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I used to think Christians were evil primarily because of hypocrisy.
But recently in a conversation with a hardcore Christian,
I realized that many Christians recognize evil, and as a result they
make excuses for it. This is what I like to call a Christian dilemma.
The Bible teaches evil things - example: In Deuteronomy chapter 21
about a rebellious son. And I read directly from the Bible...
"If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and
mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him,
his father and mother shall take a hold of him and bring him to the elders
at the gate in this town. They shall say to the elders 'This son of ours is stubborn and
rebellious
He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.' Then all the men of his town are to
stone him to death.
You must purge the evil from among you all Israel will hear of it and be afraid."
Many Christians have tried to explain away this verse by saying
that God hates disobedience so much that he created a narrative
in which to show his displeasure of it. They explain that God didn't mean for them to
literally kill their children
but figuratively. Yet other Bible verses are taken literally.
This is cherry picking verses for this one simple reason:
No moral person can agree with a verse like this.
Seeing a verse like this in the Bible invalidates the idea that God is a moral
and just God. Because of this, the Christian is forced into
manipulating the meaning of the verse to prevent the realization that the Bible
has taught something very,
very immoral. This is Christian self-defense.
They know in their heart and mind that these things are wrong and the only way
to avoid buying into this
is to twist the words of the Bible. I don't see this as a bad thing though.
In fact I see this as a good thing... It means the Christian who is
explaining this away
knows that it is evil... They know that it's wrong to kill children for any reason.
Because of their human morality, they twist the words of the Bible to make it fit.
They do this out of fear. Questioning the Bible is blasphemy.
So to avoid blasphemy and the punishment they believe they will receive,
they explain it away so that they can remain loyal to their faith
and to their true morality as a human being.
In doing so, they commit another sin, the sin of lying.
But the lesson here is that they're committing the lesser of two evils
They are lying to defend their morality versus agreeing with killing children.