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God's Word is NOT Good


Christians often ask, “Without God’s word, how can you know right from wrong?” The assumption is that the Bible is the ultimate moral guide. But if you actually read what the Bible says, the picture of morality it presents is brutal. Many of the things God commands or condones are the very things most people today see as evil.


Slavery

“If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself… And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: Then his master shall bring him unto the judges… and his master shall bore his ear through with an aul; and he shall serve him for ever.”

Exodus 21:2–6


“Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids… And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you… they shall be your bondmen for ever.”

Leviticus 25:44–46


Genocide

“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… seven nations greater and mightier than thou; 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.”

Deuteronomy 7:1–2


“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”

1 Samuel 15:3


Killing Children

“And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle.”

Exodus 12:29


Women as Property

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.”

Exodus 20:17


“If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife.”

Deuteronomy 22:28–29


Execution for Apostasy and Blasphemy

“If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods… But thou shalt surely kill him… And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die.”

Deuteronomy 13:6, 9–10


“And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him.”

Leviticus 24:16


Eternal Torture

“And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.”

Matthew 25:46


“And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.”

Revelation 14:11

__________

If morality comes from God’s word, then slavery, genocide, child-killing, execution for belief, and eternal torture must all be considered moral. But they are not. We know they are not.

And none of this moral clarity comes from the Bible. In fact, it comes from rejecting the Bible’s examples. So when someone asks, “How can you know to be good without God’s word?” the answer is simple. We know to be good without it because our sense of goodness does not come from God. It comes from empathy, reason, and the shared human experience.

The better question is not “How can we be good without God’s word?” but “Why would we ever trust God’s word as the standard of goodness in the first place?”

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