Abraham? Is that you?
Count me as another Christian who would seek psychiatric help if I thought God was telling me to kill.
Check out Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven for the true story of two Mormon fundamentalists who thought they’d been ordered by God to kill their sister-in-law and her infant daughter. Not a happy tale, but a fascinating one, with a really intriguing overview of the evolution of Mormonism: Under the Banner of Heaven - Wikipedia
I always figured God was testing Abraham but the point of the story was that Abraham failed the test. The correct answer that God wanted to hear was for Abraham to say that killing was wrong for any reason, even if God Himself told you to do it. God knew that He wouldn’t always be there to guide people on a day-to-day basis but that there would always be people claiming to be his representative. So God issued some laws to tell people what His will was even when He wasn’t around.
But the people who wrote the Bible missed the point. First, Abraham was their hero and they didn’t consider the possibility that he screwed up. Second, these guys were the kind of people that God had worried about - the ones that claimed that God left them in charge. It obviously wouldn’t have done to spread the message that God had done no such thing. So they rewrote the moral of the story and said that the message was that Abraham was being tested for his obedience to authority and he was rewarded when he blindly followed orders - a much more palatable message for authority figures to relay.
Awesome.
Compare it to the story of Zipporah in Exodus. She apparently defied God when he wanted to kill somebody and God backed down. (It’s hard to say exactly what happened because it’s a very short and confusing passage.)
If God commands you to kill, then it is a sin NOT to kill.
This is a basic conclusion of the Divine Command Theory of morality. Personally, I thought Maimonides explained it pretty well.
Of course, if you only think you heard God tell you this, and you are wrong then you are either suffering from mental disease or are sinning.
But how is that any different than the ten commandments?
This being the same Abraham who, according to earlier in the test, raised an army to defeat the army of Elam? And this being the same God who had drowned the earth because of their wickedness, and had, not too long before, sent plague down to Egypt to preserve Abraham’s wife’s honor, and who would go on to destroy the cities on the plain because of their wickedness?
Your moral of the story requires a completely different God and a completely different Abraham.
I think they did realize it, to a degree. Remember, they weren’t called the “Children of Abraham”. The true father of the nation was his grandson, who was given his name for wrestling an angel to a draw.
“Israel”, after all, means “One who has struggled with God”.
What do the ten commandments have to do with anything? It is wrong to blindly follow arbitrary rules with no thought for the consequences, period. The bible is full of rules for stoning adulterers, ostracizing menstruating women, killing homosexuals, etc. It is impossible to consider it a moral document. Why would the commandments be an exception?
That’s fine, if you don’t want to accept that a command from God has any moral authority. But that means the OP’s question is moot–if God’s commands aren’t a basis for morality then it doesn’t matter what he commands. I don’t think anyone would argue with that.
If we want to talk about Christian morality (which is what the OP wants, I think), then we have to presume that God’s commandments are moral. And then you can’t simply dismiss some commands and not others without explanation. Hence, my questions.
What I really want to know is if you would kill someone if the deity you believe in commanded you to do so.
Well, that’s a whole other kettle of fish.
And it seems to be the main thrust of your questions here. Can you, then, at least concede that we should use the correct translation for the Decalogue rather than the incorrect one that you prefer. And, we sould not should ignore what “murder” meant when they were first scribed in order to put it into modern times?
Well, I’m approaching it from the direction of morality in general. It is immoral to do what God says if God tells you to murder someone. In fact, since God does, according to the Bible, command people to murder, that proves his commands have no moral authority. He commands people both to murder and not murder. So which of God’s commands is correct, aka moral? They can’t both be.
Obviously, I don’t take the “God is moral, no matter what, by definition” stance. Personally, I think he is a psychopath. Or rather, would be, if he existed.
I will concede no such thing. My questions are straightforward-is it murder if your deity tells you to kill someone, and would you do so? What is or is not a correct translation of whatever set of Commandments of whichever version of the Bible you believe in is a topic for another thread.
Are you kidding? You won’t concede that the correct translation should be used? Or that it should be looked at in the cultural context of the time in which it was written, rather than a wildly different mindset that exists millenia after its publication?
Why the heck not? Do you have something against accuracy?
I’m really curious, why do you hold such a strange attitude?
The Decalogue was not written in English. You’ve already had your ignorance cleared up and been told what the correct translation would be, and what, in context, it would have meant when it was written.
But you’re ignoring that with all your might, evidently so you can ask those who know what the Commandment actually said, if they’d kill because they thought God wanted them to.
Why not admit your factual error, retract it, and then focus on what you seem to want this thread to be about, laying aside your mistaken views on ancient Hebrew linguistics?
The very first line of your OP makes clear that it is, in fact, part of the topic of this thread. The very first sentence of your post to me here also reiterates the fact that you refuse to correct your mistake and acknowledge the correct translation and its contextual meaning.
Why ever would you do such a thing?
Because it is your opinion, and(you might find this hard to believe) your opinion is not universal amongst the different sects.
I brought up the verse merely as an example of what others use to justify their opinions as to what is permissible, not as proof that such an action is correct, so get over it.
FinnAgain, if a deity you personally believed in told you to kill someone you previously had no reason to kill, would you personally
- consider it to be murder and
- would you do it.
No, it’s not my opinion, and I think you’re just making shit up at this point.
Provide a reputable cite that “ratsah” does not, in fact, refer to the illegal taking of a human life as distinct from sanctioned killing.
Then provide a reputable cite that Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative or Orthodox Jewish rabbis translate it differently. None of the rabbis of any of the sects who I’ve ever spoken to have said something about it meaning whatever you’d like to invent for it to mean.
Why are you so resistant to simply admitting that you are fundamentally wrong on this point?