When Christians are confronted with verses about slavery or women
being forced to marry their rapist, the
overwhelming response given for these verses is of course “you are taking it
out of context.” But when pressed to put it into context the common response
is, “we have to understand the culture”.
Let’s forget the fact
that a moral god would not be needed if the morals he is giving are based on the
cultures already present morality, as this is only evidence that man created god
in his image not a god creating man in his.
Let’s focus on the part where Christians say, “God lays out
rules specific to the culture.” (see post Short Conversation with Dr. JamesMerritt author of “God, I’ve Got A Question” to see this argument being used)
If God was real and sympathetic to our culture, He would
know we currently live in an information/scientific age, and that people who
are scientifically literate would not believe the claims of the Bible. God
would be aware that there are thousands of God claims and all of them require
people to use faith as justification for belief. So in order to avoid punishing
those who require evidence before believing things, since God cares about
culture He would update the world weekly on His YouTube channel on topics such
as gay marriage, who we should elect as president, why He is allowing African children to die of hunger, and the reason He sent a hurricane where He did that
week. These weekly updates would be aired on both the BBC World News and ABC’s
World News with Diane Sawyer. It would be crystal clear which God is the real
God no matter what country we are born in.
But we don’t see this today for either two reasons: 1) The
God who Christians worship does not care about culture - and slavery, stoning
misbehaving children, and forcing virgins to marry their rapist, etc. are moral
and should still be followed today. OR 2) God does not exists and was created
in order to explain things man didn’t understand and was a useful tool in
controlling ancient societies.
