Questioning God’s Moral Character
June 19th, 2009 | 
Author: 
When pondering the subject of morality, the subject of God’s actions and the questionable morality of those actions often comes up. When I refer to God’s actions, I would be referring to any religion which seems to make a claim to actually knowing what God’s actions are. In my case, Christianity is the closest to home and so that is where my questions are directed.
We are told by Christians that we derive our morality from God himself. We are told that without God there would be no morality and that God gives us moral directives which come from his nature. So a certain thing is not moral just because God says it, but rather it is moral because that is part of who God is and he can do no wrong.
The problem which arises however is that based on the Christian religion God supposedly does many things that from our perspective look to be pretty immoral. Jesus also seems to do things which he himself says are sinful but somehow he is able to do them in such a way where he doesn’t actually sin. In fact it would seem that God can actually do no wrong. And most Christians that I know, including my former Christian self, would agree that God is God and can do as he pleases.
Now while I would have to agree in part that if God is real and is as the bible describes him then indeed who am I to question God and to point out what I feel is evil or not. It does seem a bit strange however that we on the one hand are to get our morality from God but then when we look at his actions, we have to make a distinction between what he does as opposed to what he says. In all other contexts this would be considered hypocrisy but when it comes to God, it is just one of those mysteries that we are supposed to accept.
I heard this posed in a question on one of my favorite podcasts, Reasonable Doubts, recently. In episode 40 which they called “Unintelligible God” , they asked,
Name one action that God could not perform in order to preserve his moral character?
That is, if God is moral in all that he says and does yet we see him doing things which seem immoral, is there anything that God cannot do because of his moral character? It seems that every action which APPEAR to be bad are explained away in one way or another. A few examples are as follows:
Can God…
- Murder? See: 1 Chronicles 21:9-14 ; Deuteronomy 3:1-7; Joshua 11:7-15
- Kill children and other innocents? See: Leviticus 26:21-22; 1 Samuel 15:2-3
- Lie or mislead people? See: 1 Kings 22:23; 2 Chronicles 18:22; Ezekiel 14:9; 2 Thessalonians 2:11
- Stand by with the ability to help and withhold help to someone who needs it? See: Suffering children in Africa
- Make a bet with Satan that Job will still believe even after Satan takes everything he has and kills all his children. See Book of Job.
This is not an exhaustive list of things that God does in the Bible that seem evil but they are some pretty serious examples. If God can do these things and it is consistent with his nature, then do we really get any morality from God’s nature? Surely we cannot look at what God does in the Bible and follow that as a moral guide.
Jeff
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Posted in Christianity, God, Morality, Philosophy | 
Tags: bible, evil, genocide, God, god is a liar, god is evil., god lies, lie, Morality
6 Responses to “Questioning God’s Moral Character”
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Interesting blog; I picked it up on the Ex C site.
But I don’t quite get what you mean by this “conscience” thing. You talk about it like it presents us with some objective standard of right and wrong, and yet to an atheist what can your “conscience” be but the biochemical rumblings in your own organic brain?
You make a lot of pronouncements about what is evil, but the atheists I have met have no trouble with excusing their own positions which often include, for example, unlimited abortion (including of viable fetuses) and selective breeding (aborting babies who dont have the characteristics you want) and lots of other stuff.
As for the “evil” in the Old Testament, a lot of it involved a former slave people struggling for survival. (And of course the Eygptians din’t leave records of them around…our Western Civ professor (at a very secular university) said the Egyptian policy was to eliminate records of their enemeies and their defeats in so far as possible.)
I haven’t noticed that atheists are opposed to violence…except when it comes to Jews; everyone was happy with them when they set backa and were almost exterminated in World War Two, but when they fought back in Old Testament times that is suddenly a no no.
So, unless you are now a Pro LIfe Pacifist opposed to the Death Penalty, I don’t see that you have much room to make moral pronouncements.
HI Blair,
I should probably made it more clear in the post, the moral pronouncements that I was making concerning God’s moral character were more from looking at the Bible’s own standard of morality. Based on the Bible’s view of morality, all of the sins listed would be considered evil when applied to a human being. If we lie, murder, kill innocent people, etc it would be considered morally wrong. However, the God of the Bible while prohibiting these things seems to engage in them himself quite often. So my question is what relationship does GOd’s actions have to his commandments? And if we derive our morality from the nature of God, and God’s nature is consistent with those actions listed above, then doesn’t that present a problem?
I’m currently researching ethics for fun and ran into this page. It made me curious because I have talked to several friends about the existence of God. In response, I am not aware of your personal moral standings or the foundation of them. I am guessing that if you dig far enough, you may not be able to explain them yourself. Anyway, an understanding of God’s righteousness calls for an understanding of his righteous wrath and justice. This calls for a Biblical understanding of sin and the just wrath sin requires from a righteous God, even on the most seemingly “innocent” humans. This is often ignored by preachers which like to preach about God as if He is Santa Claus, but we cannot understand the extent of His love and grace until we deal with the just repurcussion of sin. This discussion also calls for some understanding of His sovereignty in allowing some evil for a time and even often acting so that the evil deeds of satan and mankind work for His glory and ultimate purpose. I know you’ve probably read a lot about this, I’m just saying that there are some assumptions we make about morality, especially in applying it to God, that are untrue and require some deep probing into the nature of morality, God, and the situational context in which we are morally criticizing. Also, I was wondering if this was your main reason for not believing in God?
Hi Andrew,
Thank you for your comments.
The questions that I posed in this post were not the reasons I have for not being a Christian. My reason for not being a Christian came ultimately down to the major internal and external problems and inconsistencies in the Bible. This is one of those things that I have reflected on in my post Christian life.
You mention,
“I’m just saying that there are some assumptions we make about morality, especially in applying it to God, that are untrue and require some deep probing into the nature of morality, God, and the situational context in which we are morally criticizing.”
I understand that if God exists, there is going to be a huge gap (infinite?) between us and him and that this gap is going to cause a lot of problems when we try to understand him and what he does. However, what I am more concerned about in this post, is that Christians cannot really speak about morality being rooted in God’s nature (as it is “revealed” in the Bible) because what we understand about God’s nature and actions seems to be so different then what he prescribes for his creatures in his commandments. We cannot follow and imitate what God does because what is ok for him to do is not ok for us to do. now maybe we are in two totally different categories but if that is so, it makes no sense whatsoever to talk about morality flowing from God’s nature. It seems that one is forced to conclude that the moral demands that God has for his creatures in the Bible are somewhat relative in nature and are meant for a certain context. The morality of the Christian seems no more objective to me then the morality of anyone else.
Jeff,
Thanks for the quick response!
You stated that God’s moral demands seem to be “meant for a certain context.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Christian theologian in Nazi Germany might agree with you in a way. In his book, Ethics, Bonhoeffer dives into the Christian ethic and its foundation in God himself, the ultimate reality. He himself as a pastor and theologian for the “confessing church” in Germany participated in deception for the sake of sneaking Jews out of the country and participated in a conspiracy attempt against Hitler, leading to his imprisonment and death. Bonhoeffer struggles extensively with morality in his involvement. Anyway, Bonhoeffer does not present a situational ethic, but does say that the God-reflecting moral response may take on different shapes in different contexts, while remaining faithful to the unchanging Reality, that is, God.
In response to the list of verses and situations, I admit that these are hard texts. I do not believe, however, that they demonstrate that human morality is contradictory to the nature of its Creator. In several of the texts, God is administering divine justice on guilty man as the highest Authority. We too should promote and carry out justice in society from the institution of authority. In 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles, we see God dealing with a sinful, guilty people. He sends them the truth through his prophet concerning the coming judgment, but the king hates the truth. God then permits that the king believes a lie in order to carry out justice upon guilty people. In our justice system, we find no moral quams with letting guilty criminals believe falsehood so that justice can be carried out. In Job,God allows Satan to persecute Job greatly. Here, God is acting to defeat Satan, but also for the ultimate good of Job in spite of his trial. Also God is chiefly glorifying Himself through this; we find the same purpose in our existence, to act and even suffer for the sake of His glory. We find our purpose in His purpose and in reflection of His own character. We rejoice in some ways when the suffering of believers leads to His glory being manifested on earth.
I thought I replied to this already. Sorry about that.
You say,
“Bonhoeffer does not present a situational ethic, but does say that the God-reflecting moral response may take on different shapes in different contexts, while remaining faithful to the unchanging Reality, that is, God.”
What does that even mean? How does a moral response that takes on different shapes in different contexts not be referred to a situational ethic? And how does that reflect the “unchanging reality that is God”?