GOD IS A MORAL MONSTER; HE COMMANDED THE ANNIHILATION OF THE CANAANITES

Lastly, Siegfried does what so many secularists are fond of doing: he paints God as a moral monster for his commanding the annihilation of the inhabitants of Canaan by the Jews. Yes, Joshua's conquest passages are tough to read. I hope they are. As are parts of Samuel. But there is so much we don't know.

Paul Copan, a professor at Palm Beach Atlantic, has written extensively on this. His book for the layman is called Is God a Moral Monster? It's not a light read by any measure. And then he wrote Did God Really Command Genocide? as a book for his academic peers. If you'd like to get deeply into the subject, I'd highly encourage these two books as a starting place. But most of you aren't going to go there, so let me give you a way to cope with this.

My son, David, recently graduated from Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, FL. He's a techy. And he loves new phones. He gets the newest models as soon as they are available. On one of these occasions, during his undergraduate studies, he took his new phone over to Palm Beach to do a time-lapse of a sunrise. It was a spectacular morning. Clear and breezy. The wind was kicking up the Atlantic, and there were clouds in the sky providing lots of elements for the sunlight to dance off of. He started the time-lapse just before sun-up. We watched as the horizon grew brighter - gray and then gold - until the sun broke the surface and followed it until it was a good bit up in the morning sky. He texted it to us that morning. It was beautiful! So full of character! I felt as if I were there. But I wasn't. I didn't feel the ocean breeze or smell the salt air or hear the crashing waves or the cry of the seagulls or hear the couple laughing on the sidewalk. What I got was this. (Note 1: During the presentation, the thumbs are put together and the index fingers make up a finger frame the size of an iPhone.) But THIS is what was really going on. (At this, my arms sweeping out high and wide to show how big the environment at the beach was that morning.) When you read a hard passage in the Bible, be it historical or theological, remember, this is what you see (Note 1). THIS is what was going on (Note 2). And a little humility might be in order.

I will say this: God told Abram before he was even Abraham that "the sin of the Amorites was not yet complete." (Gen. 15:16). For the next 500 years, God would have to endure fingernails scratching down the blackboard before entering into judgement with this population. I do know they routinely killed their children... by burning them in sacrifice to their gods. And they were involved in every conceivable sexual deviancy imaginable. Now, we don't quite do the burning sacrifice thing nowadays; we just sacrifice our children (in abortion) for the sake of convenience or economics or for any reason at all, really, and we light up our tallest skyscrapers in pink lights to celebrate it. We also celebrate just about any sexual deviancy. The correlation between our modern culture and those inhabiting Canaan, when the Israelites showed up at the border, are scary.

God created the scent of the rose, and gave us the ability to smell it. He gave us delicious foods and the ability to taste them. Ears to hear the wind and birds singing and the words "I love you." The extravagant number of colors of the sunset or sunrise, or the colored layers of the mountains, and the eyes to see them. Do you think he might know what he's doing? We might not have the evidence yet, that we're dealing with a loving God, but we do know he's an exceptional engineer. And in our final thoughts to follow, we'll deal with those personal aspects.

(Flagpole number 9 - bam!)