You'll find his name mentioned daily in almost every newspaper. He's been responsible for the genocide and ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of people. He has allowed his followers to rape women, kidnap leaders, plumage villages, neglect their wives, and murder their own children. He has been consistently found guilty of discrimination based on race, religion, sex, physical handicap, and sexual orientation. And it's all documented in a best-selling book that many claim was written by himself. But despite all of this he is still loved by people all over the world. Many even worship him. Why? Because he's God.

Many people believe that God, by definition, is a holy being incapable of doing any wrong. Yet if one examines the holy books written about God one will quickly see many actions attributed to God that do not line up with our sense of right and wrong. In Christianity, that holy book is the Bible. The vast majority of Christians believe that the Bible contains no errors and was inspired by God. In fact, a Gallup poll suggests that around 43% of the U.S. population believes the Bible is the word of God (Gaylor 3). For Christians to have any meaningful relationship with this God they must explain away these apparent contradictions between God's actions and moral law. As humans, we have become masters at justifying our own sins; perhaps it won't be too difficult for us to justify God's as well.

The first logical response that people have when they hear the suggestion that God is guilty of sin is to deny that the Bible says what is being suggested. After all, God is holy and can not sin. However, shrugging it off as impossible does not answer the questions that arise from difficult verses in the Bible. Adding the fact that the majority of Christians have not read the entire Bible, it is easy to see why some would ignore any statement that suggests God has done something morally wrong. But the Bible is filled with stories of God performing acts or giving commandments that go against our ideas of what is morally acceptable behavior.

Some would suggest that perhaps it's not God's behavior that is wrong, but that our definition of acceptable behavior is messed up. Yet, this suggestion ignores the fact our definitions of acceptable behavior are often based on the laws and commandments that are found in the Bible. When Moses was leading the Israelites out of captivity he showed the Israelites a stone tablet with several commandments on them which were supposedly written by God (see Exodus 20). One such commandment is found in Exodus 20:15 and it says simply, "You shall not steal." Yet later God is found telling the Israelites that when they go into a new city that they should take "the livestock and everything else in the city . . . as plunder for yourselves" (Deuteronomy 20:14). In addition to taking livestock and material goods the Israelites were continually commanded to take over land that belonged to other countries. The Israelites followed the Lord's advice and even bragged in Deuteronomy 3:4 that "there was not one of the sixty cities that we did not take from them."

In another commandment God tells his people to honor their mother and father (Exodus 20:12), yet later he commands the priests to kill their own family members (Exodus 32). Upon killing their family members Moses tells them that "[they] have been set apart to the LORD today, for you were against your own family, and he has blessed you this day." Not only has God forced his people to violate his commandment to honor ones parents, but he has also forced them to violate the next commandment which said, "You shall not murder" (Exodus 20:13). This commandment to refrain from murdering is arguably the most often violated commandment that God gives his people. Often the victims of God's plea to kill have been found guilty of crimes such as worshipping different gods and thus the killing is in one sense no different than capital punishment, but sometimes the crime seems to be having simply been born to the wrong parents. In one battle the Israelites at first allowed the women and children to live but found that the Lord was not satisfied until they went back and "killed all the male children" (Numbers 31:17). It is difficult to believe that all of those children had committed sins terrible enough to deserve being killed. But it doesn't stop there. That same passage goes on to instruct the Israelites to "save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man" (verse 18). In other words, not only were they commanded to kill all of the male children, but they were also told to keep the female virgins so they could have sex with them. If someone came to my village, killed my parents, my relatives, and my friends, and then asked me to have sex with them I would not hesitate to scream "Rape."

Continually throughout the Bible God gives a commandment and then appears to do something that goes directly against it. This is the very definition of hypocrisy--doing the opposite of what you tell others to do. Is it fair for God to create a rule and then violate it? We are quick to say that God can do whatever he wants, but what kind of God would this be? We argue that God, by definition, is sinless, but then we say that God can do whatever he wants, even if he has told us not to do those very things. If we go on to say that God is not sinning when he does those things we are guilty of circular logic because we are only defining those actions as sinless since God is the one doing the action.

Yet, not only does God seem to violate his own commandments but he also gives some laws that are either ridiculous or unjust. Gaylor summarizes one such law found in Deuteronomy 32:2 where God says that "if you know of a child who has been born out of wedlock who attends your church, you would see that the child was publicly exposed and could no longer be a member of the church." What sin has the child committed to deserve being kicked out of the church? As that New International Version puts it, the child is forbidden from entering the church because he was "born of a forbidden marriage." Perhaps God wanted to make sure his church was kept ethically and ethnically pure but does that make it right? Not only is it the children born out of wedlock that God prohibits from entering the church, but the handicapped as well. God makes this very clear in Leviticus 21:17-20 when it is written that: "For the generations to come none of [Aaron's] descendants who have a defect may come near to offer [a sacrifice to] his God. No man who has any defect may come near [and offer a sacrifice to God]: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; no man with a crippled foot or hand, or who is hunchbacked or dwarfed, or who has any eye defect." Not only are we held responsible for the parents that we are given at birth, but also for the physical handicaps that we are born with.

Other laws make God appear to be a racist and a sexist ("Religious" 9). In Deuteronomy 7:3-4 God prohibits his people from marrying anyone who is not a Jew. In Deuteronomy 23:3 God prohibits Ammonites and Moabites from entering the church. Throughout the Bible God prohibits women from serving as priests or teachers. In 1 Timothy 2:12-15 Paul, who states that he is writing under the guidance of the Lord, states that he does not even allow women to teach. His reason? "For Adam was formed first, and then Eve" (verse 12).

Can God be both innocent of sin and be a hypocrite, a racist, and a sexist all at the same time? Is it fair for God to punish us because we are born to the wrong parents, or born the wrong gender or race? Is it morally right for God to discriminate against someone because they were born with a physical handicap? Is it right for God to command his followers to murder children and have sex with teenagers? Is it okay for God to sin? Many Christians will probably still hold to their motto that God can do whatever he wants, but it doesn't answer the question--is it morally right for God to do these things? If we are dogmatic in asserting that God is not guilty of sin then there is only one feasible alternative--the Biblical stories are untrue in one way or another.

Historical research can validate that many of the stories in the Bible did in fact take place. Archeologists have discovered remains that validate that many of the cities in the Bible did actually exist. Even many of the Biblical characters have been validated through archeological research. Yet, what can not be validated through archeological research is whether or not God was behind all of these events.

The Israelites were a people who believed firmly in the existence of a God who lived and worked among his people. They believed in giving thanks to their God whenever they were given something good. If they found food, they thanked God. If they found a wife, they thanked God. If they won a battle, they thanked God. In everything they did, they thanked their God. Yet often, they did not just stop at giving God thanks; they went on to give him credit. They gave the credit to God for providing them with food. They gave credit to God bringing them a mate. Likewise, they gave credit to God for allowing them to slaughter their enemies. Since the Biblical stories started from an oral tradition, it is likely that over time God's role in the life of the Israelite people became more and more ingrained. What might have started out as "And then our descendents defeated the Cannanites" could have turned into "And then the Lord delivered the Cannanites into our hands" and finally into "The Lord told us to kill all the Cannanite men, women, and children. And the Lord made us successful." God may have had nothing to do with the slaughter of the Cannanites, but over time he was the one who increasingly got the credit for it. Likewise, when a priest or leader such as Paul felt like a certain belief was beneficial (such as prohibiting women from teaching) he would increasingly give God the credit for the idea. No one can know for sure how deep God's actual role played in any of this. All we can do is make an educated guess.

During the time of the Israelites some things seemed perfectly fine. Stealing lands that belonged to other people. Excluding the handicapped from ministering to God. Prohibiting intercultural marriage. All of this seemed natural and fine to the Israelite culture that had grown up in that type of society. Thousands of years later in 1999 we have trouble seeing how those actions and/or beliefs were morally good. The Israelites saw nothing wrong with giving credit to God for their actions and their beliefs, but now it's ever painfully clear the harm that it has caused. Perhaps it is not God himself who is the chief among sinners. Perhaps it really is man who has shifted the blame off of himself and onto God, even if it was done on accident.