" This proves there is no god."
What is it with you guys that literally everything turns into a chance to push your atheist ideology? You know, you really give it away, what it is you really care about and it isn't much of anything else.
What it proves is what it says all through the Bible, that actions and choices have consequences and one of the consequences of us having choices is that we have to live with the results of those choices. That's not proof that there is no God, it's proof that God gave us freedom of thought and action. And the collective action of lots of people can have consequences that are greatly magnified.
The atheist view of scripture is essentially the same as the most naive, most ill-considered, most superficial and dishonest of those who profess to believe it. If you read The Book of Judges you will see, over and over again the disastrous results of the choices people make. Or even better, Chapter 8 in the Book of Samuel
4 One day the nation’s leaders came to Samuel at Ramah 5 and said, “You are an old man. You set a good example for your sons, but they haven’t followed it. Now we want a king to be our leader, just like all the other nations. Choose one for us!”
6 Samuel was upset to hear the leaders say they wanted a king, so he prayed about it. 7 The Lord answered:
Samuel, do everything they want you to do. I am really the one they have rejected as their king. 8 Ever since the day I rescued my people from Egypt, they have turned from me to worship idols. Now they are turning away from you. 9 Do everything they ask, but warn them and tell them how a king will treat them.
10 Samuel told the people who were asking for a king what the Lord had said:
11 If you have a king, this is how he will treat you. He will force your sons to join his army. Some of them will ride in his chariots, some will serve in the cavalry, and others will run ahead of his own chariot. 12 Some of them will be officers in charge of a thousand soldiers, and others will be in charge of fifty. Still others will have to farm the king’s land and harvest his crops, or make weapons and parts for his chariots. 13 Your daughters will have to make perfume or do his cooking and baking.
14 The king will take your best fields, as well as your vineyards, and olive orchards and give them to his own officials. 15 He will also take a tenth of your grain and grapes and give it to his officers and officials.
16 The king will take your slaves and your best young men and your donkeys and make them do his work. 17 He will also take a tenth of your sheep and goats. You will become the king’s slaves, 18 and you will finally cry out for the Lord to save you from the king you wanted. But the Lord won’t answer your prayers.
19-20 The people would not listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want to be like other nations. We want a king to rule us and lead us in battle.”
21 Samuel listened to them and then told the Lord exactly what they had said. 22 “Do what they want,” the Lord answered. “Give them a king.”
Put that into contemporary terms that mean things like they'll dupe you into borrowing money and use the debt to steal everything you have, or they'll let them steal your retirement fund or they'll cheat your children out of an education or they'll dupe them into taking out absurd loans to finance bogus educational ventures.... That's what we got in this election, people who will do everything they can to steal everything. It's not as if that warning wasn't given more than 2,500 years ago. Maybe if you really read it you'd have been warned.
Brueggeman points out that's what Israel got in Solomon. All that good press Solomon continues to get to this day, is press he bought and paid for long, long ago. The "wisdom of Solomon" was the knowledge of scholars on the king's payroll. He bought his reputation, he didn't earn it; and he bought it by trading in arms. Israel, a tiny kingdom, was a major arms dealer thanks to Solomon, who grew rich off the dark arts of war. That is, until Israel wasn't needed anymore and Babylon came calling.
ReplyDeleteWhich the prophets never took as a sign there was no God (although people said so then, too), but as a sign of the people's faithlessness, and more importantly, of God's faithfulness (you want despair over God, read Jeremiah and Ezekiel).
Atheists are so clueless; especially the ones who swear they've "read the Bible" more carefully than most Christians.