Morality of God

[I, Brian]

No problem at all, but it's simply one of those subjects that can entirely take over a thread/discussion.

Back to the topic of God and Morality - and as this thread is posted on the Judaism board - then are there specific ways within Judaism that passages are re-interpreted so as to remove inference of cruelty or human fallibility in God's judgements?

Simply because some of the more literalist anti-Christian commenters, such as Dennis McKinsey, love to take some of the KJV translations and re-present them as some form of representation of a demonic God.

[alexa]

In my humble opinion, we cannot put God's morality in question without being accused of blasphemy. On the other hand, we can speak about humans' morality and interpretation of the bible as long as you are interested. It may take weeks, months, years, etc.

I believe bananabrain pointed out already about

a race is not the same as a biblical "nation".

. I second that.

[dauer]

The way I look at it, any description of God's behavior is just man's attempt to understand God based on the world around him. If it says, "God smote the Hendersons" then this is the understanding of a) God's role in the progression of history or b) God's role in the forces of nature. This would depend on how the Hendersons were smote.

Example:

Tsunami hits somewhere. I as an Ancient Heeb say to myself "Oh maaah LAAAAAWD why did you do such a thing?" And then I would find a way to understand why it happened. When I wrote about it, I would probably write, well, almost midrashically on history so that I would feel better about the incident. Maybe they were bad people who had to die.

Or me and my peeps roll out and bust a cap in another nation to claim their lands for our own selves. As an Ancient Jew I understand that everything happend by the will of God, unquestionably. So when the battle is recorded, I want to reflect Hashem's role rather than take credit for myself. Or, possibly I want to remove responsibility from myself by showing that it is truly in God's will. Either way it is for the same reason. God is present in all historical and natural events. A biblical text ought to reflect God's presence.

Dauer

[Sacredstar]

The winner writes the history and the writer usually as a bias.....the question is, is it GOD's presence? My soul tells me some is and some isn't the secret is differientating the two.

The choice; is it GOD of wrath or GOD of love or GOD just IS I AM totally neutral, allowing humanity to exert the greatest gift of all free will.

blessings in abundance

Sacredstar

[dauer]

For me, either God is present in everything or God is present in nothing. It makes no sense to me that some things are from God and others are not.

Free will is a complicated issue. We could say that everything is free will and nothing is God, or that everything is God and that there is no free will, or that there is free will and at the same time it is all within a system that has predictable and known outcomes, known to God.

To me, it is the last that makes sense. We have free will, but God is all-knowing. We have been placed where we are for a reason.

Dauer