God's Moral Standards

I hear a lot about how God's moral standards are higher than human standards and how we can never measure up to his greatness. Is it true? It is one thing to make such a statement, quite another to prove its veracity. Alas, it is very difficult to find examples of God actually being nice to people out of the kindness of his heart--by which I mean, he does something loving and compassionate without using violence or the threat of violence to force people to worship him. There seems to be a lot of that in the Bible. Here are just a few examples of many.

Example #1: Let's start somewhere at the beginning, in chapter 6 of the book of Genesis. You know the story--God regrets he ever made mankind. (v.6). Right off the bat, we have a "supreme" deity who has regrets about something he did in the past. God makes mistakes? How can that be if he has such high standards? His standards should be so high as to eliminate even the remotest possibility that he will ever do anything he might later regret or be sorry about. If mankind, his ultimate creation, turned bad, it's because there was a flaw in his design somewhere.

Anyway, he decides to correct the mistake. Now, being God, he could have simply snapped his fingers and remade everything in an instant so that humans were perfect and good; but no, his way to solve the problem is with tremendous bloodshed--he destroys the whole world in a great flood. Christians typically think only of all the sinful, evil grown-ups getting what they deserve, but what about the thousands of innocent children and infants? What did they do to deserve being drowned? Is this another example of God's high standards for mankind--kill the innocent along with the guilty?

Example #2: In Genesis 19 we read the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and their eventual destruction by the hand of God. It seems that these cities were so evil that God could not find one righteous person in them, except for Lot and his family (and their moral standards leave much to be desired, as well). So he made Lot leave, but killed his wife for daring to look back at the destruction of her homeland. Anyone with a sense of compassion has to wonder how many children, babies, and pregnant women were burned to death in that conflagration, and what those kids did to deserve such a terrifying and painful fate. BibleGod doesn't blink an eye, and never expresses the least regret for their deaths.

Example #3: In Exodus 9:12, we read that "the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart." This was at the time God was pounding Egypt with plagues and death in order to force Pharaoh to let the Israelites free. How fair and just was it for God to make Pharaoh stubborn so that God could visit him with still more destruction? This is a good moral example? In chapter 11, God releases the biggest disaster of all--death of all the first-born children and animals of Egypt. The majority of Egyptians would have had no idea what was happening at the palace between Moses and their king. The children and animals had not even sinned, had done nothing at all to be worthy of death, yet they died one and all, any of them that were first-born, along with any adults who were first-born in their families. That's a lot of people--how many were left alive? Why didn't God simply strike every Egyptian with temporary paralysis and then march the Israelites away from them? By the time they became unparalyzed, the Israelites would have been miles away, and no little children would have had to die. If I, a mere human, can think of a better way of dealing with a problem of this magnitude, why couldn't Yahweh?

Example #4: Numbers 31 is all about Moses taking revenge on the Midianites. It begins with this statement: The LORD said to Moses, "Take vengeance on the Midianites for the Israelites. After that, you will be gathered to your people." See, this is GOD ALMIGHTY giving the commands here. Moses was a man of God, he never did anything without God's permission. So Moses does as he is told, and in verse 17 we read this little gem: [Moses speaking] "Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." Imagine those girls watching their families get brutally murdered, and then they themselves are taken for the sexual pleasure of the barbarians who invaded their land--all with God's permission and approval. This is not the behavior of a god with high moral standards, it is the behavior of a god who is little more than a mass murderer. Our soldiers in Iraq have gotten in deep trouble for molesting Iraqi women. I suspect this happens more often than is reported, but the fact is that most of us are outraged at the thought of women and children being abused or butchered, even in war. Imagine the outcry if they killed every Iraqi male from infancy to old age, every elderly or pregnant woman, and kidnapped the young girls to take as wives or mistresses! That sort of thing doesn't fly nowadays, but BibleGod was perfectly happy with it.

Example #5: Is Yahweh a god of love, as Christians insist? 1 Cor. 13:4-7 describes what love is: patient, kind, not envious, boastful, or self-seeking, keeps no record of wrongs, etc. God, however, is impatient, jealous, and quick to anger; and when he loses his temper, the innocent and the guilty die side-by-side. God boasts of his greatness and glory in nearly every chapter; demands nonstop worship from everyone; and keeps a record of every wrong ever done by every human who has ever lived, and he will bring them up at a mass resurrection in the future and judge everyone according to their deeds.

God's high standards? I think one can see, from just the few examples listed here, that most humans have much higher standards of behavior than the God of the Bible. None of us would demand the deaths of millions to appease our anger, or go on a killing spree at the slightest offense, or set whole cities on fire for the sins of a few. I do not have to kill so much as a fly in order to forgive someone who does me wrong, but BibleGod insisted on the torturing and killing of his own son before he could even think about forgiving humanity.

Shouldn't God be better than us, not worse? Why, then, does he reflect only the most barbaric instincts and desires of some the meanest humans who ever lived, past and present? I think we know the answer to that one. God resembles humans because he was invented by humans. It is as simple as that.