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Apologist and author John DeRosa tackles the idea that the God of the Bible is violent and unworthy of being worshiped. As he does in his book One Less God Than You, DeRosa shows how this meme-level argument against God comes up short.
Cy:
Is the God of the Old Testament a homicidal maniac? Right now on Focus. Hello and welcome again to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding, and defending the Faith. As always, please take a minute to subscribe to Focus on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher. I’m pretending like I know what these things are, but you know what they are, wherever you listen. If you sign up, then you’ll know when new episodes are released, and please give us that five star rating or review. It helps to grow this podcast. Our friend, John DeRosa is back this time. He’s the author of a new book called One Less God than You. And in that book, he responds to a variety of atheist memes and slogans.
Cy:
Among the claims that gets trotted out again and again on the internet is that claim that the God of the Old Testament is a maniac. He’s nuts. Who could follow this God, this murderous God? In order to prove this point, you do have to ignore most of what’s actually written in the Hebrew text and focus just on a few troublesome texts, but even the Christian has to admit those troublesome texts are there. There do seem to be instances in the Hebrew scriptures where God orders kind of radical acts of violence. So how do we make sense of those? We check in with John DeRosa to see how he does it.
Cy:
John DeRosa, thanks for doing this with us again. I really am a great admirer of your book One Less God Than You. By the way, it takes a half hour to read the title. I mean, we’re practically through the podcast by the time I read the title. But let me just, let me start that again. I’m a big fan of your book One Less God Than You: How to Answer the Slogans, Cliches and Fallacies That Atheists Use to Challenge Your Faith. I want to give you one, a slogan, and then you and I’ll work on it for a while. Okay?
John:
Sounds good. I appreciate it.
Cy:
And I’m going to do it in the voice of an atheist, not a German atheist. This is an American atheist this time. Okay? All right.
John:
Sounds good.
Cy:
All right, here we go. “The God of the Bible is an evil maniac who commits atrocities.” Was that disrespectful? I don’t want to be disrespectful. All right. That was a California surfer girl atheist who said that. I don’t know why I settled on that for this question, but look, you read the Old Testament in particular with all the God telling people to rape other people, and God telling people to torture other people, and God telling people to feed other people to dogs, and it just seems like God’s a maniac.
John:
Yeah, I hear the objection, but I definitely want to ask you some questions about it because some of that stuff, God telling people to rape other people and torture other people nothing is really ringing a bell for me. I’m just curious. Do you have any specifics in mind, a particular event or story that you could call to mind and that we can maybe look at together because some of those general charges, a lot of them don’t sound true to me as a Christian, but I would love to investigate one in particular. That’s definitely where I would start, but do you have one in particular in mind that you want to look at?
Cy:
Wait, I have to put my glasses on to read my line now. “Are you serious? God kills everyone and orders people to rape. It’s disgusting.” That’s from-
John:
Well, where does he do that exactly? And how’d you come to that conclusion?
Cy:
Well this is just something everybody knows about the Old Testament.
John:
Yeah, I don’t think it is, but I would definitely start with asking the questions of getting them to give us a specific instance because God commanding people to rape just doesn’t happen. God telling people to kill other people does happen, and that’s something we have to address. So we’ll get into that specifically, but first-
Cy:
Okay, so I can think of one then. I know that when Joshua’s leading the Israelites, and you’re supposed to kill every man, woman, child, and animal. That just seems like put them under the ban. What kind of God is that?
John:
Absolutely. No, let’s get into that. And that’s a good objection. So you’re talking about the Israelites and they were commanded by God to destroy the Canaanites and the Canaanite tribe you’re talking about. So we could definitely get into that context. I’m happy to discuss that with you. I just want to ask you one other question though first, and I would kind of do this in conversation just to see that we’re tracking. Would you agree I get that this is an objection you have, the God of the Bible’s an evil maniac, but let’s say you’re right about that, about this Old Testament passage being really abominable and so forth. That wouldn’t mean God doesn’t exist, right?
Cy:
No, you are that’s right yeah. It wouldn’t exist. Well, we shouldn’t worship him.
John:
Oh, God at all, or perhaps this God of the Bible, because what I want to get at next is your claim is that the God of the Bible is an evil maniac because of these atrocities in particular, the command to Joshua’s army to wipe out the Canaanites, which we’ll talk about. But suppose that there’s just a difficulty here that causes Christians to revise their view of inspiration, or how we view the old Testament. And again, we’ll get to a fully Catholic response in a second. I’m happy to give that with you, but I’d like to start out with this because I think a lot of atheists and particular internet atheists kind of try to look up these different verses and use them as a quick out that they don’t need to take theism seriously at all.
John:
But even if there’s an issue with an Old Testament passage in the book of Deuteronomy or Joshua, I don’t think that would mean God doesn’t exist. I don’t even think it would mean that Christianity isn’t true because maybe we just have to revise how we understand this passage, or perhaps our doctrine of inspiration. Do you follow me on that, or am I just talking out of left field?
Cy:
That actually makes very good sense. This is not an argument against God’s existence really. It’s just that it’s an argument that says you’re following a maniac.
John:
Right? And we’re going to challenge that because I obviously, I don’t agree as a Catholic that we’re following a maniac, but I would challenge those internet atheists and folks who are really using this slogan as a quick way out I would challenge them with those questions because I want them to go deeper. Even if you find something that you find problematic in the Old Testament, that’s not a reason that you shouldn’t examine any of the really good evidence for God’s existence, really good evidence for Christ’s resurrection, and really good evidence that he founded the Catholic Church. Just because you find something problematic is not a good reason to dismiss all that other stuff.
John:
So if you’re looking for a quick reason, I kind of want to get them off track with that. That being said, as Catholics, we do affirm biblical inspiration, in its whole and its parts. And we affirm biblical inerrancy as well. So we are going to have some kind of answer, specific answer to this story and to this passage. So I do want to engage that next, but does that set up makes sense? I hope I’m not belaboring the point, but that’s an opening response.
Cy:
No, but it does bring up one point in what you just said. There are Catholics who will compromise, I suppose, at this point on the inerrancy of the Bible and say, “Well, look, it’s in general you believe the Bible, but you don’t have to believe every single thing in there as if it’s the word of God.”
John:
Right, so, and that’s the other thing that’s dangerous about the slogans. So the two in my book, I actually think this one and the other one, the Bible supports slavery, which we’re not going to talk today because we’re going to focus on this one, I think those two are actually very dangerous to the faith of Catholics because it does often force them to quickly compromise and just say, “Oh, I don’t know, the whole Old Testament is just symbolic.” And so I think just if they could read a few points that I have listed in both of those chapters, they would have a little bit more competence that they don’t need to dismiss those right away. So, okay. Let’s get into it specifically. So the Israelites are commanded to wipe out the Canaanites. I think we got to look at this in context. And first I would say the Canaanites are not just a bunch of innocent people that God ordered the Israelites to kill.
John:
They practiced some really evil and sinful practices. There’s evidence that they would sacrifice their children and burn them alive, to sacrifice them to the God of Molech. And that God actually endured with their suffering, allowing them to be hardened in their hearts for hundreds of years before he actually sent the Israelite army to wipe them out. So at the very first instance, we’re not just talking about an innocent group of people. These people have some serious sins that they’ve committed and that they might have to face God’s judgment. But if you make that point, the skeptics just going to reply, “Okay. That might make sense for the soldiers and the men in charge, but how does that make it allowable to kill every man, woman, child, oxen, and so forth? Presumably the women and the children are completely innocent.”
John:
So that just makes the point unjust. So that’s kind of, I think where we’re at with the charge. But I would kind of open, just set the scene a little bit with some context, but they’re still going to come back and say, “Hey, you got to give me some answer on this because the Bible, it says kill every man, woman, child, and oxen,” actually that’s the Canaanites. And then similarly in First Samuel 15 three, the Israelites are given actually a similar command against the Amalekites. So this is something that happens, and we have to address it more specifically. Follow me so far on the setup?
Cy:
Got it. Yes. Yeah.
John:
Okay. I would make three points. This is, I just, if you can remember these three points, it’ll help you go a long way in the discussion. You may not win the person over. Okay? And if we have time, we might go into a really deep worry that I see some atheists using to take this even up a notch and kick it up a notch with a layer of emotion. But the first point you have to make as theists, as Catholics, we acknowledge God as the author and creator of all human life. And he has a unique authority over human beings, such that he can give and take life as he sees fit. Even if we’re not allowed to do that, it’s not, I’m not allowed to go and kill someone on my own authority. Thou shall not murder, thou shall not kill.
John:
But if God, as the sovereign creator and author of all life, if he decides to let someone live a really long life and then die at a heart attack at age 80, or if he decides for their life to end sooner when they’re a teenager in a car accident or something, that’s his prerogative as the author and creator. And to help someone see this point, because that might be a little tough to stomach at first, it’s a challenging point, but it’s something we need to hold as Christians, I think. And you can get them thinking about unique authorities in this way. I actually got this one from Karlo Broussard in his book Prepare the Way, he mentions this kind of example. He say, “Well, see if you follow me on this. Is it okay for an ambulance driver to run a red light, even though other drivers aren’t allowed to do that? And is it okay if a professor wants to cancel classes for the day, even if a student isn’t allowed to cancel classes for the day? Would you be all right with those two scenarios?”
Cy:
Right. Yes. Yes.
John:
So why is that okay for the ambulance driver and for the professor to act as they’re acting, even though other people aren’t allowed to?
Cy:
Well, in the case of the professor, he has the authority to do that. I guess in both cases, they have the authority to make changes like that. They have the authority to make those kinds of exceptions.
John:
Right? So, but that’s what I’m trying to get at here. And it maybe an atheist wouldn’t be so congenial as Cy Kellett you’re giving me the nice answer that I wanted to hear.
Cy:
Oh sorry, I’ll be meaner in the next one.
John:
No, I love it. I love it. But by the nature of the office of the person, as a teacher, as an ambulance driver and so forth, they have certain prerogatives and certain authorities that other people don’t have. And God as creator has that sovereign authority over all life. So what we would view this as when God orders, the … This is the first way. We’ll get to another way you can view this passage in a moment. But when he orders the Israelites to drive the Canaanites out of the land and kill every man, woman, child, and animal, where you would say that this is God deputizing the Israelites as instruments of his justice, he’s using them.
John:
So it’s really God taking the life of the Canaanites, but using the Israelites as his instruments. If an Israelite guy on his own just wanted to randomly at a different time in the Old Testament, just wanted to say, “Hey, I’m going to run off and kill a bunch of people” that wouldn’t be just. That’s not what a sanctioned in this passage. This is a particular special divine command that comes after hundreds of years of evil on the part of the Canaanites where God decides to use them as instruments of his justice. And in the absence of some special divine command, then it actually definitely would be wrong for them to kill any innocent people who happened to be living among the Canaanites. Now that’s the first statement I want to make. There’s a second point. Second point, well actually, I’ll give the second point has two points kind of like [inaudible 00:12:46]. It’s got [inaudible 00:12:46] that’s the first part.
John:
[crosstalk 00:12:49] Then the second part, exactly [inaudible 00:12:52] second part two parts. Second part quick part is context wise in the history where the Canaanite armies were, there’s not really going to be a lot of women and children living among them, soldiers in cities preparing for battles and that when they see the Israelites fighting, they’re not going to just be a bunch of families sitting down to have casual dinner. It’s going to be armies preparing to fight, and there’s a good chance a lot of women and children aren’t even going to be around there. But so that’s a quick part, the quick part of the second point. The second part of the second point is God’s judgment will be perfect, and there will be no mistakes. I think when people read passages like this, they sometimes worry that some of the good people are going to be swept up in the calamity.
John:
And they’re going to end up in hell by accident just because of this horrible act. But that’s not how it works on Christianity. God’s judgment is perfect. And if someone is if their will is toward the Lord, and we have a good example of actually Rahab this is a separate example, take us too far afield, but Rahab was not an Israelite. There’s another story in the Old Testament. And she’s complimented and commended for what she does. In the book of James, they talk about how Rahab sends the spies out another way to protect the Israelites, but she wasn’t an Israelite. She was just someone that recognized God’s goodness. Okay? So if people by following their conscience, by following the law that’s written on their hearts, if they’re oriented towards the Lord, then at the end of their life, okay, by corresponding with that grace, God is not going to just cast them into hell by a mistake.
John:
But at the same time, if those same people have committed mortal sins, they have not followed their conscience, they have not repented, well then yes, they could face judgment and they can face eternal separation from God. But just because God sends the Israelites to kill the Canaanites, and let’s say, it’s literal at this point … The third point we’ll consider a different reading. But even if that all happens literally, it’s not like there’s going to be good people who get swept up in that and sent to the wrong place. If there are good Canaanites, and we believe as Catholics that God gives sufficient grace to all men to be saved if they respond to it, and they would still be saved through Christ in his church.
John:
But if there were good people among those Canaanites that gets swept up into the calamity and die, they’re still going to be with Christ forever in the next life. So those are kind of the first two big points. If you’re going to take a literal reading of this passage, you got to emphasize God is the author and creator of human life. He’s sovereign over it. He can take it if he wants to. And second, God’s judgment will be perfect and there will be no mistakes. That’s how I would defend the literal reading.
Cy:
Okay. But you say that’s how you defend the literal reading. You don’t believe that you’re violating the idea that scripture is inerrant by saying there might be other readings besides a strictly literal reading.
John:
Exactly. So let’s get into that because as Catholics, we are not literalistic fundamentalists that only take the text in a wooden way on first reading prima facie, and that’s all it can mean. That’s not what the Catholic tradition does. We have the fourfold senses of scripture, if you want to get really fancy and talk about the literal sense, and the moral sense, and the allegorical sense, and the anagogical sense, and all this stuff is in the catechism. But let’s just focus on this one text. A lot of people have thought and Trent Horn defends this well in his book, Paul Copan in another book that I referenced in my book, people think that some of these commands contain ancient warfare rhetoric. That’s just on the literal level, it means that the Israelites are supposed to attack the Canaanites and drive them out of the land.
John:
That’s the literal event that it’s referring to, but couched in this ancient warfare rhetoric, it’s propping up the idea that almost like a coach would do in a halftime speech like “Rah, rah, we want to crush the other team. We’re going to wipe out every man, woman, child, and ox.” It’s almost getting the armies hyped up. God is on our side, and we’re going to carry out this task of driving the Canaanites out of the land. And it’s really a warfare rhetoric that is not meant to be taken at the literal level that requires that they literally had to go up to every woman, child, and ox that they found and kill them. That may not be required by the text. And it’s actually supported by other similar commands that people point to in the ancient near East to make that point.
John:
I’ll actually give a funny example. When I was in little league and I’ll make this brief, but our coach, okay, this is going back, I think to fourth or fifth grade baseball before the game, he would sometimes say [inaudible 00:17:28] we got to found it funny and liked it, he would say, “Okay, let’s go out and crush the other team.” But then he actually kept making it more graphic. This probably would be very inappropriate today, but he would actually say stuff like “Let’s slit their throats and step on their intestines.” And obviously today it sounds horrible. Okay? It’s not a nice thing to say. I wouldn’t bring that up, but-
Cy:
I don’t know. I’m not that PC. I mean, sometimes in context, sometimes that stuff’s just funny. And I don’t know [crosstalk 00:17:51]-
John:
And sorry, I should let you talk to there, but I’m just saying it’s fifth and sixth grade boys on a little league team going out there. We loved it. We just found it fun. And it got us pumped up. And then each time he would say something different, like, oh, he’s going to pull out their liver and stab them through the heart, like different things, so that could be what’s going on with this text. It could be ancient warfare rhetoric that at the literal level, when we interpret it appropriately, the strict command was simply for the Israelites to attack the Canaanites and drive them out of the land for their evil, but not that they literally had to kill every man, woman, child, and oxen that they came across, so that’s how I would defend the non-literal reading.
Cy:
Yeah. So you in a certain sense, the ancient habit of speaking in figures of speech, it’s a habit we have today, but the figures might be very, very different, the way the figurative language would work. We would recognize as certain phrases as well. I suppose the classic example is always once upon a time. You always know that a fairy tale is about to be told when someone says once upon a time. And so these might be equivalent type figures that people understood in context that we don’t necessarily understand in our context.
John:
No I appreciate that because I think you just made the point in a clearer way, and added onto what I was saying.
Cy:
Yet I don’t have any books published by Catholic Answers Press. Can you believe that the injustice of it?
John:
We’ve got to change that. We’ve got to change that, but let me just address one more worry, because we’ve done the literal reading, and we’ve done the non literal reading. Those are just options. So I would memorize a few of those principles and you’ll be ready to go in conversation when this comes up. But people might be wondering, “Well, hey, the Holy Spirit’s inspiring this stuff. Why would he bother including such vile figures of speech? Why would he include it in that way? Why would he tell them to wipe out every man, woman, child, and oxen? If it’s figurative warfare rhetoric still, it sounds so heinous. Why would that be included?” And this is where I’ll taking a nod from Bishop Barron, we can go to the allegorical sense and going back to [inaudible 00:20:11] who, if you know [inaudible 00:20:14] dates, he was 185 AD to I think, middle of the second or middle of the third century to end of the 200s.
John:
So he’s a pretty early church writer. It’s not just a thousand years later, he’s making something up. [inaudible 00:20:28] took this and read it allegorically for how we should deal with sin in our lives. And if you take the Canaanites as an allegory for sin, you can kind of get this it kind of jives pretty well with the Sermon on the Mount. What do we do with sin? We normally, sometimes we toy around with it. We let it hang around, we mess with it a little bit. We fall into temptation. We commit a sin now we got to go to confession. That’s our whole lives as Catholics, but what should we be doing? We should be wiping it out. When we see sin, we don’t want to toy around with it. We want to destroy it. We want to crush it because we want to be holy for the Lord.
John:
So the way [inaudible 00:21:05] and some others look at this reading allegorically is that the Canaanites can represent sin, and the Israelite army represents how God wants us to wipe the sin out of our lives. And Jesus in Sermon on the Mount uses a similar hyperbole telling us to cut off your hand when it causes you to sin, pluck out your eye when it causes you to sin. So I think that’s a nice way of explaining why maybe the Holy Spirit inspired this text to be written with that type of language, even if it’s non-literal, and that’s to be an allegory for how we should handle sin in our lives.
Cy:
You said earlier two things that intrigued me. And I want to just circle back to them before I let you finish up. You said that this is particularly dangerous to Catholics because there is always the temptation to say, “Well just make that all symbolic.” And you’re not saying now, “Just treat it as all symbolic,” you’re saying, “Take the literal meaning quite seriously. And then but I understand that there are other layers of meaning to”… I mean, God’s capable of, at least complex of speeches were capable of, so his word is complex and multilayered, but you also said that you were concerned that atheists have nowadays kind of brought this up a notch and added another layer of emotion to the argument. What were you referring to there when you said that?
John:
Yeah, this is tough. And so this is extra that I didn’t quite get this into the book. So for the listeners here, this is a little something special, but what they now do, they unfortunately, they have these lists of Old Testament passages that are hard to stomach, and that sound bad on first reading. And for Catholics who haven’t studied the Bible, these can be very, very troubling. So one, it’s a good call to us to study the Bible and learn some of these senses of scripture so that we can explain these different passages in different ways. But the way they bring emotion into is they take one of these events, and I’ll just do it with you right now, and they say something like this, well, “Hey, you, okay I get that whole speech you just made about God having unique authority, his judgment being perfect, and maybe it’s not literal, but Cy Kellett what if you were that Israelite warrior? Are you telling me that you would go into that Canaanite village and that you would thrust a spear through an innocent child? Would you actually do that?”
John:
And actually, I think pretty recently, an atheist or agnostic called up and tried to phrase this type of question to Trent Horn on the radio. And so what they do is, and that’s pretty gripping. You have to admit, right. That’s a pretty emotional-
Cy:
Yeah. That’s good stuff. I mean, that’s, as far as rhetorical technique, that’s very good.
John:
Exactly. And you could do that with any horrendous passage, just anytime someone does something bad, that they’re going to put you in that situation. And it’s tough. It makes us uncomfortable. If we just give a brief yes, then it’s going to sound barbaric, and it’s going to completely derail our intellectual sense. So we’ve got to try to give some nuance where we can. I would first try before I answered the question, I would try, I would really try to distinguish with them that it’s not a great question of what we would have done, or how we would react because people are complicated, and how we feel about certain things, and what we can stomach, and what we can’t stomach doesn’t always settle the issue of what’s right to do. I think we can think of ethical dilemmas.
John:
We could think of a lot of things that people are uncomfortable with stomaching, but it still would be the right thing to do. I mean, nowadays, just think of Old Testament sacrifices, right, sacrificing goats and Holocaust offerings and so forth. If you said, if you brought someone back into the Old Testament, said do that to an animal, they’re probably very uncomfortable, okay, because we’re not Old Testament times. We don’t live among ancient civilizations, and we have all our own modern sensibilities where things are very sanitary and anesthetic and so forth. So, oh, and here’s another example again, just trying to make the principled point that how we stomach or how we feel about something doesn’t always help us answer the question of what’s the right thing to do.
John:
And a good example of this throwback on the skeptic is homosexual acts, because some people have a revulsion and can’t stomach the idea of homosexual acts, but would that be an argument that homosexuality is wrong? Now, as Catholics, we would buttress arguments or adduce arguments from natural law, and from scripture, and from tradition to talk about homosexuality in a more important way. And you have great books that do that Made This Way by Trent Horn and Leila Miller. But the point of the skeptic is just because someone can’t stomach them that doesn’t mean that they’re wrong. Right?
John:
So I would try to start there. That’s where I would try to start. And I would say we can’t just judge by feelings all right? So not much really far. I get, it’s a gripping emotional appeal, perhaps I would just answer no. If I was the Israelite [inaudible 00:25:55], do you think I would have done that? Maybe I wouldn’t have, okay. But not much follows from what I personally would have done or wouldn’t have done based on what I can stomach. The general answer that we got to kind of get to, even if it’s tough is that it’s right to follow God’s will for our lives. I would say it’s not about what I would do or what I could stomach, but what we should do and what God wants us to do.
John:
And we should follow God’s will and carry out his commands. And if we had sufficient clarity that God has commanded us to do something, and we know that we’re supposed to do it, then we should do it. But if the Israelites were not given any sort of special revelation or divine command, or they weren’t sure if they were well, then no, you should never kill someone. The commandment says thou shall not murder. So the answer is, it’s a nuanced answer. I’m trying to make it nuanced. It’s still going to be tough to get that to go over well. But it’s yes if it’s sufficiently clear that this is what God wants us to do, that’s what we should do. Ultimately, it might be easier to answer this question by falling back upon the non-literal reading and saying that well, I would hope that as a soldier, we’re given the command to drive the people out of the land, and we were not literally asked by our commanders to kill any children that were around.
John:
That’s a live possibility based on the text, but still I am not going to abandon the principle that we should follow God’s will for our lives. I don’t think that’s going to go over very well on a skeptical audience. It’s going to be tough to make that nuance, but I think that’s what we should say as Catholics. And I’m still opt for, I’m still thinking about better ways of doing that because internet atheists are sharp, and they do this kind of thing a lot where they bring emotion to it, and they put you in this situation and they make you make a choice. And I want to stick with God, and I want to stick with the scriptures. And I don’t want Catholics running around saying the whole thing is symbolic. We never believed in any way.
Cy:
Right? Right. Yeah. I feel like I might add as a Catholic that God’s given earthly authority to some people over me. And even a command that comes from an angel is not higher than the command that comes from the Bishop for me, so that I have to follow the teachings of the Catholic Church and treat them as God’s will, because that’s the way God has in the time since the life of Christ, that’s who he gave authority over me.
John:
I’m so glad you added that because you’re exactly right. And that leads me to one more point that I forgot to make. There’s a reason they put you back in those ancient times, and maybe they talk about today and they don’t know our answer, but people might worry, “Well, hey, could this type of stuff happened today where God is just going to start commanding you to wipe out whole peoples?” And for Catholics, the answer is no, because public revelation, this is right out of the catechism. I think I have it paragraph 66, paragraph 66 “Public revelation ceased with the death of the last apostle.” So God was theocratically guiding Israel in those old Testament times. And he was present to them in a very special way.
John:
But nowadays he has ascended to the father. He sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins. He lives in us, but there’s not going to be any more public revelation for people to carry out these sorts of events. Instead, we trust Christ. We trust the bishops. We trust the church, the apostolic tradition. That’s why we’re Catholic. And so we don’t have to worry about this sort of thing happening today. Public revelation did cease with the death of the last apostle. So I’m glad you brought that up, because it reminded me of that point.
Cy:
Oh, very good. Well, thanks John. I really appreciate it. This is one of the tough ones, especially I do think you point to a good point in that we don’t maybe always know our scripture. And so we’re like “God said, what?” So you kind of not be shocked. And the one way not to be shocked is to read books like Trent Horn’s Hard Sayings, a very, very helpful book, or books like your book One Less God Than You that has an unbelievably long subtitle. John DeRosa thanks very much.
John:
I appreciate the time Cy Kellett and thank you so much. I also recommend Hard Sayings, and I hope Catholics will continue to study the scriptures and give good answers.
Cy:
Amen brother. The danger of memes and slogans is that they’re not always tools for reasoning. As a matter of fact, they’re usually tools for cutting off reason. They kind of freeze the person in a position that the person didn’t arrive at, maybe they got bullied into, maybe they got manipulated into, by the power of the meme or the slogan. And in revealing himself to us, God does in fact make himself vulnerable to misunderstanding. And assaulting and accusing God with these little memes and these slogans is not really a means of arriving at the truth about him. It’s a tactic for keeping people away from opening themselves up to the God that revealed himself to them. To me, this emotional appeal based on cutting remarks is actually demonic. It flatters us into thinking that we’re thinking, when what we’re really doing is refusing to think, refusing to engage with the God who reveals himself in the Bible.
Cy:
We don’t want to give that God a mature hearing. We just cut it off before we get to that mature hearing. Read the Bible, study good teachers of the Bible. This is the only cure. This makes us ready to defend God’s revelation because we know God personally. Before we wrap up this week, I want to let you know that you can get John’s brand new book One Less God Than You at 30% off until the end of this month, just go to shop.catholic.com and put in the promo code onemore as all one word. Also email us. If you’ve got ideas for new shows, if you’d like to comment on this show, just send it to focus@catholic.com. We want to hear from you. Don’t forget to subscribe so you’ll be notified when new episodes come out. Also, don’t forget that rating and reviewing this podcast does help us grow the podcast.
Cy:
If you’re in a position to, and you’d like to support us financially, we do need financial support to keep this podcast going. And you can do that at givcatholic.com. I’m Cy Kellett your host. This is Catholic Answers Focus, and we’ll see you again next time when we do this again, God willing right here on Catholic Answers Focus.