Would God be justified & beyond reproach if he killed capriciously?

Question

I'm not saying he ever did or ever will... I'm just asking an "if" question.

P.S. If you plan on answering with "but my god isn't like that", don't bother.

Answer 1

The God of the Old Testament killed capriciously or "ordered" others to do so. For example, the order to kill all living things in Jericho was supposed to have come from
God. Frankly I think those intent on conquest and not wanting to integrate the existing population let people think that this was God's wish. Whether this was a knowing manipulation of their own population or they were delusional, I do not know.

This is one example of why one should be very suspicious of those claiming to speak for God.

Answer 2

Well, he'd be a d!ckhead like the Old Testament God.

Answer 3

God calls people from this life to the next!Death isn't a bad thing

Answer 4

It gets very close to that in Paul's argument in Romans 9.

"Potter's rights" to do whatever he wishes. No comebacks.
Even to make "vessels for destruction"

Answer 5

Well, yeah. God logic doesn't have to resemble real logic in the slightest, so I'm sure the same holds true for rules...

Answer 6

God works in mysterious ways, and we are not to question those ways, even though those ways seem oddly consistent with him not existing.

Answer 7

NO, I would not worship such a God nor should anyone. I would insist on being eternally separated from him.

In violation of your rule however, the God I worship does not, and has not, killed capriciously.

This will be my last answer/post on R&S now that I know the true nature of this forum.
Please take the time to read my answer:

Imagine that a 40-year-old man routinely hunts down children under 12 and kills them. In this hypothetical case, this person's time-for-choice is being used/abused to shorten many other people's time-for-choice. The "system" of human community life (including supporting government and judicial systems) is supposed to exile/eliminate these people before they do "too much" damage. This is simply practical governance issues, and we normally accept that one person's freedom to move about and affect others needs to be restricted/eliminated in cases where they are truly/clearly a threat to a much wider/larger group of other people. Most ethical systems accept that incarceration (and even execution, in some extreme cases) is the correct moral choice in cases of abuse of freedom and power.
How one uses free-will always conditions future use of that free-will, sometimes radically restricting its range of use in the future. For example, if I use my free choice to cut off my right arm, my future free-will to use my right arm are severely restricted...Or, if I use my free choice to expand my horizons, and open up to new ideas, approaches, and attitudes, my range of choices might actually increase. What this indicates is that free-will is also 'reduced' by our own choices (and the consequences of those choices). If we choose to reduce the choices of others, for example, the response by the community to our unlawful and abusive behavior could almost be considered "self-inflicted consequences" of our own choices (even though administered by others).
And, as was seen in the cases of God's "wrath" in the OT, a similar dynamic is visible. He was/is "wrenching an individual's natural time on earth from him"--just as we would in cases of repeated, sustained, and/or large-scale violent/murderous crimes...notice, however, that the OT situations are not generally one-off or single-act scenarios, but situations of large-scale, community-wide, or long-reaching violence/oppression...and the few individual act situations involve issues such as rulers setting bad examples for their communities/leaders.
The targets of God's choice-restriction (via exile/dispersion, execution, or removal from positions of authority) are generally those in culture-transmission roles. They are rulers, teachers, religious authorities, warrior class elites, and the economically powerful--those who perpetuate their own exploitative/destructive values through the use of power, and who in that process, 'control' the culture which shapes/influences/dominates each subsequent generation. These individuals are not first-time-offenders, occasional perpetrators, or the morally 'confused'--they have already 'sold themselves' to do these acts. They are consistent and deliberate perps, and their characters/hearts/habits/worldviews are completely integrated around these reversal of values. They "call evil good", and model this behavior to their descendants and community. This is not a case of God "busting them when they simply slipped up", but rather a more difficult issue of how God could 'wait so long'--allowing them to victimize so many--before He dealt with the violators. [BTW, part of the Problem of Innocent Suffering arises because of God's tendency to be as patient as possible with these people, creating the illusion that He doesn't care about suffering enough to consistently intervene in history upon every intention of ours to hurt someone...] Frequently, OT judgments involve overthrow of a king, removal of a religious figure (e.g., priest or prophet), destruction of authority structures through dispersion of a peoples (e.g., Canaanites), or removal of a peoples from a position of independence (e.g., the exile of Judah).
In the case of the bear attacking the 42 “youths” - most scholarly research correctly portrays these youths as an “LA street gang” harassing and interfering with the ability of a servant of God to carry out God’s will.

Answer 8

I've heard of 42 youths who would probably disagree....

Answer 9

Girl please! I way to methodical for all that.