Latest / Brandon Fogal Evolution / #141 - Could Redemption Be Written Any Better Than This?

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#141 - Could Redemption Be Written Any Better Than This? · Brandon Fogal Evolution

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  Could the story of the Bible have been written any better than we received it?
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  I wanted to talk about this because I always hear people just criticizing the
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  Bible and criticizing how just certain parts of it, you know,
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  because some of it can be horrific.
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  Some of it can be hard to receive and digest.
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  But if you allow me this, say the guard, just the grant, the Garden of Eden happened.
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  The Garden of Eden happened and we fell. Well, if you were kind of writing the
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  story, but you had to accept that part of it and this creation that you made
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  of human beings and they fell and disobeyed you and went into sin,
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  how would you have brought, how would you have made the story go from that point?
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  What, how would you have written redemption? Because I would argue that there's
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  no other better way that it could have been written if we grant that, if we grant that.
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  But to kind of top it off, I want to talk about a very specific conversation
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  that Alex O'Connor had with William Lane Craig, and they got into some very,
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  probably the toughest pills in the Bible to swallow.
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  And you might not like William Craig's answer, William Lane Craig's answer,
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  but it at least is consistent.
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  All right, so let's actually switch over there, because they're going to talk
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  about the conquest of Canaan, the slaughter of the innocents,
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  and you're like, why did I jump to this?
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  Because this is the toughest part of the Bible to get on board with.
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  I would argue with it. If you look at this and you say, why would God have decreed
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  this for the Israelite people to go into the land of Canaan and kind of drive
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  them out and wipe out everyone that was there?
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  But let's first of all, hear William Lane Craig's answer.
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  And more happy than anything.
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  Conceivable and certainly far better than if they had been allowed to live and
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  be raised in such a corrupt and evil environment as they were in.
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  So it was actually a tremendous blessing to these children for them to be killed
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  and go to heaven and be with God.
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  You must understand how that sounds, saying it was a blessing for these children
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  to be killed and go to God. I mean, this is something that Dawkins quotes you on directly.
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  And I'm interested in you share my assessment here that even if he's not correct,
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  I can understand why he would hear you say something like that and think that
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  it's morally repugnant, that it's revolting.
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  In any other context, if somebody says something like, well,
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  maybe the murder of these children, I suppose you wouldn't see it as murder,
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  but the killing of these innocent children is a blessing to them,
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  just seems, again, to run against our intuitions.
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  I mean, you mentioned in the- No, doesn't it, Alex?
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  I mean, I- Okay, that might be very tough for anyone just kind of jumping in
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  and hearing this and not listening to the whole conversation that Alex and William
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  Lynn Craig had together.
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  I've always been the type of person, I don't want to just give the easy answer
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  just to try to skate by and not be confronted on the tough issues of the Bible.
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  I might sound stupid at times, And I'm willing for that, you know,
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  and I'm always willing to like learn more and not say this is how it is.
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  You know, I know exactly why that happened in the Bible and I can explain it perfectly.
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  And I think William Lane Craig, he's thought this through.
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  In this particular event, he says that these these children and not even children,
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  it was men, women and children to they were told the edict was given by God
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  to wipe them out, to remove them from the land to basically drive them out of the land.
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  If they fought back, then they were to eliminate them.
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  And that is very tough, very tough, because, but we have wars all the time.
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  We have wars all the time. And if we think of it like, yeah,
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  people are fallen people, you know, and people are always getting each other's
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  business and just get in fighting about stupid stuff.
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  So we understand that the human condition is that way. But when we try to bring
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  God into the picture, I understand why it can be tough to swallow.
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  Specifically, why God would have given this command.
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  And like I said, this is very tough because I said the biblical argument for the redemption story,
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  I am saying that it could not have been written better, but this is probably
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  the toughest part of it to get through, the toughest part of it to get through.
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  And if I, maybe if we back up a bit and just grant, if you would grant me this
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  of that we are fallen, that people are corrupt, nobody's perfect.
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  You've heard that one before. and if we did fall in and we were in,
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  we are here, how is God going to make things right?
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  If he promised, he told, and he told Adam and Eve, he said, he actually just
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  told Adam, you know, the, he told Adam the command, if you eat of the tree of
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  the knowledge of good and evil, you will surely die.
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  And then Adam tells Eve, don't even look at it. Don't even touch it. But then they do.
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  And they, they just bring us in and they throw all the rest of their children,
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  us who are here into this mess?
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  How is God going to make it so that we can be restored?
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  How is he going to make it so he can be restored and back to a right relationship of him?
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  If God cannot look at sin, if God cannot look at evil, his eyes are too pure
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  to look at anything wrong or evil.
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  How do people that are fallen and that have disobeyed him, how do we be brought back together.
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  I would say like the only the simplest argument is,
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  in defense of it is the way that it went about, that God promising these events
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  that he would send in a redeemer to bring us back to himself.
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  And the way that it's just outlined, it might not seem it's like perfect,
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  but for me, it seems like there's no other way because there's no other explanation.
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  You could say, oh, God would just say, oh, it's all good. I forgive you.
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  We're be wiped out. The whole point of redemption is to show grace.
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  God didn't give grace to everyone. He didn't give grace to the angels when they
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  disobeyed him, but he somehow decided to give grace to Adam and Eve and to their
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  posterity or to their descendants.
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  I cannot think of, if you have a better idea of how the story could have been
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  written to bring people back, I would love to hear it.
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  I would love to hear it because I always people see people criticizing what it says in there.
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  And if you just, if you zoom into particular events, just like we read of Israel
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  going into the promised land and driving the people out.
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  And at times they were given the command to wipe everyone out.
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  That is very tough. Like why? But you can't just take things in a vacuum and
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  just say, well, for no reason he's doing this.
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  It's all set up, you know, just like any event that you are talking about,
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  you have to set the stage.
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  And the stage is that we're all sinners and God is bringing in redemption through
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  a particular group of people.
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  And he's going to send his son, the Messiah into the world through that particular group of people.
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  And just like any nations that are out there, God allows them to go off in their own way.
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  He allows them to be corrupt, and he judges nations, you know?
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  That's what happens, and he judges nations through people, you know?
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  That's what's happening throughout human history, so we see that, but.
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  When this is happening right here, and this command is given to kind of just execute justice.
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  William Lane Craig, his answer of this is a blessing to these children,
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  if you look at it specifically as if you have the view of before the age of
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  accountability, that everyone goes to heaven, you know, it's if there's an age
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  of accountability that somebody begins to know that they're doing right or wrong,
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  then at that point, they've actually sinned against their creator. This makes sense.
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  It makes sense, sort of, kind of.
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  Otherwise, these children would have grown up into this terrible.
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  God-hating, innocent slaughtering. They would have been grown up to sacrifice their own children.
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  So that in itself, I mean, I can kind of understand why he is saying that.
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  I never really thought of it like that as being a blessing for someone,
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  because then you think of,
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  well, why don't we just go out and blow up, you know, People that are doing
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  abortion clinics, they're blowing up abortion clinics, they are actually doing something good.
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  Or if you are aborting someone that you are doing something good because you're
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  sending them straight to heaven.
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  I just, I kind of, when I look at this, I always struggle with people can be
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  so against the slaughter of the innocents and this can catch you so off guard
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  and you hate it so much, which it is. It is repugnant.
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  It's tough. It's very, there's no way of easy cutting it apart and slicing it so that it makes sense.
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  But then the same people can be like all for abortion.
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  Like how does that drive? Or you want to save children.
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  You don't want other, you don't want children getting blown up in certain things.
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  And that is terrible, you know, and what happens in war, collateral damage when
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  kids and innocent people get killed, but then the same people can be okay with abortion.
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  I've never understood that. I can understand what it is to be on the side of,
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  oh, it's whatever's in the womb, whatever's in there.
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  We don't see it. Let's close our eyes. Let's not even think about it.
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  Because before I became a Christian, that's how I was. I was like.
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  Let's remove it. I don't know.
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  Why would I care about something in someone's stomach? Why would it matter? I don't see it.
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  But since I've become a Christian, now I would say that that is terrible.
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  But I'm trying to be as consistent as possible. So this is a very tough text
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  in the Bible to kind of understand what's happening.
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  But the story of redemption plays out that God is sending his Messiah in.
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  He's bringing it through the nation of Israel.
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  They are the chosen nation because it's the one who he chose to bring his son
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  into the world. When Jesus came on the scene, nobody argued his credentials
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  in the sense of he's the son of David.
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  They could have easily thrown that one in his face, say, no, we got records.
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  The temple is still up and going. We have all the records of whose lineage is who.
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  Yeah, we can say you're not a son of David. You did not descend from David,
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  Jesus, and just immediately disqualify him from being the Messiah.
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  But God's plan was to, he chose Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
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  Jacob's name was changed to Israel. And we just think of so many times a part
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  of this world that we just assume Christianity.
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  We just assume the morals of Christianity and then we judge everything else
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  by it and then criticize Christianity.
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  But it's like if we did not, weren't raised with a Bible just being enveloped
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  and just drowning in Bibles all around us and our culture just having that as a bedrock,
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  we would just be out in the tribes out in the jungle and we would just be slaughtering
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  our kids to appease deities out there that we're just, we think are controlling
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  us and that they're controlling our atmosphere. They're controlling our lives.
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  They're, you know, they can wreak havoc and punish us for everything.
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  So we got to slaughter our children.
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  And it's like those people were slaughtering them to appease the deities,
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  but now we're slaughtering the innocents in the womb to appease God knows what.
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  I would still argue that there is no better way that the way that the Bible
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  is written out, the redemption plan, there is no better way.
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  If you grant that we fell into sin and the Garden of Eden happened and we are
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  deceived and we are all in rebellion to God, how is God going to make peace with us?
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  He doesn't have to give us grace or mercy, but he decided to do it,
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  and this is the way it happened.
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  What other better way could there have been to explain it all?
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  How could God have made things right with us and brought us back into communion
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  with him without the way it plays out in the Bible.
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  The toughest part is definitely the Canaan conquest, like we talked about,
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  and might not have convinced you at all.
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  I'm still, I understand it happened and trying to say that it like a reason
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  why it happened like that is, it's tough and we can have different explanations.
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  William Lane Craig's answer was just, it was consistent.
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  It was a blessing for these children that it happened, but it doesn't really still sit well.
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  So, all right. If you've enjoyed this video and you want to continue this conversation,
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  hit this link right here, and I will see you on the other side.