Thread: What if...

God came to you and told you to kill someone. Would you do it?

Aw damn, I didn't make it public

Did you ever see Evan Almighty?

If I ever really believed that God told me to do so............yes I would.

Originally Posted by TenGig

God came to you and told you to kill someone. Would you do it?

If my name was George W. Bush or Dick Cheney, I wouldn't even hesitate before doing it.

...but if it was just little ol' me, I wouldn't because who the hell is this "God" thing anyway?

I don't think so. If I started hearing regular voices of God telling me to kill people, I would see a shrink, tell him about the voices without the killing part, and get a receipt for an antipsychotic, plus enroll myself in a study with functional mri and stuff.

If it really WAS God, then yes.

No, not a chance. If the Creator of the Universe can't do His own killing, then I'm not going to do it for Him.

One of the worst stories in the Bible is the one about Abraham committing child abuse by obeying God (supposedly) and taking Isaac up into the mountains to cut his throat and burn his body as a sacrifice to God. To add insult to injury Abraham had Isaac help build the altar. Sickness! I would have respected Abraham if he had told God, "NO!" It's called speaking truth to power when you tell a powerful person or entity that you will not do wrong just because they say so, even it means your own death.

Doing something that's wrong because God tells you to do it is no different that doing something wrong because it's your job. Soldiers stuffed Jews into ovens, religious people tortured and burned others at the stake, and genocide has been committed over and over again in God's name--but it's still wrong.

But if God is real, he knows what is truly good and evil.

Originally Posted by Zarathustra

But if God is real, he knows what is truly good and evil.

Was that aimed at my reply? God may know what is truly good and evil, but if I do something that I think is evil on the basis of God's say-so, then I have betrayed myself in the case that it was just another of God's tests. Either way God will know what's in my heart and if He sees fit to punish me for not killing someone because I think it's wrong, then He's hardly the kind of god I'd want to spend eternity with in Heaven. To thine own self be true, while you may be wrong, at least you will be wrong for the right reason.

This whole discussion points out why Jesus' message was SO IMPORTANT. If you love God and love others as yourself, if you turn the other cheek, return good for evil, and forgive others in the way that you wish to be forgiven, then you really can't go wrong--you may die, but you'll die with a clear conscience. This is where I part company with most Christians, they are not content just to do what Jesus said, they have to try to force others to obey His teachings too and in so doing they lose sight of what Jesus told THEM to do.