book of Isaiah and the whole of God’s revelation to man: “Behold your God” (Isaiah 40:9). When Isaiah beheld God in all of His glory, majesty and holiness, he saw the scope of his sin as never before (Isaiah 6:1-5).

Adam and Eve lost sight of the God they both saw and knew and plunged themselves and the world into darkness. “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Romans 5:12). The power of fleshly lust blinded the spiritual eyes of the righteous descendants of Seth to the beauty of God’s holiness as they gazed with delight upon the carnal daughters of Cain’s descendants and “they took them wives of all which they chose” (Genesis 6:2), acts of sin that produced a world of people void of a single righteous thought and opened the door to the global Flood. The first generation from Egypt never saw the God that Isaiah saw, and their lives testified to their spiritual sightlessness. God informed Samuel that from Egypt onward “they have forsaken me, and served other gods” (1 Samuel 8:8). They wanted a God of power that could liberate them from Egypt but not a God of holiness, justice, and wrath Whose very nature demanded, “Be ye holy; for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16), and condemned and punished sin.

The idols that Israel brought out of Egypt were added to and multiplied, and they plagued the nation for most of its national life. Solomon allowed his love for God to be supplanted by his love for “many strange women” (1 Kings 11:1), and “his wives turned away his heart after other gods” (1 Kings 11:4). The northern kingdom inaugurated its national existence with roots in idolatry as Jeroboam “made two calves of gold, and said unto them, ‘It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem; behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt’” (1 Kings 12:28). Israel became so enamored with lifeless pieces of wood and stone that God said, “Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone” (Hosea 4:17), because His mercy upon them was gone (Hosea 1:6), He was no longer their God (Hosea 1:9), and He would “cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel” (Hosea 1:4). Except for a minute remnant, they lived their national life sightless of the God that Isaiah saw. They were powerless to know their sin because they rejected God’s revelation of Himself through the material Universe, the law, the prophets, and confirming miracles. God destroyed them in Assyrian captivity (2 Kings 17:21-23).

Under Rehoboam’s rule, the nation of Judah initiated their national life with idolatry as they “built them high places, and images, and groves, on every high hill, and under every green tree” (1 Kings 14:23). With a few exceptions, they followed king after king who led them in idol worship and all of its confederate sins. God told Isaiah that except for a “very small remnant” (Isaiah 1:9), Judah would never be able to see their sin because they refused to see Him (Isaiah 6:5-12). This very chapter is permeated with God’s condemnation of Judah’s idols and their affiliated sins. Ezekiel’s audience in Babylon was led by leaders with “idols in their heart” (14:3), who could not see and know their sin because they could not see the “glory of the Lord” that Ezekiel saw (1:28).

Second, covetousness is idolatry. Paul affirmed this truth in Colossians 3:5. Verse 3 of Ezekiel 16 illustrates it. Why does God point to Canaan as the place of Israel’s national birth? Not because they were actually born there, but because Israel coveted the gods of Canaan and the sins of the flesh that idol worship allowed. This covetous spirit inhered in Israel’s request for a king so they could “be like all the nations” (1 Samuel 8:20). God said, “they have rejected Me that I should not reign over them” (1 Samuel 8:7). This rebellious spirt was not something new in the hearts of Israel. It was Samuel’s appointment of his wicked sons as judges that opened the door for Israel to request a more formal system of government that would remove every vestige of their national distinctiveness and allow them total kinship with the heathen nations of the world.

Israel had already been living like pagans for over three centuries. When Joshua and those who served him died, “there arose another generation after them which knew not the Lord” (Judges 2:10). They did not know the Lord because they did not want to know the Lord. They were like the people of Judah, “for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me saith the Lord” (Jeremiah 9:3). Israel lived among the heathens in Canaan, intermarried with them, and adopted their gods as their own (Judges 3:5-7). They coveted the heathenish lifestyle that idolatry licensed. They loved their idols because they loved the “pleasures of sin” (Hebrews 11:25) that they vouchsafed to them. They “ceased not from their own doings, nor from their stubborn way” and “every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judges 2:19; 21:25).

Covetousness lusts, longs, yearns, and desires. It is selfishness in its purest form. It is determined to have its way regardless of the consequences. Eve desired self-rule to the ruin of her life in Eden (Genesis 3:5-6). The cities of the plain lusted for sexual sin to their utter destruction (Genesis 19). Achan “coveted” gold, silver, and a garment to the subversion of himself and his family (Joshua 7:21). David yearned for his neighbor’s wife to the detriment of his spiritual life, family, and stature in Israel and the world (2 Samuel 11-12). Amnon longed for his brother’s wife and paid for his covetousness with his life (2 Samuel 13). Solomon coveted “strange women” and strange gods (1 Kings 11:1,4-8), to his personal ruin and the ruin of Israel. A thief (John 12:6) and a traitor (John 18:2) were the products of Judas’ covetous spirit.  Herod’s desire for personal acclaim led to his death on a bed of agony (Acts 12:21-23). Demas yearned for worldly pleasure (2 Timothy 4:10), Diotrephes for preeminence (3 John 9), and Israel for the gods of Canaan to the spiritual devastation of each.

Third, Israel misread God’s love, grace, and goodness. The nation is depicted as a new born infant, discarded and left to die, floundering in the blood of its birth, and void of human pity (16:4-5). God washed, cleaned, clothed, fed, loved, protected, preserved, and blessed Israel to her national maturity. Israel viewed God’s work as merit because they were fleshly descendants of Abraham and special in their own eyes. God denied repetitively their right to specialty and feelings of superiority to all other nations, but they refused to believe it. God affirmed that His spiritual blessings through Abraham embraced “all families of the earth” (Genesis 12:3), but Israel could see only themselves as recipients of God’s love and goodness. Three times in three verses (Deuteronomy 9:4-6), God asserted that they did not deserve the land of Canaan, and then reminded them that from Egypt to that moment, “ye have been rebellious against the Lord” (Deuteronomy 9:7). But nothing that God said or did in acts of judgment upon them could shake their feelings of national peerlessness.

It was God’s intention to reach Calvary with the seed of woman and Abraham (Genesis 3:15; 12:3). This was a work of pure love, grace, and goodness, and national Israel fought God every step of the way. They loathed the law of God and loved their idols. They thought they could sin with impunity (Jeremiah 7:8-10). The Old Testament closes with Israel’s corrupt priests’ horrendous accusation of God’s delighting in evildoers, robbing God of tithes and offerings, and affirming the vanity of serving God (Malachi 1-3). The New Testament opens with John the Baptist in spiritual combat with Pharisees and Sadducees yet clinging to Abraham as their spiritual savior (Matthew 3:7-9). Having pointed to the truth that makes man free, Jesus encountered this Jewish proclivity as some answered, “We be Abraham’s seed and were never in bondage to any man” (John 8:33). It took miraculous intervention (Acts 10) to convince Peter that what God said in Genesis 12:3, what Jesus said in John 3:16, and what Peter said in Acts 2:39 was the truth.  Prior to embracing Christ and the Gospel, Paul considered his Jewishness as “gain” (Philippians 3:7). To this present hour, the love, grace, and goodness of God is sifted in the sieve of human reasoning.

Fourth, misplaced trust leads to spiritual ruin. “But you trusted in your own beauty, played the harlot” (vs. 15). Improper entities of trust assume many and diverse forms and all lead to spiritual decay. Moses warned Israel about displacing God with fortified walls as objects of their trust (Deuteronomy 28:32). Israel trusted in oppression and perverseness (Isaiah 30:12), military aid from Egypt (Isaiah 31:1), idols (Isaiah 42:17), wickedness (Isaiah 47:10), vanity (Isaiah 59:4), lying words (Jeremiah 7:8), the temple (Jeremiah 7:14), and in their own ways and mighty men (Hosea 10:13). God placed a curse upon “the man that trusted in man” (Jeremiah 17:5) and likened him to a shrub in the desert barely cleaving to life and without hope for betterment (Jeremiah 17:6). Paul warned about trusting in “uncertain riches” (1 Timothy 6:17).

Biblical faith involves trust and obedience. The Word of God is the basis of faith (Romans 10:17), and the faith that saves is the faith that obeys God. Jesus described faith as a work (John 6:28-29), and Paul spoke of the “work of faith” (1 Thessalonians 1:3) and the “obedience of faith” (Romans 16:26), because faith is active in its submission to the will of God. James said, “I will show thee my faith by my works” (James 2:18). The object of faith’s trust is God, not the works of righteousness that faith produces. The Pharisee was rejected because he trusted in himself and his own works instead of God (Luke 18:9-14). Misplaced trust negates Biblical faith.

Fifth, Israel abused blessings on loan from God (vss. 16-21). They honored their idols with gifts from God. They made, adorned, and paid homage to the works of their own hands with material endowments from God. Having abandoned all natural affection, they descended into the depths of human depravity by offering their children as sacrifices to their idols. God said these children were “born unto me” (vs. 20), and they have “slain my children” (vs. 21).

Israel was a steward of the blessings of God and so are all men. Stewardship does not imply ownership. A steward does not own anything. “For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out” (1 Timothy 6:7). God allows man an accommodative usage of “my money, house, land, cars,” but these and all material things are gifts and blessings from God and on loan from God. God is the “possessor of heaven and earth” (Genesis 14:19); everything “under the whole heaven” (Job 41:11) belongs to Him; “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1), and all the silver and gold on Earth belongs to God (Haggai 2:8).

David pointed to the material riches that he and Israel had donated for the construction of the temple and asserted, “But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? For all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee” (1 Chronicles 29:14). Joseph was the steward over Potiphar’s house and “all that he had he put into his hand” (Genesis 39:4), but not one thing belonged to Joseph. Even a man’s children belong to God. “Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward” (Psalm 127:3). Israel misused blessings and gifts on loan from God and so has the preponderance of humanity from time’s beginning.

Sixth, idolatry and sexual sin are twin sins. Illicit sexual conduct inheres in Ezekiel’s “eminent place” (vss. 24,31,39), his phrase “opened their feet to everyone that passed by” (vs. 25), and the “great of flesh” (vs. 26) comment that describes the fleshly lewd nature of Egyptian idolatry borrowed and made common in Israel’s own idolatrous practices. This chapter pulsates with sexual connotations. Physical whoredom follows spiritual whoredom like the night follows the day. Physical adultery is spiritual adultery’s shadow. It is idolatry’s cardinal sin. Balaam knew that idolatry and fornication were comrade sins and would bring divine judgment upon Israel that his initial efforts failed to achieve (Revelation 2:14; Numbers 25:1-9). If sexual lust in thought and act was idolatry’s only fruit, the worship of idols would yet have been as common in Israel as the rising of the Sun.

Seventh, memory failures beget ingratitude that often ends in spiritual death. The spirit of thanksgiving is as rare as was the good man in Israel (Micah 7:2). In an unsurpassed catalog of massive evils, ingratitude was at the top of the list (Romans 1:21). When a man refuses or neglects to reflect daily on the innumerable wonders of God’s love, grace, and goodness, he is paving the road to his own spiritual deterioration. Twice, Ezekiel points to Israel’s failure to remember the blessings of God in her national youth as one of the foundational reasons for her idolatry and companioned sins (vss. 22 and 43). Joseph languished two additional years in prison because the chief butler of Pharaoh did not “remember Joseph, but forgot him” (Genesis 40:23).

One negative report from ten spies drained Israel’s memory of God’s mighty miracles in Egypt onward and left them weeping all night in ingratitude and unbelief (Numbers 14:1-3). “Remember” was one of the key words that Moses used in his final sermon to the second generation from Egypt in the book of Deuteronomy. When David saw Bathsheba bathing, if he had supplanted inquiring about her (2 Samuel 11:3) with reflection and gratitude for God’s love and goodness, he would never have consummated his act of adultery. Remembering and thanking God continually for the blessings of 1 Kings 10 would have saved Solomon from the evils and consequences of 1 Kings 11. In conjunction with his wife, Jehoiada saved, protected, preserved, and aided Joash in becoming king and ruling over Judah until he died. At Jehoiada’s death, Joash forsook God, embraced idolatry, rejected the preaching and warnings of the prophets, and had Jehoiada’s son, Zechariah, stoned to death for rebuking him. Inspiration’s report of this tragedy reads, “Thus Joash the king remembered not the kindness which Jehoiada his father had done, but slew his son” (2 Chronicles 24:23-25). Memory failures and ingratitude accompany every continuous sin and sin of rebellion.

Eighth, the desires of the flesh are insatiable (vss. 28-34). Israel pursued political alliances with the heathen nations and claimed their gods as their own. Pagan nations were jealous and protective of their own gods, but Israel’s love affair with idols was indiscriminate. Multiplying gods meant multiplying opportunities for the flesh. When Syria was defeated by Israel, instead of forsaking their gods, the Syrians chose a different location for their conflict, declaring, “Their gods are gods of the hills, therefore they were stronger than we; but let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they” (1 Kings 20:23). Conversely, when Assyria’s military proved superior to Israel’s, Ahaz said, “Because the gods of the king of Syria help them, therefore will I sacrifice to them that they may help me.  But they were the ruin of him and of all Israel” (2 Chronicles 28:23).

When a man’s life is void of God, it is void of reason. There is nothing rational about the flesh. It feels, but does not think. Severed from God, law, and restraints, it choses sin’s pleasures with reckless abandon. Noah’s contemporaries were dominated by the “flesh” (Genesis 6:3) and pursued its ravenous passions until their minds were empty of a single righteous thought. A lifetime of fleshly lust cannot quench the fires of its interest. It does not pause to consider its ways. It is ever open to new ways of expression. It is oblivious to shame. Were the prophets, priests, and wise men of Judah “ashamed when they had committed abomination? Nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush” (Jeremiah 8:12). The flesh does not need the darkness to conceal its baseness. It considers it a “pleasure to riot in the daytime” (2 Peter 2:13). It possesses “eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin” (2 Peter 2:14). Israel loved their gods of wood and stone because they allowed the flesh the freedom to pursue its uninhibited desired ends.

Ninth, greater responsibility is attached to superior spiritual advantages that demand a more severe judgment for sin (vss. 44-51). Jesus utilized this principle when He depicted the day of judgment as rendering a more intense degree of punishment for certain Galilean cities “wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not” (Matthew 11:20) as compared with the pagan cities of Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom that did not enjoy such opportunities. Spiritual advantages abounded to the Jewish nation. Paul affirmed that Israel’s possession of the law of God was their chief advantage (Romans 3:1-2). Moses asserted that God’s statutes and judgments were so noteworthy that even the pagan nations would declare, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people” (Deuteronomy 4:6) because of their possession of the righteous laws of God. Due to their unique spiritual advantages, Israel’s sin was highhanded rebellion against God.

In depicting His judgment through Babylon, God said, “Behold I am bringing such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whosoever heareth of it, both his ears shall tingle” (2 Kings 21:12), and in describing God’s judgment on Jerusalem by the Roman army, Jesus said, “For there shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matthew 24:21). The severity of their judgment would match the severity of their sin.

Tenth, following the darkness of the night is the comfort and solace of the day’s light (vss. 53-63). The deep darkness of sin needs the bright light of redemption. The world of Genesis 1-2 was a world of continuous light. The physical night was bathed in the light of perfection and innocence. Even the darkness of the night carried the brilliance of the day’s light in its bosom. The day closed in consummate physical and spiritual serenity and the night welcomed its return in an unaltered state. Genesis 3:6 ruined everything. The Sun was shrouded in sackcloth. Nature wept, and its tears displaced the dew of the Earth.  In fig leaves, shame, and dread, Adam and Eve hid among the trees of Eden.

From the grave of despair, arose the resplendent light of redemption. The seed of woman (Genesis 3:15), of Abraham (Genesis 12:3), of Isaac (Genesis 26:4), and of Jacob (Genesis 28:14), was deposited in a small righteous remnant of Israel and Judah, secured in David (Acts 2:30), and assigned to Mary, “of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ” (Matthew 1:16), who paid the penalty for the catastrophe of Genesis 3:6 and every subsequent sin until time’s end, and became the “author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him” (Hebrews 5:9).

The post Ezekiel’s Response to the Culture War of His Day appeared first on Apologetics Press.

One on-line petition which seeks “Justice for Harambe,” calling for an investigation of the parents, has already received more than 500,000 signatures.⁴ Princeton University bioethics professor Peter Singer and animal rights activist Karen Dawn insist: “As animal advocates, we don’t automatically deem the life of a boy as exponentially more important than that of a fellow primate.”⁵ PETA was quick to scold the zoo even for having gorillas and other animals in captivity,⁶ where they are “exploited” and “gunned down.”⁷ PETA Primatologist, Julia Gallucci, chided: “This tragedy is exactly why PETA urges families to stay away from any facility that displays animals as sideshows for humans to gawk at.”⁸

For those whose minds have been shaped by the perspective of divine truth—as most American minds, for most of American history, once were—the confusion regarding the value of human beings in contrast with the animal kingdom are shocking, disturbing, and depressing. How can a civilization slump so far into outright animism, paganism, and atheism? Such should not be surprising since, once the Christian worldview is jettisoned from any society, the ideologies that will quickly fill the vacuum will inevitably be humanistic, heathen, irreligious, depraved, and idolatrous. Indeed, the half-century long descent into the abyss of moral and spiritual confusion that has characterized America is strongly reminiscent of the societal circumstances that prevailed in the Roman Empire during the first century:

[A]lthough they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man–and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen (Romans 1:22-25).

The passage proceeds to delineate the moral filth that ensues for such a people—a portrait of America’s own moral decline, including the acceptance and practice of homosexuality and other forms of sexual immorality, covetousness, and haters of God, to name a few (vss. 26-32).

The substantial infiltration of academia by evolution and atheism has resulted in precisely the social conditions that now prevail in America with regard to the nonsensical and inflated sense of importance assigned to animals and the physical environment. Any individual, who would have even a split second of hesitation to kill a gorilla (or any other animal) to save a human child, has unwittingly become a victim to the massive inundation of humanist propaganda that fails to assign the proper value to animals.

For those who believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that He literally left the heavenly realm and came to Earth to atone for sin, and that He now reigns in heaven itself, and will one day bring the entire physical Universe to a fiery conclusion (2 Peter 3:1-11), the value of Harambe the gorilla is a settled matter. Jesus spoke directly and definitively—several times—to the issue.

In Matthew 6, Jesus reassured His disciples that God’s care for them meant that they need not worry unnecessarily about acquiring food and clothes. His reasoning included this admonition: “Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (vs. 26, emp. added; cf. Luke 12:25—“Of how much more value are you than the birds?”).

On another occasion, Jesus challenged the disciples not to fear the hatred, intimidation, and opposition of those who would seek to deter their efforts to teach and preach His message. Why? He explained: “Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:29-31, emp. added; cf. Luke 12:7). Observe that animals have some value in this world. God created them for specific purposes. However, there is literally no comparison when it comes to evaluating their status and their worth in relation to humans. Animals are expendable. But Jesus adamantly insisted that humans are much more valuable than even many animals.

On yet another occasion, Jesus answered those who sought to condemn Him for healing—on the Sabbath—a man whose hand was shriveled and deformed. The Lord’s logical prowess was piercing and penetrating: “He said to them, ‘What man is there among you who has one sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out?’” This question was a reflection of Deuteronomy 22:1-4. It was part of the Law of Moses designed to promote care and concern for one’s fellow man. In an agrarian society, the preservation of farm animals was a serious matter. A family’s survival was dependent on its animals for food and clothes. So Jesus reasoned, if it is proper to intervene to save the life of a farm animal so that human beings might be provided for, “of how much more value then is a man than a sheep?” (Matthew 12:11-12). Do sheep have some value? Certainly—they are vital to providing the basic necessities of humans. But they are mere animals—they do not have souls like humans, nor were they made in God’s image like humans (Genesis 1:26).⁹ Jesus’ point was poignant. He was, in essence, stressing an important contrast between animals and humans. He was essentially saying, “If you see the value of preserving the life of a dumb, soulless animal for the good of humans, why in the world would you question My action which will improve the life and well-being of a human?” Indeed, Jesus demonstrated that even His religious enemies were clear thinking enough to know that animals are not even to be compared to the value of human beings.

Whatever might be said about parental responsibility to discipline their children and train them to be obedient when parents warn children of the potential dangers that exist at zoos, and whatever might be said about the value of animals—from zebras and gorillas to tarantulas and boa constrictors—nevertheless, according to Deity, human beings are of much more value. As a nation, our depraved moral sensibilities are on display when our citizens show more concern for a 17-year-old gorilla than for the 56 million innocent human babies that have been slaughtered by abortion since 1973.¹⁰

REFERENCES

The post Are You Not Much More Valuable than an Animal? appeared first on Apologetics Press.

For those who believe in the God of the Bible, this decision is encouraging—not because of any financial hardship that would have been imposed on the employer, and not because of the erroneous claim by liberal politicians that the health of women is endangered—but because killing unborn babies is murder and deserves absolutely no support or encouragement from government. The Bible plainly teaches that human life commences at conception (Zechariah 12:1; Job 10:11-12; Ecclesiastes 11:5; Psalm 139:13-16; Jeremiah 1:4-5; Galatians 1:15). It also teaches that the term “baby” (brephos) applies to a person in utero as well as in the crib (Luke 1:39-44; 2:12,16; for more biblical allusions, see Miller, 2003).

The culture war being waged in American civilization is a life and death struggle for Christianity, Christian morality, and whether America is going to continue to enjoy the favor and blessing of God. This is America’s most pressing concern (see Miller, 2012).

REFERENCES

Miller, Dave (2003), “Abortion and the Bible,” Apologetics Press, http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=7&article=445&topic=25.

Miller, Dave (2012), America’s Most Pressing Concern DVD, Apologetics Press, http://apologeticspress.org/store/Product.aspx?pid=456.

“Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby in Contraceptive Mandate Challenge” (2014), Fox News, June 30, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/06/30/supreme-court-hobby-lobby/.

The post Victory for the Children! appeared first on Apologetics Press.

Dr. Ehrman, a self-proclaimed agnostic, was there to affirm the proposition: “The pain and suffering in the world indicate that the Christian God does not exist.” I was there to deny that proposition and show that the pain and suffering in this world do not show that God does not exist. In this article, I would like to highlight some things that I learned from this debate.

Unbelief Likes to Hide Its Real Agenda

Almost a year prior to the event, Dr. Ehrman agreed to the proposition of the debate. He contracted to shoulder the affirmative position and show how the pain and suffering in the world indicate that the God of the Bible does not exist. When he issued his opening statements, however, he stated that he was not there to win a debate. In fact, throughout the evening, he said that he was not even trying to convince the audience of the accuracy of his position. He said that he did not mind if the listeners agreed with him or not. If the listeners wanted to believe something different from what he was saying, it was fine with him, as long as they had seriously thought it through. He made it a conspicuous point to insist that he was not trying to convert anyone, or even convince anybody of anything. It is interesting to note that Blair Scott, the atheist I debated in 2011, said almost the exact same thing.

There are two reasons why I find Dr. Ehrman’s approach perplexing. First, it shows a complete failure to do what he agreed to do with the proposition. If a debater agrees to affirm a certain proposition, then the debate can only proceed if he attempts to do that. Dr. Ehrman, in essence, said early on in his opening comments that he could not uphold his end of the debate and show that the pain and suffering in the world indicate that the Christian God does not exist.

Second, Dr. Ehrman’s statement that he was not trying to convince the audience of his point of view is simply not true. In the very act of saying he is not trying to convince you of anything, he is trying to convince you that he is not trying to convince you. You see, if he can convince you that he is not trying to convince you of anything, then when he tries to convince you that the Christian God does not exist, you may not even recognize what is happening. It is the classic “wolf in sheep’s clothing” technique. The phrase comes from a dangerous predator (a wolf) attempting to look innocent by donning the garb of a helpless sheep. If Ehrman can sheepishly suggest that he is not a big, bad unbeliever here to steal your faith, then you may not be on the defensive when he tries to do that very thing.

There are at least two ways to lay bare Dr. Ehrman’s deception. First, we could simply ask the common sense question: why is Dr. Ehrman writing books and doing debates if he does not care if he convinces anyone of his premises? If the situation is such that any point of view is equally valid, then, pray tell, why has Dr. Ehrman poured thousands of man hours into writing books that state that the biblical view of suffering is contradictory, or that pain and suffering indicate that the Christian God does not exist? What’s it all for? Is he simply spinning his wheels to collect royalties and honorariums from the sale of his books and from his speaking engagements, with no desire to see others adopt his point of view? Such would seem absurd. The mere fact that he has engaged in five debates on the topic of suffering (and numerous debates on various other topics) brings to light his disingenuous claim that he is not trying to convince people that the Christian God does not exist.

The second way to show the falsity of Dr. Ehrman’s claim that he is not trying to convince people of the correctness of his position is to show specific instances in our debate in which he tried to convince the audience of his position. That can easily be done. For example, throughout the debate, Dr. Ehrman insisted that the Bible writers made statements about suffering that are contradictory to one another. He stated that the books of Job and Ecclesiastes explicitly deny that there is an afterlife. And he quoted several verses from Ecclesiastes that supposedly “prove” that the book denies an afterlife. Was he trying to convince the audience that Ecclesiastes was not inspired and contradicted other books of the Bible? Absolutely. [NOTE: During the debate it was brought out that he was using the verses out of context and “conveniently” left out the other verses in the text that affirm an afterlife.] At another point in the debate, Dr. Ehrman said there is no afterlife and that this life is all there is. With such statements, he most certainly was trying to convince the audience that there is no afterlife.

From what I can tell, Dr. Ehrman has done as much or more than any single individual in modern times to destroy the Christian faith of literally thousands of people, young and old alike, across the globe. He has written four New York Times bestsellers, in each of which he boldly proclaims that the Bible is not God’s Word, Jesus was not, and never claimed to be, God, the Christian God does not exist, and the resurrection of Jesus never occurred. And then he stood before a live audience of 1,500 people and tried to convince them that he was not there to convince them of anything. Such a ploy is nothing short of dishonest. It would be my plea and prayer that every person who views the debate could see past such subtle and devious devices.

The Logical and Emotional Aspects of Suffering

The “problem of suffering,” as it is often called, is used by unbelievers to cast doubt on the existence of the God of the Bible. The tactic normally employed, and the one utilized by Dr. Ehrman, is to rattle off a series of statistics about death, disease, murder, war, genocide, natural disasters, and a host of other calamities and then finish the list with a question such as, “Are you telling me that a loving God allows that?” This is a well-known rhetorical device designed to appeal to your emotions. There is no logical argument made. There is nothing in the statement that would lead a person to correctly conclude, “Thus the Christian God does not exist.” It is simply an emotional appeal designed to leave the listener with the sense that something is wrong, when in reality, there has been no real evidence presented that verifies the conclusion.

The emotional appeal presented by unbelievers such as Dr. Ehrman has long been known to be a logical fallacy—an incorrect way to arrive at any conclusion. You can find this logical fallacy in virtually every list of logical fallacies. One sample that represents the standard discussion of the appeal to emotion states that an appeal to emotion is when a person attempts

to manipulate an emotional response in place of a valid or compelling argument. Appeals to emotion include appeals to fear, envy, hatred, pity, pride, and more. It’s important to note that sometimes a logically coherent argument may inspire emotion or have an emotional aspect, but the problem and fallacy occurs when emotion is used instead of a logical argument, or to obscure the fact that no compelling rational reason exists for one’s position. Everyone, bar sociopaths, is affected by emotion, and so appeals to emotion are a very common and effective argument tactic, but they’re ultimately flawed, dishonest, and tend to make one’s opponents justifiably emotional (“Appeal to Emotion,” 2014).

Throughout the debate, it was clear that Dr. Ehrman was not providing logical arguments for his belief that pain and suffering supposedly show that the God of the Bible does not exist. Instead, he was simply offering an emotional appeal. He never once offered rational or logical evidence to affirm his position. Instead, he kept insisting that humans are emotional beings, and suffering is emotional. In fact, he attempted to belittle the idea that we should even approach suffering from a logical standpoint. He stated that the concepts of suffering “couldn’t be solved like a mathematical formula.” And he said that it is not “whether 2+2=4 or not, it’s a matter of how to make sense of it all.” The irony of such a statement is that “to make sense of it all” demands that there be something more than emotion to our answer. “Making sense” means thinking correctly, logically, or rationally about something. It is impossible “to make sense” of anything without providing logical answers to the questions presented.

Dr. Ehrman’s raw appeal to emotion is misguided and inadequate. Any legitimate answer to suffering should have both a proper emotional and a logical aspect. Dr. Ehrman as much as admitted that he cannot provide a rational reason to accept his conclusion that the Christian God does not exist. In the course of the debate he conceded over and over that there is no logical reason to be an unbeliever. He rested his case on his emotional appeal. In contrast, however, Christianity and the Bible can offer both logical and emotional ways to validate the claims that an all-loving, all-powerful God exists. The Bible certainly offers logical reasons that explain suffering, such as—God giving people free will and them misusing it; some suffering resulting as a punishment for wicked deeds; some suffering being redemptive and bringing about a greater good; and the opportunity of an afterlife where all can be made right. The Bible also offers the only satisfactory emotional answer to suffering: that God, in the human form of Jesus Christ, came to Earth to share in our suffering. The battered body of the Lord Jesus Christ hanging on the cross for the sins of man provides the final emotional exclamation point to the logical answers to suffering provided in the Bible.

Ehrman Denies Objective Moral Values

I continue to be astonished at the admissions that unbelievers such as Dr. Ehrman and others I have debated make during our debates. For instance, when I debated Dan Barker in 2009, he admitted that, according to his view of atheism, it would be permissible to rape two million girls to save humanity. After such admissions, I am awestruck that other unbelievers continue to align themselves with such debased and immoral thinking. In my debate with Dr. Ehrman, he made some of the most serious and baffling admissions of any unbeliever that I have heard in any debate.

In my opening statements, I presented two problems for unbelief as it relates to suffering and God’s existence. First, I presented the moral argument for God’s existence, which states that if objective moral values exist, then God exists. Objective moral values do exist, therefore God exists. From what I had read from the pen of Dr. Ehrman and from what I had heard in his other debates, I assumed he would argue that there can be objective moral values without a Creator. After all, he is very fond of saying that this world is unfair, unjust, and that there is something wrong with it. If there really are objective concepts of fairness and justice, then those objective values must be explained. It was rather surprising when he abandoned the idea of objective moral values and stated that there are none. He argued that cultural anthropologists have “shown” that some cultures have differing sets of values, and therefore there cannot be any objective values. He insisted that there are “no moral absolutes,” and we do not need to provide any logical or philosophical reasons why we think something is wrong; we should simply be able to say that we think something is right or wrong, and that should suffice.

It was clear in the debate that Dr. Ehrman’s position (that there are no absolutes) is indefensible. During the discussion, it was brought up that the Nazis were doing what they thought was right by killing millions of Jews. Can we, as a different society and culture, tell the Nazis that they were violating some law that is higher than a cultural law? According to Dr. Ehrman’s position, we cannot. In fact, he insisted that there are no “moral imperatives.” A moral imperative is something that a person is bound by objective moral law to follow. When we begin a statement with, “you should…,” the “should” implies that there is something that you are obliged to do. Dr. Ehrman’s position is that there is nothing that one person can legitimately say another person “should” do. And yet, Dr. Ehrman often says (even though it contradicts his position) we “should” do this or that.

I have rarely heard an unbeliever in public in modern times so openly embrace moral relativism and deny moral absolutes. This denial of moral absolutes is not even embraced by some of the most hardnosed atheists, such as Sam Harris or Michael Ruse. In fact, Michael Ruse stated: “The man who says that it is morally acceptable to rape little children, is just as mistaken as the man who says that 2 + 2 = 5” (1982, p. 275). What Dr. Ehrman tried to do is say that there are no moral absolutes—no moral imperatives—but at the same time say we should still be able to say that some things are absolutely right and absolutely wrong. When he abandoned absolute moral values, he destroyed the foundation that would permit any person to say something is wrong, unfair, or unjust. In essence, he was saying that he might not like certain things, like someone beating a child for fun, but since there are no moral absolutes or imperatives, one culture cannot tell another culture that it is wrong for them to do it. [For a discussion of the moral argument, see Lyons, 2011).]

Easy Answers

Throughout the debate, and often in his writings, Dr. Ehrman claims that Christian apologists are providing easy answers and are not really wrestling with the reality of suffering. Ehrman is fond of saying, and said at least twice in the debate, that if there is an answer that can be given in 20 seconds that supposedly solves “the problem of suffering,” then it is almost certainly wrong. The implication of his statement is that his brand of unbelief does not provide these types of “easy” answers. In fact, during the debate, he claimed that he did not even have any answers, just questions. And he disparaged me for claiming to have answers, as though somehow, if a person claims to have any definite answers, he is doing something wrong.

This “easy answers” idea turns out to be inconsistent. Dr. Ehrman claims not to be giving answers to the problem of suffering, but that is not true. He is offering answers. On his blog he stated: “There is suffering because people are able to do nasty things when they want, and they often do them, usually because it advances their own purposes; and there is suffering because the universe we live in is a hard and cruel place that doesn’t give a rip about us or our needs and sometimes we get in the way of its workings” (Ehrman, 2013). His answer is that there is suffering because there is no loving God. As I stated in the debate, that answer takes far less than 20 seconds to state. And it is an answer, ironically, that is very “easy.” That is, without a God, we do not have to wrestle with things that seem unjust or unfair. Without a God, we do not have to demand that other people adhere to absolute moral values. Without a God, there is no “problem of suffering” because humans are just another living organism that happen to get in the way of the naturalistic workings of the Universe. Dr. Ehrman’s idea of an “easy answer” cannot be defined in any real sense. He means that any answer that includes God or an afterlife is “easy,” and his answers (that he does not call answers, because remember he is not trying to convince anyone of anything) that do not include God or an afterlife are not easy. I find it fitting that when C.S. Lewis was struggling through his unbelief, and he ran into the problem of trying to arrive at absolute moral values without God, he rejected unbelief and stated, “Consequently, atheism turns out to be too simple” (1952, pp. 45-46). “There is no God.” “This Universe is chaotic and cares nothing for us.” Those are some of the “easiest” and most unsatisfactory answers ever given to suffering.

The Bible Taken Out of Context

One issue on which Dr. Ehrman spent a considerable amount of time in his opening statements was his assertion that the Bible writers have different, and often contradictory, views of how to deal with suffering. Dr. Ehrman delights in saying that the book of Job claims that Job is such a “peon” (Ehrman’s word) that he shouldn’t even ask why he is suffering. Dr. Ehrman insists that the prophets viewed suffering as punishment: God bringing suffering into the lives of those who disobey. He contends that the apocalyptic writers had an altogether different view of suffering that contradicted that of the prophets. He claims that the apocalyptic view is that evil forces in this world are causing suffering, and those who are righteous are suffering because of these evil forces.

The contention that the Bible writers’ views on suffering are contradictory can only be made if you leave out large portions of what the books actually say. This point became clear in the debate when Dr. Ehrman claimed to hold to the view of Ecclesiastes—“that we should eat and drink for tomorrow we die.” When the entirety of the book is read, however, it is clear that the writer summed up the whole of man by saying that humans should fear God and keep His commandments (12:13-14). Dr. Ehrman claimed that the conclusion had been added on by a later writer. But there is no textual evidence that would lead to this conclusion. In fact, other verses in the book, such as 11:9, which says that God will bring each person into judgment for his deeds, or 7:29 that says that God made man upright but he has chosen to do evil, do not correspond with Dr. Ehrman’s unbelief. It is only when those verses are intentionally ignored that the teaching of the book could be construed to be contradictory to other teachings about suffering found in the Bible. Futhermore, Dr. Ehrman misses the point that Ecclesiastes was written to show that only when life is viewed from an earthly, materialistic perspective, is all life meaningless. When viewed in light of eternity, there is a purpose to this life (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14).

We can further see the flaws of Dr. Ehrman’s assessment in his dealing with apocalyptic literature. He insists that according to such literature, it is only the wicked who prosper, and it is the righteous who suffer at the hands of the evil spiritual forces. Yet a quick look at the book of Daniel shows this to be an oversimplified statement of what the writers actually said. Why are the Israelites in captivity? Because of their own sins. God is punishing them. Why are Daniel and his friends suffering? Because the righteous sometimes suffer. Does Daniel ever prosper? Yes, and he is elevated to one of the most honorable positions in the kingdom. Is there an afterlife in this book? Certainly since “those who sleep in the dust will arise, and some will go to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (12:2). Are some aspects of suffering redemptive? Yes, that is why Nebuchadnezzar in chapter four is humbled by God and then given his kingdom back after he repented. There is nothing in apocalyptic literature that cannot be reconciled with every other answer given in the Bible. In reality, the books of the Bible supplement one another in their dealing with suffering in order to give a broad answer to the many different aspects of the topic. Dr. Ehrman’s accusation that the Bible is contradictory on the theme of suffering is inaccurate and cannot be sustained.

The Tragedy of unbelief

Dr. Ehrman is one of the most well-known and highly credentialed unbelievers in the world. The flaws and inconsistencies in his positions are not due to a lack of intelligence. The flaws are inherent to unbelief. Since disbelief in God and the Bible as His Word is irrational, there will always be aspects of every unbeliever’s case that cannot be defended. Ultimately, the most heartbreaking failure of unbelief is the void it causes in the spiritual lives of its adherents. Even though unbelievers attempt to deny the spiritual dimension of their lives, this denial comes with tragic consequences. For instance, in his book on suffering, Dr. Ehrman wrote:

The Problem is this: I have such a fantastic life that I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for it; I am fortunate beyond words. But I don’t have anyone to express my gratitude to. This is a void deep inside me, a void of wanting someone to thank, and I don’t see any plausible way of filling it (2008, p. 128).

Dr. Ehrman has a deep void inside that he cannot fill because he attempts to deny that he is a spiritual being created in the image of God. One of the most basic human emotions in the face of blessings is the desire to thank the Giver of those blessings. By denying God’s existence, Ehrman has denied himself the opportunity to be a completely fulfilled human. It is for this reason that I come away from debates such as this one with a heavy heart of pity and sorrow for those who have chosen unbelief.

Another telling statement comes from Dr. Ehrman in his discussion of hell. He states:

As a result, when I fell away from my faith—not just in the Bible as God’s inspired word, but in Christ as the only way of salvation, and eventually from the view that Christ was himself divine, and beyond that from the view that there is an all-powerful God in charge of this world—I still wondered, deep down inside: could I have been right after all? What if I was right then but wrong now? Will I burn in hell forever? The fear of death gripped me for years, and there are still moments when I wake up at night in a cold sweat (2008, p. 127.)

Ehrman’s haunting admission brings to mind the only solution to this crippling fear. As the Hebrews writer stated, Jesus shared in humanity’s flesh and blood that “through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Hebrews 2:14-15). As much as Dr. Ehrman tries to deny that Jesus is the answer, many of his statements belie his inability to do so. In one of his blog posts, he stated:

When I was a Christian, acknowledging that the myth of the incarnation was a myth, I accepted the myth as saying something very profound. In that myth, the ultimate reality (call it God) did not come into the world in a blaze of power worthy of, well, a Roman emperor. He came as an impoverished child to an unwed mother in the midst of a world of pain and suffering; and this child grew in poverty and urged his followers to give of themselves for the sake of others, insisting that it was the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, the hungry, the sick, the demon-possessed, the sinners, the outcasts who were the concern of that ultimate reality. That made a lot of sense to me. It still does (2012, emp. added).

After pouring over Dr.  Ehrman’s materials, meeting him in a head-to-head debate, and praying for him frequently, I pity him most because he now lives a life with no hope and without God in this world. The answer to his struggle with suffering, to his attempts to “make sense of it all” is staring him in the face, in the person of Jesus Christ. But Bart refuses to accept the answer, and instead, attempts to satisfy himself with questions that leave him with a deep void in his life and frightened about eternity.

After the lights are out, and the final scene on life’s curtain is almost drawn, let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: “Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (Ecclesiastes 12:13). Would to God that Bart Ehrman and other unbelievers truly accepted the book of Ecclesiastes.

References

“Appeal to Emotion” (2014), Your Logical Fallacy Is, https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-emotion.

Ehrman, Bart (2008), God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer (New York: Harper One).

Ehrman, Bart (2012), “Christmas Longings,” http://ehrmanblog.org/christmas-longings/.

Ehrman, Bart (2013), “Suffering and My Blog,” http://ehrmanblog.org/suffering-and-my-blog/.

Lewis, C.S. (1952), Mere Christianity (New York: Simon and Schuster).

Lyons, Eric (2011), “The Moral Argument for God’s Existence,” http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=12&article=4101&topic=95.

Ruse, Michael (1982), Darwinism Defended: A Guide to the Evolution Controversies (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley).

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Isn’t America’s wealth an indication that the nation is pleasing to God?

A:

There’s no question that America’s unprecedented affluence and technological superiority have been the direct result of God showering the country with His blessings for over 200 years (Psalm 33:12). However, we must not think even for a moment that He will continue His favor indefinitely if we, as a nation, veer from the principles of Christian morality on which the Republic was founded. One cannot assume that since national existence remains intact and the bulk of the populace continues to enjoy lavish physical comforts that God is pleased or that He has no intention of “pulling the plug.” Indeed, tragically, America would seem to have entered the same phase of national status which God warned would one day characterize Israel of old if they jettisoned God’s commands and decrees from their lives.

Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joy and gladness of heart, for the abundance of everything, therefore you shall serve your enemies, whom the LORD will send against you, in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in need of everything; and He will put a yoke of iron on your neck until He has destroyed you (Deuteronomy 28:47-48, emp. added).

If there was ever an accurate description of America’s condition, it would be that we enjoy “the abundance of everything.” Yet great spiritual poverty has spread like a scourge across the land. The abundance that Americans wallow in everyday should propel them to live godly lives before the great Governor of the Universe. Sadly, however, much of the population is rushing headlong down the precipice of moral depravity, wanton luxury, hedonism, and irreligion. We should fully expect the same outcome (2 Kings 17 and 25). Even as God expressed through the prophet Zechariah:

Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Execute true justice, show mercy and compassion everyone to his brother. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. Let none of you plan evil in his heart against his brother.” But they refused to heed, shrugged their shoulders, and stopped their ears so that they could not hear…refusing to hear the law and the words which the Lord of hosts had sent…. Thus great wrath came from the Lord of hosts…. Thus the land became desolate after them, so that no one passed through or returned; for they made the pleasant land desolate (7:8-14, emp. added).

America has most certainly been “the pleasant land.” But she can be made desolate—if God wills.

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[EDITOR’S NOTE: We receive many questions at A.P. from inquirers all over the world. We are devoting this issue of R&R to a few of these questions that we think may be of interest to a wider audience.]

Q:

“I agree that the historical proof is there that Christianity was the religion of the vast majority of the Founders and Americans ever since. But in the last half-century, America has changed drastically with the influx of many other worldviews and religious sentiments, and we seem to be doing just fine. So why would you say Christianity is still needed in America?”

A:

For the same reason it was needed at the beginning: it is the only way to sustain the kind of Republic we enjoy. The practice of Christian principles by the majority of the citizens is not necessary in a dictatorship, monarchy, communist or socialist state, atheistic country, Islamic country, etc. In all such ideological settings, the government is coercive and regulates everybody and everything. But to have the kind of freedom we have enjoyed in this country, where everyone is free to pursue moral happiness and exercise freedom of choice with regard to profession, travel, etc., the people must embrace Christian morality. The less of Christianity in the hearts and behavior of the population, the more need for government regulation. The more the people are self-controlled by Christian principles, the fewer laws are needed. Consider these quotes by Founders who articulated this principle plainly:

Patrick Henry:

I am not so much alarmed as at the apprehension of [France] destroying the great pillars of all government and of social life; I mean virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone, that renders us invincible. These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these, we are conquered, fallen indeed (as quoted in Henry, 1891, 2:591-592, emp. added).

James McHenry (signer of the Constitution andSecretary of War):

The Holy Scriptures…can alone secure to society, order and peace, and to our courts of justice and constitutions of government, purity, stability, and usefulness. In vain, without the Bible, we increase penal laws and draw entrenchments around our institutions. Bibles are strong entrenchments. Where they abound, men cannot pursue wicked courses (as quoted in Steiner, 1921, p. 14, emp. added).

John Adams (signer of Declaration of Independence, Vice-President under George Washington, and second President of the United States):

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion…. Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other (1854, 9:229).

Statesmen my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand…. The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a greater Measure, than they have it now, They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty. They will only exchange Tyrants and Tyrannies (1976-2000, emp. added).

Benjamin Rush (signer of the Declaration of Independence):

I have been alternately called an aristocrat and a democrat. I am neither. I am a Christocrat. I believe all power…will always fail of producing order and happiness in the hands of man. He alone who created and redeemed man is qualified to govern him (as quoted in Ramsay, 1813, p. 103).

John Witherspoon (signer of the Declaration of Independence):

It is the prerogative of God to do what he will with his own; but he often displays his justice itself, by throwing into the furnace those, who, though they may not be visibly worse than others, may yet have more to answer for, as having been favoured with more distinguished privileges, both civil and sacred…. Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners makes a people ripe for destruction…. [W]hen the manners of a nation are pure, when true religion and internal principles maintain their vigour, the attempts of the most powerful enemies to oppress them are commonly baffled and disappointed…. [H]e is the best friend to American liberty, who is most sincere and active in promoting true and undefiled religion [Christianity—James 1:27], and who sets himself with the greatest firmness to bear down profanity and immorality of every kind (1777, pp. 16,33, emp. added).

Noah Webster (Father of American Scholarship and Education):

[T]hose who destroy the influence and authority of the Christian religion, sap the foundations of public order, of liberty, and of republican government (1832, pp. 310-311).

Jedidiah Morse (Father of American Geography):

To the kindly influence of Christianity we owe that degree of civil freedom, and political and social happiness which mankind now enjoys. In proportion as the genuine effects of Christianity are diminished in any nation, either through unbelief, or the corruption of its doctrines, or the neglect of its institutions; in the same proportion will the people of that nation recede from the blessings of genuine freedom, and approximate the miseries of complete despotism. All efforts to destroy the foundations of our holy religion, ultimately tend to the subversion also of our political freedom and happiness. Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government, and all the blessings which flow from them, must fall with them (1799, p. 11, emp. added).

Elias Boudinot (President of the Continental Congress):

[O]ur country should be preserved from the dreadful evil of becoming enemies to the religion of the Gospel, which I have no doubt, but would be introductive of the dissolution of government and the bonds of civil society (1801, p. xxii, emp. added).

George Washington (Father of our Country, first President of the United States):

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric? (1796, pp. 22-23, emp. added).

Washington also said only God can protect our nation:

I am sure there never was a people who had more reason to acknowledge a Divine interposition in their affairs than those of the United States; and I should be pained to believe that they have forgotten that Agency which was so often manifested during our revolution, or that they failed to consider the omnipotence of that God who is alone able to protect them (1792, “Letter to…”).

Observe that these Founders (and many more—see Miller, 2009) insisted that Christianity is necessary to provide the people with proper moral behavior so that the Republic they established might be perpetuated. No other religion—Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, or even Atheism—can provide the proper moral framework necessary to perpetuate the civil institutions and way of life created by the Founders and Framers.

The Bible teaches the same thing:

When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when a wicked man rules, the people groan. The king establishes the land by justice, but he who receives bribes overthrows it (Proverbs 29:2-4). No king is saved by the multitude of an army; a mighty man is not delivered by great strength. A horse is a vain hope for safety; neither shall it deliver any by its great strength. Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, on those who hope in His mercy (Psalm 33:16-18).

Further, consider this: If there is a God, and if He is the God of the Bible, and if His Word is expressed in the Bible alone, then according to that Word, (1) He is active in the affairs of nations (Daniel 4:17); (2) He blesses those who look to Him (Psalm 33:12); and (3) He will abandon and even punish the nation that spurns His will and chooses to live sinfully—which is precisely the direction our nation/citizens are swiftly headed. Hence, we should well expect national calamity to come in some form (economic collapse, infiltration by enemies, increase in diseases, natural calamity, etc. [Deuteronomy 28:15ff., et al.]).

To repeat: Systematically banning Christianity from our schools, our government, and the public square will have two results: (1) a massive increase in immorality, crime, and social anarchy, and (2) God’s disfavor and wrath will eventually be unleashed against the nation.

REFERENCES

Adams, John (1854), The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, ed. Charles Adams (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company).

Adams, John (1976-2000), Letters of delegates to Congress, 1774-1789, ed. Paul Smith (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress), Volume 4, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field(DOCID+@lit(dg004210)).

Boudinot, Elias (1801), The Age of Revelation (Philadelphia, PA: Asbury Dickins), http://www.google.com/books?id=XpcPAAAAIAAJ.

Henry, William (1891), Patrick Henry; Life, Correspondence and Speeches (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons), http://www.archive.org/details/pathenrylife01henrrich. See also George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741-1799: Series 4. General Correspondence. 1697-1799, Image 1071, “Patrick Henry to Archibald Blair,” January 8, 1799, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mgw4&fileName=gwpage113.db&recNum=1070.

Miller, Dave (2009), Christ & the Continental Congress (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).

Morse, Jedidiah (1799), A Sermon, Exhibiting the Present Dangers and Consequent Duties of the Citizens of the United States of America (Charlestown, MS: Samuel Etheridge), http://www.archive.org/details/sermonexhibiting00morsrich.

Ramsay, David (1813), An Eulogium Upon Benjamin Rush, M.D. (Philadelphia, PA: Bradford & Inskeep).

Steiner, Bernard (1921), One Hundred and Ten Years of Bible Society Work in Maryland, 1810-1920 (Baltimore, MD: The Maryland Bible Society).

Washington, George (1792), “Letter to John Armstrong, March 11, 1792,” Letterbook 18
Image 110 of 359, George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741-1799: Series 2 Letterbooks, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mgw2&fileName=gwpage018.db&recNum=109.

Washington, George (1796), Address of George Washington, President of the United States…Preparatory to His Declination (Baltimore, MD: George & Henry Keating).

Webster, Noah (1832), History of the United States (New Haven, CT: Durrie & Peck).

Witherspoon, John (1777), The Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men (Philadelphia, PA: Town & Country), http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Dominion_of_Providence_Over_the_Pass.html?id=HpRIAAAAYAAJ.

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Some 3,400 years before the Holocaust, the God of the Bible commanded the Israelites to “destroy all the inhabitants of the land” of Canaan (Joshua 9:24). They were to conquer, kill, and cast out the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites (Exodus 23:23; Deuteronomy 7:1-2; Joshua 3:10). After crossing the Jordan River, we learn in the book of Joshua that the Israelites “utterly destroyed all that was in the city [of Jericho], both man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword…. [T]hey burned the city and all that was in it with fire” (Joshua 6:21,24). They also “utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai” (Joshua 8:26), killing 12,000 men and women, and hanging their king (8:25,29). In Makkedah and Libnah, the Israelites “let none remain” (Joshua 10:28,30). They struck Lachish “and all the people who were in it with the edge of the sword” (10:32). The Israelites then conquered Gezer, Eglon, Hebron, Debir, and Hazor (10:33-39; 11:1-1). “So all the cities of those kings, and all their kings, Joshua took and struck with the edge of the sword. He utterly destroyed them, as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded” (Joshua 11:12).

God had the Israelites kill countless thousands, perhaps millions, of people throughout the land of Canaan. It was genocide in the sense that it was a planned, systematic, limited extermination of a number of nation states from a relatively small area in the Middle East (cf. “Genocide,” 2000; cf. also “Genocide,” 2012). But, it was not a war against a particular race (from the Greek genos) or ethnic group. Nor were the Israelites commanded to pursue and kill the Canaanite nations if they fled from Israel’s Promised Land. The Israelites were to drive out and dispossess the nations of their land (killing all who resisted the dispossession), but they were not instructed to annihilate a particular race or ethnic group from the face of the Earth.

Still, many find God’s commands to conquer and destroy the Canaanite nation states problematic. How could a loving God instruct one group of people to kill and conquer another group? America’s most well-known critic of Christianity in the late 1700s and early 1800s, Thomas Paine (one of only a handful of America’s Founding Fathers who did not claim to be a Christian), called the God of the Old Testament “the Mars of the Jews, the fighting God of Israel,” Who was “boisterous, contemptible, and vulgar” (Paine, 1807). Two centuries later, Richard Dawkins (arguably the most famous atheist in the world today), published his book The God Delusion, which soon became a New York Times bestseller. One of the most oft-quoted phrases from this work comes from page 31, where Dawkins called God, a “racist, infanticidal, genocidal…capriciously malevolent bully” (2006). According to one search engine, this quote (in part or in whole) is found on-line approximately one million times. The fact is, critics of the God of the Bible are fond of repeating the allegation that, because of His instruction to the Israelites to kill millions of people in their conquest of Canaan, the God of the Bible has (allegedly) shown Himself to be an unruly, shameful, offensive, genocidal, “evil monster” (Dawkins, p. 248; cf. Hitchens, 2007, p. 107).

Was God’s Campaign Against Canaan Immoral?

How could a supremely good (Mark 10:18), all-loving (1 John 4:8), perfectly holy God (Leviticus 11:44-45) order the Israelites to slay with swords myriads of human beings, letting “none remain” in Canaan? Is not such a planned, systematic extermination of nations equivalent to the murderous actions of the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s, as atheists and other critics of Christianity would have us believe? In truth, God’s actions in Israel’s conquest of Canaan were in perfect harmony with His supremely loving, merciful, righteous, just, and holy nature.

Punishing Evildoers is Not Unloving

Similar to how merciful parents, principals, policemen, and judges can justly administer punishment to rule-breakers and evildoers, so, too, can the all-knowing, all-loving Creator of the Universe. Loving parents and principals have administered corporal punishment appropriately to children for years (cf. Proverbs 13:24). Merciful policemen, who are constantly saving the lives of the innocent, have the authority (both from God and the government—Romans 13:1-4) to kill a wicked person who is murdering others. Just judges have the authority to sentence a depraved child rapist to death. Loving-kindness and corporal or capital punishment are not antithetical. Prior to conquering Canaan, God commanded the Israelites, saying,

You shall not hate your brother in your heart…. You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself…. And if a stranger dwells with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him. The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself (Leviticus 19:17-18,33-34; cf. Romans 13:9).

The faithful Jew was expected, as are Christians, to “not resist an evil person” (Matthew 5:39) but rather “go the extra mile” (Matthew 5:41) and “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39). “Love,” after all, “is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:10; cf. Matthew 22:36-40). Interestingly, however, the Israelite was commanded to punish (even kill) lawbreakers. Just five chapters after commanding the individual Israelite to “not take vengeance,” but “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18), God twice said that murderers would receive the death penalty (Leviticus 24:21,17).

The Wickedness of the Inhabitants of Canaan

The Canaanite nations were punished because of their extreme wickedness. God did not cast out the Canaanites for being a particular race or ethnic group. God did not send the Israelites into the land of Canaan to destroy a number of righteous nations. On the contrary, the Canaanite nations were horribly depraved. They practiced “abominable customs” (Leviticus 18:30) and did “detestable things” (Deuteronomy 18:9, NASB). They practiced idolatry, witchcraft, soothsaying, and sorcery. They attempted to cast spells upon people and call up the dead (Deuteronomy 18:10-11).

Their “cultic practice was barbarous and thoroughly licentious” (Unger, 1954, p. 175). Their “deities…had no moral character whatever,” which “must have brought out the worst traits in their devotees and entailed many of the most demoralizing practices of the time,” including sensuous nudity, orgiastic nature-worship, snake worship, and even child sacrifice (Unger, 1954, p. 175; cf. Albright, 1940, p. 214). As Moses wrote, the inhabitants of Canaan would “burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods” (Deuteronomy 12:30). The Canaanite nations were anything but “innocent.” In truth, “[t]hese Canaanite cults were utterly immoral, decadent, and corrupt, dangerously contaminating and thoroughly justifying the divine command to destroy their devotees” (Unger, 1988). They were so nefarious that God said they defiled the land and the land could stomach them no longer—“the land vomited out its inhabitants” (Leviticus 18:25). [NOTE: Israel was an imperfect nation (as all nations are), but God still used them to punish the Canaanites. God warned Israel before ever entering Canaan, however, that if they forsook His law, they, too, would be severely punished (Deuteronomy 28:15ff). In fact, similar to how God used the Israelites to bring judgment upon the inhabitants of Canaan in the time of Joshua, He used the pagan nations of Babylon and Assyria to judge and conquer Israel hundreds of years later.]

The Longsuffering of God

Unlike the foolish, impulsive, quick-tempered reactions of many men (Proverbs 14:29), the Lord is “slow to anger and great in mercy” (Psalm 145:8). He is “longsuffering…, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). Immediately following a reminder to the Christians in Rome that the Old Testament was “written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope,” the apostle Paul referred to God as “the God of patience” (Romans 15:4-5). Throughout the Old Testament, the Bible writers portrayed God as longsuffering.

Though in Noah’s day, “the wickedness of man was great in the earth” and “every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5), “the Divine longsuffering waited” (1 Peter 3:20). (It seems as though God delayed flooding the Earth for 120 years as His Spirit’s message of righteousness was preached to a wicked world—Genesis 6:3; 2 Peter 2:5.) In the days of Abraham, God ultimately decided to spare the iniquitous city of Sodom, not if 50 righteous people were found living therein, but only 10 righteous individuals.

And what about prior to God’s destruction of the Canaanite nations? Did God quickly decide to cast them out of the land? Did He respond to the peoples’ wickedness like an impulsive, reckless mad-man? Or was He, as the Bible repeatedly states and exemplifies, longsuffering? Indeed, God waited. He waited more than four centuries to bring judgment upon the inhabitants of Canaan. Although the Amorites were already a sinful people in Abraham’s day, God delayed in giving the descendants of the patriarch the Promised Land. He would wait until the Israelites had been in Egypt for hundreds of years, because at the time that God spoke with Abraham “the iniquity of the Amorites” was “not yet complete” (Genesis 15:16). [NOTE: “The Amorites were so numerous and powerful a tribe in Canaan that they are sometimes named for the whole of the ancient inhabitants, as they are here” (Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, 1997).] In Abraham’s day, the inhabitants of Canaan were not so degenerate that God would bring judgment upon them. However, by the time of Joshua (more than 400 years later), the Canaanites’ iniquity was full, and God used the army of Israel to destroy them.

Yes, God is longsuffering, but His longsuffering is not an “eternal” suffering. His patience with impenitent sinners eventually ends. It ended for a wicked world in the days of Noah. It ended for Sodom and Gomorrah in the days of Abraham. And it eventually ended for the inhabitants of Canaan, whom God justly destroyed.

What About the Innocent Children?

The children of Canaan were not guilty of their parents’ sins (cf. Ezekiel 18:20); they were sinless, innocent, precious human beings (cf. Matthew 18:3-5; see Butt, 2003). So how could God justly take the lives of children, any children, “who have no knowledge of good and evil” (Deuteronomy 1:39)? The fact is, as Dave Miller properly noted, “Including the children in the destruction of such populations actually spared them from a worse condition—that of being reared to be as wicked as their parents and thus face eternal punishment. All persons who die in childhood, according to the Bible, are ushered to Paradise and will ultimately reside in Heaven. Children who have parents who are evil must naturally suffer innocently while on Earth (e.g., Numbers 14:33)” (Miller, 2009). God, the Giver of life (Acts 17:25; Ecclesiastes 12:7), and only God has the right to take the life of His creation whenever He chooses (for the righteous purposes that He has). At times in history, God took the life of men out of righteous judgment. At other times (as in the case of children), it was taken for merciful reasons. [NOTE: For a superb, extensive discussion on the relationship between (1) the goodness of God, (2) the contradictory, hideousness of atheism, and (3) God bringing about the death of various infants throughout history, see Kyle Butt’s article “Is God Immoral for Killing Innocent Children?” (2009).]

CONCLUSION

Though the enemies of the God of the Bible are frequently heard criticizing Israel’s conquest of Canaan, the fact is, such a conquest was in complete harmony with God’s perfectly loving, holy, and righteous nature. After patiently waiting for hundreds of years, God eventually used the Israelites to bring judgment upon myriads of wicked Canaanites. Simultaneously, He spared their children a fate much worse than physical death—the horror of growing up in a reprehensible culture and becoming like their hedonistic parents—and immediately ushered them into a pain-free, marvelous place called Paradise (Luke 16:19-31; 23:43).

REFERENCES

Albright, William F. (1940), From the Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins).

Butt, Kyle (2003), “Do Babies Go to Hell When They Die?” Apologetics Press, http://apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=13&article=1201.

Butt, Kyle (2009), “Is God Immoral for Killing Innocent Children?” Apologetics Press, http://apologeticspress.org/article/260.

Dawkins, Richard (2006), The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin).

“Genocide” (2000), The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin), fourth edition.

“Genocide” (2012), Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genocide.

Hitchens, Christopher (2007), God is Not Great (New York: Twelve).

“Holocaust” (2011), Encyclopedia.com, http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Holocaust.aspx#1.

Jamieson, Robert, et al. (1997), Jamieson, Fausset, Brown Bible Commentary (Electronic Database: Biblesoft).

Miller, Dave (2009), “Did God Order the Killing of Babies?” Apologetics Press, http://apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=13&article=2810.

Paine, Thomas (1807), “Essay on Dream,” http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/paine/dream.htm.

Unger, Merrill F. (1954), Archaeology and the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan).

Unger, Merrill F. (1988), “Canaan,” The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary (Electronic Database: Biblesoft).

The post God’s Just Destruction of the Canaanites appeared first on Apologetics Press.

Legion are the emotional, irrational explanations that have inundated the Web: “Adam Lanza and his mother both spent time at an area gun range” (Thomas, 2012); “Technology has rendered the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution obsolete” (“Adam Lanza’s…,” 2012); “New York mayor demands action on gun control” (“Connecticut…New York…,” 2012)”; “Connecticut Governor calls for a federal framework for gun control laws” (“Connecticut…State’s…,” 2012).“Time to get rid of the guns!” (Mackey, 2012); “The gunman had hundreds of rounds of ammunition!” (“Connecticut…Gunman…,” 2012); “The mother and father are Republicans” (Swain and Sanchez, 2012). Even the National Rifle Association missed the point when it announced, “The N.R.A. is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again” (“NRA News Release…,” 2012). As if money can fix morality.

Interestingly, regarding the propriety of citizens having free access to guns, prominent Founder Thomas Jefferson approvingly quoted (1926, p. 314) from the celebrated Italian jurist, philosopher, and politician, Cesare Beccaria’s 1764 treatise, An Essay on Crimes and Punishments, words which are hauntingly prophetic of our present predicament:

Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794)

The laws of this nature are those which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent. Can it be supposed, that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, and the most important of the code, will respect the less considerable and arbitrary injunctions, the violation of which is so easy, and of so little comparative importance? Does not the execution of this law deprive the subject of that personal liberty, so dear to mankind and to the wise legislator? and does it not subject the innocent to all the disagreeable circumstances that should only fall on the guilty? It certainly makes the situation of the assaulted worse, and of the assailants better, and rather encourages than prevents murder, as it requires less courage to attack unarmed than armed persons (1983, p. 91, emp. added).

Yet, as American society’s Christian moorings continue to erode, and immoral human behavior rapidly replaces traditional American values, the left continues to trot out their insane assessments and godless “solutions”—completely missing the only explanation and the only solution. If only Americans would take the time to reread their Bibles and go back to the Founding Fathers to see the clear and unmistakable explanation for our predicament. This is not rocket science. It is not that difficult to see with clarity what is happening.

The Central Issue and Solution

The fact is that the Creator of the human race is the sole Author and Source of objective morality. Otherwise, moral distinctions would simply be the product of the subjective whims of humans. Morality would thus legitimately vary from person to person and country to country. One society might decide to legalize pedophilia while another might make it illegal—and both would be “right” in the sense that each person would be free to formulate his own moral standards. The result would be complete and utter social anarchy in which every person would be equally free to believe and behave however he or she chooses. Sound like America? What has happened? How can such profound change come over an entire civilization?The Founders of the American Republic anticipated just this social scenario—and even described the circumstances under which it would occur. The Founders predicted that if Americans do not retain an ardent commitment to the moral principles of Christianity, civil society will wane.

Consider the following prophetic voices. In the 1811 New York State Supreme Court case of The People v. Ruggles, the “Father of American Jurisprudence,” James Kent, explained the importance of punishing unchristian behavior, when he wrote that Americans are a “people whose manners are refined, and whose morals have been elevated and inspired with a more enlarged benevolence, by means of the Christian religion” (1811, emp. added). The gentility of the American spirit has historically been contrasted with those peoples “whose sense of shame would not be affected by what we should consider the most audacious outrages upon decorum” (1811, emp. added).

The Founders understood that the Bible presents the only logical and sane assessment of reality: an objective standard, authored by the Creator, which exists for the entire human race—what Thomas Jefferson identified as “one code of morality for men whether acting singly or collectively” (1789). That standard resides within the confines of the Christian religion as articulated in the New Testament. Unless human civilization gauges its moral behavior according to that objective, absolute framework, moral and spiritual chaos in society will be the end result—even if all the guns in the world were dumped into the ocean. In the words of Charles Carroll, a signer of the Declaration of Independence: “Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they, therefore, who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure…are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments” (as quoted in Steiner, 1907, p. 475, emp. added).

Yet, for some 50 years now, Americans have been pummeled with the humanistic notion that morality can be maintained in society to the exclusion of Christianity. With almost prophetic anticipation, the very first president of the United States—the Father of our country—anticipated and addressed this sinister misnomer. After serving his country for two terms as president, George Washington delivered his farewell address to the nation, articulating forcefully the key to achieving security and protection for our lives:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric? (1796, pp. 22-23, emp. added).

Declaration of Independence signer Benjamin Rush stated: “[T]he only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments” (1806, p. 8, emp. added). Dr. Rush further stated:

We profess to be republicans, and yet we neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government, that is, the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by the means of the Bible. For this Divine Book, above all others, favors that equality among mankind, that respect for just laws, and those sober and frugal virtues, which constitute the soul of republicanism (pp. 112-113, emp. added).

Dr. Rush also insisted:

I wish to be excused for repeating here, that if the Bible did not convey a single direction for the attainment of future happiness, it should be read in our schools in preference to all other books, from, its containing the greatest portion of that kind of knowledge which is calculated to produce private and public temporal happiness…. By withholding the knowledge of this [Christian] doctrine from children, we deprive ourselves of the best means of awakening moral sensibility in their minds (pp. 100,105, emp. and bracketed item added).

Over the past 50 years or so, the liberal establishment has convinced society that evil actions are merely the result of “disturbed,” “mentally ill,” and “genetically predisposed” people who are not, in the final analysis, responsible for their behavior. But both the Bible and the Founders insisted that a failure to fill one’s mind and thoughts with pure, righteous, virtuous concepts found in the Bible inevitably leads to a confused mind, a reckless lifestyle, and harm to society. In his scathing repudiation of Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason, Continental Congress president Elias Boudinot insisted: “[O]ur country should be preserved from the dreadful evil of becoming enemies to the religion of the Gospel, which I have no doubt, but would be introductive of the dissolution of government and the bonds of civil society” (1801, p. xxii, emp. added). Dr. Benjamin Rush added his blunt observation: “Without the restraints of religion and social worship, men become savages” (1951, 1:505, emp. added). Noah Webster stated: “[R]eligion has an excellent effect in repressing vices [and] in softening the manners of men” (1794, Vol. 2, Ch. 44, emp. added).

The Founders believed that, should Christian principles be jettisoned by Americans, manners would be corrupted, and social anarchy and the fall of the Republic would naturally follow. Declaration signer and “The Father of the American Revolution,” Samuel Adams, issued a solemn warning in a letter to James Warren on February 12, 1779: “A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy” (1908, 4:124). In his inaugural address as the Governor of Massachusetts in 1780, Founder John Hancock insisted that both our freedom and our very existence as a Republic will be determined by public attachment to Christian morality: “Manners, by which not only the freedom, but the very existence of the republics, are greatly affected, depend much upon the public institutions of religion and the good education of youth” (as quoted in Brown, 1898, p. 269, emp. added). The words of Declaration signer John Witherspoon are frightening: “Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction” (1802, 3:41, emp. added). In contrasting the general religion of Christianity with Islam, John Quincy Adams likewise explained:

The fundamental doctrine of the Christian religion, is the extirpation of hatred from the human heart. It forbids the exercise of it, even towards enemies. There is no denomination of Christians, which denies or misunderstands this doctrine. All understand it alike—all acknowledge its obligations; and however imperfectly, in the purposes of Divine Providence, its efficacy has been shown in the practice of Christians, it has not been wholly inoperative upon them. Its effect has been upon the manners of nations. It has mitigated the horrors of war—it has softened the features of slavery—it has humanized the intercourse of social life (1830, p. 300, emp. added).

We are a blind and hard-hearted people if we refuse to recognize the truth and validity of these observations. Fixating on guns, and other peripheral issues, sidesteps the eternal reality that when a society is organized and geared to respect God and His Word, aberrant behavior will still occur, but it will be far more infrequent that what America is now experiencing. Though mocked, ridiculed, and hotly denied, the truth remains that Connecticut, Columbine, and a host of other tragic occurrences America is experiencing, are the result of banishing God from our schools, our government, and our civic institutions. It is the natural result of teaching three generations of Americans that they owe their ultimate origin to rocks, slime, and soup which produced them over millions of years. It is the result of over half of Americans no longer attending church. It is the inevitable result of demeaning the Bible in universities and the corresponding loss of respect for inspired writ as seen in the failure of most Americans to read and study it. As the ancient prophet Hosea, in quoting God, forcefully declared many millennia ago concerning another nation: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you…. Because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. The more they increased, the more they sinned against Me; I will change their glory into shame” (4:6-7, emp. added).

A good summary of the attitude of the Founders regarding the key to a tranquil, nonviolent society is seen in an “election sermon” preached by Chandler Robbins before the joint assembly of government officials of Massachusetts on May 25, 1791 which included the Governor, John Hancock (the first to sign the Declaration of Independence), the Lieutenant-Governor, Samuel Adams (the “Father of the American Revolution”), and both houses of the state government. Robbins articulated the widespread sentiments of his fellow citizens that now, more than two centuries later, sound haunting and eerily prophetic:

Our advantages for happiness as a people are great, almost beyond a parallel, bounteous Heaven has, with liberal profusion, poured his blessings upon our land, has given us a name and distinction among the kingdoms of the earth, we are spread over a great continent, so that…“we make a WORLD within ourselves…. We enjoy the divine WORD—are favored with the glorious privilege of the GOSPEL OF CHRIST. Indeed, there seems to be nothing wanting, to complete our character and our happiness as a community, but the spirit and practice of real religion. The want of this, it must be acknowledged, has the most threatening aspect upon our nation. The diffusive and rapid progress of declared infidelity and deism, of licentiousness and skepticism, the disregard of divine institutions, the practical contempt of the gospel of our Salvation, the awful dishonor, which, with unblushing confidence, many have openly cast upon the ETERNAL SON OF GOD, whom we are commanded to “honor as we honor the FATHER,” because he is “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person.” In fine, the torrent of immorality, profaneness and impiety, which daily increased among us, exhibit but a sad presage, if persisted in, of impending miseries on our land. It is, in the nature of things, impossible it should eventually go well with a people of the above description, and who remain impenitent and unreformed…. It is manifest therefore, that righteousness alone can truly exalt our nation—that RELIGION is the only basis, on which true happiness can be founded, either in communities or individuals. Let this then, be the object of universal concern (pp. 5-51, italics and caps in orig., emp. added).

A sizeable percentage of our politicians and citizens don’t get it. Yet the truth is so simple and plain, echoed in Robbins’ allusion to Proverbs 14:34—“Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” Mark it down: as more and more Americans lose their connection to the nation’s spiritual and moral roots—the Christian religion—the more our nation will be plunged into the nightmarish onslaught of events like the one which occurred in Newtown, Connecticut.

CONCLUSION

It is fully to be expected—it is absolutely inevitable—that as society expels God and Christianity, civility and morality among the people decreases. As people abandon Christian morality, more laws must be made to restrain their evil deeds. As more laws are made to restrain a lawless people, the less freedom those people enjoy. I repeat: Morality and religion are absolutely necessary to achieve and retain freedom. Once Americans abandon the Christian moral framework, they will inevitably clamor for more prisons, more security forces, more screening devices, and yes, fewer guns. But these “solutions” are merely temporary band aids that will not fix the problem and, in actuality, create more problems. The truth is that only two options lie before us, pinpointed in the 1840s by the Speaker of the U.S. House, Robert Winthrop: “Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them; either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet” (1852, p. 172, emp. added). Observe: Americans have banned the Bible from the public square and have opted for the bayonet—more government control and fewer freedoms.

What was going on in that child’s life that would enable him to so conduct himself? Not the existence of guns! The Left does not want to go to the root of the problem—because their very philosophy and belief system has already dismissed God and Christian morality as irrelevant, if not harmful. They recoil at the thought of promoting self-restraint and strict Christian morality. Hence, to them, the problem must lie elsewhere. (Although, they are perfectly happy to blame God for the killings.) But this 20-year-old boy was not born with the propensity to kill children. Even his suspected autism is not responsible for the violence. His attitude and behavior was developed and nurtured during his formative years. His training, experiences, and personal choices made him who he became. Not his genes, not the presence of guns in the world, not visits to the gun range, and certainly not the existence of “Bible-thumping, right wing radical Christians.” The Bible plainly teaches that a stable home environment, with both biological parents present nurturing their children in the principles of Christianity, are the most effective aids to producing successful, productive, law-abiding citizens. The Founders wholeheartedly affirmed this approach to life and realized that the societal environment most conducive to producing stable citizens and a happy country is one that is based on and rooted in the moral principles of the Bible. Yet this boy’s personal life very likely possessed features that contributed to his degeneration to a “debased mind” (Romans 1:28), even enabling him to kill his own mother by shooting her in the face (Swain and Sanchez, 2012). This was a troubled child, to say the least. His troubled condition did not arise from the presence of guns. Until America faces the reality of what creates the increasing numbers of troubled children, society will continue to reap the consequences.

REFERENCES

“Adam Lanza’s Weapons” (2012), New York Post, December 18, http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/adam_lanza_weapons_NU2tb0tIf9hNsOCZkPJ1XP.

Adams, John Quincy (1830), The American Annual Register (New York: E. & G.W. Blunt).

Adams, Samuel (1904-1908), The Writings of Samuel Adams, ed. Harry Cushing (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons).

Beccaria, Cesare (1983), An Essay on Crimes and Punishments (Boston, MA: International Pocket Library, http://books.google.com/books?id=InuKBpD_  21YC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Cesare+Beccaria,+An+Essay+on+Crimes+ %26+Punishments&hl=en&sa=X&ei=TkzTUJ-ZNIH88gScxoGoCg&ved =0CDQQ6AEwAA).

Boudinot, Elias (1801), The Age of Revelation (Philadelphia, PA: Asbury Dickins), http://www.google.com/books?id=XpcPAAAAIAAJ.

Brown, Abram (1898), John Hancock, His Book (Boston, MA: Lee & Shepard Publishers), http://www.archive.org/details/johnhancock00browrich.

“Connecticut School Shooting: Gunman Had Hundreds of Rounds of Ammunition” (2012), Chicago Tribune, December 16, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-connecticut-school-shooting-victims-20121216,0,5491415.story?page=2.

“Connecticut School Shooting: New York Mayor Demands Action on Gun Control” (2012), The Telegraph, December 17, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews /northamerica/usa/9751633/Connecticut-school-shooting-New-York-mayor -demands-action-on-gun-control.html.

“Connecticut School Shooting: State’s Governor Calls for Action on Gun Control” (2012), The Telegraph, December 17, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews /northamerica/usa/9751905/Connecticut-school-shooting-states-governor- calls-for-action-on-gun-control.html.

Jefferson, Thomas (1789), “Letter to James Madison,” The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes, ed. Paul Leicester Ford, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mtj:@field(DOCID+@lit (tj050135)).

Jefferson, Thomas (1926), The Commonplace Book of Thomas Jefferson: A Repertory of His Ideas on Government, ed. Gilbert Chinard (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press).

Mackey, Robert (2012), “Dec. 18 Updates on Connecticut Shooting Aftermath,” The New York Times, December 19, http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/latest-updates-on-connecticut-shooting-aftermath/.

“NRA News Release on December Press Conference” (2012), The National Rifle Association of America, http://www.nrablog.com/.

The People v. Ruggles(1811), 8 Johns 290 (Sup. Ct. NY.), N.Y. Lexis 124.

Robbins, Chandler (1791), A Sermon Preached Before His Excellency John Hancock, Esq., Governour, His Honor Samuel Adams, Esq., Lieutenant-Governour, the Honourable the Council, and the Honourable the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, May 25, 1791 Being the Day of General Election (Boston, MA: Thomas Adams), http://openlibrary.org/works/OL1743074W /A_sermon_preached_before_His_Excellency_Jonh_sic_Hancock_Esq. _governour_His_Honor_Samuel_Adams_Esq._.

Rush, Benjamin (1806), Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical (Philadelphia, PA: Thomas & William Bradford).

Rush, Benjamin (1951), Letters of Benjamin Rush, ed. L.H. Butterfield (Princeton, NJ: The American Philosophical Society).

Steiner, Bernard (1907), The Life and Correspondence of James McHenry (Cleveland, OH: Burrows Brothers).

Swain, Jon, and Raf Sanchez (2012), “Connecticut School Shooting: Adam Lanza Was Assigned Psychologist,” The Telegraph, December 17, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/ usa/9750422/Connecticut-school-shooting-Adam-Lanza-was-assigned- psychologist.html.

Thomas, Pierre, et al. (2012), “Connecticut School Shooting: Adam Lanza and Mother Visited Gun Ranges,” ABC News, December 16, http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/connecticut-school-shooting-adam-lanza-mother-visited-gun/story?id=17992396.

Washington, George (1796), Address of George Washington, President of the United States…Preparatory to His Declination (Baltimore, MD: George & Henry Keating).

Webster, Noah (1794), “The Revolution in France,” in Political Sermons of the American Founding Era: 1730-1805, ed. Ellis Sandoz (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund), 1998 edition, http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/817/69415.

Winthrop, Robert (1852), Addresses and Speeches on Various Occasions (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, & Co.).

Witherspoon, John (1802), The Works of the Rev. John Witherspoon (Philadelphia, PA: William Woodard).

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Same-Sex Marriage

Without question, shock waves of seismic proportion were sent across the entire world when the highest executive official in our land announced his endorsement of same-sex marriage (Stein, 2012). All the angels in heaven must have wept. Such an unconscionable action that reflects our downward spiral into moral depravity stands in stark contrast to the political leaders at the beginning of the nation who openly avowed attachment to God and Christian virtue. Indeed, the Founders—to a man—would be horrified. After serving two terms as vice-president alongside President George Washington, on October 11, 1798, the second president of these United States, John Adams, delivered a speech to military officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts: “[W]e have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion…. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other” (1854, 9:229, emp. added). In his State of the Union address, the father of our country explained that the Republic may be sustained only if citizens “discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness—cherishing the first, avoiding the last—and uniting a speedy but temperate vigilance against encroachments, with an inviolable respect to the laws” (1790). The homosexual movement flaunts laws instituted at the beginning of the country designed to hold in check sexual immorality, opting instead for licentiousness. As Samuel West explained in a sermon preached in 1776 before the Massachusetts House of Representatives: “When a man goes beyond or contrary to the law of nature and reason, he becomes the slave of base passions and vile lusts; he introduces confusion and disorder into society, and brings misery and destruction upon himself” (1776).

Irish statesman, political theorist, member of the House of Commons, and one who supported America during the Founding era, Edmund Burke, understood this critical tenet of freedom:

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites….  Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters (1791, 68-69).

Another outside observer of American freedom was Alexis de Tocqueville who, in extolling the glories of American morals and marriage based on Christianity, made this insightful observation about what happens to a country when those sexual standards are relaxed: “In Europe almost all the disturbances of society arise from the irregularities of domestic life. To despise the natural bonds and legitimate pleasures of home is to contract a taste for excesses, a restlessness of heart, and fluctuating desires” (1845, 1:304, emp. added). Indeed, when the Christian religion and Christian morality no longer characterize the people, and this spiritual framework is therefore excluded from the political process, we can fully expect the nation, in time, to collapse. God Himself obliterated cities from the surface of the Earth for homosexuality (Genesis 19), and caused the land to “vomit out its inhabitants” (Leviticus 18:22-25).

Abortion & Innocent Blood

A second critical moral issue that has been politicized in America is abortion. God’s view on killing children is clear and decisive:

And they built the high places of Baal which are in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I did not command them, nor did it come into My mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin (Jeremiah 32:35).

It never entered God’s mind to have people kill their children. Yet, in the United States of America alone, since the ungodly judicial decision to legalize abortion in 1973, over 53 million unborn babies have been butchered. The human mind is incapable of grasping the import of this statistic.

Isaiah 59:6-7 well describes the abortion industry that has developed in America: “Their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands. Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood.” One of the things that God hates is “hands that shed innocent blood” (Proverbs 6:17). If ever there was “innocent blood” on this Earth, it is the blood of the unborn. In the wake of the heinous act of murder, God declared to Cain, “The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground” (Genesis 4:10). If the blood of righteous Abel cried out to God, imagine the sound of 50+ million shrieking babies crying out to God. While you and I cannot hear such pitiable, heart-wrenching sounds, the God of eternity can. He announced to the Israelites: “So you shall not pollute the land where you are; for blood defiles the land, and no atonement can be made for the land, for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it” (Numbers 35:33, emp. added). Looking down from heaven, God must surely see the streets of America running with blood—atonement for which can only be made by punishing the civilization that has implemented and tolerated such horror.

One reason given for why God subjected Judah to the destruction of enemy marauders was because of the innocent blood that King Manasseh had shed—“for he had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, which the LORD would not pardon” (2 Kings 24:4, emp. added). “But I thought God would pardon anything!” National sins are punished by God in time by physical destruction. Hence, we as a nation are overdue for receiving the punishment that comes from shedding innocent blood for nearly 40 years! Those precious innocents must surely be asking God the very same question He was asked by the slain martyrs of the Domitianic persecution of the first century: “How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” (Revelation 6:10, emp. added). Make no mistake about it—God will avenge the blood of the innocents. It’s only a matter of when.

When one contemplates the magnitude of this moral atrocity that is rampant in the land—and one which wicked politicians have brazenly taken it upon themselves to champion—one can only wonder why anyone would think the economy is the “big issue” in the election, or whether a segment of the population is getting sufficient entitlements from the government, or even whether the politicians are going to create jobs. When God finally wreaks vengeance on our deserving nation, the condition of one’s personal finances will be of little concern.

What May Be Done?

While the ultimate solution to our nation’s woes is recommitment to God and the moral precepts of the Bible, one immediate strategy ought to be that Christians do more to control the political forces that are running amok. In the words of President James A. Garfield:

Now, more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. If that body be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature…. [I]f the next centennial does not find us a great nation…it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces (as quoted in Taylor, 1970, p. 180, emp. added).

On Friday, June 20, 1788, in the Virginia convention assembled to debate ratification of the federal Constitution, James Madison reminded his colleagues of the only ultimate safeguard for national preservation:

But I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government, can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men; so that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them (Elliot, 1836, 3:536-537, emp. added).

Without a doubt, the current elections will provide direct insight into the virtue, intelligence, and wisdom of a sizable number of Americans. We pray God that a majority will have the good sense to be “spiritually minded” (Romans 8:6) and cast their vote first and foremost on the basis of these critical, life-threatening moral issues.

[AUTHOR UPDATE: With the encroachments of homosexuality and abortion have now come transgenderism and polygamy. Christians ought to resist candidates who favor acceptance of these sexually aberrant behaviors. They should also keep in mind that U.S. Presidents have the power to appoint nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court, and that the Court is presently dominated by those who are hostile to Christian morality and the original intention of the Founders.]

REFERENCES

Adams, John (1854), The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, ed. Charles Adams (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company).

Burke, Edmund (1791), A Letter From Mr. Burke To A Member of The National Assembly (Paris: J. Dodsley), http://books.google.com/books?id=CEgJAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA69&dq= Edmund+burke+passions+forge+their+fetters&hl=en&sa=X&ei= HeOOUMXvNoOK8QTVwIHIBw&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v= onepage&q=Edmund%20burke%20passions% 20forge%20their%20fetters&f=false.

Elliot, Jonathan, ed. (1836), The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution (Washington, D.C.: Jonathan Elliot), http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=lled&fileName=003/ lled003.db&recNum=547&itemLink=r%3Fammem%2Fhlaw%3A@field% 28DOCID%2B@lit%28ed0032%29%29%230030003&linkText=1.

Miller, Dave (2005), “Is America’s Iniquity Full?” Apologetics Press, http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/305.

Miller, Dave (2006), “Destruction of Marriage Equals Destruction of America,” Apologetics Press, http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/3105.

Stein, Sam (2012), “Obama Backs Gay Marriage,” The Huffington Post, May 9, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/09/obama-gay-marriage_n_1503245.html?ref=mostpopular.

Taylor, John (1970), Garfield of Ohio: The Available Man (New York: W.W. Norton).

Tocqueville, Alexis de (1945 reprint), Democracy in America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf).

Washington, George (1790), “First State of the Union Address,” U.S. Government Info., http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/ref/blfirstsou.htm.

West, Samuel (1776), A Sermon Preached Before the Honorable Council and the Honorable House of Representatives of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay (Boston, MA: John Gill).

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What was the primary factor that forced Libresco to this theistic conclusion? She explained that morality was the key. Throughout her time as an atheist, she struggled to come to grips with how humans can adhere to a morality that seems objective if there is no God. As she searched for answers among atheistic thinkers and writers, she admitted that their answers were inadequate. She stated:

I’ve heard some explanations that try to bake morality into the natural world by reaching for evolutionary psychology. They argue that moral dispositions are evolutionarily triumphant over selfishness, or they talk about group selection, or something else. Usually, these proposed solutions radically misunderstand a) evolution b) moral philosophy or c) both. I didn’t think the answer was there (2012).

When pressed by a friend to give an answer for the foundation for morality, Libresco was forced to admit that her atheism could not provide an explanation. Did she know where an answer could be found? She stated: “It turns out I did. I believed that the Moral Law wasn’t just a Platonic truth, abstract and distant.  It turns out I actually believed it was some kind of Person, as well as Truth.” The Person, of course, to which she is referring is God.

In an interview with a CNN news reporter, Libresco noted that her conversion to theism was “kinda the same thing with any scientific theory, almost, that it had more explanatory power to explain something I was really sure of. I’m really sure that morality is objective, human independent; something we uncover like archaeologists not something we build like architects” (“Atheist Becomes Catholic,” 2012).

Libresco’s intellectual honesty regarding morality is refreshing to see. Theists have long understood and irrefutably shown that morality is objective, and atheism is impotent to provide an explanation for this reality (see Butt, 2002; 2010, pp. 87-123,204). Without a belief in a personal God from Whose character morality flows, the words “right” and “wrong” have no meaning in a moral discussion. Yet every person who is thinking honestly and rationally must admit that some things are objectively right and some things are objectively wrong. When such an admission is made, it inevitably leads to “some kind of Person, as well as Truth.” Thus, “In the beginning, God…” becomes the only statement with enough explanatory value to adequately deal with objective morality.

REFERENCES

“Atheist Becomes Catholic” (2012), http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/22/prominent-atheist-blogger-converts-to-catholicism/.

Butt, Kyle (2002), “Right, Wrong, and God’s Existence,” http://www.apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=12&article=878&topic=95.

Butt, Kyle (2010), A Christians Guide to Refuting Modern Atheism (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).

Libresco, Leah (2012), “This is My Last Post for the Patheos Atheist Portal,” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unequallyyoked/2012/06/this-is-my-last-post-for-the-patheos-atheist-portal.html.

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Sadly, the instruction of children in the ways “of the Lord” has diminished significantly in America, and yes, even in the Lord’s Church. Consequently, as the ways of the Lord are forgotten, many are promoting and partaking in the heartbreaking sexualization of children. Though many adults in this country will condemn (and rightly so) pedophilia, child pornography, etc., many of these same individuals have contributed to the sexualizing of children. It may start very young when parents purchase their four-year-old daughters baby dolls that look more like the seductress harlot described in Proverbs 7 than an innocent little bundle of joy. Some of the Bratz Babyz manufactured by MGA Entertainment, for example, sell dolls wearing midriff tops, mini skirts, tiny bikinis, and sparkly panties. The dolls are painted to look more like a seductive, grown woman—with large, glossy lips, and long, painted eyelashes. One manufacturing company a few years ago went so far as to make a “Pole Dance” doll. So outrageous was this product that even The Huffington Post ran a story titled “The 7 Most Inappropriate Products for Children” (2010). Number one on the list was the “Pole Dance” doll, which had on it’s box keywords such as “Flash,” and “Up and Down”—words that The Huffington Post said “sound like they were written by the happiest pedophile in playland.”

What seems to be contributing even more to the sexualization of children in America are the clothes that retail stores are selling—that parents are purchasing. Livescience.com published a story in 2011 about a study regarding children’s clothing (toddlers to pre-teen children) from 15 national retail stores. The researchers found that of the 5,666 items of clothing that were reviewed, “31 percent had sexualizing features” (i.e., “they revealed or emphasized a sexualized body part such as the chest or buttocks and…had sexy characteristics such as slinky material;” Pappas, 2011, emp. added). Add to this the skin-tight, short shorts that retailers sell and that parents buy, and the problem is compounded. Parents, you might be contributing to the sexualizing of your own children (1) if your daughter’s shirts are longer than her shorts, (2) if your daughter’s shorts are tighter and shorter than a pair of boxer briefs, or (3) if the pockets of your daughter’s shorts hang lower than the shorts themselves.

Some parents have even taken this a step further, by entering their young, innocent daughters (some as young as three years old) into beauty pageants that reward young girls for dressing and acting like anything but the modest and discreet girls the Lord desires parents to rear (Titus 2:4-8; 1 Peter 3:1-5). Some mothers and fathers accessorize their five- and six-year-old daughters with spray tans, hair extensions, and fake eyelashes and fingernails. Some even remove the hair from their prepubescent bodies, followed by a layer of make-up that might give Dolly Parton a run for her money. It is as if the parents are trying to turn their daughters into the previously mentioned, sexualized Bratz Babyz dolls. Promoting this behavior is the exact opposite of teaching the important value to young ladies that “charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised” (Proverbs 31:30).

These little girls, who in many ways are made to look more like grown women, are then paraded in front of an audience like eye candy. They are asked to sing and dance and take people’s breath away. I recently saw a clip of a talk show where one woman was critical of the pageants, saying, “You said it’s not sexualizing the kids…and there is nothing mature about the performance. Yet one of the little ones is shaking her backside, shaking her booty, and she said so.” One mother’s sad defense: “What does that have to do [with anything]? That’s having fun” (emp. added). Another defensive mother added: “If people are looking at a child in a sexy way, then there’s something wrong with them” (“Toddlers…,” 2011). Perhaps, but when a mother intentionally makes her five-year-old look, act, talk, flirt, and dance like a harlot, we should not be surprised that some men will find this satisfying to their sexual senses. In fact, one woman responded to the show on-line, saying, “When you dress a child up like a [prostitute], have her act like one, shaking her [bottom], etc., you are just asking for trouble. Every pedophile out there is watching getting their [thrills] at your child’s expense” (“Toddlers…,” 2011).

Only the naïve or the immoral will not admit to the obvious sexualization of children in America. It is so obvious that even liberal organizations such as The Huffington Post and Livescience.com recognize it. Question: Are you submitting to the Lord’s will to rear sensible, humble, modest, and discreet children who are letting their “Christian lights” shine? Are you teaching about the sinfulness and danger of impure, lewd, sensual things that tend to stir up ungodly passions? Or, are you working hand in hand with Satan in the sexualizing of children by what you purchase and allow your own kids to wear?

REFERENCES

Pappas, Stephanie (2011), “30% of Girls Clothing is Sexualized in Major Sales Trent,” Livescience.com, May 20, http://www.livescience.com/14249-girls-clothing-sexualized.html.

“The 7 Most Inappropriate Products for Children” (2010), March 12, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/14/the-7-most-inappropriate_n_286223.html.

“Toddlers & Tiaras’ Moms Defend Child Beauty Pageants” (2011), Anderson Live, October 19, http://www.andersoncooper.com/2011/10/18/toddlers-and-tiaras-tlc-moms-defend-child-beauty-pageants/.

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WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY?

Homosexuality in the Patriarchal Period

What, precisely, is God’s will concerning human sexuality? That will was demonstrated originally in the creation of the first human beings: “Male and female created He them” (Genesis 1:27). God’s decision to create a female counterpart to the male was not coincidental. The female uniquely met three essential criteria: (1) “It is not good for man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18); (2) a helper, suitable to him, was needed (Genesis 2:18,20); and (3) the human race was to be perpetuated through sexual union (Genesis 1:28). Both Jesus and Paul reiterated this same understanding (Matthew 19:4-6; 1 Corinthians 7:2). So the woman was: (a) the divine antidote to Adam’s loneliness; (b) a helper fit for him; and (c) the means of the propagation of the human race. Here, we see the divine arrangement for the human species.

Not long after God set into motion the created order—which He had pronounced as “very good” (Genesis 1:31)—man began to tamper with the divine will, and altered God’s original intentions concerning human sexuality. Lamech—not God—introduced polygamy into the world (Genesis 4:19). God could have created two women for Adam, but He did not. Rather, He made one man for one woman for life. That is the divine will—“male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27; cf. Matthew 19:1-9). Genesis 19:1-11 now comes into view.

Now before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people from every quarter, surrounded the house. And they called to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may know them carnally.” So Lot went out to them through the doorway, shut the door behind him, and said, “Please, my brethren, do not do so wickedly! See now, I have two daughters who have not known a man; please, let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them as you wish; only do nothing to these men, since this is the reason they have come under the shadow of my roof.” And they said, “Stand back!” Then they said, “This one came in to sojourn, and he keeps acting as a judge; now we will deal worse with you than with them.” So they pressed hard against the man Lot, and came near to break down the door. But the men reached out their hands and pulled Lot into the house with them, and shut the door. And they struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness, both small and great, so that they became weary trying to find the door (vss. 4-11).

Defenders of homosexuality who seek justification for their viewpoint from the Bible have pursued a revisionist interpretation of the account of the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (along with Admah and Zeboiim, Deuteronomy 29:23). This passage has traditionally been understood to be a denunciation of homosexuality. This understanding has been so universal that the word “sodomy” was incorporated into English vernacular as referring to “any of various forms of sexual intercourse held to be unnatural or abnormal, especially anal intercourse or bestiality” (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 2000, p. 1651). How may the account of Sodom be reinterpreted to place same-sex relationships in a favorable light? Two explanations have been offered in an effort to promote the biblical legitimacy of homosexuality.

(1) Inhospitality or Homosexuality?

The first claim maintains that the men of Sodom simply were guilty of inhospitality. The text says that the men of Sodom insisted on Lot bringing the angelic visitors out to them, “that we may know them” (Genesis 19:5). It thus is argued that “know” refers to their intention to meet, greet, get to know, or become acquainted with the visitors. However, contextual indicators exclude the feasibility of this interpretation.

First, while the Hebrew verb translated “know” (yada) has a wide range of meanings, including “to get to know” or “to become acquainted” (for the most part, the nuances of the Hebrew verb parallel the corresponding English verb), Hebrew, in common with other ancient languages, also used “know” as a euphemism for sexual intercourse (Genesis 4:1; 19:8). Other Semitic euphemisms similarly used include “lie with” (2 Samuel 11:4), “uncover the nakedness of ” (Leviticus 18), “go in unto” (Genesis 16:2; 38:2), and “touch” (Genesis 20:6; Proverbs 6:29; 1 Corinthians 7:1). Ancient languages that shared this figurative use of “know” included Egyptian, Akkadian, and Ugaritic (Botterweck, 1986, pp. 455-456,460), as well as Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Greek (Gesenius, 1979, p. 334). When Hebrew scholars define “know,” as used in Genesis 19:5, they use terminology like “sexual perversion” (Harris, et al., 1980, 1:366), “homosexual intercourse” (Botterweck, 1986, 5:464), and “crimes against nature” (Gesenius, p. 334).

Second, if “know” simply means “to get acquainted,” why did the Bible writers repeatedly use forms of the word “wicked” to refer to the actions of the Sodomites? Lot pleaded, “Do not do so wickedly!” (Genesis 19:7). Moses, by inspiration, already had given God’s assessment in the words, “But the men of Sodom were exceedingly wicked and sinful against the Lord” (Genesis 13:13); “their sin is very grievous” (Genesis 18:20). Peter referred to the “filthy conduct of the wicked” sodomites and their “lawless deeds” (2 Peter 2:7-8). But “getting acquainted” is not “wicked”! In fact, if the men of Sodom were nothing more than a group of friendly, civic-minded neighbors who sought to make the visitors welcome to their city, God surely would have commended them—not condemned them!

Third, if “know” simply means “to get to know,” then why did Lot offer his virgin daughters to the men? He would not have offered his daughters for the purpose of the men “getting to know” or “becoming acquainted” with them. The daughters were already residents of Sodom, and would have been known to the men. Lot was offering his daughters to the men as sexual alternatives. Lot specifically said: “I have two daughters who have not known a man” (Genesis 19:8, emp. added). “Known” is another reference to sexual intercourse. Lot referred to their sexual status for the very reason that these men were interested in sexual impropriety. As astonishing and objectionable to us as it may seem for a father to sacrifice his own daughters in such a fashion, it verifies the fact that the unnatural lust of homosexuality was considered far more repugnant than even illicit heterosexuality. Scholars have further noted that in antiquity, a host was to protect his guests at the cost of his own life (Whitelaw, 1950, 1:253).

Fourth, the men of Sodom threatened Lot with the words, “we will deal worse with you than with them” (Genesis 19:9). If their intention was simply to “get to know” the male visitors, what would “dealing worse” with Lot entail? Perhaps it would have entailed their becoming so thoroughly “acquainted” with Lot that they would perpetually remain in his presence and make a pest of themselves? Maybe they intended to impose on Lot’s hospitality to the point that they would monopolize his living room couch, consume all of his snack foods, and refuse to vacate his home at a courteous hour?

In a further effort to achieve sanction for homosexuality, attention has been directed to the words of Jesus in His commissioning of the Seventy. He instructed them, in their evangelistic travels, to enter into those cities that would receive them and to feel free to partake of their hospitality (Luke 10:7-8). However, should a city fail to receive them, they were to shake the dust off their feet against the city (Luke 10:10-11). Jesus then declared: “It will be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city” (Luke 10:12). Defenders and practitioners of same-sex relations claim that Jesus was drawing a comparison between the inhospitality of Sodom and the cities that the disciples would encounter. They claim that the inhospitality of a city that would reject Christ’s emissaries would be a greater evil than Sodom’s inhospitable treatment of the angelic visitors.

However, if “hospitality” was the issue at stake in Sodom, the Sodomites should have been commended, since they only wanted to “get to know” and be hospitable to the visitors. In fact, Lot should have been the one condemned, since he attempted to deter the hospitable overtures of the “Welcome Wagon.” In reality, the words of Jesus in Luke 10 were not directed against the cities’ refusal to be hospitable toward the disciples. Rather, He condemned them for their refusal to accept the teaching of the disciples. Jesus pinpointed their task when He warned: “He who hears you hears Me, he who rejects you rejects Me” (Luke 10:16). Jesus placed Sodom at the top of the list of the most notoriously wicked cities of antiquity. He stressed the fact that to reject Christ and the Gospel would be a far greater offense than what the most wicked city in human history ever did. What the inhabitants of Sodom did was repulsive, repugnant, disgusting, and incredibly depraved. But to reject the antidote to sin is the ultimate insult and the final infraction against God!

Yet another argument marshaled in an effort to justify homosexuality concerns the allusions in the prophets to Sodom. Isaiah (3:9), Jeremiah (23:14), and Ezekiel (16:49) all refer to the sinfulness of Sodom, but none explicitly mentioned homosexuality as the problem. In fact, Ezekiel pinpointed the specific sins of “pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness,” as well as her unwillingness to aid the poor and needy. In response, we should not be surprised that a city that was guilty of sexual perversion also would be guilty of additional violations of God’s will.

Isaiah, in his discussion of Sodom, did not specify a particular sin, but merely noted how brazen and open the Sodomites were with their sin: “The look on their countenance witnesses against them, and they declare their sin as Sodom; they do not hide it.” Interestingly, this depiction is very apropos of the “in-your-face” attitude of those who seek to advance the homosexual agenda in our day. Jeremiah made essentially the same point in his comparison between Judah and Sodom when he wrote that “no one turns back from his wickedness.” He, too, was noting the sodomites’ blatant, unbending, determined intention to proceed with their sin. Ezekiel, though mentioning the additional sins that we have listed above, nevertheless referred repeatedly to Sodom’s “abomination” (16:50; cf., vs. 43,47,51,52,58). Moses also linked “abomination” with homosexual activity (Leviticus 18:22).

(2) Homosexual Rape?

The second explanation offered to justify homosexual relations is that the men of Sodom were not condemned for their homosexuality, but for their inhospitable intention to engage in homosexual rape. Rape, some suggest (whether homosexual or heterosexual), being nonconsensual, is wrong, and is worthy of condemnation. However, this extension of the inhospitality quibble is likewise contextually indefensible. First, if gang rape was the issue, why did Lot offer his daughters in exchange for the visitors? Rape would have been at issue in both cases. Lot’s offer of his daughters indicated his clear concern over gender and same-sex relations. Second, the men of Sodom were declared wicked and guilty of “very grievous” sin before the visitors ever came to town (Genesis 18:20).

Third, Jude cinched the matter in his discussion of the sin of Sodom. He wrote that Sodom and her sister cities had “given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh” (Jude 7). “Given themselves over to sexual immorality” is a translation of the compound word ekporneusasai, which combines the verb porneuo (to commit illicit sexual intercourse) with the preposition ek (out of). The attachment of the prepositional prefix indicates intensification, i.e., that the men of Sodom possessed “a lust that gluts itself” (Thayer, 1977, p. 199). Their sexual appetites took them beyond the range of normal sexual activity. The idea of force or coercion is not in the meaning of the word. “Strange” refers to “being dissimilar in kind or class from all other entities, another, different” (Danker, p. 399), and so pertains to the indulgence of passions that are “contrary to nature” (Barnes, 1949, p. 392)—“a departure from the laws of nature in the impurities practiced” (Salmond, 1950, 22:7). The frequent allusion to “nature” by scholars is interesting, in view of the fact that Scripture elsewhere links same-sex relations with that which is “against nature” (Romans 1:26-27) or unnatural, i.e., out of harmony with God’s original arrangement of nature (e.g., Genesis 1:27; 2:22; Matthew 19:4-6). Summarizing, Jude asserted that the sin of Sodom was homosexual relations—not homosexual rape.

Fourth, homosexuality itself is specifically condemned in Scripture. Under the Law of Moses, God made homosexuality a capital crime, and stipulated that both participants in the illicit sexual activity were to be put to death (Leviticus 20:13). God would not have required the innocent victim of homosexual rape to be executed along with the rapist.

American culture may well reach the point where the majority approves of homosexuality as acceptable behavior. And those who disapprove may well be accused of being “politically incorrect,” intolerant, and “homophobic.” It surely is reminiscent of our day to observe that when Lot urged the sodomites not to do “so wickedly,” the men accused Lot of being judgmental (Genesis 19:9; cf. Deuteronomy 23:17-18). Nevertheless, the objective, unbiased reader of the Bible is forced to conclude that God destroyed the men of Sodom on account of their sinful practice of homosexuality.

Homosexuality in the Mosaic Period

In addition to the pre-Mosaic, Patriarchal Period of history, God made clear His will on this matter when He handed down the Law of Moses to the Israelite nation. In a chapter dealing almost exclusively with sexual regulations, His words are explicit and unmistakable.

You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination…. Do not defile yourselves with any of these things,…lest the land vomit you out also when you defile it, as it vomited out the nations that were before you (Leviticus 18:22-30). If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them (Leviticus 20:13).

We suggest that a reader would need help to misunderstand these injunctions.

Another graphic account is presented during the period of the judges, which was a time of spiritual and moral depravity and decay—the “Dark Ages” of Jewish history. Judges 19 records that “sons of Belial” (i.e., wicked scoundrels) surrounded a house where travelers had taken refuge for the night. As in Sodom, they desired to “know” the male guests (vs. 22). The host, like Lot, knew exactly what they meant, as is evident from the fact that, like Lot, he offered them a sexual alternative (which, of course, God did not approve). Their sexual desire was labeled as “wickedness,” “outrage,” “vileness,” “lewdness,” and “evil” (Judges 19:23-24; 20:3,6,10,12,13). The rest of the Old Testament corroborates this judgment of same-sex relations. For example, during the period of the kings, Josiah instituted sweeping moral and religious reforms, including tearing down the homes of the Sodomites (2 Kings 23:7).

Homosexuality in the New Testament Period

The New Testament is equally definitive in its uncompromising and unquestioned condemnation of illicit sexual activity. Paul summarized the “unrighteous” and “ungodly” behavior of the Gentile nations, and declared:

For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting. …who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them (Romans 1:26-32, emp. added).

Observe that “God gave them up” to “vile passions.” Other renderings include “lusts of dishonor” (Bengel, 1971, 2:26), “passions of dishonor” (Lenski, 1951, p. 113), and “passions which bring dishonour” (Cranfield, 1985, p. 125). The passions to which the heathen nations were given are declared to be vile and debased. Barrett observed: “No feature of pagan society filled the Jew with greater loathing than the toleration, or rather admiration, of homosexual practices” (1967, p. 39). In fact, Melina noted that homosexuality is the sin that lies at the heart of idolatry. Therefore the Jews despised this practice that defiled both the soul as well as the body (1998, 25:57-68). The “women”and “men” (i.e., the “females”and “males” of verse 26) had descended “to the brutish level of being nothing but creatures of sex” (Lenski, p. 113; Bengel, 2:26).

The contrast between the “natural” and the “unnatural” shows that the Gentiles had “left aside and thus discarded” the natural form of intercourse between a man and his wife (Lenski, p. 113). The fact that this exchange involved sexual intercourse is well established (Bauer, 1979, p. 886; Cranfield, p. 125). And Lenski adds, “It was bad enough to sin with males, vastly worse and the very limit of vice to sin as they did” (p. 114). Kent Hughes observed that Paul singled out homosexuality “because it is obviously unnatural and therefore underlines the extent to which sin takes mankind” (1991, p. 43). Indeed, same-sex relations were “quite prevalent in the Greco-Roman society in which he [Paul] lived” (Fitzmyer, 1993, p. 275).

Paul’s observation that homosexual activity goes “against nature” harks back to the Creation model when God created the first human beings (Genesis 1:26). Homosexual practices go against the natural pattern established by God when He created “male and female” (Deyoung, 1988, pp. 429-441). Such behavior is “contrary to the intention of the Creator” (Cranfield, p. 123). Therefore, homosexuality goes against the natural order of marriage, not of Jews or Gentiles; the marriage bed should be undefiled in all nationalities and cultures.

The males mentioned in verse 27 are equally as debased as their previously discussed female counterparts. Being “set on fire” with lust for each other, one must realize that “[t]he moment God is taken out of the control in men’s life, the stench of sex aberration is bound to arise. It is so in the world to this day. Without God sex runs wild” (Lenski, p. 115). One of the consequences that follows for those who engage in homosexual relations is that they receive “in themselves the penalty of their error which was due”—“the vicious effect of the unnatural sexual vices upon men’s own bodies and their minds, corruption, destroying, disintegrating” (p. 116).

Such forthright words—“set on fire”—from an inspired apostle are set against a specific social and cultural milieu. In his survey of homosexuality in Western Europe from the beginning of the Christian era to the 14^th century, John Boswell depicted how Rome had a severe problem with homosexuality, contributing significantly to the glorification and proliferation of homosexual activity. He noted that 14 out of the first 15 Roman emperors were homosexuals, and spent 25 pages detailing facts that prove Rome to have been a hotbed of homosexual activity. For example, during the Augustan reign, the government not only allowed male homosexual prostitutes to operate on her streets, but also taxed them and gave them a national day off work (1980, p. 70). The Emperor Hadrian, called by some “the most outstanding of the ‘five good emperors,’” according to Boswell, “appears to have been exclusively gay” (p. 84). Dupont adds that “it was said of Caesar that he was the ‘husband of all women and the wife of all husbands,’” identifying his bisexual nature (1993, p. 117). One needs only peruse any reputable historical account of the life and times of the average Roman citizen to see that homosexual activity played a major role in the politics, recreations, and commerce of the first century. It is no surprise then that the apostle Paul spoke so stringently on such practices.

Those who attempt to soften or contradict the clear teaching of Paul in Romans 1 regarding the sinfulness of homosexuality sometimes attempt to sidestep the clear import of the passage by insisting that it applied only to its original recipients. Boswell claimed that the idea of the passage is not to “stigmatize sexual behavior but to condemn Gentiles for their general infidelity” (p. 108). Martin has suggested that Paul referred to the Gentile culture, not the “universal human condition” (1995, p. 338). But is Romans 1:26-27 a “cultural chastisement,” or a universal condemnation? The immediate context (1:18-3:20) consists of God’s pronouncement that all humans in every culture and nation are under sin—“all the world” (3:19). In fact, the entire book of Romans is the New Testament’s flagship declaration of the means of justification for all persons—“everyone” (Romans 1:16). Hence, the condemnation of homosexuality in Romans 1 is parallel to its like condemnation of murder, deceit, covetousness, and all the other sins itemized by Paul.

One final observation regarding Romans 1 is noteworthy. Not only is God displeased with those who participate in homosexual behavior, but Paul indicates that He is equally displeased with those who are supportive of such conduct—even if they do not engage in the activity themselves. The wording is: “[T]hose who practice such things are worthy of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them” (vs. 32). On this count alone, many have earned the disapproval of God.

Compare Paul’s remarks to the church at Rome with the question he posed to the Corinthian church:

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God (1 Corinthians 6:9-11, emp. added).

The Greek word translated “homosexual” in this passage is a metaphorical use of a term that literally means “soft,” and when referring to people, refers to males allowing themselves to be used sexually by other males. Again, lexicographers apply the term to the person who is a “catamite,” i.e., a male who submits his body to another male for unnatural lewdness—i.e., homosexually (Thayer, p. 387; Arndt and Gingrich, 1957, p. 489).

“Sodomites” (“abusers of themselves with mankind” in the KJV) is a translation of the term arsenokoitai. It derives from two words: arsein (a male) and koitei (a bed), and refers to one who engages in sex with a male as with a female (Thayer, p. 75). Paul used the same term when he wrote to Timothy to discuss certain behaviors that are both “contrary to sound doctrine” and characteristic of the one who is not “a righteous man” (1 Timothy 1:9-10).

As D. Gene West correctly observed regarding Paul’s letter to Timothy:

We can see from the context that homosexual activities are classed with such sins as patricide, matricide, homicide, kidnapping, and perjury. If we accept that any of these things are sins, we must accept that all are sins. If it is a sin to be a whoremonger, to pursue a lascivious life with prostitutes, then it is likewise a sin to engage in homosexual acts. There is no way to escape that conclusion. If it is a sin to murder one’s father, or mother, or some other human being, then it is a sin for both males and females to “cohabitate” (2004).

When Paul said to the Christians at Corinth, “such were some of you,” he proved not only that homosexuals may be forgiven, but that they can cease such sinful activity. Here we have a clear biblical indication that someone can change their sexual orientation, and can be forgiven of a past immoral lifestyle. We are forced to conclude that sexual activity between persons of the same sex is not a matter of genetics; but is a behavioral phenomenon associated largely with environmental factors (see the August 2004 issue of Reason and Revelation).

CONCLUSION

Homosexuality is only one of many departures from God’s will for human morality and sexuality that society is facing. The Greek term for fornication, porneia, is a broad term that covers every form of illicit sexual intercourse, including adultery, incest, bestiality, bigamy, polygamy, bisexuality, homosexuality, pedophilia, necrophilia, and more. Our sex-crazed society is so promiscuous, and so estranged from God’s view of human sexuality, that our public schools consider it appropriate to teach children to simply “take precautions” when they engage in sexual escapades outside of marriage. But God never encouraged people to practice that kind of “safe sex.” The Bible definition of “safe sex” is sex that is confined to a divinely authorized, scriptural marriage (1 Corinthians 7:2-5). God insists that people can, and must, exercise self-control, self-discipline, and moral responsibility. The Bible teaches that we are not to be self-indulgent. We are to put restraints on ourselves, controlling our sexual urges in accordance with God’s teachings.

Encouraging young people simply to “take precautions” only encourages additional illicit behavior. It encourages more promiscuity. It contributes to an increase—not a decrease—in the number of pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. Despite several decades of having inundated our schools with sex education and the promotion of so-called “safe sex,” the statisticians inform us that “[a]fter steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage” (DeParle and Tavernise (2012). The liberals’ “solution” has not worked. In fact, the problem has greatly worsened.

The depths to which our country has slumped morally is evinced by the legality of the distribution birth control devices to students, and the illegality to distribute Bibles or to teach Bible principles. The time has come for our nation to wake up, and for all citizens to understand that freedom requires restraint. Rights require personal responsibility. People must take responsibility for their personal choices, and accept the consequences of their own actions. Paul declared: “flee fornication” (1 Corinthians 6:18). He did not write, “engage in ‘safe’ fornication”! There is no such thing as “safe” sin or “safe” immorality, because all sin is damning (James 1:15). God said a person must run away from it, resist it, and reject it (2 Corinthians 6:18). To a youth, Paul said: “Keep yourself pure” (1 Timothy 5:22). The writer of Hebrews insisted that the marriage bed is to be kept “undefiled.” “[F]ornicators and adulterers God will judge” (Hebrews 13:4). There should not be so much as a hint of sexual immorality among Christians (Ephesians 5:3).

Please understand: God loves all sinners—regardless of the specific sins they have committed. But it is imperative that we be about the business of alerting those who are engaged in sexual sin regarding God’s will, in an effort to “snatch them out of the fire” (Jude 23), and to “save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins” (James 5:20). One day it will be too late for both those who “not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them” (Romans 1:32). Indeed, the “sexually immoral…shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone” (Revelation 21:8).

Sexual sin undoubtedly will go down in history as one of the major contributors to the moral and spiritual deterioration, decline, and downfall of American society. Homosexuality is one more glaring proof of the sexual anarchy that prevails in American civilization. One wonders how much longer such widespread unchastity can continue in our land before God will “visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants” (Leviticus 18:25). We know today that homosexuality is not caused by genetics (see Harrub, et al., 2004). It is not “nature,” but “nurture” that is responsible. It is not a life “style,” but rather a life “choice.” And it is wrong.

Every society in human history that has followed a course of moral and spiritual depravity has either been destroyed by God or has imploded from within. Like these previous civilized nations, our society will not be permitted to survive indefinitely into the future—unless, of course, God is prepared to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.

REFERENCES

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin), fourth edition.

Arndt, William and F.W. Gingrich (1957), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press).

Barnes, Albert (1949 reprint), Barnes’ Notes on the Old and New Testaments—James-Jude (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).

Barrett, C.K. (1967), A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, ed. Henry Chadwick (London: Black).

Bauer, Walter (1979), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, trans., rev., and ed. William F. Arndt, F. Wilbur Gingrich, and Frederick W. Danker (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press), second edition.

Bengel, John Albert (1971), New Testament Word Studies, trans. Charlton Lewis and Marvin Vincent (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel).

Boswell, John (1980), Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press).

Botterweck, G. Johannes and Helmer Ringgren (1986), Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans).

Cranfield, C.E.B. (1985), A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, ed. J.A. Emmerton and C.E.B. Cranfield (Edinburgh: Clark).

Danker, Frederick (2000), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago), third edition.

DeParle, Jason and Sabrina Tavernise (2012), “For Women Under 30, Most Births Occur Outside Marriage,” The New York Times, February 17, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/18/us/for-women-under-30-most-births-occur-outside-marriage.html?pagewanted=all.

Deyoung, James B. (1988), “The Meaning of ‘Nature’ in Romans and Its Implications for Biblical Proscriptions of Homosexual Behavior,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 31:429-441.

Dupont, Florence(1993), Daily Life in Ancient Rome, trans. Christopher Woodall (Cambridge: Blackwell).

Fitzmyer, Joseph A. (1993), Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday).

Gesenius, William (1979), Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).

Harris, R. Laird, Gleason Archer Jr., and Bruce Waltke, eds. (1980), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (Chicago, IL: Moody).

Harrub, Brad and Dave Miller (2004), “This is the Way God Made Me”—A Scientific Examination of Homosexuality and the ‘Gay Gene’,” Apologetics Press, http://www.apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=7&article=1388&topic=36.

Hughes, R. Kent (1991), Righteousness from Heaven (Wheaton, IL: Crossway).

Lenski, R. C. H. (1951), The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Columbus, OH: Wartburg).

Martin, Dale B. (1995), “Heterosexuality and the Interpretation of Romans 1.18-32,” Biblical Interpreter, 3:332-355.

Melina, Livio (1998), “Homosexual Inclination as an Objective Disorder: Reflections of Theological Anthropology,” Communio-International Catholic Review, 25:57-68.

Miller, Dave (2008), “The Founders on Homosexuality,” Apologetics Press, http://www.apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=7&article=1126&topic=36.

Salmond, S.D.F. (1950), The Pulpit Commentary—Jude, ed. H.D.M. Spence and Joseph S. Exell (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans).

Stein, Sam (2012), “Obama Backs Gay Marriage,” The Huffington Post, May 9, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/09/obama-gay-marriage_n_1503245.html?ref=mostpopular.

Thayer, Joseph H. (1977 reprint), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).

West, D. Gene (2004), “Homosexuality, Alternative or Deviate Lifestyle?” [a tract], (Moundsville, WV).

Whitelaw, Thomas (1950), The Pulpit Commentary—Genesis, ed. H.D.M. Spence and Joseph S. Exell (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans).

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One of the things that the Bible has consistently denounced is the taking of the Lord’s name in vain. In fact, one of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament states: “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain” (Exodus 20:7). The word “vain” means “for no reason” or “useless.” Thus, God was instructing the Israelites to avoid using His name in a useless, disrespectful way. Instead, the Israelites were supposed to revere the name of God and use it in a serious, considerate way. Many of the ancient Israelites were so respectful of the name of God that they would not even pronounce it or write it for fear of using it in vain. Those who did write it would often throw away the quill they had used, because they thought that any quill that had written God’s name was holy and should not be used for regular words.

While it is true that the Ten Commandments in their original form are not binding on people today (Lyons, 2001), it is also true that God continues to be serious about the vain use of His name. In Matthew 12:36-37, Jesus explained: “But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified and by your words you will be condemned.” While Jesus’ warning against idle words is broader than just using the Lord’s name in vain, it certainly would include that as well.

Unfortunately, many today no longer respect God’s name. Not only does the skeptical community misuse and abuse God’s name, many of those within Christendom have lost respect for His name as well. One of the most common abuses of God’s name is the exclamation, “Oh my God.” This phrase is used by millions of people every day who give no thought to God when they are using His name. They say these words in an idle, useless, vain way that shows contempt for God. Both the Old and New Testaments (Colossians 3:8) explain to us that God views this as a sin and will not hold him guiltless who uses His name in such a way. Another common way the Lord’s name is abused is in statements of exclamation, such as “Good Lord,” or “Lord, no,” or “Lord, have mercy.” Unfortunately, many who understand the fact that the phrase, “Oh my God” is using the Lord’s name in vain, fail to see that saying “Good Lord,” without thinking about the Lord, is equally wrong. Notice that Exodus 20:7 says not to take the name of “the Lord your God in vain.” That verse includes both the terms “Lord” and “God.”

Since the Bible explains that Satan is the “god of this world,” it only makes sense that he would incorporate things into culture that are sinful and wrong. The cultural acceptance of the phrases “Oh my God,” “Good Lord,” “Lord have mercy,” and a host of vain uses of the Lord God’s name is exactly what we should expect from the world’s sinful culture. We should remember, however, that Christians are not to conform themselves to the sinful mold of this world (Romans 12:1-2). Instead, Christians are called to live a life of reverence to God and obedience to His Word. Let us all carefully consider what comes out of our mouths and determine that we will not use the Lord God’s name in vain.

REFERENCE

Lyons, Eric (2001), “Which Law Was Abolished?” Apologetics Press, http://apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=11&article=531.

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