Had a guy in Walmart tell me God is cruel because in His laws for war, Deuteronomy 20:16-18, He tells Israel to:
“But leave nothing alive in the cities of the land the LORD your God is giving you. Completely destroy these people: the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded. Otherwise, they will teach you what they do for their gods, and if you do these hateful things, you will sin against the LORD your God.” – Deuteronomy 20:16-18
I asked him if he knew whether or not the sin choices the people were making were affecting their genetic, mental, and/or spiritual code.
Perhaps God knew something about their condition this young man did not.
If you had just found out a tribe of cancer was living in your body, would you want the doctor to remove ALL of it?
Would you rather him leave behind the littler, immature cancer cells?
Would you want Him to allow the non-violent cells, the benign ones, to stay there and take up the space and utilize the resources needed by healthy cells?
Hm…
Maybe, begin here, with a fresh understanding of God and of His people:
“God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son so that whoever believes in him may not be lost, but have eternal life. God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world guilty, but to save the world through him. People who believe in God’s Son are not judged guilty. Those who do not believe have already been judged guilty, because they have not believed in God’s one and only Son. They are judged by this fact: The Light has come into the world, but they did not want light. They wanted darkness, because they were doing evil things. All who do evil hate the light and will not come to the light, because it will show all the evil things they do. But those who follow the true way come to the light, and it shows that the things they do were done through God.” – John 3:16-21
“Because of this, since the day we heard about you, we have continued praying for you, asking God that you will know fully what he wants. We pray that you will also have great wisdom and understanding in spiritual things so that you will live the kind of life that honors and pleases the Lord in every way. You will produce fruit in every good work and grow in the knowledge of God. God will strengthen you with his own great power so that you will not give up when troubles come, but you will be patient. And you will joyfully give thanks to the Father who has made you able to have a share in all that he has prepared for his people in the kingdom of light. God has freed us from the power of darkness, and he brought us into the kingdom of his dear Son. The Son paid for our sins, and in him we have forgiveness.” – Colossians 1:9-14
Consider these verses and then, allow them to flow out to all the ‘cruel’ thoughts and machinations the enemy has convinced you are God’s.
He is not.
His thoughts are not.
God IS love and everything He does is motivated by that love.
