Is God a mass murderer?
Well, of course He is! After all, He killed everyone in a worldwide flood. How could we believe in a God like that?
That’s the question of the meme we are looking at today. Here it is.
The idea behind this meme is that the Bible is inconsistent, and therefore not true. It starts off quoting the most popular phrase in the Bible: “For God so loved the world…” but abruptly stops and says that because He loved them so much, He drowned everyone.
Now, we all know that if you love someone, you’re not going to drown them. Therefore, one of the statements is not true—either God doesn’t actually love everyone, or He didn’t really drown them in the Flood. Or, better yet, the whole Bible is a farce. Why would you trust a book that talks about how God loves everyone, but then in cold blood sends them all to a violent and watery grave? And if for some reason you decide to check your intellect at the door and believe it anyway, you’re worshipping a mass murderer.
So, it comes down to this: the Bible must not be true because if God sent the Flood, He would be a genocidal mass murderer rather than a God of love.
Just like we always do, let’s list the problems with this meme.
First, “love” does not mean “let someone get away with everything.” Our modern understanding of love is tripping over ourselves to keep from damaging another person’s fragile psyche. We sure don’t want to tell someone that they’re wrong, because they might feel bad! But God doesn’t have a problem with that. As the Creator, He has the right to require a certain standard of living. Because He loves us, He requires us to conform to His standard, which turns out to be better for us.
Second, God didn’t kill everyone in the Flood. He spared Noah and his family. If He was just fulfilling His bloodthirsty desires, He would have wiped them all out. Yet, He allowed eight people to live, knowing full well that their descendants would also reject Him. The Flood is actually not just about judgment, but mercy. In the book of Revelation, we read about how God is going to destroy the earth with fire in the end of time. If He wouldn’t have saved Noah, He wouldn’t have to deal with this, and He knew it. But He saved them anyway.
Third, it is not wrong for God to take a life. God can take any life—He is the author of it, so it’s not murder. He could stop anyone from dying, but He doesn’t, because that is what we as people asked for in the fall of Adam.
Fourth, the death of all those people was their fault. All those people who died had rejected God’s revelation of Himself. Because of His holy nature, He cannot allow sin to go on unpunished. So, we’re asking the wrong question. Instead of asking how God could kill all those people in the flood, ask why He would spare anyone. And why would He allow Noah to preach to them while he was building the ark? Why not just whisk Noah and all those animals up to Heaven, destroy the earth, and put them back when He was finished? Maybe God was offering them mercy—which they refused to accept.
By the way, that’s what’s happening today. God is offering mercy to people, but they refuse to accept it. If you don’t accept it through faith in Jesus, you will reap the punishment that we all deserve.
So, this meme is way off base, so, for me, it deserves a “thumbs down.” Because God “so loved the world,” He allowed Noah and his family to be rescued from the Flood, and He also allows you to be rescued from eternal punishment for your sin.
We do not worship a “genocidal mass murderer.” We worship a God whose holy nature requires punishment for sin, but offers mercy to those who will receive it.
> First, “love” does not mean “let someone get away with everything.”
Nor does it mean murder everyone who doesn’t conform to your standards.
> Second, God didn’t kill everyone in the Flood. He spared Noah and his family.
He murdered millions of people and trillions of animals but spared one family. Phew, that’s alright then. Incidentally, isn’t it somewhat implausible that the most worthwhile people in the world are all in the same family, even though they aren’t all blood relations? And while we’re on the subject, Noah ends up later in the story as a drunken slob who exposes himself to his own daughters, yet there’s no better person alive?
> Yet, He allowed eight people to live, knowing full well that their descendants would also reject Him.
If he knew that their descendents would also reject him, the flood was a gratuitous waste of human and animal life. Incidentally, if God is trying to fix his creation by what boils down to selective breeding, why didn’t he just create better people in the first place?
> Third, it is not wrong for God to take a life. God can take any life—He is the author of it, so it’s not murder.
According to what reasoning? Is it okay for a father to kill their child? Surely, having created life, God would have more duty of care over it, not less.
> He could stop anyone from dying, but He doesn’t, because that is what we as people asked for in the fall of Adam.
We ‘as people’ asked to die thousands of years before we were born? I didn’t give Adam and Eve permission to represent me! Incidentally, believing a lie that you won’t die isn’t ‘asking to die’.
> Fourth, the death of all those people was their fault. All those people who died had rejected God’s revelation of Himself.
Even unborn babies, or people living in remote tribes in the middle of the Amazon rainforest? How did they even know God existed at all when all the events in the Old Testament take place in the Middle East? And what about all the animals?
> Why not just whisk Noah and all those animals up to Heaven, destroy the earth, and put them back when He was finished? Maybe God was offering them mercy—which they refused to accept.
Good question. Shame about the answer. Animals refused to accept God’s mercy?