This is evil. Police in Enugu, Nigeria, found a private hospital where infants were being bred for slavery. “Their babies would be sold for as little as 15,000 naira ($127, £72), the police said. It is suspected the babies were to be sold to traffickers who sell children into forced labour or prostitution.”
The article notes that abortion is illegal in Nigeria, which is a good detail to make for American readers, but I wonder if the reporter isn’t suggesting the slavery problem would be solved by killing the children before birth.
Just to the stir the pot (and use a cliche), what’s your theology on infants and children dying. Do they go to heaven?
Sam Storms’ two cents.
I thought I was going to disagree with him, but I guess I don’t. This question on what happens to infants or children who die relies on our theology of salvation. We have to understand exactly what or who saves us, any of us, in order to know whether children will be saved too.
I heard someone on the radio last week explain that original sin is not what condemns us under God’s holy judgment, only our acting on that sin nature condemns us. I heartily disagree with that.
I think most of the pastors I know would honestly say, “I just don’t know the answer to that.”
Just to the stir the pot (and use a cliche), what’s your theology on infants and children dying. Do they go to heaven?
Yes, but I’m Jewish. We believe that you have to work really hard to avoid heaven. Harder than you’d have to work to get your parents to disown you and refuse to ever forgive you.
We also believe you go to Geheinom (usually translated hell, but more like purgatory) when you die to clean off your sins. But it usually takes less than a year.
We just finished Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. Part of the liturgy for that day is the book of Jonah. God wanted to forgive the people of Nineveh, who were so bad that even when they turned back to Him they made their domesticated animals suffer (by making them fast). If God was merciful towards them, it’s hard to believe He won’t be merciful towards babies and toddlers.
Great point from Jonah, Ori. Why would the Lord show mercy to a people who hated him? Why would he save anyone at all? And if he would far rather save than condemn, why all of the damnation language in Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and all of the other prophesies and histories?
And if he would far rather save than condemn, why all of the damnation language in Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and all of the other prophesies and histories?
Because the original audience was a stiff necked people, who had to be grabbed by their shoulders are shaken repeatedly if there is any hope of getting them to listen. The kind of people who can receive the Torah in awe of God who is without form, and forty days later build a golden calf. The kind of people who can rebel against the greatest empire the world has ever known (until that time), lose their temple, be defeated completely – and in a couple of generations try again.
The modern group that is nearest to the ancient Israelites is probably Arabs. They engage in hyperbole as a matter of course, and so do Charedim (= ultra orthodox Jews). If you don’t speak in the same hyperbole, members of those groups probably think you’re not serious anyway and tune you out.
Oops. My HTML didn’t come out right.
Arab use of hyberbole.
Jewish use of hyperbole.
That’s fascinating. So the Israelites were stiff-necked and quarrelsome, yet they still had to work hard at lose what we’d call salvation. This sounds like something one of our hymn writers described as being “prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.”
Why do we need the law at all, if it’s mostly hyberbole?
So the Israelites were stiff-necked and quarrelsome, yet they still had to work hard at lose what we’d call salvation.
Yes. Even if you believe Jews lost it in Jesus’s time (of course, I don’t) that was after more than a thousand years of missed opportunities.
Why do we need the law at all, if it’s mostly hyberbole?
Why did God choose to reveal Himself to a bunch of Semitic nomads who were so stiff necked they’d do everything possible to reject Him, and require Him to use hyperbole to shout in their ears in the hope something would get through? I don’t know. Maybe they needed that revelation more than most other people at the time. Or maybe God needed a stiff necked people in that role.
Remember that hyperbole is not the same as lying. If I tell you “Alaska is so cold that the air freezes and you need to use a blowtorch to warm it up so you can breathe” I used hyperbole, but I did convey the true information that Alaska is cold.
In practical terms, there is only a tiny group called the Karaites who actually follows the letter of the Pentateuch (as best they can, which isn’t that great these days). You Christians see it through the lens of Jesus, follow the parts that your tradition and the New Testament tells you are still valid, and ignore the rest. Orthodox Jews see it through the lens of the oral Torah (the Mishnah and the Talmud), which modifies the meaning considerably. We Heterodox Jews follow it even less. Yet we all try to follow the God who revealed the Pentateuch.
I’d say this means the Pentateuch is doing its job, hyperbole and all.
I still don’t follow the need. Aren’t you saying it doesn’t matter whether we follow the law? Perhaps I’m extrapolating beyond your intent. When you pointed to Jonah and the Ninevites, I thought you were saying God would show mercy even to those who don’t follow his direction at all ever. Is that what you’re saying?
The New Testament makes the case that no one has an excuse for not worshiping God and everyone will be condemned by their own sin if they do not repent. It’s spelled out very nicely in Romans with some great commentary in Hebrews. The only way to live in heaven is to accept the sacrifice made on our behalf by Jesus.
I still don’t follow the need. Aren’t you saying it doesn’t matter whether we follow the law?
A law is composed of two elements: the thing you have to do (or refrain from doing) and the penalty for transgressing it. The second part, the penalty, is where you’d see hyperbole.
I believe we should follow God’s law. But that the penalties in the Torah are often exaggerated, and you have to be really bad to get the book thrown at you.
When you pointed to Jonah and the Ninevites, I thought you were saying God would show mercy even to those who don’t follow his direction at all ever. Is that what you’re saying?
Yes. God is looking for every possible excuse to show mercy.
Good. I understand now, though I disagree. Even if we could identify some possible hyperbole, I believe God was giving us the straight dope throughout the Old Test. Who can ascend his holy hill? He who has clean hands and pure heart . . . “Such is the generation of those who seek him,
who seek the face of the God of Jacob.”