Elisha, bears and 42 children dead

[_sock puppet]

Here Darth J points to the LDS Church yet teaching about God causing a couple of bears to eat 42 children for making fun of Elisha for being bald. Poor Elisha. His feelings were hurt. And the measure of justice meted out by elohim or jehovah (or both) was that those children be eaten by bears.

To me, this seems even more incredible than a talking donkey. JSJr said (4/7/1844, King Follett Sermon) that

It is necessary for us to have an understanding of God himself in the beginning. * * * If any man does not know God, and inquires what kind of a being He is,--if he will search diligently his own heart--if the declaration of Jesus and the apostles be true, he will realize that he has not eternal life; for there can be eternal life on no other principle. * * * It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God, and to know that we may converse with Him as one man converses with another, ... .

Wow. So what do we learn about the character of God from his causing the bears to consume 42 children simply for mocking Elisha due to his baldness?

HWH was bald. Did God cause any bears to eat children that may have seen HWH and point and tell their mommies, "Look at that bald man!"

Certainly seems that God is pretty thin skinned and gets rather testy if anyone points out some physical shortcoming of one of his prophets. Not the kind of guy I'd want to converse with. Thank you, no, JSJr and Elisha.

[_Darth J]

If Elisha felt bad about being bald, why didn't he pray for God to give him hair, rather than praying for the miracle of revenge against those kids who were making fun of him?

And what does it tell us about the LDS Church that this story is not only related as something that really happened, but it is spun as a positive story about the power of faith?

[_Hades]

It is also a powerful story to show that you shouldn't mock God or his anointed.

[_EAllusion]

There's a lot of revenge fantasy - don't mess with God and his peeps - stuff in the Bible and you have to be a very liberal Christian to escape that fact about the nature of your worship.

One of the more beautiful Psalms ends in a brutal revenge fantasy:

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept

when we remembered Zion.

There on the poplars

we hung our harps,

for there our captors asked us for songs,

our tormentors demanded songs of joy;

they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How can we sing the songs of the Lord

while in a foreign land?

If I forget you, O Jerusalem,

may my right hand forget.

May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth

if I do not remember you,

if I do not consider Jerusalem

my highest joy.

Remember, O Lord, what the Edomites did

on the day Jerusalem fell.

“Tear it down,” they cried,

“tear it down to its foundations!”

O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,

happy is he who repays you

for what you have done to us—

he who seizes your infants

and dashes them against the rocks.

Pretty. Moving. Evil.

[_sock puppet]

There's a lot of revenge fantasy - don't mess with God and his peeps - stuff in the Bible and you have to be a very liberal Christian to escape that fact about the nature of your worship.

One of the more beautiful Psalms ends in a brutal revenge fantasy:

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept

when we remembered Zion.

There on the poplars

we hung our harps,

for there our captors asked us for songs,

our tormentors demanded songs of joy;

they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How can we sing the songs of the Lord

while in a foreign land?

If I forget you, O Jerusalem,

may my right hand forget.

May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth

if I do not remember you,

if I do not consider Jerusalem

my highest joy.

Remember, O Lord, what the Edomites did

on the day Jerusalem fell.

“Tear it down,” they cried,

“tear it down to its foundations!”

O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,

happy is he who repays you

for what you have done to us—

he who seizes your infants

and dashes them against the rocks.

Pretty. Moving. Evil.

A god of love indeed.

[_bcspace]

Pretty. Moving. Evil.

A god of love indeed.

No, the God of love is not the leftwing crybaby you imagine Him to be. But here I think you are confusing God with the Edomites.

[Guest]

And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD.

The LORD answers the prayer of His Anointed Ones.

[_ludwigm]

It is also a powerful story to show that you shouldn't mock God or his anointed.

Or criticize them:
"It's wrong to criticize leaders of the church, even if the criticism is true" (c) Dallin H. Oaks.

Evil speaking of the Lord’s anointed is in a class by itself. It is one thing to depreciate a person who exercises corporate power or even government power. It is quite another thing to criticize or depreciate a person for the performance of an office to which he or she has been called of God. It does not matter that the criticism is true. As Elder George F. Richards, President of the Council of the Twelve, said in a conference address in April 1947.
( "Criticism" - By Elder Dallin H. Oaks - Of the Quorum of the Twelve - This is an edited version of a talk delivered at a Latter-day Saint Student Association fireside in the Salt Lake Tabernacle on 4 May 1986.)


It does not matter that the criticism is true.

It does not matter that the criticism is true.

It does not matter that the criticism is true.

.

.

.

Elisha had bald head. That forty and two didn't listen Oaks. Their own fault.

[_EAllusion]

No, the God of love is not the leftwing crybaby you imagine Him to be.

Right. The God of love you worship is more like the violent, abusive father who insists he loves his children while the bruises suggest otherwise to outsiders.

[_moksha]

No, the God of love is not the leftwing crybaby you imagine Him to be. But here I think you are confusing God with the Edomites.

Excellent point. That left-wing loving God is not set up to help the rich in their eternal quest to avoid taxes or to promote the valiancy of Wall Street, let alone send an army of killer bears to slaughter innocents.

.