So I was listening to Dr. Frank Turek’s podcast the other day, and he mentioned how so many atheists and skeptics complain about how God ordered the execution of every man, woman, and child in Canaan when the Israelites moved in to take their Promised Land. Frank gave a good explanation, and mentioned a book I’ve often recommended by Dr. Paul Copan titled, “Is God a Moral Monster?” He also mentioned another professor he’d had on his show before, a Dr. Clay Jones, who has a different view than Copan. So when I got home, I looked up Clay Jones and found a video teaching of his on YouTube, in which he gave his explanation why it wasn’t immoral of God to bring judgment on the Canaanites.
The gist of his teaching is that we don’t really appreciate or understand our human depravity or what original sin is. Then he proceeded to give a litany of horrors which have been perpetrated by human beings, Auschwitz, the rape of Nanking, China by the Japanese in WWII, the murder of Ukrainians by the Soviet Union, etc. He also mentioned a well-known experiment in which people were told to ask others questions, and if they did not answer their questions correctly, to give them an increasingly powerful electric shock. Even when the person (who was an actor and wasn’t really being shocked) cried and begged to be released and not shocked anymore, from 65-85% (depending on the location of the test) of participants went ahead and administered the shocks they thought they should administer.
Clay Jones repeatedly asks during his presentation, were these acts inhuman? And he repeatedly answers his own question, no, they were things human beings do. It has often been said that the most shocking thing about people like Adolph Eichmann, who was responsible for the murder of millions of Jews, was that he was so ordinary. He was just a man, another guy, like your neighbor next door.
Since the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, I’ve heard so many newscasters call the young perpetrator a monster. What Clay Jones says in this video is the truth we all need to recognize. Nikolas Cruz wasn’t something we are not. He’s just a troubled human being, with a lot of problems, who lashed out. I’m afraid the monster is inside every human being.
My wife recorded a Frontline program for me about the enmity that exists between Saudi Arabia and Iran. I was fascinated by this two-hour program. But I mention it because it so fits in this discussion. The CIA helped topple a lawfully elected prime minister in Iran, and brought in the shah to take his place. We preferred the shah, because he wasn’t a religious fanatic like Khomeini and we thought we could control him and get along better with him. Today we howl about Russian interference in our elections, but we didn’t just interfere with the Iranian elections; we directly overthrew the lawfully elected man they had chosen to put in our puppet!
The shah lived in luxury while brutally suppressing his own people. Then he got cancer and came to the US for treatment. That’s why the Ayatollah Khomeini came back to Iran and took power. Our interference is what made the Iranian Islamic revolution possible. We actually prepared the way for it!
When Khomeini took power, his military was in a weakened state. Saddam Hussein, in next door Iraq, thought that would be the best time to launch an attack against Iran. He was hoping to take territory and oust this Shia leader who might prove to be a threat to him. Many were slaughtered on both sides. Though Hussein was a brutal dictator, we helped him in his war, because we preferred a secular dictator like him to a religious fanatic. The CIA gave him intelligence on where to attack the Iranians, and helped in other ways. We were complicit in the deaths of many Iranians.
Khomeini was in trouble. So he responded by calling for every available male to fight in the war. This included thousands of boys from age 10 and up. They were given keys to hang around their necks, and told these would get them into the Islamic heaven. Then they were sent in “human wave” attacks of thousands upon thousands. They were blown up by mines, mortar attacks, Iraqi artillery, aircraft, and if they made it through all that, were shot by the hundreds by Iraqi troops. All with the promise of heaven if they fought for their ayatollah.
Eventually these tactics paid off, and Iran pushed the Iraqis out of their country. The two sides could’ve called it quits. But Khomeini refused. He ordered his troops to keep pushing into Iraq. Saddam Hussein responded with chemical weapon attacks that slaughtered thousands upon thousands. Recently declassified reports show our CIA knew he did this. But we were silent, and so was the rest of the world. We howl when Assad of Syria uses chemical weapons, but since Saddam Hussein was using them against someone we didn’t favor, nobody said a word. Over 1 million people were killed in that Iran-Iraq war.
The correspondent Martin Smith, asked both sides who was at fault. Neither accepted any blame. Both said it was the other side’s fault, and they themselves were perfectly within their rights. It was right to send thousands of boys to die based on a twisted religious hope. It was right for us to help and right for the Iraqis to gas the Iranians.
The program dealt with our various wars in Iraq as well. It showed how the Saudis were dumbfounded that we would so stupidly hand the Iranians such a gift. They were able to gain power in the region because of what we did. But we were so angry and traumatized over 911 there was no stopping us from invading. We killed thousands and thousands. We thought they’d understand we were “the good guys,” but they just saw us as invaders. There was chaos and terror and death.
Abu Museb al Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, decided to start a sectarian war between the Shias and Sunnis in Iraq. He blew up mosques sacred to the Shias and murdered hundreds and hundreds of people. Then the Shias retaliated in endless cycles of bombings and murders. Both sides were doing Allah’s will. They were perfectly justified in their own minds. But women, children, and all sorts of others were maimed and murdered. The whole country became a living hell.
Saudi Arabia sent in their citizens to help the Sunnis overcome their Shia enemies, because Iran competes with Saudi Arabia for dominance in the Middle East, and Sunni Saudi Arabia can’t allow Shia Iran to win. So both sides fight proxy wars, in Iraq, in Syria, Yemen, and the whole Gulf region. It was amazing how leaders from both sides answered the reporter when asked about their part in the wars and suffering. None of them ever said their side was doing anything wrong. They were only doing what they had to do.
Iran has send hundreds and hundreds of fighters into Syria, to prop up Assad. They’ve trained fighters to fight against Israel and against US-backed fighters trying to help topple Assad. Syria looks so much like hell these days. Buildings blown up, children bleeding, burned by chlorine gas. Starving to death in Yemen, as Saudi forces won’t let them farm or get food from markets. The whole Middle East has been in chaos for generations, and there never seems to be any end in sight.
Meanwhile, back here in the “civilized world,” a young man slaughters 17 other young people. A man sprays bullets from a hotel in Las Vegas. Democrats blame Republicans for everything and vice versa. A young girl going through a sex change wins a wrestling championship in Texas, because she’s on testosterone and steroids, but nobody dares to say anything about it, because we don’t want to offend, and we don’t even know what gender we are anymore.
It’s possible to overlook the horrors of human existence. You can hide in an ivory tower and pretend we’re all wonderful people. All human beings are just wonderful. We’re good people. We’re completely reasonable. We’re going to solve all of human problems because we now live in an age of reason and science, atheist Sam Harris says. We all just instinctively know what’s good and we’re going to do it. Really?
Have you considered the prison population in this country lately? Have you ever taken a ride with a police officer? Do you realize how many of us are addicted to drugs, alcohol, opioids, pornography? When I was a pastor I found out these things aren’t just outside the church either, by any means. Children of church people are molested. Pastors embezzle, commit adultery, are addicted to porn. The amount of sexual sin in this country, and even in the church, is astounding. The relational conflicts are rampant. Violence springs up, even in nice neighborhoods like where senator Rand Paul lives, or like Parkland, Florida, one of the wealthiest and most desirable communities in Florida.
What’s the point? Sin is a universal problem. It’s not something only a few “monsters” commit. It’s something the whole human race is born with and lives out daily. It’s ubiquitous. So when atheists and skeptics want to condemn God for judging the Canaanites, they’re really being absurd and outrageous. For over 400 years God had been patient with those people, while they literally offered up their own children to Molech, a metallic god which could have a fire built within his abdomen, that heated him up to blazing temperature, at which time these people would place their own children into his fiery arms to burn to death. Statues and engravings show they indulged in every sort of sexual vice and sin as well, and were eaten up with venereal diseases. So God brought judgment and worldly people want to condemn Him for that?!
As Frank Turek said today, when an atheist tries to tell him that he as a Christian has a problem answering why God would order death to the Canaanites, Frank just asks the atheist if he/she believes in abortion. Most do. Interesting, says Frank. You have no problem when millions of Americans want to play God and take the life of an innocent baby by suctioning out its brain or ripping it limb from limb in the womb, but you want to condemn God for playing God, when He moves in judgment to punish sinners? The audacity of the human race! All of us deserve to die. We don’t deserve to even live, or to enjoy any of the wonderful blessings we experience in life. God is the only One who gave us our life, and He is within His rights to take anyone’s life whenever He chooses.
We all need to understand the seriousness and horror of human sin and rebellion, and how much we all deserve condemnation. We are all sinners. We're not “good people,” no matter how much we would wish to believe it! We all desperately need a Savior to forgive our sins and save us from the wrath of God and the condemnation we so richly deserve. We all need to realize the great depth of God’s love that He has shown to us by giving His Son to die for our sins, to pay our penalty, to make it possible for us to get out of this world of horrors someday and live in His holy presence forever.
America deserves the judgment of God. And so does every individual American. What a wonder it is that God is willing to forgive us and offer us an escape!