If God told you to kill a baby, would you?

God has told his followers to kill babies before. If God told you to kill a baby, would you? -@Hughyydooe42732

What kind of a question is that? Good question. The following is a re-post of a Twitter exchange of someone trying a ‘gotcha’ moment on a pro life post. The idea would be to catch someone in a trap if they are pro life yet support the death of children as commanded by God and recorded in the Bible.

My thinking has long been that a faith isn’t worth believing if it can’t stand up for itself. I have long discovered that such ‘problems’ have been discussed for centuries, if not millennia, and there’s always a satisfactory answer out there.

Since the question boiled down to a moral question, I decided to put my bible knowledge and past experience to use on this specific question. In the past, I’ve had to come to grips with the New Covenant and how it informs our faith. When distilled down to its essence, you end up with a command, a commission, and a clemency: Love God and Neighbour, Preach the Gospel and Make Disciples, and Mercy Triumphs Over Judgment.

If God told you to kill a baby, would you?

Okay, this has been a good exercise. Like all good questions, it is at once simple and deep. You’re not really asking a question about killing babies, you’re asking a question about right or wrong. So, I will answer this question at multiple levels in graduated fashion.

We’ve already lost neat and tidy

Preface: We ‘kill’ babies to this day who are unable to survive on their own even with food, shelter, and clothing. Serious lung or brain deformities are left to expire on their own because we reason it would be more loving to do that. So, we’ve already lost neat and tidy.

The Pre School Answer

No.

The Elementary School Answer

God is moral by definition. What he asks is by definition the right thing. You will be doing the right thing by doing what God is asking.

The High School Answer

You are not more just or moral than God, he is already there. if you think God is asking something immoral, then consider it seriously, and you will come to new levels of understanding.

The College Answer

God commanded Israel to exterminate certain groups for judgment and to prevent idolatry and worse future sins (think Aztec/Maya/Incan child sacrifice level). ***God’s ways are beyond understanding; He’s sovereign over life and death.***

See Why did God command the genocide of the Canaanites?

The Post Grad Answer

Even back to the Forefather of Israel, Abraham, we have demonstrations that we can plead, argue, and intercede for others with God and God will change His Will.

If we think we are more moral or just than God, He’s already there.

God is not wrong in what He decides because He is acting Good all the time, for all time, outside of time.

We must strive to understand God’s Will and God encourages that even to the point of changing His Will based on our striving to understand.

Jacob struggled with God until God ’had a change of mind’ and blessed him (Genesis 32:22-28)

Moses intercedes and “changes God’s mind” against destroying the Israelites which would have included women and children (Exodus 32:11-14)

Abraham pleaded with God that Sodom and Gomorrah would be spared if there were at least a few righteous (Genesis 18;22-33)

Hezekiah pleaded with God for his illness and God extended his life by 15 years (2 Kings 20), Amos pleads for Israel and God relents (Amos 7:1-3, 4-6), God relents when people repent (Jonah, Jeremiah 18:8), David is allowed to choose his punishment (1 Chronicles 21:6-17).

The Ph. D. Answer

God is the only one who has control over life and death, He can turn evil to good and death to life, and only God can see the end from the beginning, so only He is in a position to rightfully ask for a death.

The Answer That Was Always There

“The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.” (Psalm 51:17)

Are we as broken about the victims of abortion as we are about the children of the Amalekites?

Love God and Neighbour

Preach the Gospel and Make Disciples

Mercy Triumphs Over Judgment

This has always been the way.

If you practice this way, you will never violate God’s Will or your own.

Learn more: The New Covenant

Two Sons

The artwork at the top of this piece is “Abraham and the sacrifice of his son Isaac” by Bartolomeo Cavarozzi (1598). In that account in the bible, Abraham is asked to sacrifice his one and only son, Isaac, who he was promised by God would begin a great nation. Abraham obeys anyway because he trusted that God had power even over death and could raise his son back to life.

Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death. -Hebrews 11:19

This was never God’s intention, of course, as an angel restrained him and showed him the proper sacrifice, a lamb, nearby. It was, to us, a harrowing test of Isaac’s faith, but to God there was never the slightest possibility that Abraham would have been able to actually kill Isaac. God is the Creator, all powerful, and He is in full control, calm, and at ease.

They built high places for Baal in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to sacrifice their sons and daughters to Molek, though I never commanded—nor did it enter my mind—that they should do such a detestable thing and so make Judah sin. -Jeremiah 32:35

It is a powerful image of mirrored inversion that God would never think to have you sacrifice your child but put His own proper sacrifice, His ‘lamb without blemish’, His one and only Son, to die on a Cross and rise again for your sins to save you from your death.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” -John 3:16

Credit: Featured Image