Why do Christians ignore the atrocities of the Old Testament?

We hear all the time from Christians how the law of the Old Testament was fulfilled when Jesus arrived, but they never seem to want to talk about why God justified the senseless killing that happened under his rule in the Old Testament. Whenever I ask why God condoned these acts, I always get a substandard answer like "God had his reasons" or "It doesn't really matter because Jesus came, yayyyy". I never get an actual logical answer. It always boils down to God knowing best and how dare I question his motives.

So why are God's actions in the old testament excused so much?

 

Well, you may not have found out WHY they ignore it, but you have certainly confirmed that they DO!
LOL!

 

yeppers, the old shutters slam down hard when innocents ask why god was such an a.rsewipe in the good oldtestament days. that dismissal of inquiry washed in 1952 (you see ... it's always there .... lurking. the golden decade), and 1652, but is laughable in 2013. that's why they're now squirming like leeches in salt. first time in history the proles have had the maracas to demand an explanation.

 

I can't give you an answer, but I assure that even my son is asking this question. And I have no answer for him either, and I have no answer for myself.

But still I believe. The Gospels are wonderful, and there is no way a mere man could have come up with Jesus' teachings. He teaches men to act in complete opposition to all other sources of wisdom. He tells us to let people slap us in the face, and not resist. It makes no sense, and yet it seems true just the same. Its MORE true than what common sense tells us, which is to hit back. Even the Catholic Church tells us its ok to hit back. So really, Jesus' teaching can't be handled even by his own followers.

 

Ok, so why quote OT stuff in relation to current issues like gay marriage or evolution/creationism if you concur that the OT is not representative of the same "God" as the NT?
And why try to legislate a dogma so that we all have to try to live with it, when you admit that even believers are unable to "handle" it?

 

All of this could only be answered with a history in English common law.

And I don't know enough to answer the question.

But England was a Christian country and its common law tended to reflect that.

You can't expect a society to develop a common law tradition that is opposite to and hostile to its religious tradition.

If you're going to say we no longer have a Christian society, so we should no longer have Christian laws, then go ahead and say it.

Just keep in mind that other faith traditions are also going to demand their own kind of laws.

For example, in Muslim law, a man is allowed to have four wives, and he can divorce his wife simply by saying "I divorce thee" three times, but women cannot divorce their husbands.

So if you want atheist law to be implemented, we have to allow Muslims their laws too.

 

I disagree... The US specifically broke away from all that history and specifically stated in the Constitution that religion could not be used to determine the rights of the individual. Whereas English common law may have a Christian tradition, I don't believe America was ever meant to.

And "atheist law" would not necessarily have to include any religion... All religions are flawed in the eyes of the atheist. Have whatever religious values you want, just don't rub other people's faces in them and expect/force them to agree with you; doesn't matter what "flavor" of religion you believe in.

 

But there is no way the law can be truly neutral on issues like marriage or abortion or homosexuality. Someone's viewpoint has to prevail. What you're saying is that atheists should get the say in all this, and Christians should be satisfied with second-class citizenship.

 

I can't speak for certainly but Here my opinion on why and how I look at it

I personaly dont disregard the OT I think there is wisdom in it But there is also allot of what I disregard. The reason I do it and I think most Christians do it is the arrival of Jesus or savior that changed things. Through his life death and resurrection He changed things and now some of what is written in the OT is to be interpreted differently based on what is learned in the NT.

For instance the famous parable of a woman about to be stoned for adultery who was saved by Jesus and He said "any man who is without sin may cast the first stone." In the OT she would have been stoned mercilessly. However the arrival of Jesus changed things as he taught us to forgive and not to judge. There is allot to learn from the OT but we have to keep in mind what changed with the teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus like adultery is bad but it doesn't mean we should stone the adulterer.

 

excellent reply - for its honesty, if not its content.

point. jesus was not the first or the last prophet to shop the turn the other cheek approach. buddha beat him by miles in that area, and he firmly and continuously reminded his acolytes that he was NOT a deity, but a man.

 

But in the real world, where evil men go about beating people, good men must stop them.

 

yep, buddha again. he was a good man.

 

Buddha was a good man, but there are still policemen in Buddhist countries, and these Buddhist policemen use violence to apprehend violent criminals.

 

Why is pacifism a good quality? How is this unique? And even if it was unique, why would that mean your religion is true? How is that not a concept that humans could come up with?

It's funny how Christians keep recycling old ideas and holidays and then, claim them for themselves as original.

Hinduism, for instance, taught pacifism long before Jesus is claimed to have come along. So, I guess Hinduism is the one true religion.

 

What's your concrete problem?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeTsSyhtw0Q

 

The OT is didactic literature.. a teaching narrative.. not history.

 

Jesus was an extremely sensitive and intelligent man who, like the Buddha in a very different society, managed to make a bridge from primitive tribal superstition to a species-uniting idea (though inevitably expressed in the notions of his own time). He also managed to see ahead to the necessity of socialism. The Old Testament, with a few poetic/philosophical exceptions, is antiquated filth. The hitters-back always hit someone who wasn't even there, as we all know.

 

You are very uninformed and thoughtless in this, because the Muslim patriarchies today are doing exactly what those Hebrew patriarchs did back then.

God told the sexually prudent Jews that they must eliminate all neighbors promoting sexual promiscuity and enticing their younger generation into similar behavior, or his forces of nature and the Facts of Life would destroy their twelve tribes.

The evidence that the Jews did NOT do as God told them is found in scripture.
They did not maintain war like attitudes against those promiscuous societies, and their children went the same ways as the gentiles.

Sure enough, chosen as an example for us in America, homosexual Sodomy and slutty harlots reigning over their nation ended in destruction and diaspora and holocaust.

 

The Old Testament is key to our surivival and a guide to how the world works. To be a pacifist, not fight for what you believe in. not do what you have to do to protect your family, your country and your way of life is to not survive, be taken over, extinguished.

I don't know exactly what you are talking about regarding the Old Testament---if its the wars where the innocent is killed or what. It would be helpful for you to be specific.

But the Old Testament is truth in the sense that is guides you on human nature, what is evil, the true nature of war and what you must do to win a war against evil.

It teaches you to know God and to know what is righteous and what isn't.

It teaches a time for peace and a time for war. It shares the experience of taking a weak, nomadic, people and molding them into a strong resilient people designed to be on this earth til the end of days.

Lots of good stuff there and all relevant when read in context. The weapons, lifestyles, legal systems and societies have changed through the years but the truth of the Bible's Old and New Testament will never be out-dated.

 

LOL

What crap.
Ridiculous.

Islam is demonstrating that sexual prudence can be maintained if harlots, sluts, agys are driven underground and eliminated visually from the societies.

They have no abortions, while we kill 1.2 million babies every year.
Gays are invisible.
Divorce is rare and never without Fault.
Marriages are virginal.
Adultery punished.

 

Well, yes,... it is both those, but actually, it is an empirical test of its sociological theories, too.

What the ancients called prophecy, scientists today refer to as Predictions.
Sociology is a soft science today, exactly because it can not test it "theories" with prediction about the future consequences with any degree of validity.

The Sociology known to the Jews boasted a "cabala" which COULD tell the future, but of course, any long range predictions had to also know enough sociology to theorize a method of getting those predictions into that future.
Hence, the Bible and its use of Religion to so do.

The Jewish sociologists understood that religion would maintain concise and valid copies of what they wrote down, to an extent that people in the future would not suspect the prophecy what made up after the facts.
That the predictions came true, validates the suspicion that a comprehensive Sociology did exist back then, and that we might find the actual theories locked into the bible in some puzzle of ideas that could sorted out.

The ability to definitely predict the future based upon what the social behavior of the past has been, and the present trends and behaviors is invaluable and a salvation to any nation which is blindly driving its culture forward without any rules or guide posts that can be scientifically relied upon.

 

And this is in the Old Testament?

 

Of course.

The Old Testament describes the sexual norms of the two types of societies men arrange.

One is the Hebrew patriarchy, which is basically the same as Muslim Sharia.
The other is the Gentile (i.e.; dogs), sexually promiscuous, societies which are called whoredoms, which they certainly are.

The Hebrew patriarchs believe they do God a service by eliminating these matriarchies which surround them.

 

And the OT gives many examples of Jewish kings who were whores. It doesn't give any specific examples of "whoredom" for gentiles.


The only matriarchies it talks about is a love story of a successful queen of Sheba who is given the highest esteem and of Esther who was a savior to the Jews.


You don't know anything about the bible.

 

Esther was taken from a much older tale from Babylon.... She was Astarte.