Deaths commited by the Devil

[Padawan learner]

A thought occured to me today which I had never considered. In all the bible specifically the old testament it is only God who ever sends someone to kill. The Israelites were sent in the promised land to slay all the inhabitants. David killed Goliath. Never once do I recall Satan killing or commanding anyone to kill another. Has this occured to anyone else?

[Maguru]

I have thought about this many times. I think the devil is disguised as god. Clever hey?

Originally Posted by Padawan learner

A thought occured to me today which I had never considered. In all the bible specifically the old testament it is only God who ever sends someone to kill. The Israelites were sent in the promised land to slay all the inhabitants. David killed Goliath. Never once do I recall Satan killing or commanding anyone to kill another. Has this occured to anyone else?

[Sam988]

Maybe the devil is more merciful than god?

[Ramsus]

I think that it's assumed that all of the killing that wasn't directly commanded by God was instigated by the Devil. Also, the Bible is more about God's dealings with humanity, not the Devil's dealings with humanity. Also, the Devil inspired Cain to kill Abel, that particular dealing of the Devil was recorded in the Bible.

[Maguru]

God doesn't sound to be any better than the devil. In fact they are both as bad as each other and maybe the message here is that they are a reflection of humanity as a whole.

Originally Posted by Ramsus

I think that it's assumed that all of the killing that wasn't directly commanded by God was instigated by the Devil. Also, the Bible is more about God's dealings with humanity, not the Devil's dealings with humanity. Also, the Devil inspired Cain to kill Abel, that particular dealing of the Devil was recorded in the Bible.

[mlc82]

Originally Posted by Maguru

God doesn't sound to be any better than the devil. In fact they are both as bad as each other and maybe the message here is that they are a reflection of humanity as a whole.

God's friendly wager with the Devil allowing him to torture Job horribly in order to see whether or not Job would break and curse God is pretty disturbing as well. Of course, this story is now rationalized away as a parable, many times by people claiming to know that the rest of the Bible is, in fact, meant to be taken 100% literally. It's insane.

[Maguru]

Even as a parable, it's pretty bloody shocking. Who in hell's name would want to follow a god like that? It sounds like a con-job to me. Put up and shut up and god will love you and make everything better. It might not be until you die, nevertheless, you will go to heaven for being a martyr.

The bible is wide open to interpretation and we can make it mean what we want it to mean. Maybe that is what it is all about. Choice! Not rules, morals, codes of conduct or commandments but choice.

In looking at the bible as a whole and imagining everything in there to be occurring simultaneously on another planet bears an uncanny resemblance to the world we live in today. Point to any story in the bible and someone somewhere will be having a similar experience.

How will our global history read in 2000yrs? Isn't it time we stopped history repeating itself?

Originally Posted by mlc82

God's friendly wager with the Devil allowing him to torture Job horribly in order to see whether or not Job would break and curse God is pretty disturbing as well. Of course, this story is now rationalized away as a parable, many times by people claiming to know that the rest of the Bible is, in fact, meant to be taken 100% literally. It's insane.

[Mark Lapierre]

Originally Posted by Maguru

Who in hell's name would want to follow a god like that?

Did you do that on purpose? (emphasis added)

[Maguru]

Absolutely

I think Job would have been better off trusting the devil, or maybe he was?

Originally Posted by Mark Lapierre

Did you do that on purpose? (emphasis added)

[Parthon]

If you think of "God" as the entire universe, and also the energy that permeates the universe and the "Devil" as the mind's Ego it makes for an entirely different read.

[Maguru]

Hang on, if god is the entire universe and the energy that permeates the universe, shouldn't the mind's ego be included?

Originally Posted by Parthon

If you think of "God" as the entire universe, and also the energy that permeates the universe and the "Devil" as the mind's Ego it makes for an entirely different read.

[Old Soul]

the Devil inspired Cain to kill Abel, that particular dealing of the Devil was recorded in the Bible

I often wonder if God had not put a mark on cain to protect him from enemies for killing his brother, would our justice system be the same today?

[Parthon]

Originally Posted by Maguru

Hang on, if god is the entire universe and the energy that permeates the universe, shouldn't the mind's ego be included?

Oh yeah, for sure.

But even in the Bible God created the Devil, and this Devil goes against God's will. Sounds familiar.

[Mark Lapierre]

Originally Posted by Old Soul

I often wonder if God had not put a mark on cain to protect him from enemies for killing his brother, would our justice system be the same today?

Perhaps I'm just ignorant, but what does that have to do with our justice system?

[Maguru]

Are you meaning that ego and devil are the same and what would be the purpose of creating ego and devil from god's perspective??

Originally Posted by Parthon

Oh yeah, for sure.

But even in the Bible God created the Devil, and this Devil goes against God's will. Sounds familiar.

[Parthon]

From my point of view God is everything that has, does and will ever exist. I see God's main purpose is to experience and grow, and does that through the beings that inhabit the world and universe. Ego is just an expression of that and it serves two purposes.

Each ego is a unique way of viewing the world, the more Egos the more view points and the more experiences. Each person gets guided along his life path in a different way due to each person being unique. Ego is the part of us that makes us unique, but it's also the part of us that judges, has opinions and talks to itself. It reasons everything out, compares everything and does all the considerings. This kind of reasoning is what elevates us away from impulse, but often we end up in seperation because we reason too much. Ego divides and seperates because it's what it does best, and is what it's designed for.

Ego itself though is a part of the whole, and is the stepping stone between animal and awareness. Before you can have awareness you need to have the sense of "I". By awareness I mean the experience and state of being connected with everything in the universe where everything is just fine exactly the way it is and there is nothing but love for all things. The Ego is both a pathway and a hindrance to awareness, by being a stepping stone from impulse up to thought, but then getting stuck in thought instead of progressing up to awareness.

For God however, Ego is perfect just the way it is. It's meant to be that way for the experiences and the capability of growth that comes from it. You can even say that God created Ego in order to allow beings in the universe to become aware.

Just a small view on what the universe could be like.

[Winston]

Back to Job for a second, I'd like you guys to consider the story from a different perspective.
I don’t know if you’ve ever read Socrates’ book, The Republic, but in it Socrates argued that it was better to be a good man and yet have all the appearance and reputation of being bad, than to be a bad man who had all the appearance and reputation of being good. Basically Job is a real life manifestation of Socrates’ hypothetical example. Job was a man from whom everything was stripped except his righteousness. Satan believed that if you take away the benefits of being good, like health and prosperity, then there is no worth to being righteous, no point. God, on the other hand, set out to prove that righteousness was desirable for its own sake. He set out to show that God is to be loved for who He is, not for what He gives. And Job did not follow his wife’s advice to “curse God and die.” His response to her was tantamount to saying: to curse God now would be to prove that I have served and blessed Him not for what He is, but for the good-fortune which for so long He gave me; now that ill-fortune has befallen me I can show that I serve Him for what He is.” Job ultimately only cared about one thing. He was troubled by the idea that God may have turned away from Job, no longer regarding him as a friend. He was willing to accept all the suffering in the world that came his way, as long as he felt that God was with him. However, he and everyone he knew had the idea that if you suffered, then you must be sinning (which is false), so Job had to rethink what he thought about God, because he was innocent and viewed his suffering as unjust punishment. But God was only proving the genuineness of a righteous heart to Satan and to the world.

[mlc82]

Originally Posted by Winston

Back to Job for a second, I'd like you guys to consider the story from a different perspective.
I don’t know if you’ve ever read Socrates’ book, The Republic, but in it Socrates argued that it was better to be a good man and yet have all the appearance and reputation of being bad, than to be a bad man who had all the appearance and reputation of being good. Basically Job is a real life manifestation of Socrates’ hypothetical example. Job was a man from whom everything was stripped except his righteousness. Satan believed that if you take away the benefits of being good, like health and prosperity, then there is no worth to being righteous, no point. God, on the other hand, set out to prove that righteousness was desirable for its own sake. He set out to show that God is to be loved for who He is, not for what He gives. And Job did not follow his wife’s advice to “curse God and die.” His response to her was tantamount to saying: to curse God now would be to prove that I have served and blessed Him not for what He is, but for the good-fortune which for so long He gave me; now that ill-fortune has befallen me I can show that I serve Him for what He is.” Job ultimately only cared about one thing. He was troubled by the idea that God may have turned away from Job, no longer regarding him as a friend. He was willing to accept all the suffering in the world that came his way, as long as he felt that God was with him. However, he and everyone he knew had the idea that if you suffered, then you must be sinning (which is false), so Job had to rethink what he thought about God, because he was innocent and viewed his suffering as unjust punishment. But God was only proving the genuineness of a righteous heart to Satan and to the world.

Interesting parallel to Socrates!

On the 2nd part:
This is cute and well until you remember Job's entire family dying a horrible, disease stricken death. What did they do to deserve that? You aren't supposed to think from that angle though of course...

[Winston]

Job's family did not do anything to deserve it. Then again neither did Christ or any of the other saints do anything to deserve the horrible deaths they suffered through.

This kind of reminds me of a story I read in the novel "Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk. Allow me to share with you an excerpt:

"'In ancient history,' Tyler says, "human sacrifices were made on a hill above a river. Thousands of people. Listen to me. The sacrifices were made and the bodies were burned on a pyre.
After hundreds of people were sacrificed and burned, Tyler says, a thick white discharge crept from the altar, downhill to the river.
"Rain," Tyler says, "fell on the burnt pyre year after year, and year after year, people were burned, and the rain seeped through the wood ashes to become a solution of lye, and the lye combined with the melted fat of the sacrifices, and a thick white discharge of soap crept out from the base of the altar and crept downhill toward the river."
Where the soap fell into the river, Tyler says, after a thousand years of killing people and rain, the ancient people found their clothes got cleaner if they washed at that spot. Cultures without soap, Tyler says, they used their urine and the urine of their dogs to wash their clothes and hair beacause of the uric acid and ammonia.
"It was right to kill all those people," Tyler says. "You have to see, how the first soap was made of heroes."
Think about the animals used in product testing.
Think about the monkeys shot into space.
"Without their death, their pain, without their sacrifice," Tyler says, "we would have nothing.'"

So you see, I don't claim to know exactly why Job's family suffered and died, but I don't believe that it was in vain. Without them there would be no story. The sweet can never be as sweet without the sour. There's just so much we don't know, and thats why I believe its so important to keep an open mind and not dismiss the story away as bullshit. I believe that there is more to reality than just being alive and pain-free. There are things worth dying for.

[mlc82]

Originally Posted by Winston

Job's family did not do anything to deserve it. Then again neither did Christ or any of the other saints do anything to deserve the horrible deaths they suffered through.

This kind of reminds me of a story I read in the novel "Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk. Allow me to share with you an excerpt:

"'In ancient history,' Tyler says, "human sacrifices were made on a hill above a river. Thousands of people. Listen to me. The sacrifices were made and the bodies were burned on a pyre.
After hundreds of people were sacrificed and burned, Tyler says, a thick white discharge crept from the altar, downhill to the river.
"Rain," Tyler says, "fell on the burnt pyre year after year, and year after year, people were burned, and the rain seeped through the wood ashes to become a solution of lye, and the lye combined with the melted fat of the sacrifices, and a thick white discharge of soap crept out from the base of the altar and crept downhill toward the river."
Where the soap fell into the river, Tyler says, after a thousand years of killing people and rain, the ancient people found their clothes got cleaner if they washed at that spot. Cultures without soap, Tyler says, they used their urine and the urine of their dogs to wash their clothes and hair beacause of the uric acid and ammonia.
"It was right to kill all those people," Tyler says. "You have to see, how the first soap was made of heroes."
Think about the animals used in product testing.
Think about the monkeys shot into space.
"Without their death, their pain, without their sacrifice," Tyler says, "we would have nothing.'"

So you see, I don't claim to know exactly why Job's family suffered and died, but I don't believe that it was in vain. Without them there would be no story. The sweet can never be as sweet without the sour. There's just so much we don't know, and thats why I believe its so important to keep an open mind and not dismiss the story away as bullshit. I believe that there is more to reality than just being alive and pain-free. There are things worth dying for.

This story though, if in fact taken literally, raises the nasty quesiton of why a "Loving God" would create a creation for the sole purpose of allowing his worst rival (Satan) to horribly torment it to death without raising a finger to stop it, simply to show off his own power over his creation.

If I were to go out and get two puppies or kittens, treat them well and have them love me, then later down the line show off my "power" over them by throwing one in the oven and slowly roasting it to death, while the other still happily played with me and licked all over my face, I would be seen as nothing but a cruel, sadistic, obscenely arrogant monster. IMO the Old Testament god acts like a spoiled, narcissistic bully.


I loved Fight Club as well btw

[Terumoto]

Maybe God creates all good and all evil. It says so plainly in the bible, I think. God and Satan are working together behind the scenes. That doesn't mean God is bad or Satan is good, they just necessarily involve eachother.

It's kind of like how the hindu god of destruction, Shiva, after she destroys the universe, creates it again as Brahma, the god of creation. Well, something along those lines anyway.

[Billy]

I just had an interesting thought, has anyone in the field of psychiatry or psychology ever actually studied the actions of this christian god and done say a case study on him? When I hear or read about this so called god it always conjures up in my mind the image of one of those cruel little children who enjoy torturing small creatures. I'm no academic in those fields but I can't help feeling that the christian god is an absolute psychopath who gets off on seeing his subjects cringe before him in adulation.