Franics Collins

[athrock]

LOL. No, because unlike God, Sauron WASN'T a good guy all along.

The census may have merely been the final straw or occasion of punishment for a series of events or patterns of sins that God finally had to address. And yes, I can say that God's just is perfect because His justice matched the offense in ways that you cannot comprehend.

For example, everyone rants about the killing of the Canaanites...conveniently overlooking the fact that the Canaanites were truly horrible people...engaged in all sorts of perversions including child sacrifice to their idols, etc. Or they whine about the flood when God wiped out everyone but Noah's family...again missing the point that the sins of the people were a stench in God's nostrils. Or they point to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (recently uncovered by archaeologists, btw - another vindication of the historical accuracy of the Bible), and claim that God was unfair while completely ignoring the sinful lifestyle of the homosexual population of the cities that was the cause of God's wrath.

Like I said before, your emotional reaction to these stories is understandable at one level, but your failure to deal with the full set of data is the real reason why you can't understand why God acted as He did.

You can't just say "God is the good guy", and therefore excuse all of his actions. 

I'm not excusing anything. Believers grapple with these same passages, but they come to different conclusions based upon a more complete understanding of God's character. Where you see an evil, malevolent God, believers see a loving Father who does not want to discipline his children but must for their own good.

You can't just say "Well his justice is perfect!" and expect people to buy your bullshit hook line and sinker.

True. I expect people to look deeper and come to something more than a superficial, emotional reaction to the passages in question.

You're just upset that people are questioning the actions of your precious homopobic misogynistic asshole god.  I get that you're also probably a homophobic misogynistic asshole yourself, so you identify with him and love that he killed the homosexuals and that he killed 70,000 people because a census was taken by their king. 

I am? How do you know all these things about me? Fact is, you don't know me and you don't know God.

Let. That. Sink. In.

You think that's perfect justice because that's what you're told to believe.  You don't ask any questions.

Now, as you read through what I hope are my reasonably well-articulated and thoughtful replies, do I strike you as being the type of shy, retiring type who doesn't ask questions?

The truth is this just shows you aren't open minded at all.  You blindly accept whatever bullshit your holy book feeds you.  And then you expect others to believe the same.  And when they don't, you call it a 'failure' but the real failure is that you fail to see that if your God existed that he wouldn't be worthy of worship.   You have to prove that god is the good guy, and I just don't see it.  God is the Sauron of this story.  Ever watchful, and completely evil.

Then you should read it again, because you've completely missed the revelation of God.

For the record, there's no archaeological evidence of God destroying the city.  If something did happen there, there's zero evidence that some asshole god did it.  Or that he did it because there were gay people there.  Apparently God decided not to destroy San Francisco for some reason.  Or any other place that has a lot of gay people, like gay bars.

LOL. Seriously, Cecelia, you need to do a bit more research. Tall el Hammam. That's your starting point.