How and why can people ignore their God’s immoral ways?

[Catholic_Lady]

Are you talking about the Passover?

One of any time he's ordered the slaughter of children. Telling troops to kill every man woman and child, save for young virgin girls. Or killing David's kid because he did a bad thing. Though passover is a great example, since it's directly stated he hardened Pharoah's heart so Moses couldn't convince him, just so Yahweh could bring down more plagues. including killing the firstborns.

If this is the type of thing that is being referred to as "God's immoral ways", my answer personally to the thread question is that all these Old Testament stories were written allegorically. I don't know how many theists on this site are Old Testament literalists, but in Catholicism at least, an allegorical interpretation of the OT tales is quite common and accepted. Ive spoken about this quite a bit on the forums before.

I'm not saying none of these wars happened, or that there wasn't a King named David who's children died, or that the Egyptians didn't enslave Jews who eventually obtained freedom. But do I think God's voice sounded from the skies and gave people war orders? Do I think He sent down a black cloud of death to kill the Egyptians' first born? No, I don't. I think Jesus came and showed us a very accurate picture of what God is like - someone who tells us to love our enemies.

I think a lot of these stories are still a step up for the morality of those times. For example, sparing the life of virgin women in war and marrying them, while allowing them to divorce you if they eventuslly chose to do so, was a step up in morality at that time. Young women in war would otherwise be enslaved and raped for life, kept as sex objects. So these stories ignighted a sort of moral awakening in people from thousands of years ago when things were very different and very uncivilized. In this way, God worked through people slowly to bring about higher moral standards.