A Merciless God and the Need for Critical Thinking

Heading home from work, pressing "Seek" again and again on the radio. Come across a preacher commenting on the wonderful mercy of God. The text under discussion? God's amazing mercy, as shown to King David subsequent to his, David's, dalliance with the seductively bathing Bathsheba and his Godfather-like arrangement of her husband's battlefield demise.

I mentioned critical thinking. A few years ago I would not have questioned the claim that God's actions in this case manifest some sort of supreme degree of mercy. But today I actually think about it. Here's what occurs to me.

In retribution for his favorite guy's misdeeds, God makes the resulting baby get sick and die. Not only that, but he makes David's wives (which polygamy God allowed, by the way) be acquired and screwed by David's own son, in full view of "all Israel." (Not sure how he accomplished the broadcasting of the event, but let's leave that aside.)

Now I ask, you, just how merciful is it to allow a parent to live and yet take the life of his baby? And then have the man's sworn enemy screw his wives in public? Vito Corleone ain't got nuthin on this God.

No doubt Christian apologists will say that God was merciful just letting David go to heaven. Yes, we all deserve to be damned eternally because we all fall short of perfection, never mind that we were all (if you believe the story) designed and manufactured in God's factory to begin with. So God has the perfect right to inflict the worst possible suffering on us and still be called merciful by the mendicant masses.

And here's the irony: Christians will flay the woman who undergoes an abortion and call her a hell-bound murderer, and bemoan the poor baby-souls who never get to live on the earth, but God, he gets to kill babies and still have us kiss his behind.

What do you think?

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