Posted: 12 Mar 2018 01:57 AM PDT
Unsurprisingly, our national conversation about gun violence intensifies following any well-publicized shooting or murder, especially if it occurs in a school or public setting. The recent massacre in Parkland, Florida, for example, leaves many of us searching for answers. As a Christian who happens to be a homicide detective, I’ve wrestled to understand how an all-powerful, all-loving God would allow the horrific evil I’ve observed over the years. Human free-will is an important part of the answer. If God exists and wants us to genuinely love one another, He must first allow us something dangerous: personal freedom. This kind of liberty is risky, because it must, by it’s very nature, also allow the freedom to do great harm. Human free agency is a double-edged knife, and each of us must decide how we will handle it responsibly.
So, as I talk with others about what happened in Parkland (or in any other recent shooting), I do my best to address the issues as both a detectiveand a Christian, balancing the relationship between our God-given freedoms and our civic responsibilities:
Apparently, Wallace is more concerned to make God more politically correct to modern ears than God really is, and less concerned to confine his theological opinion solely to the allegedly "sufficient" biblical langauge.
In the bible, one reason women are raped is because God causes men to rape, He doesn't merely "allow" it. In Isaiah 13, God reacts to his Hebrew followers worshipping idols and such, by causing pagan men to war against the Hebrews and rape their women and massacre their children, despite the obvious fact that children cannot rationally be considered accountable for following the religious traditions imposed on them by their parents:
NAU Isaiah 13:1 The oracle concerning Babylon which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw. 2 Lift up a standard on the bare hill, Raise your voice to them, Wave the hand that they may enter the doors of the nobles. 3 I have commanded My consecrated ones, I have even called My mighty warriors, My proudly exulting ones, To execute My anger. 4 A sound of tumult on the mountains, Like that of many people! A sound of the uproar of kingdoms, Of nations gathered together! The LORD of hosts is mustering the army for battle. 5 They are coming from a far country, From the farthest horizons, The LORD and His instruments of indignation, To destroy the whole land. 6 Wail, for the day of the LORD is near! It will come as destruction from the Almighty. 7 Therefore all hands will fall limp, And every man's heart will melt. 8 They will be terrified, Pains and anguish will take hold of them; They will writhe like a woman in labor, They will look at one another in astonishment, Their faces aflame. 9 Behold, the day of the LORD is coming, Cruel, with fury and burning anger, To make the land a desolation; And He will exterminate its sinners from it. 10 For the stars of heaven and their constellations Will not flash forth their light; The sun will be dark when it rises And the moon will not shed its light. 11 Thus I will punish the world for its evil And the wicked for their iniquity; I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud And abase the haughtiness of the ruthless. 12 I will make mortal man scarcer than pure gold And mankind than the gold of Ophir. 13 Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, And the earth will be shaken from its place At the fury of the LORD of hosts In the day of His burning anger. 14 And it will be that like a hunted gazelle, Or like sheep with none to gather them, They will each turn to his own people, And each one flee to his own land. 15 Anyone who is found will be thrust through, And anyone who is captured will fall by the sword. 16 Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces Before their eyes; Their houses will be plundered And their wives ravished. 17 Behold, I am going to stir up the Medes against them, Who will not value silver or take pleasure in gold. 18 And their bows will mow down the young men, They will not even have compassion on the fruit of the womb, Nor will their eye pity children. 19 And Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms, the glory of the Chaldeans' pride, Will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. 20 It will never be inhabited or lived in from generation to generation; Nor will the Arab pitch his tent there, Nor will shepherds make their flocks lie down there. 21 But desert creatures will lie down there, And their houses will be full of owls; Ostriches also will live there, and shaggy goats will frolic there. 22 Hyenas will howl in their fortified towers And jackals in their luxurious palaces. Her fateful time also will soon come And her days will not be prolonged. (Isa. 13:1-22, NAU)
The question is: who is identified in the immediate context of Isaiah's rape prediction (v. 16) as the cause of such rapes? Clearly it is the pagan men who will do the raping, but...does the context identify who is causing those men to do such things? Yes:
13 Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, And the earth will be shaken from its place At the fury of the LORD of hosts In the day of His burning anger....... 17 Behold, I am going to stir up the Medes against them...
Clearly, the context indicates it is "God" who will cause these men to commit these sexual crimes.
This contextual constraint will not disappear just because you are positively certain your allegedly good God "would never" want such a thing to happen. If you believe that way, you worship something conjured up on your mind, not the "biblical" god.
Sorry to say, but nothing could be more clear in the bible, than God's willingness to impose horrific atrocities not just on the guilty, but on those who are associated with them (i.e., the little kids can hardly be accountable for being idolatrous, nevertheless their mothers and sisters will be raped and killed, and the kids will be massacred).
For "bible believing" Christians, there can be no discussion of why certain people in America take loaded guns to schools and commit mass murder: It is God causing them to do so, likely with the same type of coercive telepathic ability God uses in Ezra 1:1 to make even an unbelieving pagan idolater do what God wants:
NAU Ezra 1:1 Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he sent a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and also put it in writing, saying: (Ezr. 1:1, NAU)
The Hebrew word for "stirred up" there is ur, the same Hebrew word that underlies Isaiah 13:17, in saying God would "stir up" the Medes against the Hebrews.
So we have to wonder: If God has both power and willingness to cause people to do whatever he wants, including pagan unbelievers like Cyrus, supra, then why didn't he use this magic fairy dust on the Hebrews themselves, so that they avoid worshiping idols in the first place? Wouldn't use of his power in that preemptive way be morally superior to reserving it solely for when the Hebrews disobey Him?
If you don't find it very convincing when heretics use "God's ways are mysterious" to get their asses out of a theological jam, fairness dictates that YOU not be permitted to employ that dishonest excuse either.
Having been been divested of your typical explanation, now what's your excuse for God choosing to cause men to rape idolatrous Hebrew women, when God could also just as easily have waved his magic wand the other way, and caused those Hebrew women to refrain from idolatry and thus avoid Isaiah's threatened atrocities in the first place?
Could it be that the theological statements in the OT arise solely from human imagination that didn't think the ramifications all the way through? Gee, sinful Christians could never be wrong about bible inerrancy, could they? Isn't there a law of the universe that says if you've posted at least 349 blog entries in favor of biblical inerrancy, you are incapable of getting that doctrine wrong?
