Blind Faith and Biblical Contradictions 2

Part two of the Bible contradictions I found in the hilarious Youtube video. I am following the same format in this Hub as in my previous contradictions hub. The contradiction proposed will be titled, the verses in question will follow, and finally my response to the contradiction. Enjoy!

Gen 22:1 After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”

James 1:13Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.

God was not tempting Abraham, to tempt somebody is to tempt them with sin. God was asking for a sacrifice, which was Isaac. God asked for sacrifices throughout the Old Testament as a form of retribution for sins. There is nothing tempting in offering a sacrifice, especially in the form of a child. Through this sacrifice God was showing the immensity of Sin, and the very expensive payment that would be required to pay for our sin. He was showing just how impossible it is for us to live up to his standard of justice, and showing how we have to rely on His mercy. In this story God provided a lamb top be sacrificed in the place of Isaac. In his mercy he provided the innocent sacrifice, while still showing just how disgusting Sin was to him, and just how hard it is for us to conquer sin alone.

Gal 2:16 Yet we know that a person is not justified^[a] by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

Rom 3:28 For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

Matt 19:17And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.”

Luke 10:26-28 He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” ²⁷ And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” ²⁸ And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

Faith and works go hand in hand. If you have faith in Jesus then you necessarily love Jesus, if you love Jesus then you necessarily show that love. The love that Jesus demands is shown through the way we live, the works. This is not a contradiction, you cannot attain salvation by just following the Law, the law requires you love God that would mean having faith in God. You cannot attain salvation by faith alone, if you have faith and do not love Jesus then your faith is misplaced or a lie, if you do love Jesus then you need to act like it, which means loving Him they way he asks us to. That means living like you love him. That would mean trying to follow the law and trying to do what Jesus asks of us. That would be the works.

Is 45:7 I form light and create darkness,
I make well-being and create calamity,
I am the Lord, who does all these things.

1 John 4:8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Calamity is not a synonym for evil.

Imagine a world in which there was no calamity, life was always easy. There were no challenges, there was nothing to overcome. You just simply existed, and everything you needed and wanted was provided for you. This would not be a life worth living, you could not grow as a person. You would not learn, you would not need to work. It would be boring; we would forget God in a world such as this. We would not know anything but happiness, so we would not know what God was protecting us from. We would feel as if we did not need to love him, we would not be aware of consequences. I imagine this would be like the life of a pet Beta fish. Just exist and look pretty.

Through calamity God teaches us how to live, he improves our character. We are given challenges to overcome; we learn to protect people and ourselves. We learn the value of life, of love. We learn how we need God. We learn that we have purpose, we have a reason to exist.

Calamity is not evil; it is an important part of life. Sin is the only thing that is evil, going against God, going against the Love that God shows us is evil. Rejecting love means you are accepting the opposite. That means you are accepting sin, and thus evil.

Gen 2:18-19Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for^[a] him.” ¹⁹ Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed^[b] every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature that was its name.

Gen 1:25-27 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make man^[a] in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

God created the animals first, this is clear in Gen 1:25-27. In Gen 1:27 He created man. In Gen 2:18-19 He decided that Adam needed a companion, so He brought all the animals he had already created from the earth to Adam, so that Adam could name them and find a suitable companion. The animals were already created, the verse says “¹⁹ Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.” The important word in this verse is HAD. God HAD created the animals; He didn’t go and create them afterwards to make a companion for Adam. He had already created them. He simply brought them to Adam for Adam to name. Moses is reiterating the fact that God created the animals from the ground. He is not saying that God created them for Adam.

2 Kings 2:11And as they still went on and talked, behold, chariots of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.

John 3:13No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.

You need the context of these versus. Yes Elijah and Enoch ascended into heaven, but the word used in the original greek was shamayim which means sky, or where the clouds are. Elijah and Enoch both went to “heaven” but they were not without sin. So they could not go directly to the heaven that God, or Yahweh, resides in (using reside for lack of a better word). Jesus was the only man who had not sinned, he ascended directly to where Yahweh resided, and bypassed judgment. He didn’t need judgment; he was the only sinless man. Enoch and Elijah ascended, but still faced judgment. Jesus was the only one to ascend directly into heaven and the only one who descended from heaven as well.

Deut 24:16 Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.

Deut 5:9 You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.

Deut 24:16 is saying that at judgment each person is responsible for their own sin. They are responsible for choosing to go to Hell, and nobody else. In Deut 5:9 God is not talking about death. He is talking about their lives; if unfortunate things happen during the lives of children due to their parents’ behavior then it happens. If my mother and father smoked around me everyday of my life and I got lung cancer for their negligence then I am paying for their wrongs. However this doesn’t change anything for me when my judgment comes, I will be judged for my sins, and they will be judged for theirs. This contradiction is simply a false parallel.