Board index ‹ Specific Bible verses, texts, and passages ‹ 2 Samuel

[MIA]

Yet it seems like a logical view of what would have had to happen given the precedent you set. For god to let nature take its path undisturbed as a form of punishment, it means that innocence would necessarily be saved...otherwise suffering happens regardless of punishment.

If I fall off a cliff and break my spine and die, per your logic that is a punishment for something going on. Me, the atheist, a sinner, getting judged. But if a christian fell and miraculously survived, that is god intervening in the natural order to protect someone from unjust punishment.

Basically, everyone that suffers whatever horrors our world can dole out that isn't saved by god had it coming one way or another. Logically it cannot be any other way unless your god lets nature do its job for punishing people who deserve it...and do not.

[jimwalton]

You greatly misunderstand. You're jumping to conclusions where I didn't take you and that the Bible doesn't teach, but you're jumping nonetheless.

The Bible is quite clear and blunt about the fact that the world doesn't work according to the Retribution Principle (good people get rewarded and bad people get judged in this life). If we were to push the RP all the way to its logical conclusions, we would discover that it didn't have logical conclusions. Life cannot work that way, and it doesn't.

Therefore I am NOT making the case that if you were to fall off a cliff and die it would be a punishment for something—you, the atheist, getting judged. That's not how things work. Nor is it true that if a Christian survived, it would mean God was intervening in the natural order. That's not how things work either. Life can't work that way (if you push it to its logical conclusions) and it doesn't.

Neither is it true that " everyone that suffers whatever horrors our world can dole out that isn't saved by god had it coming one way or another." It's not what the Bible teaches, nor what I was suggesting, nor what is taught in this text. The Bible tells us more about David than about almost any other character (perhaps Moses and Jesus get similar quantity of material). David is a peculiar character in that he is supposed to mirror the character of God,and yet in chapter after chapter he's a miserable failure, almost an anti-type. In this text David had sinned and God is, once again (it wasn't the first time and it won't be the last) showing him the error of his ways. It's part of the whole biblical picture about Jesus being the David that David never was. David was, in many senses, a miserable failure, but Jesus, as the rightful heir of David's throne, was the perfect representation of the character of God.

We Christians don't take this passage and generalize it, as you are doing, to "the way God acts in the world": judge the sinners and reward the saints. Instead we see God dealing with David for what he, personally and individually, has done. We are to learn many different lessons from David's mistakes, but what you are suggesting isn't in the list.

[MIA]

> Instead we see God dealing with David for what he, personally and individually, has done

God does not give people special treatment, this would be an offense to any conception of morality. No one has ever argued that god plays favorites and certain people get off light while others are judged more harshly.

Now, look, there is a clear dichotomy. There is either justice or injustice. You have made it abundently clear that god letting the baby die...not killing it itself...was the punishment...and it was just.

If letting it die is punishment then not letting it die would be the opposite. Saving the baby would be the right thing to do if there was no punishment. Default mode = save the innocent baby. Sin mode = let it die.

Now unless you look at this situation with david's baby in a vaccuum...which is a horrible decision...then you have established the retribution principal. Maybe you didn't realize that's what your view is...but that is exactly what it is.

God not intervening being a punishment cannot be painted as a anything other than just by christians, this is leading then to a logical conclusion you don't like yet is entirely valid.

[jimwalton]

> God does not give people special treatment

You misunderstand. God is not giving David preferential treatment, but he is giving him personal treatment. David gets no free passes or any benefits based on partiality. When any person does wrong, they are accountable to God for it, whether they are king or commoner, prophet or peasant. God isn't playing favorites, and that's exactly why David gets rebuked and punished for his behavior. Just because he's king doesn't mean God turns a blind eye.

It's no different with the nation. When other nations go rogue, God judges them, but when they repent and fly right (like Nineveh in Jonah 3.10). But what happened to Israel, God's chosen people, when they went rogue? God judged them just the same. But when they repented and straightened out, God blessed them. It's a very consistent and fundamental concept of retributive justice: everyone gets what is fair and right for them to get.

> There is either justice or injustice...retribution principle.

You're right in a sense, and not right in another. Bad things happen all the time that are not "God punishing me." Just because something bad happens doesn't mean that. So your default mode (save the innocent, kill the sinner) is an expression of the retribution principle, and it's not valid. Sometimes people die and it has nothing to do with sin; sometimes people are saved and it has nothing to do with innocence. We can't look at this through the lens of the RP.

What is happening here with David and the baby are not an expression of the RP. It is a one-time occurrence that is used to make a point of judgment against David. Remember, David is being judged, not the baby (as you recognize, or at least repeated to me). In this case the baby had a fatal illness, and that situation was used by God to judge David. God didn't intervene, but God rarely intervenes in many such fatal illnesses, but those are not punishments for sin. Those are nature taking its course. In this case we also have nature taking its course, but God is using the event to make a theological point with David: "You are judged for your sin. The baby will die."

So God not intervening in this case is identified as a punishment. In the 8 gazillion other cases of God's not intervening, it's not.

[MIA]

> What is happening here with David and the baby are not an expression of the RP. It is a one-time occurrence that is used to make a point of judgment against David.

I warned you not to view this event as if it were in a vaccuum. You have opened a can of worms in that now I can ask you: if david's situation is a one time event, then what stops almost anything in the bible from being treated that way?

[jimwalton]

That's no can of worms. The things that happen in the Bible have to be treated the way the author intended them to be treated, whether individual (one-time event), meant to be a precedent (applying in a wider circle), or universal (always applicable).

A lot of the time (I would even venture to say most of the time), God deals with people individually on a one-shot basis, and what happens to them is not meant to act as a precedent or to be universal. We have to understand the text and what God is doing, study the agenda and intent of the writer, and weigh the teaching theologically against other texts. Most of the time it's fairly clear what the design is and what God is saying and doing.

While most of the events in the Bible are one-time things, we can still learn from them. This message was given to David, but it's also for us. We can see how God treated him and why, and even though I don't have to worry that my baby is going to die (and if he does, it's not God's judgment), I can still learn many principles:

1. God holds people accountable for their sin.
2. Sin has negative consequences.
3. Sin affects a whole circle of people around someone. It's rarely a private offense.
4.People of status, wealth, or power don't get preferential treatment.
5. Sometimes God uses natural events to make a theological point.
6. God doesn't just judge by the letter of the law. He takes many factors into consideration as he makes fair decisions.

By the same token, there are things that the text doesn't teach.

1. God kills babies.
2. God is immoral and cruel.
3. David gets preferential treatment.
4. What happened here is a description of how things work for everybody.

[MIA]

I don't think you realize what you have established. By saying that there are events that happen totally independent of anything else in the theology, you are allowing that anyone can argue that anything in the bible...or perhaps even in human history...is an abberation which can be safely ignored.

Let's compare you and another christian who commented on here for a moment. This other christian, when asked to provide a parallel event in biblical history where god slowly killed a baby for a week offered up the exodus plagues. God plagued the first born, then killed them.
Now, you are off in your version of christianity thinking that god does not kill children. This other christian disagrees. Now, just as you say David's baby is a special circumstance, he can say anything else is a special circumstance.

Now both of you are playing with your own sets of facts from which you derive your view of your religion. You say god doesn't kill babies, he says god does. He may insist the bible clearly teaches young earth creationism, you may disagree...but since anything you would use to argue against his view can be ignored the same way you are ignoring the story about David's baby...there is virtually no chance for reconciliation of beliefs about what Christianity is.

I told you that doing this was a horrible decision, you have opened the doorway to people being allowed to cherry pick what matters and what does not.

[jimwalton]

Not at all. Again you misunderstand. There are and have always been plenty of event that happen totally independent of anything else in theology. This is not a Pandora's box nor a can of worms, but long-standing theological understanding. The Bible is properly interpreted according to standard rules of interpretation, just like science, history, and jurisprudence. It's not just willy-nilly anyone can argue that anything in the Bible can be safely ignored.

Since Christians believe that all of Scripture is God-breathed, I can confidently say that *nothing* can be safely ignored. It is all there to reveal God to us and to inform our lives. Granted, some texts have more weight and significance than others, but none of it is to be ignored. It's all there for a reason.

By the same token, we are not to understand that God only has one tool in his toolbox: a blanket, and everything that happens at all happens to all, and anything that happens to anybody could happen to anybody else. This is simply not biblical. God often uses lasers rather than blankets, but it's safe to say he uses whatever tool is best suited to the situation. And we use standard rules of interpretation to get at the author's intent, and therefore the legitimate meaning.

As to the 10 plagues, as well as the flood, yes, God killed children in those instances. Those are a different situation altogether, and they are quite different from each other also. The reasons and the mechanisms are distinct, and neither of those have anything to do with the David story. I have not opened any doorway that hasn't been opened for millennia, and I'm not cherry-picking in the least. It's a ll a matter of proper interpretation.

[MIA]

No. Interpretation is one thing. You have made the claim that god does one time things. You have decided that whatever is in the bible can be viewed as a singular event that does not need to be considered in cooperation with everything else. That's not about how you read something, you are speaking to the nature of scripture itself. There is no unringing this bell.

[jimwalton]

Of course God does one-time things:

- the flood
- forming a nation from the descendants of Abraham
- the 10th plague of the Passover
- giving the Law at Sinai
- conception inside a virgin
- Jesus dying and rising again

There are hundreds, if not thousands of them.

> You have decided that whatever is in the bible can be viewed as a singular event that does not need to be considered in cooperation with everything else.

I haven't decided this. It's standard theology, as I have said three times now. I have no desire to "unring this bell," and I wouldn't try to renege on the truth. God does plenty of one-time things that have no further reach than the person for whom they were intended. And while they can be instructive to all who know of it, it was a one-time thing for that particular person, like David's baby dying and David feeling the judgment of that.

Now that we've been back and forth on this several times, I'll readily admit that I don't understand what your point is that you seem so worked up that I have opened a can of worms or rung a bell that takes me into no man's land. It's like you remarking that I eat three meals a day. So what—it's been like that my whole life.

God often does one-time things. It's neither new nor a surprise. I just don't get where your surprise or that sort-of accusation that I've stepping in theological quicksand is coming from. Let me know what you're thinking.