Is God a moral monster?

God did not make man in the condition in which he is now; He did not throw the world into its moral confusion, not to speak of its physical misery. He that can conceive a divine being to have made man as he is, and the world as it is, must have the notion of a demon, an Ahriman, instead of the true God. That infinite power should create man to be the victim of such sorrow, to have his heart distracted with varied, intense, and ceaseless misery — to have, according to the word of God itself, evil inbred in his very nature (a doctrine enforced by the facts of every day), he that could conceive God to have so made man in such a world has the least worthy notion of God that even Rationalism could conceive. The word of God alone supplies the key, and explains this otherwise inscrutable riddle. According to that word He made man upright; the world and every creature in it He formed good; but man departed from God, and lost Him morally. No wonder, if foundations are out of course — God left and man fallen through self-exalting rebellion, that there should be misery; for the only possible spring of happiness is in the communion of God with His creatures. Sin necessarily destroys it; and man having lost Him becomes a prey to all the evil that the enemy of God can bring into the world, more deeply and if possible irreparably, to sever man from God. This is the account of the Scriptures, and there is none other that can compete with it or explain all, so as either to justify God or to clear up the state of man. To make God Himself the author of man's moral evil is heinous wickedness, and man's conscience knows it, even when he might wish it to excuse himself. Here then at the outset the immense and singular value of God's word comes in; and upon this too a remark of general import may be seasonable.

But earth and sea and sky just as plainly afford traces of some dreadful evil that has passed over all — of an enemy's hand that has been there and sown evil. There is not a tempest that rages, there is not a volcano that pours out its destructive lava, there is not a blast of lightning, but tells that there is, above, below, around, disorder in this once untainted universe. And how much more, when you come down to the moral evil under which groans every town, and every hamlet; ay, perhaps every home, even the happiest hearth, has had its blight. And whence comes this? From God? Never. A being of perfect goodness and power, who would make the world and man as they are, is morally an impossible thought. But God never made the world as it now is; He did make it, but He made it good. God did not create anything unworthy of Himself.

It would, I am persuaded, be impossible for anyone possessing even in a feeble measure the knowledge of God, to think that anything could enter His creation unknown to Him, or that a thought could spring up in the mind of any intelligent being without His cognition. Every enlightened soul will gladly acknowledge, that from no quarter could the omniscient One be surprised by an enemy. Nothing could possibly be hid from Him, before whom hell is naked, and destruction without a covering. At the same time the faithful heart revolts with horror from the doctrine that would make the holy and righteous God the Author and Inventor of the evil which has ruined His fair creation. Evil could not enter the creation without His knowledge and permission, but He is not the author of it, the devil is that; he abode not in the truth. “He is a liar and the father of it.” And this is just what sin is; it is lawlessness, and lawlessness is departure from the truth, for the truth is the right relation of everything to God, and sin is falsehood and departure from this, and becomes manifested in the lawlessness of the rebel creature.

But although God is not the author of sin, but its Judge, He, for His own wise purposes, allowed it to enter His dominions. He will make it serve Him, and He will get glory to His great and holy name through it, and in the end banish it from His sight forever; and we may be sure enough of this, that were it not destined to serve the purposes of His heart, it could have gained no entrance. But it does serve Him, not willingly, but in spite of the fact that it is an enemy it is made to serve Him, as is every other creature, be that creature good or evil, be it the horrible invention of the wicked mind of angel or of man, or be it the offspring of the goodness of God Himself, everything must serve in the carrying out of the purposes of His love; and in nothing shall the creature be triumphant, for dust must be the serpent’s meat, and every proud spirit must be humbled, and in the end come to learn, in the bitterness of eternal defeat, destruction and death, that all its profound plotting and restless wickedness have only been helping on the end the blessed God had in view from the beginning.

They utterly destroyed men, women and children of every city. Many an infidel has sneered at this statement and blasphemed God, charging Him with cruelty and injustice for allowing such an extermination of human beings. God is righteous. These people were steeped in all kinds of vices and wickedness, similar to the depravity and vilest corruption of the Canaanites. God had to deal in judgment with them. He could not permit them to exist, and as the sovereign God He dealt with them in His righteous government.

"Now, the question is, Are we competent to understand these ways of God in government? Is it any part of our business to sit in judgment upon them? Are we capable of unraveling the profound and awful mysteries of divine providences? Can we--are we called upon to--account for the tremendous fact of helpless babes involved in the judgment of their guilty parents? Impious infidelity may sneer at these things; morbid sentimentality may stumble over them; but the true believer, the pious Christian, the reverent student of holy Scripture, will meet them all with this one simple but safe and solid question, 'Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?'

"This, we may rest assured, is the only true way in which to meet such questions. If man is to sit in judgment upon the actings of God in government--if he can take upon himself to decide as to what is and what is not worthy of God to do, then, verily, we have lost the true sense of God altogether. And this is just what the devil is aiming at. He wants to lead the heart away from God; and to this end, he leads men to reason and question and speculate in a region which lies as far beyond their ken as heaven is above the earth. Can we comprehend God? If we could, we should ourselves be God" (C.H. Mackintosh).

The Spirit now devotes a whole chapter to the expedition against Amalek, in order to make it absolutely clear why Jehovah rejected Saul, and the righteousness of it. The sentence of God had long gone forth against this inveterate enemy of His people. At Rephidim, Jehovah said that He would have "war against Amalek from generation to generation" (Ex. 17:16): and Moses, in his parting charge to Israel said, "Thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget it" (Deut. 25:19). All that was wanting was a word from Jehovah as to the precise moment for the execution of the terrible sentence, and the needed word was sent to Saul by means of Samuel.

The instructions were clear and unequivocal. Samuel said to Saul, "Jehovah sent me to anoint thee King over His people, over Israel: now therefore hearken thou to the voice of the words of Jehovah. Thus says Jehovah of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." Thus nothing whatever was to be spared. Adversaries of Holy Scripture have sometimes declaimed against the severity of Jehovah's instructions to Israel concerning their foes. If God is love, why should He bid His people act in such a manner? The answer is very simple, "God is light," as well as love. The nations in and around Canaan were so deeply impregnated with such terrible evils that they constituted a moral ulcer in the midst of the earth, and it was mercy to others, as well as righteousness in God to destroy them utterly, after enduring them with much long-suffering. How much of a cancer does the knife of a skilful surgeon spare? It was largely due to Israel's failure to do their work thoroughly that they soon became so corrupt themselves. The evil influence of their neighbours in time brought down the judgement of God upon His own people.

However, in speaking of these things, it was the intention of Moses to encourage Israel to be unafraid to enter the land of Canaan and dispossess their enemies there. The terrible, indiscriminate slaughter of a whole culture may seem to us naturally reprehensible. But God is wiser than we. He knows what He is doing. He had told Abraham years before, "The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete" (Gen.15:16). But now the time had come when it was complete. Idolatry and demon worship had risen to such a height that there was no hope of recovery (1 Kings 21:26). Little children would be better dead than exposed to the evil indulged in by their parents, and parents would be better dead than left to continue in the abominations that were prevalent in their whole society.

When God made man, He did not make him as he is, any more than the world as it is. He made everything good, but He was not pleased to put forth His power to keep everything good. He was pleased to put the creature to the proof. He tried the creature in two great spheres — above and below. The angels fell before man; and the chief of those that fell above is the great tempter. No man can account for sin, for the ruin of the world, in any other way than Scripture reveals. Many a man has essayed to do so. The brightest wits and the greatest minds have attempted it; but they have never conceived anything that was not rubbish when they have not followed the word of God. Some have endeavoured to account for sin by supposing that there are two Gods — a good one and a bad one; because there are evidences of goodness all around us, and there are too plainly the evidences of badness. This hypothesis, I need not stay to show, is sheer folly. There is but one who is Almighty; and man cannot get rid of the consciousness of One — not merely one thing but One Being — One who has power and will and purpose, One who has affections no less than mind, but who, nevertheless, subjects the creatures that He made to a moral probation. If He kept everything from falling, there could be no such trial at all. All would be mechanical or chemical; and the wonderful scene of the conflict of good and evil — of good wrought by His grace in the heart of man, and rising above Satan's power and wiles of evil — would be quite lost. What is still more important, the active display of love and righteousness on God's part, of moral qualities reproduced in repentant believing man, would be completely destroyed, if it were merely divine power so keeping the creature that there could be no failure.

But evil never came from God — only from the creature once innocent, now fallen, that kept not his first estate, but chose to do his own will and have his own way. An angel did this first. Man was misled by him who, straying and exalting himself, beguiled others both in heaven and on earth. That creature is called Satan — the Devil. All efforts to get rid of this fact have proved utterly vain, so much so that the boasted lights of antiquity fell consequently into one or other of these notions: either that God is everything, which denies sin; or, secondly, that there is no such being as God at all; while both cases led to worshipping ever so many false gods. Witness now the two greatest philosophers of Greece who have exercised perhaps the largest and most enduring influence over civilised men outside the Bible — the one the head of Pantheism, the other of Atheism. There is what man's thought ends in when it is logically carried out. Man in his fallen estate may reason God away; yet he excludes God, not from his conscience, but in his reason; for at the bottom of the man's heart who does so there is the uneasy feeling that what he sees around him did not grow like a potato — least of all, he himself and his fellows. He feels that, though fallen, he is a moral being who will have to give an account of his action; and to whom but to God — the One who made him and all things?

Another thing we must keep in mind, the Creator cannot but be supreme in His own creation, and He must have the right to do as He pleases, whatever that pleasure may be. Woe to the creature that withstands Him. His authority must be supreme, and from His judgment seat there can be no appeal. Neither can the creature be wronged by his Creator; for he cannot be wronged who has no rights. The potter can make out of the clay whatever kind of vessel he may please, and when it is made he has the right to put it to whatever purpose is agreeable to his mind, he claims the right to do this, and no one is foolish enough to dispute with him about it. And certainly there is less distance between the potter and the clay than there is between God and His creation. Whatever He does is right.

To the believer it ought not to be a question whether Israel was justified in the conquest of Canaan; and the endeavours to soften the matter, whether by Jews or by Christians, are vain. It was righteous vengeance on earth, not wrath from heaven, still less grace reigning by righteousness as in the gospel. It is not well founded, if Scripture be our authority, that Joshua proposed flight or peace, with war as the unwilling alternative; nor is there any ground to suppose that the Canaanites would have been spared in case of surrender, whatever the mercy to individuals exceptionally. The Canaanites were devoted, in the most stringent and solemn manner, to utter destruction. It was not vengeance on the part of Israel, but of God, who was pleased to make His people executors of judgment.

In the opening verses of Deuteronomy 7 the people are plainly told that they are completely to exterminate the nations then in possession of the land. They were to make no covenant with them and to show them no mercy. This command has, we believe, been denounced by sceptics as being savage and utterly unworthy of God, if He is supposed to be a God of goodness and kindness. So let us consider it for a moment. Israel did not fully carry it out, but had they done so, it would have been the third time that God had acted in summary and wholesale judgment.