Darrell W. Conder's

Things You've Never Heard In Church Series:

For The Love of God!

While recently driving through the backwoods of Arkansas, I noticed a prominent sign posted in someone's front yard. It read: "God Is Love". I had seen or heard this "sentiment" many times before, but as I drove along on that beautiful fall day I started reflecting on what these words truly mean. The biggest, fattest truth of all is that no such god exists either in or out of Christian scriptures—that indeed the Christian god is the antithesis of love, the proof of which begins in the opening chapters of the bible.

It is in Genesis where we are first introduced to the elohim (the Hebrew word for "gods") who create a man and a woman and then quickly devised one of the most cunning deathtraps imaginable with a fruit tree and a talking serpent. Overlooking the point that any logically-minded person should reject such a tale as pure fantasy (a talking snake!), let's focus on the fact that the Genesis gods purposely set the stage for humanity's fall from "grace," and then cursed every man, woman and child who will ever be born with indescribable suffering and sadistic death because some remote ancestors fell into their trap. This means that all of history's wars, all of its brutal murders, rapes, plunderings, suffering, diseases, etc., can be traced back to that hideous fruit tree death trap, as St. Paul explains in Romans 5:14: Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come."

After the snake thing in Eden, one would think that the Adam family would keep their distance from the gods described above. Not so. In fact soon after being booted out of Eden we find the Adam family had organized into the world's first church to worship these gods—well, a kind of church, considering that there were only four members: Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel. As is the habit within churches the world over, in short order there arose a theological dispute between the two younger members. Setting a precedent for all time to come, the dispute was settled when Cain turned on his brother Abel and bashed out his brains over whose sacrifice had been more acceptable to the gods. And, who do you suppose sat by and watched the world's first murder? It was the omnipotent elohim, one of whom later introduces himself as Jehovah. Even worse, the All-Merciful One didn't seem overly upset about the murder because in one of the few instances in the bible where he shrugged his shoulders over sin, Jehovah let Cain go scot-free. In fact, he not only let Cain go, he gave him godly protection by pronouncing a curse on anyone who sought revenge—even though in Genesis 9:6 this same god commands that "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man."

In the story of Cain and Abel we find the beginnings of humanity's descent into murderous chaos—and all because of a basket of fruit. (Romans 5:12, NKJ: "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned . . ." Also see I Corinthians 15:20.) Overlooking the pettiness of the thing, one of the major problems with the C & A tale is that it directly contradicts God's promise that he doesn't hold children guilty of nor punish them for the sins of their fathers, which is clearly stated in Deuteronomy 24:16: "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin." This precept is even more bluntly stated in Ezekiel 18:20: "The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." More confusion is tossed into the mix by Exodus 20:5 wherein God gives his famous ten commandments and threatens to punish children for the sins of their fathers: ". . . for I the lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. . ." This threat is given force in Deuteronomy 32:25: "The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs."

So, which is it? Did God lie on Mt. Sinai when he handed down his ten commandments, or did he lie in Deuteronomy and Ezekiel? The answer is clear—there is a bold lie somewhere in this mishmash. My vote is for God lying when he promised not to punish children for their father's sins because the bible is full of examples of him smiting children or grandchildren for a trifle committed by a parent or some remote ancestor, such as the murder of righteous Abel because his mom and pop ate a piece of fruit. Hey, when it comes to punishment, the famous "God of love" seldom let bygones be bygones, an example of which can be found in Matthew 23:35 wherein Jesus threatened the Pharisees with revenge for murders carried out by their ancestors, and/or remote relations: ". . . on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar."

The cold hard fact is that no god or goddess can match the bloodlust of Jehovah, a prime example being the story of the Great Deluge. To tell that story we return to the Adam family.

After God dumped Adam and Eve out of Eden, he essentially went away and left humanity on their own. For the first 2,000 years no laws were given, nor penalties threatened, such as are found in his infamous ten commands. However, the lack of knowing what ticked off God and what pleased him made absolutely no difference to the Almighty as he sat up in heaven looking down on humanity. This is made plain in Matthew 13:14: "And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: 15) For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. 16) But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear. 17) For verily I say unto you, that many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them." In other words, God purposely kept humanity from understanding his version of right and wrong, which forced the masses to "sin," and for which he perpetually stands ready to exact a terrible revenge.

About 4,000 years ago God looked down on the earth and decided that it was a cess pool of sin—such a cess pool that it should be turned into a giant toilet bowl in which humanity could be flushed away. Never mind that God himself was to blame for human misbehavior when he cursed all unborn generations back in the Eden snake thing. Never mind that he neglected to open their hearts to their "sinful" ways so that they could be given a chance to repent and turn to him. God simply decided to arbitrarily teach the world a lesson in obedience by drowning every man, woman and child, every grasshopper, beetle, worm and ant, and destroying every single tree and blade of grass on Earth—except for a floating zoo and eight people, who, if we judge by their behavior immediately after the flood, were a piece of real work. What I mean by that statement is that after our omnipotent "god of love" carried out his global murder and destruction, old Noah crawled out of the ark and went off on a drunk, during which his son Ham, homosexually raped him in the anus. (For the details of this story, see my eBook on Genesis.)

Now answer truthfully here: Where in the story of Noah's flood do we find any traces of a "god of love?"

Because of the sheer volume of death and destruction, the flood was a hard act to follow, even for the supreme homicidal "god of love." In the rest of the bible's tales of murder the death tolls never approached those of the flood, being a bit more reasonable (i.e., not in the millions but thousands), such as when God rained down fire and brimstone on the defenseless towns of Sodom and Gomorrah, after which he murdered righteous Lot's wife with some kind of salt trick. Okay, I know that bible-pounding preachers say that the queer men of Sodom and Gomorrah had it coming, but let me ask them this: Why would God create homosexuality and then make it a sin for which he demanded the death penalty? (See my eBook "Things You've Never Heard In Church Series: Jehovah Finally Comes Out of the Closet!") Even more, what about the women and children? Why did they need to die for the "sins" of a few oversexed gay men? And, speaking of Lot, don't you think it strange that he and his two daughters were the only ones judged righteous enough to escape God's wrath back in Sodom since Lot left there and immediately went on a drunk, incestuously fornicated with his two daughters and fathered two sons? (So much for God's sense of right and wrong!)

Okay, let's get back to God murdering children for the sins of their fathers, which he says he doesn't do, but then does, a good example of which is the slaughter of Eli's children. Now old Eli was a godly man, being a high priest, judge and ruler of Israel (1Sam 2:31, 1 Sam 22:16-18), but Eli had a problem: He was a lenient father. We can certainly understand the almighty god of love being pissed off about that, since leniency seldom plays a part in his omniscient brain. For his horrendous "sin" God contrived to break Eli's neck; but the All Merciful One didn't stop there. The god who doesn't punish the children for the "sins" of the father, also went after Eli's priestly descendants.

Here they were, the Eli family, busy day and night on God's behalf squeezing gold, sliver, copper and all those other things God needs, like sheep, cattle, grain and linens from the Lord's terrified faithful, so one would expect some little show of mercy from the Great Cosmic Lord of the Manor. Not so! Decades after old Eli had "sinned," and after God had broken his neck, our god of love had the Eli family hacked to pieces.

What is so incredible is that for decades the Eli family knew of God's intentions, since he had it announced via the prophet Samuel, and they were told that their god of mercy wouldn't accept any form of repentance! No way out—the Lord was out for their blood and nothing in heaven or on earth (or hell) would move his resolve: 1 Samuel 3:12: "Behold, I will do a thing in Israel, at which both ears of every one that hears it shall tingle. In that day I shall perform against Eli all the things which I have spoken concerning his house... I will punish his house for ever, for the offense that he knew that his sons made themselves accursed, but restrained them not. The iniquity of Eli's house shall not be purged with sacrifice nor offering for ever."

Certainly, Eli was a special case, meaning that God took a personal interest in killing his family. In the case of plain garden-variety sinning Israelites, God sometimes let nature do his dirty work, such as when he let a tornado wipe out Job's children because Job was worshiping too perfectly. In Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 28:53 and Jeremiah 19:9, God threatens disobedient Israelites with wild beasts, which will drag off and eat their children alive. If this failed to strike the required amount of fear, God threatened to cause the Israelites to eat their own children, which they ultimately did, if what we read elsewhere in the bible is to be believed. But, if God really got miffed, he didn't hold back—all-out murder and mayhem followed his displeasure, which we read in Hoesa 13:16: ". . . because they have rebelled against their God [read tired of worshiping an unpredictable homicidal deity], they will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open." Isaiah 13:16 threatens: "Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes...and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children."

I ask: God is love? God is mercy? God is forgiveness?

Skipping over a fair amount of godly blood and gore, let's direct our attention to the tale of the Israelite Exodus. First of all, let me point out that for no rhyme or reason God arranged for the Israel family to move en masse down to Egypt to be tossed into the misery, abuse and murder of slavery for the next four hundred years! I say for "no rhyme or reason" because we never really learn what the children of Israel did to deserve this punishment, except that they had the misfortune to be selected as the chosen ones of an unpredictable homicidal supreme torturer. Anyway, four hundred years of misery and death dragged by as God listened to the prayers and supplications of his chosen ones begging on their gnarled knees for deliverance. Interminable waiting being the key ingredient of prayer, God finally moved against Egypt with all his homicidal inventiveness—in such proportion as to put old Cecil B. DeMille and his Hollywood film to shame!

To get even with his quarry, God needed a front man for his dirty work. Now, far be it from the Holy One of Israel to simply select a man from among the millions of Israelite minions. Being the Supreme Dramatist, he first contrived to kill off all the little Israelite baby boys, save one, whom he saved in a water-logged basket. The little runt was called Moses, and in the fullness of time became to be one of the Lord's most zealous admirers.

After first murdering an Egyptian, Moses fled into the wilderness where he had his first encounter with God via a burning bush. I think Charlton Heston and his boss Cecil B. DeMille have made most of us familiar with that tale, so we skip ahead to the time when Moses reappears in Egypt, presents himself to pharaoh and performs some divine magic with the demand to let the Israelites go free.

Now old pharaoh, being smart enough to see that he was dealing with a fire-breathing homicidal god, wisely decided to be rid of the Israelites rather quickly! But God would have none of that. He had cast the Israelites into bondage for no good reason, set the Egyptians up as the fall guys, and now he was hell-bent on killing off a large number of helpless people—and no rational human was going to spoil his fun, pharaoh or not. So what did he do? God "hardened" pharaoh's heart, which means that he prolonged the Israelite's bondage so that he could torture and kill Egyptians. Oh, and what methods of madness, mayhem and murder God used on them!

Trapped like rats, the God of Mercy tortured and killed the helpless Egyptians with a variety of ingenious tricks. He tortured them with utter darkness, he sent locusts to bring on mass starvation, he sent frogs to blanket the land, he poisoned the Nile River with blood, he rained deadly hail stones down on their heads, he covered them with boils, etc., until the land was a ruin of death and stink. It was only then that God sprung the final phase of his death trap—he "unhardened" pharaoh's heart who promptly freed the Israelites.

One can almost hear old pharaoh's sigh of relief as he watched the Israelites waddle off into the desert, only to have the Lord zap him yet again with another dose of heart-hardening. And so God's puppet pharaoh took off in pursuit after the departing Israelites. Finally catching up to the lot at the Red Sea, God sprung his trap on what was left of the Egyptians in a cunningly-devised water death. One thing you can say about the All Loving One—he does have a flare for inventive murder! But here's the real icing on the divine cake: After God had put pharaoh and his people out of their prolonged misery, he turned his "love" on the poor Israelites, who didn't fully realize what kind of deity who had them in his grip, they being cut off from his "mercy" for the past four hundred years.

The killing off of the free Israelites started almost immediately once they got into the desert, and continued for the next forty years. With the exception of Caleb and Joshua, every last man and woman who escaped Egyptian slavery was exterminated by God with armies, snakes, heart attacks, thirst and earthquakes, until the "love of God" had slaughtered the whole damned bunch—including his loyal servant Moses! The only twist in this tale is that this time God spared the children for the sins of their fathers—a logical move since there wouldn't have been any Israelites left to occupy Canaan, and no chosen ones for God to "love" in the coming years. (Actually, the children made it into Canaan by the skin of their teeth, since on two separate occasions God decided to kill off every last one of them had not Moses begged for their lives!)

It is the fashion of Christianity to preach the love of God for all humanity. "We are all one in the Lord!" "Red and yellow, black or white, we are all precious in his sight!" We see an example of God's love for people of color when he led the Israelites to the borders of Canaan. Since the land was already inhabited with people, what do you suppose our God of mercy did? Did he order Joshua and his priest to convert the Canaanites to "God's truth" so that all could live in peace and harmony? No! Did God at least order the Canaanites to leave the land? No! The all-merciful God of the bible, who loves all peoples in all lands, commanded the Israelites to murder every last man, woman, child and animal down to the suckling lamb: Deuteronomy 7:1 "When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; 2) And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them: you must utterly annihilate them."

We are talking godly genocide here folks, a prime example being the Midianites, who actually were cousins to the Israelites—being descended of Abraham. Kinship notwithstanding, we read in Numbers 31 how God ordered that every Midianite man, woman and child—including every suckling babe, down to the last suckling lamb—to be hacked to death. But there was a snag to God's order. Some of the Israelite commanders didn't have God's appetite for wholesale murder, even after killing an estimated 250,000 people. What they did was to allow the Midianite women and children to live. Of course this didn't set well with the "God of love," nor his chief executioner. Giving the whole thing some thought, Moses, that supposed champion of liberty and justice, first ordered that all the little infant Midianite boys be dragged from the arms of their terrified, screaming mothers and hacked to pieces by razor-sharp Israelite blades. Casting his eyes over the female captives, and undoubtedly noting that some were quite young and beautiful, Moses displayed a spark of humanity when he decreed that all virgins were to be spared. Well, sort of spared.

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