Neo, how about this (thanks to one of Miller's articles).
As much as I hate to present it.
If your wife is in labour and you clearly have to choose (the decision is clear) between your wife or child.
I doubt it would ever be clear, but let's assume for the sake of argument it is. You've not discussed the situation previously with wife.
Would you be justified in deciding for your baby to die in order to save your wife?
Hi, K, I am sorry I wasn't able to address this on the weekend.
This is perhaps as close to a situation which could be imagined. But I will never say I was justified in doing so, I'll call it a lesser of two evils.
BUT the problem here isn't just what was commanded. What I am really astonished at as to how quickly and heartlessly, atleast in words, this charge is being defended by Christians. In reality we are try to minimize the emotional damage that this causes in humans but the truth is we are increasing it by heartlessly talking about it. I have not heard one person say that it was such a sad thing to happen, that those infants and children and girls and old men suffered. Like everyone suffers from the evil that exists in this world.
There is not an iota of the human feeling in this response. If a person shoots up a school, people start crying but somehow our response is less human when it comes to the children killed at the command of God.
Instead of treating it as a tragedy, which may show we are not insensitive to slaughter of infants or children of children, we go full on "God was right", "It was just/justice". Really? If God had your child slaughtered in the name of justice, would you still say with a straight face "it was justice"? Even Job knew better, he was honest, he didn't know any better and he coped with it.
But we come off as "Don't you dare call our God in question, and we are not sorry this happened." Which just tells the other person that we are fanatics, we condone such acts or we'd be fine if they were carried out in the name of God and that our moral compass is probably broken. Believe me whether its true or not, the kind of responses given here portray exactly that.
The logic Philip has used unintentionally, not realizing (and I call it an evil logic) and I questioned him on that, is that those infants would go to heaven.
But how could they?
1. If they were sinless then God had innocents killed?
2. If they were not sinless than how would they go to heaven?
I have yet to get an answer to these. Perhaps I will be told "I don't understand it". which is fair but then don't follow it up with a poor-useless consolation like they went to heaven.
We don't know if they went to heaven.
Essentially if anyone asks me, did God had infants and children killed? the only response by this logic I can give is...yes. Justified or not, today no ones in their right frame of mind would ever try to justify such an action. And that answer, as you would agree, would not be a resounding success with the audience, should you be asked to defend your faith on a public platform.
This statement that those infants would go to heaven, does not even deserve to be called a consolation, much less a deserved apologetic answer to a very brutal issue. I mean it plainly conveys that idea that God can have innocent people killed just to get them to heaven.
And in my anticipation of a push back (from non-Christians), if Israel is rewriting history as the victor then it strikes me as authentic history given they've left in warts and all. If everything was absolutely pat down, then I'd be more suspicious of its truth and the authors writing it. As Sam Harris has no doubt said, "Anyone with any sense of a moral compass can clearly see killing children is wrong." Great! So let the victor just edit such out and show how compassionate they were... show how good and loving their God is such that He always comes out sparkling... but they didn't.
But not if their audience agreed with them. These authors had no idea that we'd be reading these books 3000 years later in a very different world where even Christians can't agree to the killing of infants even in the name of God. I doubt they even thought that the gentiles would ever understand or ever read these stories. What was important was their immediate and only audience. They didn't need to pat it down. And that is why I think they never did. Which in this case doesn't help us with our apologetic at all, except to confirm what they did do.
And now, I'm providing a very Christian response. BUT, who knows, maybe God in his complete knowledge of all situations, was ultimately protecting Israel who were to bring forth the Christ. Jesus Christ in whom we can be now be raised up to God's level. If true, then while the decision isn't nice and in clear cut situations would be intolerable, God's decision to protect His plan of eternal consequence would be far more important in the scheme of things than finite human lives.
I am fine with all that, but our response should also be human, it should not appear so out of emotional values which people feel everyday that it becomes impossible to believe that such a God exists.
Trusting God, that he will do fine is alright. But showing someone that God is love is equally necessary. That doesn't come when you say oh God can kill those babies, justly. It comes when we show how hard it is to square it off with what we believe.
I guess people make it sounds so simple and straightforward, a no brainier that it becomes disgusting.
EDIT:
Further another point which came to my mind was that Israel might have been afraid of a revenge war. After all Israel itself was taking a revenge war some 400 years later. So a smart guy must have said, lets kill them all and nip this right here, no children, no revenge war. And to be honest, to that poor chap it may have sounded quite Godly, they were on a righteous war, there God was with them and all they were doing was taking a precaution further for the the future. adding something to the mission brief which was not originally there but sounded a good idea at the moment. Just like America bombed the atom bomb on Japan and saved millions of other lives.
It could be totally natural for these people to write this as commanded by God. Even in our normal speak we often say things, like God put this in my heart, without actually hearing the voice of God. This is a very likely possibility here.
I know this answer may tick off (I am not sure) someone like Philip who is strong on inerrancy of the scripture but it sounds a plausible answer than the children go to heaven when killed brutally by the command of God.
That and I do have issues when people kill in the name of God, in a western country that may be a mute concern, its very real in the east. But even if my life is safe, this isn't a good logic at all to say he is God, he can do anything. There must be an objective standard to which he even Gods could be held.
If there is no objective standard how can you say the acts attributed Allah or Krishna or the Aztec or Inca Gods are any different which sound immoral. Because of this everybody can then say their God is right based on "He is God" clause in their scriptures. Which logically is a disaster because you have contradictions. An exception can't be made here just for our God, because then again everyone can say that OM exists but their God is exempted from it.
ISIS is killing thousands because they think their God told them so. Is there an objective standard where I can say God can do that but probably won't do that? How can you put a hole in that logic when you yourself use the same?
If someone slaughters your baby and tell you God told him to, there needs to be a standard by which you can say you are wrong, God can't do that.
But why does this standard doesn't come up when innocent infants were killed? This is also my concern.