Franics Collins

[athrock]

My depths of understanding do not have to be strong to know that I can safely ignore the bible.

It's a book that says that the creator of the world killed 70,000 people because a King messed up with a census.  To call that moral is, in my book, reprehensible.  It's a book that makes outrageous claims that have no backing aside from the book itself.  I see no reason to take it seriously enough to give it any more study than I've already given it.  One can easily surmise from a single reading that the views of the book reflect the people who wrote it, and not some 'almighty divine creator'

Unless you are simply wrong. From a single reading? Really?

Do you not recall that God gave David three choices:

• three years of famine
  
• three months of fleeing his enemies
  
• three days of plague.
  

David reasoned that the latter would be the best option because he trust more in the mercy of God than in the mercy of men (his enemies).

Why did this happen? Two possibilities come to mind:

1. God was punishing the entire nation for offences that had been building up over time, or
   
2. God sought to teach His people (note that carefully, the Israelites were HIS people) an important lesson concerning strict obedience to His instructions.
   

It's understandable that you have emotional difficulties with this, but if God's judgment is perfect based upon His omniscience, then His justice is also perfect. Nothing that He did was unfair or unjust.

In this account, the multitude was killed for the sin of one man; later, one man would be killed for the sins of the multitude on a cross.