Genocide, Death and Favours

A poster on the CHNI Forums asked about 'atrocities' commited either 'on God's behalf' or 'at God's request' citing 1 Samuel 15:2-3, Judges 11:39, Joshua 6:21, and Joshua 10:40-41 as examples. Essentially the question boils down to how do we understandstand the God of these passages as good and just when he appears to be 'some bloodthirsty, vengeful, monster'

Here's my response...

Death is one of the few certainties of life. (The other being taxes ) Though their may be a few exceptions to the rule, Elijah, Enoch, Mary (?), and those 'who are left' cf. 1 Thess 4:17 at the end of the world.

Given that we shall all leave this existence for the next (one way or another) one might wonder what is the best way to go?

The prevailing secular preference seems to be 'passing away gently in one's sleep' and I can see the appeal there. Indeed the whole euthanasia movement is geared toward giving people the option to do just that. (Either for the benefit of the dying person or for the benefit of those who have to live through it and watch, I'm not sure).

For the Catholic/Christian, in view of the resurrection, their are other perspectives. For myself, if I could choose, I think my top two choices would be …

1. Dying slowly of a wasting disease, with enough time to make peace with my maker, settle my family affairs, offer my suffering for others, and die with my family and priest around me, immediately after having received the ‘last rites’ (Confession, Anointing, Viaticum).

2. Going down in an airplane crash, again with enough time, in view of my impending destruction to ‘make peace’ with my maker.

Why do I say this? And what does it have to do with genocide?

I know that I am a sinner, I know that I tend toward sin even when I would rather not, I know that prayer can help keep me from sin, and even still I sometimes, in light of that, choose not to pray. The point being, while I have ‘absolute assurance’ that God will keep his promises and save me if I am faithful, I know myself enough that I don’t have absolute assurance that I will remain faithful. So if I were given the opportunity to choreograph my demise, I would choose one more likely to keep that choice to remain faithful in the forefront of my mind right to the very end.

God knows our ‘internal disposition’, he knows the state of our souls as they are now, and he knows how they would be in that hypothetical plane crash above. He knows what our disposition would be if our biological father were about to set fire to us and offer us as a burnt offering to his God, and he knows what it would be if a horde of Hebrews, whipped up into a religious frenzy, bent on our complete annihilation were about to descend upon our little town.

To my mind, it seems that God may have been guiding the Hebrews toward their destiny as played out in the New Testament, while simultaneously He was deliberately doing a favor to those ‘victims of atrocities’ in the old testament. That ‘religious nut of a father’ and that ‘horde of Hebrews’ that may have been just the incentive that some of them needed to ‘repent and be saved’.

And at the end, isn’t that what we’re all after?