This passage of scripture has been one of the most difficult challenges to my faith personally and an issue that I was forced to wrestle with if I were to continue following the Lord Jesus. Isn't God supposed to be loving and forgiving, abounding in mercy and steadfast love? I have a three-year-old girl, a one-year-old girl, and a two-year-old boy, and the thought of some Israelite army marching into my town, forcing me to either submit to their right to take my land or face war, is already frightening enough, but to know that even after my people’s defeat they would carry off my daughters for service/marriage and murder my son is just such a horrid thought that anyone that does not immediately squirm at such a scenario has either not thought through the implications of what the text is saying or their conscience is so seared they no longer experience emotions properly and should probably seek professional help! Now, any studious student of scripture understands the situation is a lot more complex and nuanced than the face value interpretation I laid out; however, the problem in my mind is exacerbated when you throw the following scriptures into the mix.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Matthew 5:38-48
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
Mark 12:30-31
And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”
Exodus 34:6-7
Does it not seem just a little hypocritical of God to command us to love our enemies and to do good to them and yet command the children of Israel to do the complete opposite? Remember, Jesus is God, (mostly clear seen from Exodus 3:14 and John 8:48-59 and is also confirmed by the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:1-5 and the creed found in Philippians 2:5-11) which complicates the question even further to my mind.
How is any of this loving?
How is any of this merciful?
What could these little boys and girls have done to deserve such harsh and cruel treatment? If I am being truthful, this issue almost caused me to walk away from my faith entirely, and I feared what this would do to my family and I.
My wife is a born-again believer; my children love going to church and have made many friends there. Jesus has also been such a great friend to me, and so the idea of walking away from Him felt like an ultimate betrayal; even if Christianity were not true, it still would have felt like I was leaving a part of me. The thought was painful, but I did not want to disrupt my wife's faith or disrupt the happiness that going to church gave my children (especially my daughter Aubriella, who is excited every Sunday to play and learn about Jesus), and so I suffered in silence. When my wife Brieann was talking about Jesus as we went up the stairs one afternoon, I cringed internally with anger at the God I thought I knew who gave what I felt to be the most atrocious command ever given in all of scripture! I felt betrayed by my Best Friend, by the God who is the very source of love, life, mercy, truth, and grace. I understood He also is a God of wrath, but that was deserved only for the people who rejected Him, not for innocent children! I could reconcile the idea of God judging the wicked men of the city; I could even go so far as accepting that “the wages of sin is death” for the women that led Israel into pagan idolatry through sexual practices that corrupted them, but the killing of young boys and the little girls forced to live as Israelites after their mothers and fathers are destroyed? How could God do such a thing? I have a theodicy for childhood cancer. I have a theodicy for natural evil. I have a theodicy for moral evil, but this? How was I supposed to make it through this when it's God giving the command?
I prayed and asked the Lord Jesus for help, and thankfully I have made it to the other side with a stronger faith, and now I would love to share with you my journey through this difficult text in hopes that it will help you as you wrestle through this issue, but I forewarn you that I am going to be extremely philosophical at certain points. Before we begin an honest examination of the context in which this command was given, we will first need to establish the nature of morality, the value of human life, and that it is even possible for God to commit a moral evil...
For now, assume that God does not exist for the sake of argument, as I invite us to do a simple thought experiment to begin clarifying the issue of morality. I want you to imagine five of the nicest people you know (or five people you know of, or a mix of both) and extract everything that you deem to be their most noble and good characteristics (such as their empathy and compassion, kindness to others, bravery, etc.). Now let's take those characteristics and mold them into a new person in our minds, possessing all of the good qualities of the individuals you thought of (you could also just label five traits you find to be virtuous if you need to). Mine are,
Compassion
Courage
Levelheadedness
Kindness
Hospitality
Let us now take the amalgamation of our list and max out these virtues to the highest possible level of greatness that we can conceive and have this avatar be the symbol of the perfect embodiment of these moral goods. We now have an imaginary being that is a reflection of what we perceive to be the good, and if we just go a little higher up on the status, it won't be hard to understand how it's possible that a society could create a god(s) in their image.
You'll find very quickly that a god concept may easily vary from culture to culture depending on what they deem as virtuous. If God does not exist, He is merely a product of our minds, a collection of the moral imaginations of the society with which the god concept is built upon (imagine the greatest possible secular humanist who lives out their virtues perfectly; this standard of morality would function as their “god” guiding their moral behavior as they aim to align with those values).
Let's now look at some less-than-pleasant moral systems that have cropped up and compare them with our imaginary being based on the five virtues you chose.
Consider first for a moment the trolley problem. Imagine there is a train racing forward at 80 miles an hour, and an evil scientist, wanting to observe human psychology in perilous circumstances, ties five people to the right train track and one person to the left and sets the train's default to run over the five. All of them have bags over their heads, all adults, so your judgments will be based solely on the number of people that would die in the scenario. You have the option to hit the switch, and the train tracks will shift, and only one person will die. What do you do? Think of your answer for a moment, and when you have it, I will share mine.
I would hit the switch without thinking about it too much in such an extreme scenario. It's easy for us to be upset with people for making the wrong decision in precarious circumstances, but if we are honest, sometimes we are placed in moral dilemmas where there is no easy answer, where regardless of what we pick, it is not the ideal choice. For instance, an employer hiring two candidates who both have families to feed, whoever you choose means passing over the other; thus, there is some amount of good to go along with some sort of suffering with either option you choose; it's inescapable. If you have only one antidote for a poisonous venom from a snake bite and 6 people are bitten, do you not use it at all to be fair, or is it better to save one life than no lives? This will be important to remember later with the Amalekite problem (there are sometimes no ideal solutions), but for now let me share my why.
The underlying moral assumption behind my reasoning is the value of human life and the desire to preserve and maximize it as much as I possibly can. Let's now redo our scenario, but this time in the mad scientist's twisted experiment, there are no bags over the people's heads, and this time the scientist is forcing you to be an onlooker. As the train moves full speed ahead, you notice the man forced to decide the train's direction appears to have a conflict of conscience as he looks at the one man on the left track with utter hatred and then with longing eyes at a woman over at the other track to the right. Grudgingly he doesn't pull the switch, and five people die! The diabolical scientist looks at you and asks, “What do you think?”
Well… what do you think? What reasons do you believe the man had for not pulling the lever and saving the one man at the expense of five? Remember, he could see everyone's faces, and so it appears he despised the very man's life he saved and appears to have loved the woman on the other side of the track, who he could have saved with the flick of a lever, plus four more! What do you think was going through his mind? Do you believe he was wrong in his decision? Remember, five lives are gone forever now, and we would certainly call the man who saved only one kid from drowning when he could have saved five… Take your time.
I bet you didn't come to the correct answer, and that's okay; you are working off incomplete information, which I will fill in for you now. The man on the left track who was spared is a brilliant neuroscientist on the verge of curing Alzheimer's disease, and the lady in the right track was his wife, who had developed 3rd stage Alzheimer's. His feelings of anger and resentment stemmed from the realization that the very man he was going to save so he may continue his work was most likely the only man who could have saved his wife, but that by sacrificing her, he would at least be able to spare anyone else from having to suffer in the way he has. If we did not have this information, we would think this man to be a monster, but with more information, we can see him in a different light and understand that his sacrifice was immense, and he did it for the greater good of humanity by saving the scientist who could potentially go on to save many, many more lives and reduce suffering.
With incomplete information, it is easy to think evil of someone, so it's best to withhold judgment until we have all of the facts. This will also be important to remember for later.
Now, let's imagine a hypothetical tribe that worships a deity that demands child sacrifice in exchange for plentiful crops. The tribe reasons that by sacrificing one child, they could appease the gods and produce an even more plentiful crop season and thus reduce suffering for their community at large. How many children would be saved from famine and starvation? They certainly are operating in a false belief (child sacrifice doesn't affect the weather), but notice the same moral principle is at work in them as it was with us when we were at the trolley, the same moral principle that was operating in the man who saved the scientist and even the same moral principle operating in the Nazis, frighteningly enough. Let's unpack that.
The Nazis were completely wrong about the value of Jewish life in seeing them as lesser beings, but their moral principle was still one aimed at the flourishing of human life, and they believed that by eradicating weaker humans (eugenics), they would create a stronger humanity. By moving the trolley to a class of people they deemed inhuman (which is so terrifyingly sad; I remember visiting the Holocaust museum, and it's one of the most tragic events in human history, and I'm glad the Nazis were defeated; Jewish people are just as human as you and I are and the Nazis that committed the horror's) they felt they could create a better humanity, but the only point that I am trying to demonstrate is, in general people are not actively believing they are pursuing evil, they are chasing something good, only in an improper way with bad information.
He said that there was one only good, namely, knowledge; and one only evil, namely, ignorance.
Socrates
Now I don't fully agree with Socrates on this; I do believe some people relish in evil, love it, and enjoy it, but in most cases, there is truth to his sentiment.
In the trolley scenario, you were pursuing the greatest good of humanity by trying to save as much human life as possible.
The man who sacrificed his wife for the scientist also sought out the greatest good of humanity by trying to create progress for a better future without a terrible disease.
The child sacrifice tribe sought the greatest good for their tribe, something that is good but in the wrong way based on bad information.
The Nazis were aiming at improving the human species, but in the wrong way with incorrect information (humans are all equal and all are worthy of life, so they were wrong to assume a people group was beneath them and not worthy of life).
I know it may be terrifying to imagine a similar operating principle behind the motivations of actions we view as abhorrent because it tends to humanize the people behind the moral atrocities, but if I am going to be logically consistent when examining the Israelites from this perspective, I need to try and understand their reasoning.
[16] “These are the very ones who followed Balaam’s advice and caused the people of Israel to rebel against the Lord at Mount Peor. They are the ones who caused the plague to strike the Lord’s people. [17] So kill all the boys and all the women who have had intercourse with a man.
Numbers 31:16-17
What was the incident?
[1] While the Israelites were camped at Acacia Grove, some of the men defiled themselves by having sexual relations with local Moabite women. [2] These women invited them to attend sacrifices to their gods, so the Israelites feasted with them and worshiped the gods of Moab. [3] In this way, Israel joined in the worship of Baal of Peor, causing the Lord’s anger to blaze against his people. [4] The Lord issued the following command to Moses: “Seize all the ringleaders and execute them before the Lord in broad daylight, so his fierce anger will turn away from the people of Israel.” [5] So Moses ordered Israel’s judges, “Each of you must put to death the men under your authority who have joined in worshiping Baal of Peor.” [6] Just then one of the Israelite men brought a Midianite woman into his tent, right before the eyes of Moses and all the people, as everyone was weeping at the entrance of the Tabernacle. [7] When Phinehas son of Eleazar and grandson of Aaron the priest saw this, he jumped up and left the assembly. He took a spear [8] and rushed after the man into his tent. Phinehas thrust the spear through the man’s body and into the woman’s stomach. So the plague against the Israelites was stopped, [9] but not before 24,000 people had died.
Numbers 25:1-9
Remember, in this analysis, we are assuming that God does not exist for the sake of argument (remember, this shook my faith, so if this was not resolved for me, I may very well be an atheist today), and it seems to me Israel associated the plague that killed 24,000 people with Israel falling into sexual sin (a violation of the moral ethic built on their culture projected onto their god concept). If God did not create the plague and it is a case of apophenia (the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things), then the Israelites were working on incomplete information. Keep in mind, the Amalekites hated Israel and sought to destroy them, so if they were operating on false information (remember, I'm perspective-taking for a moment; this isn't my view), that being the Moabite women causing a plague, their reasoning could have been to prevent more plagues as they may have feared inevitable conflict with this people group and wanted to remove the source of temptation that would anger the God that threatened to destroy them with a plague they thought was related (keep in mind I believe the Bible is the Word of God and He endorsed their destruction; we have a way to go before we get to the answer). The boys would grow up to possibly avenge their family, and so in their panic, irrationality and emotion took over, and they did something out of character, but either way, the Hebrew people were operating within their moral system, the virtues they thought were the highest ideal for their culture that ultimately became grounded in their god concept, a reflection of their intuitions maxed out to the greatest possible level. We could assume then they were seeking the highest good for their society, albeit in the wrong way, but this leads to a very pressing problem for us if we take that route.
If we assume they were pursuing a higher good in the wrong way, then that assumes there is a right way for them to pursue it, but we cannot not make that leap so quickly and without justification as it assumes we are pursuing the higher good in the right way with perfect information!
At the start of this article, we did a simple thought experiment where we took the virtues we thought most valuable and made them into an ideal person we then maxed out to show how god concepts could arise for ancient people. Our secular humanist example further drives this point home that even if we don't happen to believe in God or gods, a moral operating force is still guiding our decisions, as the atheist is just as capable of pursuing the highest good for humanity as believers in God; the problem is, however, if there is no God, are we obligated to? If we are not obligated to carry out moral duties, then does it matter which way you turn the train tracks really in the end? We will have to go a little deeper into the subject, but we are closer to answering the question.
In the meantime, please reflect on the moral argument for God's existence. It’ll be critical for
part 2.
If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
Objective moral values and duties exist.
Therefore, God exists.
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