Tough Questions for Christians #18: Promised Land

Image by Gauis Caecilius via Flickr

God is a very efficient killer. The Bible is full of stories about God killing people. It starts with a mass killing where God actually drowns billions of people on the planet. Later on God sends the angel of death down to kill Egypt to kill anyone - to kill the oldest - of everyone in Egypt who doesn't have blood painted around their door. (Apparently he needs some sort of external marker so he knows who he is supposed to slaughter.)

God also kills about 50,000 people because a couple people looked inside the Ark of the Covenant, he kills someone else for simply touching the box. He killed someone else for failing to impregnate his dead brother's wife. God is a very efficient killer, he's good at killing everyone himself... sometimes.

Other times he asks his followers to do it for him.

Imagine I promised I was going to give you a car. I told you that when you turn 16, or 30, or 50 (pick an age depending on how old you are right now). When you hit your birthday, I'm going to give you a brand-new, bright, shiny sports car. And I promise you I'm going to do it.

So the day comes, you come to my house. You're knocking on my door, excited, and say: "Great, great, I want the car. Where's my car?"

I say, "I'm a man of my word, I'll give you the car. Go right across the street, to the Jones' house, kill Mr. Jones, kill his wife, kill their infant son, kill their daughter, kill their dog, their cat, and their parakeet... Then you can have their car. It's yours. Happy Birthday."

Would you consider that a good gift? Would you consider me a "great," "wonderful," "fabulous" person for giving you this gift? No, you'd consider me a kook for telling you to kill somebody else and take their shit.

But that's exactly what God does in the Bible.

God promises his chosen people the "promised land," when they get there, people are already living there. Does God kill those people, or move those people away on his own? (As I said, he's a very efficient killer, he could do it just fine) No. God tells the Israelites "If you want the land, slaughter everybody that's in it."

Of course, sometimes he tells them to take sex slaves, but usually it's just "kill everybody, and everything... then you can have what's there's, the land. Happy Birthday."

Now, it's not a good gift, it's stupid. And people that say "God gave them the promised land so they had the right to kill these people," they are just insane.

Apologists have thousands of excuses as to why God had these people killed. There are all sorts of rationalizations for why they had to die. But what I haven't heard yet is why God had the Israelites kill them. Why, if they had to die, God didn't just take care of it himself and give the Israelites the "gift" he promised? Why not just give them the land, why make them slaughter everyone for it?

So that's the new Tough Question for you right now. Why did God make the Israelites kill everyone off, instead of simply having the land prepared and ready for them, like he promised?

TOUGH QUESTIONS FOR CHRISTIANS #18
Why did God make the Israelites murder so many people in order to take possession of the land he promised them?

originally posted on YouTube at: www.youtube.com/azatheist