A simple question for theists

[Kernel Sohcahtoa]

Again, I trust the God that I believe is real. The God that is Himself goodness and love, and who created morality through establishing Natural Law in this world.

I've observed that "God that is himself goodness and love", was used in your post.  I've also observed other theists referring to god with words such as himself, he, him, or words that would seem to associate human masculinity with god.  Now out of curiosity, have you met other practitioners of Catholicism or Christianity who think of god as a woman or some other life-form?  To what degree do religious practitioners project human-like qualities onto their deity? Does your deity assume human-like qualities in order to make it easier for humanity's theists to relate to it and accept it. 

Also, is it more accurate to use more neutral descriptors for god, and do you have any suggestions?  With that said, thanks for your thoughtful and well-written posts, CL.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Again, I trust the God that I believe is real. The God that is Himself goodness and love, and who created morality through establishing Natural Law in this world.

I've observed that "God that is himself goodness and love", was used in your post.  I've also observed other theists referring to god with words such as himself, he, him, or words that would seem to associate human masculinity with god.  Now out of curiosity, have you met other practitioners of Catholicism or Christianity who think of god as a woman or some other life-form?  To what degree do religious practitioners project human-like qualities onto their deity? Does your deity assume human-like qualities in order to make it easier for humanity's theists to relate to it and accept it. 

Also, is it more accurate to use more neutral descriptors for god, and do you have any suggestions?  With that said, thanks for your thoughtful and well-written posts, CL.

"He" is gendered (in the linguistic sense) pronoun but standard use is to refer to either a person known to be male or an unknown person of either sex. It is a convention - nothing more. People that read politics into it are misguided. Most other languages (from French to Hebrew) use much more heavily gendered syntax. In French "lawnmower" is gendered feminine the color pink is masculine. I doubt very much the French are interested in purging their language of gender conventions. If someone cannot look beyond the gender conventions of English, that is his problem, not the language's.

[Kernel Sohcahtoa]

I've observed that "God that is himself goodness and love", was used in your post.  I've also observed other theists referring to god with words such as himself, he, him, or words that would seem to associate human masculinity with god.  Now out of curiosity, have you met other practitioners of Catholicism or Christianity who think of god as a woman or some other life-form?  To what degree do religious practitioners project human-like qualities onto their deity? Does your deity assume human-like qualities in order to make it easier for humanity's theists to relate to it and accept it. 

Also, is it more accurate to use more neutral descriptors for god, and do you have any suggestions?  With that said, thanks for your thoughtful and well-written posts, CL.

"He" is gendered (in the linguistic sense) pronoun but standard use is to refer to either a person known to be male or an unknown person of either sex. It is a convention - nothing more.

Thanks for the clarification, Neo-Scholastic. As per the op and out of curiosity, if your deity gave the order to kill an innocent person but did so in a completely peaceful, serene way while assuring you that its divine command gave you all the moral justification that was needed, then would you obey your deity's command? Would you question its omnibenevolence?  Are there some divine orders that shouldn't be blindly followed?  Thanks.

[Rhondazvous]

If God told you that you absolutely must kill someone who, in your eyes, is 100% innocent, would you do it? Why or why not? Assume that you are also 100% sure that God did indeed tell you this and you did not have a hallucination etc.

This question is not religion-specific in any way and is just a hypothetical situation.

Here's the thing sport.

God told us not to follow any new or direct revelations if the contradict how we are told to live in the bible.

If God told one of us to kill someone period apart from what the rule of law is willing t support, then what that person is talking to is not God.

And yet the Bible is ripe with instances of god telling people to kill someone who's innocent. So it's not the Bible that tells you you're not talking to god, but your own human conscience and secular laws.

[Neo-Scholastic]

"He" is gendered (in the linguistic sense) pronoun but standard use is to refer to either a person known to be male or an unknown person of either sex. It is a convention - nothing more.

Thanks for the clarification, Neo-Scholastic. As per the op and out of curiosity, if your deity gave the order to kill an innocent person but did so in a completely peaceful, serene way while assuring you that its divine command gave you all the moral justification that was needed, then would you obey your deity's command? Would you question its omnibenevolence?  Are their some divine orders that shouldn't be blindly followed?  Thanks.

I don't know. When I reflect on both the historical and typically dire situations, I would like to believe I would be/been the hero, but there really isn't any way to know is there? If I were an early Christian would I have renounced Christ rather than die a martyr? Before the Civil War would I have been a slaveholder or an abolitionist? If I were a German in 1930's would I have succumbed to Nazi propaganda or provided assistance to fleeing Jews? Very few did. Tomorrow if, I see someone being beaten up by thugs or trapped in burning car would I rush in to save them? Whatever the circumstances I would hope to be the hero, but maybe I would be scared.

Speculation is fine but I guess the more pertinent and real question for me, one I ask myself all the time, is am I doing what God is calling me to do, right now. And I really wish I knew for sure that I was.

[Rhondazvous]

I don't know. When I reflect on both the historical and typically dire situations, I would like to believe I would be/been the hero, but there really isn't any way to know is there? If I were an early Christian would I have renounced Christ rather than die a martyr? Before the Civil War would I have been a slaveholder or an abolitionist? If I were a German in 1930's would I have succumbed to Nazi propaganda or provided assistance to fleeing Jews? Very few did. Tomorrow if, I see someone being beaten up by thugs or trapped in burning car would I rush in to save them? Whatever the circumstances I would hope to be the hero, but maybe I would be scared.

Speculation is fine but I guess the more pertinent and real question for me, one I ask myself all the time, is am I doing what God is calling me to do, right now. And I really wish I knew for sure that I was.

what makes it complex is parties on both sides of the issues you've brought up thought that they were the heroes at the time those things were happening. Only the prevalent sentiments of today allow us to look back and declare that Hitler was an evil man and what the Romans did to the Christians or what the slavemasters did to the slaves was wrong. when that changes, the heroes shift and we view history through a different lens.

god's will and what he wants us to do can only be seen in hindsight. There's no way to clearly distinguish the voice of god from our own thoughts except through the lens of how things turned out.

[Brian37]

...killing an innocent person goes against Natural Law. Meaning it goes against the way our world works, because that is how God created our world to work. Thus we have an inherent understanding that directly killing an innocent person is wrong.

Exactly that. At the same time, The OP's hypothetical is that you believe the person is 100% innocent. As fallen creatures, we must admit to our own limitations - there is no 100% and so while you may believe the person is innocent isn't it also possible that you are not in command of all the facts and must trust that God's judgment is just?

As for Abraham, remember that God did't actually have Abraham kill his son, but was merely testing him. Furthermore, I personally find it hard to believe that story actually happened in the literal way it was written...Did God's voice sound from the sky and tell Abraham to kill his son, and then tell him not to? My guess would be no...as a Catholic, I am free to take a literal or allegorical approach to the Old Testament stories. I tend to lean to the latter. 

As you know, I feel people should be careful to discern between what should be taken figuratively as opposed to literal versus. In this case, Gen 22, figurative elements are clearly present, however, I see no reason to take this story as pure allegory.

Lastly, Christianity is defined by the New Testament.

Sorry, but I must protest. The NT cannot be divorced from the OT. As per my earlier citation, on the road to Emmasus, the resurrected Christ opened the eyes of his disciples to show them how the Law and Prophets spoke of Him. Or in John 5:46 where Jesus says "if you had believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me..." Or the story of the eunuch reading Isaiah and not understanding it until Peter explained it to him.  Christianity is defined by both the NT and the OT together as a seamless narrative.

This is the problem with every religion, you cant even get members to agree how to view the writings. Nobody wants to consider maybe that is because there is no God and the people who wrote them had no clue about the nature of reality and each new writer was simply trying to get in on the game to gain fame for being part of writing it. 

Same reason Sunnis and Shiites don't agree. Same reason a Tibet Buddhist won't agree with a Chinese Buddhist whom wont agree with a Japanese Shinto Buddhist. Same reason a Obama voting Baptist wont agree with a Trump voting Baptist.

But I agree, you cannot separate the NT from the OT or even Revelations because regardless of the inconsistencies throughout the book it is still written to defend the head character God. I cannot take a book seriously that has men magically popping out of dirt, has women magically popping out of a man's rib, stories of taking snakes, talking donkeys, talking bushes, treats the sun and moon as separate sources of light. 

The OT certainly is far more violent than the NT, sure. It has God condoning violence to dissent or causing violence of dissent, in infanticide and genocide. Jesus comes along and offers flowers, but not really because he says he is there to uphold the OT. But so what, the head God of the entire book goes right back to being a violent bully at the end. 

That book was written for the tribal kingships of it's time. It has no reflection of today's modern western pluralism and concept of consent of the governed. You cannot remove this character from his position.  You cannot have him impeached. You cannot change his laws. You cannot vote him out of his position. Just like you cant remove a ruling family, a king. And neither of you like Jews want to face the fact that the Yahweh character was stolen from the prior polytheism of the Canaanites. 

Both you and CL cant agree on interpretation, just like our two Muslims here Mystic Night and Atlas cant agree on how to interpret the Koran. How is it you think you are not doing the same thing other religions are doing, having their internal conflicts about interpretation?

[Neo-Scholastic]

This is the problem with every religion, you cant even get members to agree how to view the writings....Both you and CL cant agree on interpretation, just like our two Muslims here Mystic Night and Atlas cant agree on how to interpret the Koran. How is it you think you are not doing the same thing other religions are doing, having their internal conflicts about interpretation?

In all fields of knowledge there are broad areas of agreement and hotly contested areas of debate. That is true of biology, of archaeology, history, linguistics, economics,...the list is endless. For you to the single out religion merely demonstrates the shallowness of your thinking.

[Cyberman]

How is that murder?  The fact that god decided he should die is not the highest of judgements?

The question specifically said "innocent".

No, it said innocent in your eyes.

[Brian37]

This is the problem with every religion, you cant even get members to agree how to view the writings....Both you and CL cant agree on interpretation, just like our two Muslims here Mystic Night and Atlas cant agree on how to interpret the Koran. How is it you think you are not doing the same thing other religions are doing, having their internal conflicts about interpretation?

In all fields of knowledge there are broad areas of agreement and hotly contested areas of debate. That is true of biology, of archaeology, history, linguistics, economics,...the list is endless. For you to the single out religion merely demonstrates the shallowness of your thinking.

Of course they are contested, because it is a horribly written book. It is not an instruction manual, it is a gang manual and not only 1 manual but many different versions. 

Having knowledge of a history of religious claims does not make the claims true, it only proves a history of making those claims. It is as much a gang manual as the Koran and Jewish Texts. 

Now again, I don't say that to demand an end to religion, but to explain to you that is because in antiquity humans formed competing rival city states and over centuries the writers would revise them and change them after the fact to suit their own agendas. 

Shallow? How, so you think the KJV bible is the only version? Nope, you also have the NIV and Revised Standard and even the Book of Mormon. And again, how dare you falsely accuse me of singling out your religion.

Jews don't agree on the interpretations of the Torah and Talmud. Muslims compete over the interpretations of the Koran and Hadiths. Buddhist also have competing subs sects.

How about you instead of having a childish kneejerk reaction try to understand THAT WAS THEN, this is now. There is not one religion, or holy writing in human history that does not suffer the flaw of competing interpretations. Name me one religion in the world that does not have multiple sub sects. YOU CANT. Grow up.