Four questions for Christians

[Consilius]

First of all, Egypt had supposedly killed many more Hebrew boys than God killed Egyptians. He killed ALL males in Hebrew households, or at least most of them. He did this for a span of about 80 YEARS. It could have for been a single day, and the tally would STILL be higher. Actions are reciprocated back on the offender under God's 'eye for an eye' and 'tooth for a tooth' policy. This policy could be found in Confucianism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Greco-Roman and, yes, Egyptian literature. "The Teaching of Ankhsheshonqy".
Pharaoh caused all ten of the Plagues by refusing to let Israel go. He had firsthand knowledge of all the Plagues beforehand, and consented to their execution. Now we come upon the issue of 'God hardened his heart'.

I would not say that there were no guilty Egyptians in this scenario, but why not punish only those who were guilty of these atrocities? Why, instead, punish millions of people whose only crime was to be born in Egypt? Why punish so many people who did not commit that sin, while leaving alive every killer who had the good sense to not be their parents' firstborn child?

As I said, the death of a first-born child was a crippling punishment TO THE PARENTS, not the children. It also was a reciprocation of what the Egyptians had done before. They had not killed Israelites, they had killed their babies. What they did was much worse than killing the Israelites themselves, but rather they had cut off their bloodlines and killed their family names, and the continuity of your family name was extremely important.

God didn't harden Pharaoh's heart: the words of his servant, Moses, did.

Why not just punish Pharaoh, then?

Because the Egyptians are guilty, too.

So we can say that Pharaoh willingfully caused the Ten Plagues to ravage his people. But, apparently, the Egyptians weren't so innocent either. Exodus 10:1, 14:17, and 1 Samuel 6:6 state that the Egyptians were just as bad as their Pharaoh. So that removes the innocence of pretty much everyone, except the kids.

A biased source, for one thing. A blanket generalization, for another.

If Pharaoh is guilty for not preventing the Ten Plagues (as he had the power to do so), why is God not guilty when he allows atrocities to take place, when he has the power to do so?

Historical bias? I thought this was about God killing kids! You have found fault in this Bible story as it is, and I am explaining it. If we want to factor in historical bias, then you are condemning the validity of the source, and that's a debate on the historical validity of the Bible itself, and you could ask someone else about that. I am defending morals. We are not analyzing this Bible story as a historical event, but if you want to say that not EVERY Egyptian was guilty, who's to say that God didn't put blood in EVERY water source or send locusts to EVERY crop or kill EVERY Egyptian firstborn male? I can say so because I can dismiss those plagues as simply blanket generalizations.
God caused the Ten Plagues to punish Pharaoh and the Egyptians for what they had done. If you are referring to the slavery, through it, God tested the faith of his people and gave them a strong national identity. God never told anyone to enslave his people in the first place, so it isn't His fault that the Pharaoh found the opportunity to make slaves and used it immorally.

In ancient society, in Egypt as well as Babylonia and Israel, children were punished for the sins of their parents. This punishment has nothing to do with sin being 'transferred' to other people. The firstborn son of a parent was an essential family member. First-born males recieved inheritance, could protect aging parents, and could perpetuate the family name, like last names allow them to do today. The loss was a judgement on the parents, and not God getting revenge on kids.

1. Unless God was incapable of punishing the parents without killing their children, then it was absolutely taking revenge on children. It literally cannot be anything else.

2. Regardless, every parent in Egypt was a victim of this, regardless of whether or not they were responsible for whatever crimes God saw fit to charge the Pharaoh with.

3. Does it not strike you as odd that God's sense of justice is no different than any jumped-up warlord of that time period?

God did nothing more than what the Pharaoh had done himself, and that was to kill male children. As you have probably noticed, the penalty was actually less than the crime. Around 80 years of killing all males vs. 8 hours of killing firstborns. Like I said, the death of a male child was probably feared worse than death. People lived on in their heirs. Without these heirs, the family went extinct. The children died in peace while the parents lived in agony and fear.
In ancient times, children were killed for the crimes of their parents, and people received exactly whatever crime they had carried out. Pharaoh would have been familiar with this. He also would have also understood that it was in no way was the punishment meant for the kids. The punishment would be intended to hurt the parents. Pharaoh himself killed Israelite babies in order to suppress their Israelite parents. He had no reason to hate the infants.
The Egyptians never lifted a finger against their Pharaoh or against slavery. They are described as having the exact same condition as their Pharaoh: their hearts were hard, nothing more, nothing less. The Pharaoh simply voiced the Egyptian opinion, because they had all benefitted from slave labor.

Also, there is an age of accountability at around 7-9. So, if we have firstborn males of hardened hearts dying after that age, they would have been accountable for their sins. Anyone who died before it would have gone to heaven, or, as the Catholics like to call it, 'limbo'. So we are left with the kids who died before their 8th birthday.

1. God's punishment was for a specific offense. If God wanted to kill all those other people for their sins, why did he not do so?

2. Why was God's attitude regarding mass slaughter for sin inconsistent? The vast majority of sinners, then and now, do not meet such horribly violent ends. How is it justice without consistency?

As I have explained, God didn't use the Passover to kill people because they did bad things. Killing anybody would have been completely out of the question had not Pharaoh responded to population growth by killing innocent kids.
All sinners are punished according to their crimes in one way or another. God doesn't convey the punishment in the same way for everybody. God gave specific reasons that he punished the Egyptians in this way: not only did he prove to them that he wasn't to be messed with (notice how Pharaoh denied the Israelites freedom even when they invoked the name of God) or to prove his existence to Egypt, but he brought the people of Israel together and gave them the faith that is the centerpiece of the Jewish religion.

These particular kids were not punished, because that was not the intention. All that was needed from them was that their souls be absent from their bodies to produce the desired effect. Also, who's to say that their souls were not simply taken from their bodies during sleep? It was midnight, and I don't think that spiritual beings can walk around with bronze swords to hack the heads off about 69,000 kids in 8 hours.

Not that I believe in spiritual beings, but assuming they do exist, who is to say what they are capable of, especially when acting under the orders of a being capable of doing anything?

Regardless of how gentle their slaughter was, they were still slaughtered.

If God is able to do anything, this proves my point. In ancient times, killing children for their parents sins was inefficient because the kids still suffered in death. But if God can do anything, that means that he would punish everybody precisely how they deserved to be punished. The Egyptian boys weren't meant to be punished at all, so God punished them exactly as much as they needed: not at all. Therefore, who's to say their deaths were impossibly painless?
Yes, the Egyptian boys still died, and God killed them. The punishment was the fact that they were dead, and was experienced throughout the lives of their parents. The boys who died no longer lived in Egypt, but with God, which was infinitely better. That does not mean we should kill innocent people, because, as I stated, they will be being punished by the pain of their death, and we will always be punished for killing anybody.

Note that God isn't simply siding with the Israelites. The entire Book of Judges is about God letting in foreign nations to conquer his own people. But God is only partial in the sense that he sides with the oppressed and works with them against the powerful. God isn't getting back at people, but judging them for their offenses and punishing them justly, despite what he feels for either side. Luke 19:41-43.

In other words, he is playing both ends against the middle, and for what reason if not for enjoyment? What purpose could such senseless misery serve that could not be accomplished without senseless misery?

Did God ignite the conflict? The Egyptians were the offenders, and God, as a judge, made them pay the penalty. They had had no reason to do what they did to the Israelites than that it was done out of fear, and led to an immoral decision that caused much more misery than the Israelites could have possibly done, and, if you noticed, the Israelites never did anything to a single Egyptian for the 430 years they were there, except perhaps Moses' episode with the slave-driver. The Egyptians recieved no more misery than they had dished out themselves, because they had caused much more misery to the Israelites.