This video is making the rounds on Facebook. It is only 5 minutes, but it is a grueling 5 minutes. Just in case you can't endure, here is (to me) the crux from what John Piper has to say:
"It's right for God to slaughter women and children anytime he pleases. God gives life and he takes life. Everybody who dies, dies because God wills that they die.
God is taking life every day. He will take 50,000 lives today. Life is in God's hand. God decides when your last heartbeat will be, and whether it ends through cancer or a bullet wound. God governs.
So God is God! He rules and governs everything. And everything he does is just and right and good. God owes us nothing."My brother once said, after reading something of mine that he disagreed with, "I feel like a mosquito at a nudist colony... I don't know where to start." There are so many things horribly, horribly wrong with Piper's world-view that it is hard to pick where to begin.
First, let's do away with any notions that Piper is at the fringe of Christianity. John Piper is one of Christianity's most sought after speakers and authors. He is a principal voice in the American Christian faith. His books are not banned at Christian bookstores, they are front and center.
On to the argument. John Piper, and anyone who agrees with him, has no objective sense of right and wrong. His moral code is on shifting sand. There are no true moral or immoral behaviors, only the actions of his god. Once those actions have taken place, right is determined. His followers may, or may not, be correct in imitating his actions. This god is full of do as I say not as I do, behaviors. To describe Piper's god as capricious is to partake in the epitome of understatement.
John Piper is an example of some of the worst religious thought that can occur in a secular environment. I say this, because I would hate to see what would happen under his reign if he had the power like some clerics in Islamic nations. A closer tie between religion and state increases the influence of men like Piper. Slaughter in the name of religion does not even cause a blip on this man's moral radar.
I no longer believe in any deities. But if I did, I would expect the god to be superior to me in morals and character. Piper believes in a poor deity. Look at the quote above. If you are a parent, could you imagine your child describing you in that way? Piper's god is not a good parent; he is not a good person. Anyone reading Piper's description of his god knows in their gut that the creature he describes is not good. To believe Piper's god to be good, you need a LOT of religious indoctrination or suffer from a cosmic version of battered spouse syndrome.
In the end, this is what drove me from Christianity to agnosticism. Maybe there is a god, but if so, that ain't it.
ReplyDeletePiper is the product of a theology that goes all the way back to Jonathan Edward's "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God". It is a horrible, horrible theology that has warped Christianity and our understanding of God for far to long. Piper's God is mad...and God ain't mad!
ReplyDeleteDamned if you do, damned if you don't.
ReplyDeleteJohn Piper writes I have three sons. Every night after they are asleep I turn on the hall light, open their bedroom door, and walk from bed to bed, laying my hands on them and praying. Often I am moved to tears of joy and longing. I pray that Karsten Luke become a great physician of the soul, that Benjamin John become the beloved son of my right hand in the gospel, and that Abraham Christian give glory to God as he grows strong in his faith.
ReplyDeleteBut I am not ignorant that God may not have chosen my sons for his sons. And-, though I think I would give my life for their salvation, if they should be lost to me, I would not rail against the Almighty. He is God. I am but a man. The potter has absolute rights over the clay. Mine is to bow before his unimpeachable character and believe that the Judge of all the earth has ever and always will do right.
Yikes imagine believing this!
Anon - I thought at first you were making that argument... I now understand it is an actual quote from Piper... How horrid that that man would sacrifice his sons to his god, and allow that god to abuse them, and feel the compulsion to call that god's actions good.
ReplyDeleteI boggles the mind.
Because John Piper is a Calvinist he thinks it is what the Bible teaches. For me this was the final straw for my belief in the Christian god. Have you read Thom Stark's response to Paul Copan's book Is God a Moral Monster. Thom Stark's free response is called Is God a Moral Compromiser? Thom Stark rips Paul Copan's book. The OT God is a moral monster.
ReplyDeleteSadly, the western interpretation of the bible-starting with the Roman Catholic reformation and continuing with the protestant reformation-has done much harm and has caused the world to see Christianity not as Christ would have had the world see it.
ReplyDeleteChristianity existed for a long time in the east before the west was ever civilised and in those days councils of believers from all over the known world gathered periodically to make sure that doctrine like this was always refuted by those who understood Christ's words rightly.
The eastern church, those who have received the faith passed down for 2000 years without any significant reformations or major changes in belief or doctrine, sees the God of the universe in a completely different light than John Piper.
Unfortunately, America sees John Piper's God and thinks that John Piper adequately represents the authentic Christian faith-this just isn't true.
Most of the western world does not have a fair and true representation of the authentic Christian faith because they have only seen and been exposed to Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, which have both broken away from the original true beliefs of the Church.
Before writing off God as your Father, Saviour, and Friend-be sure you've heard His story from someone who truly knows Him, not from someone who's understanding is twisted by western scholasticism and western culture.
Now, if anyone has actually read this far, consider that John Piper is not completely wrong-he finished by stating that God wills for His Church not to judge the world, but to serve and love the world in the hopes of healing and redeeming the world.
God is JUST, but His justice was fulfilled in JESUS and now it is not His will to judge but rather to pour out grace and mercy and love on every human who will receive Him.
Please don't reject the God who is LOVE just because some person who claimed to know Him gave you an imperfect portrait of who God is. NOBODY can give you a perfect portrait of who God is except JESUS because JESUS was and is the image of the invisible God.
God declares that He will reject noone who honestly seeks Him, no matter how sinful, how broken, how low that person has become in life-all of heaven rejoices(especially God) when someone accepts Jesus and puts their hope and trust in God.
It breaks God's heart anytime someone perishes appart from knowing Him. He doesn't desire that any should die without knowledge of His love and salvation.
If you currently consider yourself agnostic or athiest or angry and doubtful, please consider that the God that culture, media, and the western version of christianity has offered you may be grossly mistaken and take a while to earnestly investigate the true beginnings of Christianity and the true God who loves and desires for you to know Him.
I suggest reading the book in the Bible called The Book Of John, that is one of the clearest books on the love and mercy of God and the first book anyone should read if they want to learn about who God truly is.
I spent the first 20 years of my life angry and hating the God I'd been taught because my parents divorced and I was abused and bullied for years, later I became addicted to living a reckless life filled with danger, promiscuous relationships, and many times coming close to doing something that would have put me in prison for a long time, but God saved me and protected me through all of it and now I can say that I love and cherish Him and I know that He loves and adores me and I mess up in life every day but He carries me through it all and He wants the same for each and every one of you.
Steve, you or I should post a YouTube video answering the same question.
ReplyDeleteIt could be the short answer to whether it's right for God to kill women and children. ("Uh...no.")
I can think of a much longer answer that would be fun too.
Gotta fight the crazy.