Sigh. Be sure to apply your religiously-based condemnation and forgiveness selectively.
By the way, the story he’s talking about is the story of King David and Bathsheba. David wanted Bathsheba, so he drafted Bathsheba’s husband into the army, put him on the front line, had the troops abandon him, which resulted in his death. David then married and had a child with Bathsheba. God killed the child to punish David for his sin (because killing children for the sins of their fathers is a good idea). This is why, in the US legal system, we often kill the children of murderers as punishment.
I also have to wonder how the pro-life crowd could interpret God as being pro-life if He kills children.
I also have to wonder how the pro-life crowd could interpret God as being pro-life if He kills children.
Easy. If God does it it can’t be wrong. Even if it’s something that we’re explicitly told by God not to do. So murder is wrong, but not if God does it. Theft is wrong, but not if God does it. Lying is wrong, but not if God does it (see Genesis and the story of Adam and Eve). Hubris is wrong, but not if the hubris is God’s (see Genesis and the story of the Tower of Babel). And on and on. God is the ultimate good, you see, so if God does it it must be good, even if it looks like evil to us.
And for truly disgusting stories of God punishing someone by doing horrible things to their families, look no further than the Book of Job – where Job’s entire family is killed off because God and the Adversary are having a philosophical discussion about just how much punishment Job can take before he snaps and curses God. And then God gives him a new family and that’s supposed to make everything okay for Job. Blech.
The story of Job always bugged me a bit. Though it really fits with human psychology; in extreme cases, a person with strong beliefs will actually feel more strongly about said belief if things go badly. Just look at the Seventh Day Adventist church; it spawned after their founder told his followers the end of the world would come soon on multiple occasions (he was wrong each time).
Another case of this phenomenon, albeit a bit more light hearted, is the story behind “Audience of One.” To quote the synopsis:
“Ten years ago, a Pastor from the Voice of Pentecost Church in San Francisco received a ‘prophetic whisper,’ -a directive from God to make movies for the Lord. Using donations from his congregation, he slowly transformed his church into a fully functioning movie studio and the production company Christian WYSIWYG Filmworks was born. After experimenting on a number of small projects, Pastor Richard Gazowsky announced that he and his WYSIWYG crew were going to make a film entitled, GRAVITY: THE SHADOW OF JOSEPH, a $50 million biblical science fiction movie that would redefine the Hollywood epic.
AUDIENCE OF ONE is a documentary that chronicles the making of GRAVITY. This verite style film goes inside a Pentecostal church, where the charismatic Gazowsky leads his loyal cast and crew on an incredible journey that tests the limits of faith. From pre-production at their church, to shooting principal photography in Italy, to leasing an enormous studio on an island in San Francisco Bay, AUDIENCE OF ONE keeps pace with an embattled church production that looks to God in order to keep their dream alive. Full of humor and pathos, what transpires is a story of obsession, faith and delusion.”
http://bit.ly/AudienceOfOne
And yet, after all was said and done, they keep going on. http://bit.ly/AOOWYSIWYG