| garvey0 said: Well put. I'd also like to clarify a misconception regarding 2 Samuel 12:11...I believe it was specifically referring to David's son Absalom rebelling against him and stealing the kingdom from him. When this happened, Absalom also took David's wives though there is no evidence in the text that raped them. I think that God pointing this out specifically was meant to powerfully communicate to David that the things that he loved most were going to be taken from him. You may be thinking "don't the women get a say in this?" In a perfect world they would get say, but humans had already warped the culture so far from what God had intended and instead of snapping his fingers and making things perfect again He decided to let people learn from the consequences of their mistakes and also provide us a text in which we can learn from their mistakes. As a sidenote, my humble guess would be that David's wives who'd been given over to Absalom probably did not feel violated due to their cultural conditioning. Should they have felt violated and objectified by having to switch husbands? Yes. Were they violated and objectified having to switch husbands? Yes. But for whatever it's worth I doubt if they did, especially considering that they were king's wives and lived in royal luxury. |
Yes, but what I'm asking is: are God's values so fickle, that they change according to the culture and mindsets of the times?
First underlined - They weren't God's to take. If the women who he created equally, had committed no sin, regardless of the time, should not be punished for another person's sin. A benevolent being would not do that, for it simply isn't a benevolent act.
Second underlined - An omnipotent, benevolent being surely would have methods of dealing with such crises far beyond our understanding that wouldn't involve punishing or deciding the lives of innocents.
Third underlined - That irrelevant here though. Regardless of their ignorance to their mistreatment, they were mistreated. They were treated as property of men as is often the case. If this is against the values of a benevolent being, and I mean core values of a god, surely they wouldn't treat it as water under the bridge as a result of troubling times.
Edit:
Imagine these poor women when they had died:
They arrive at heaven and ask God, "to which man would we serve?" "Do not be foolish, my children. You are free. You belong to nobody, you are your own." Clearly the women would be baffled as God himself had traded them in life as if they were property. One of the women would speak up - "But you, yourself, had acknowledged us as property of men in our lifes" "Water under the bridge, my love" He responded, "water under the bridge."
Obviously the conversation wouldn't occur anything like that. But according to what I'm reading, it's essentially what had happened. I find it simply absurd.
