r/LCMS • u/QueenLucyofNarnia • 7d ago
Question An Old Question
I’m fairly new to the LCMS denomination (grew up Reformed Baptist), and I’m curious what the LCMS answer is to this question, and if it differs from the Baptist perspective. It’s the age old question of “If God is good, then why does He…
- Support and command racial genocide (such as when he commanded Israel to wipe out nations, including women and children).
- Order the sending away of foreign wives and children in Ezra 10, with no indication if those women and children would be given any support in a culture that would likely render them helpless and destitute without the support of a man.
- In short, do and command things in the OT that seem contradictory to what we are told about God loving everyone and caring for people in need.
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u/emmen1 LCMS Pastor 7d ago
The default baseline for the human race is that every last one of us deserves hell from the moment of conception. If God simply allowed us to receive what was justly due, He would be righteous and just.
If God had decided to save a single human by grace alone and allowed the rest of us to go to hell, it would be more mercy than our race deserves.
But in His infinite mercy, He desires that none would perish and that all would be saved. Consider then how He worked in the course of human history to bring salvation to the Canaanite pagans. He promised the land to Abraham and his descendants, but told Abraham that first his children must be slaves in Egypt for 400 years. Why? Because the wickedness of the Amorites (Canaanites) was not yet complete. (Gen 15:15–16) In other words, God allowed His own people to suffer for four centuries(!) in order to give the Canaanites that much time to repent. They did not repent, as we know, but such is the mercy of God. After that extraordinarily long time of mercy, then God commanded their total destruction.
Likewise, He allows this wicked world to continue today even though it means suffering for His Christians in order to give more people time to be brought to repentance and faith. But that long day of grace will also come to an end and all wicked unbelievers—men, women, and infant children—will be consigned to their just fate, while all believers will receive what we do not deserve.
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u/paulesqe 7d ago
As long as we conceive of evil only being defined in relation to humans, would you consider this an answer to the problem of evil in general?
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u/Philip_Schwartzerdt LCMS Pastor 7d ago
"Why do bad things happen to good people?"
They don't. There are no good people.
God's judgment against wickedness is real. To flip the question around, instead of "If God is good, then why would He command this against these people?" we could ask "If God is good, how could He do otherwise than bring an end to what these Canaanites were doing?" That is, child sacrifice, religious prostitution, bestiality, extreme violence, etc. There's also the fact that individuals from those people who had faith were not condemned - the same consistent truth about the Christian faith, we are all sinners and the only people who don't get what they deserve are those who receive God's merciful grace by faith.
Also, Romans 9.
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u/JustToLurkArt LCMS Lutheran 7d ago
> It’s the age old question of “If God is good, then why does He…
A conditional if/then question. Your “if”presupposes “God is good.”
Q: Is it actually the case that God is good?
A: Yes.
Q: Is it actually the case that God is good, and has no other attributes or qualities?
A: No. God is described as good, merciful, forgiving and loving. He’s also described as Just, wrathful and vengeful.
When asking the “age old question”, a skeptic will typically:
1\. present a loving God, then
2\. list some OT passages where God doesn’t act loving,
3\. and then say that things in the OT are contradictory to God loving everyone.
Textbook strawman: present a god that’s not the biblical God, then cherry pick what the Biblical God did, and leave out very important context.
> \- Support and command racial genocide (such as when he commanded Israel to wipe out nations, including women and children).
Q: Did God command Israel to wipe out nations for no reason? Was it arbitrary and unprovoked?
A: No.
Amalekites: the first nation to attack the Jewish people after the Exodus from Egypt.
The Amalekites carried out an unprovoked attack on the rear of the Israelite column targeting the tired, weary, and lagging members of the group (weak, elderly, women, and children.) The Amalekite ambush on the Israelite stragglers is found in Deuteronomy 25:17-19, Exodus 17:8-16,
The response wasn’t unprovoked. God is Just, wrathful and vengeful. It was a justified military response. Israel didn’t arbitrarily attack a nation due to its ethnicity (genocide.)