Tag Archives: god

Does God want people to sacrifice their children?

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No.

God’s law says you shouldn’t sacrifice your children to Molek, and if you do, you can be stoned to death. It also says not to sacrifice your sons and daughters in the fire at all. Not even as a way of worshiping God, because God hates it when people worship their gods that way. Whenever God’s people and kings do sacrifice their children, the Bible generally says that what they’re doing is detestable and evil and makes God angry.

God told Jeremiah repeatedly that it had never even occurred to him to command people to do such a detestable thing as to burn their children in the fire. God told Ezekiel that his people were defiling themselves with this bloodshed. Hosea says God threatened to destroy his people for sinning by offering human sacrifices. And Micah didn’t seem to think God wanted him to offer his firstborn, or anything else, for that matter. David too claims that God doesn’t desire sacrifices and offerings at all.

Yes.

But obviously David and Micah were wrong to think that God didn’t want sacrifices. God’s laws demand loads of those. And sometimes he even demands that people sacrifice their children to him.

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The Parable of the Nymphomaniac

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Some Canaanites had a baby girl, but they hated her for some reason, so they left her to die in a field. A man found the baby lying there naked, and he magically made her grow up and become beautiful. Then he abandoned her too.

Later, the man came back and noticed that the naked girl was all grown up! She had boobs and everything. So he married her. But this woman had an extremely high sex drive, and her husband couldn’t satisfy her. So she started having sex with her well-endowed Egyptian neighbors, and with every stranger who passed by. She made statues of men and had sex with them, too.

Her husband was furious and called her a whore, even though he knew that she was actually the one paying for all that sex. He tried to punish her by stripping her in front of all her lovers, as if they hadn’t already seen her naked. Then the beautiful woman’s lovers got a mob to come and kill her, for some reason.

The end.

Interpretation

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The Parable of the Big Tree

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A certain cedar of Lebanon was the biggest and most beautiful tree around, even bigger and more beautiful than the ones in God’s garden. But God thought it was wicked for the cedar to stand so tall and proud, so he let a ruthless emperor cut it down. He warned the other trees not to grow taller than the rest, or they would die too. Then all the other trees in Lebanon died too. (Presumably because there was always a tallest remaining tree.)

The end.

The moral of the story

Don’t be tall and beautiful.

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Will God destroy all living creatures again?

Contradictions, , ,

No.

After God flooded the whole world, he famously gave us the rainbow as a sign that he would never destroy all life on earth in a flood again. But that’s not all. In the chapter before that, God went further, and declared that he will never again destroy all living creatures. So that even rules out the possibility that he’ll do it by some method other than a flood.

Yes.

God told Nahum that he would leave the lions of Ninevah no prey on the earth. What does that entail? Maybe it doesn’t necessarily mean that absolutely all animals on earth will die out, but it sure doesn’t sound promising. Even if he doesn’t mean actual lions, God is saying the people of Ninevah will have no more people on earth left to kill. Which means God must be planning to at least kill all the people on earth.

Which God confirms in Isaiah, when he says he will totally destroy all nations. Or maybe he just means he’ll destroy their armies? No, Zephaniah says God is going to consume the whole earth with fire and make a sudden end of all who live on the earth. So God is definitely going to destroy all the people on earth. And it sounds like he’s going to destroy all the animals too.

Which God confirms in that same chapter, saying he’ll sweep away everything from the face of the earth, man and beast, when he destroys all mankind on the face of the earth. And the New Testament agrees that the earth will be laid bare on the day of the Lord, when everything will be completely will be destroyed by fire.

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The Parable of the Dirty Pot

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Someone cooked meat in a pot. But some food got baked onto the pot and wouldn’t come off. Not even when he set the pot on fire.

The end.

The moral of the story

After you set the pot on the coals, don’t forget to pour a little water in, to soften the baked-on food, and then scrape it off with a spatula.

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The Parable of the Gardening Eagles

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An eagle planted a vine. The vine grew toward the eagle, until another eagle came and watered the vine, and then the vine grew toward that eagle. Then some people came and pulled the vine out of the ground, and it withered and died.

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The Parable of the Failed Vineyard

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Someone tried to plant a vineyard, but the grapes he grew weren’t any good. He couldn’t figure out what he had done wrong, so he decided it must be the grapes’ fault. And so he destroyed his vineyard.

The end.

The moral of the story

Don’t over-water your vineyard.

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The Parable of the Rich Thief

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Once there was a rich man and a poor man. The poor man had nothing but one lamb, but he loved it much more than the rich man loved any of the many sheep he had. When a traveler came and stayed with the rich man, the rich man needed a sheep to make a meal for the traveler. But instead of using one of his own sheep, the rich man stole the poor man’s lamb. King David said the rich man should be killed, and be forced to give the poor man four new lambs.

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Should people blaspheme God?

Contradictions, ,

No.

God commanded his people through Moses not to blaspheme him. He said blasphemers must be cut off from Israel.

When one half-Israelite man blasphemed God’s name, the others weren’t sure what God wanted them to do. So God clarified that anyone who blasphemed his name was to be stoned to death. Even if they were foreigners. So they did.

When Eli’s sons blasphemed God, God rejected them and put a curse on their family forever, with no hope of atonement. Even though God had promised that they would be his priests forever.

The king of Assyria and his commander blasphemed God, so God got the king’s sons to kill him with swords. And when the king of Tyre called himself a god, God said he would send the king’s ruthless enemies to prove his mortality to him.

God had an angel kill Herod Agrippa just because other people called him a god. God didn’t even give him a chance to say what he thought about it.

According to Mark, Jesus said blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the only sin that God never forgives.

Maybe?

According to Matthew and Luke, though, Jesus also said that “every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven“. And that “anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven“. So if you sin by slandering the Holy Spirit, God might forgive you. And if you sin by slandering Jesus, God will definitely forgive you.

Yes.

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