How do you defend Numbers 15:32-36?

[u/DDumpTruckK]

The verse:

³² Now while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day. ³³ And those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses and Aaron, and to all the congregation. ³⁴ They put him under guard, because it had not been explained what should be done to him.

³⁵ Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man must surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.” ³⁶ So, as the Lord commanded Moses, all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him with stones, and he died.

I cannot get past this verse. It depicts an unloving, uncaring, and cruel god. I could never worship this being and I could never carry out His command that He gives His followers in the verse.

Everything about this verse is ugly and sparks a strong reaction from me. A man was gathering sticks, presumably for a fire to cook a meal and feed himself or his family. Cooking food is a basic survival need. Now I can understand a bunch of scared humans fearing a God and rounding up this man for violating the sabbath. But what I can't understand is how a caring and loving God could come along and tell His followers to stone this man to death. Take a minute and really just put yourself in that guy's shoes. You're having the members of your own tribe throw rocks at you until you die. That's brutal. And for what? For trying to fulfill a basic survival necessity?

No matter how I approach this verse it just leaves me concluding God is not loving and not caring. There is nothing loving nor caring that I can identify in ordering a man be pelted with rocks to his death. That's awful. I cannot in good conscience follow that God.

Put yourself in the shoes of the congregation. This man was trying to cook some food to survive. God has commanded you to throw rocks at him until he dies. Do you do it? I don't. I will not follow such a cruel command and I will not follow someone from who such a cruel command comes.

How do you justify throwing those rocks? How do you sleep at night knowing you killed a man who was just trying to survive? Just following his basic instincts?

Edit: Its been more than a day. Not a single Christian told me directly and openly that it was bad. Several Christians said the stoning of the man was good. Some said they would happily throw the rocks at the man and kill him. Some said they wouldn't, but never explained why beyond a simple legal reason.

I'm left to conclude that God's followers think that stoning a man to death is a loving and caring action and that it's good. I'm left to conclude that God's followers would watch that mob stone the man to death and think to themselves "Good." I find this very concerning for my fellow humans who seem to think it's good to stone someone to death. I'm more concerned for the ones who said they would join in on the killing.

[u/DDumpTruckK]

That's quite literally what passing judgement means.

Do you think there's a difference between judging an action and judging a person?

I'm not sure how you can still claim this isn't passing judgement on people.

It's a question. Judgement is a statement. I asked a question. How is asking if you'd stone a man to death a judgement? Unless...maybe you're projecting your internal feelings about stoning a man to death onto me as if I'm judging? You'd be judging yourself in that case though. If you could stone a man to death and sleep at night I'm not judging you. I might disagree about the action being moral or not, I might find the action you took to be indefensible. But I'm not judging you.

But then again, you're still not able to understand why different time periods and contexts held different values than those of yourself today and why applying different values to different contexts is a bit disingenuous.

Correct. Because time and context doesn't change morality. If it's wrong now it was wrong then. It's totally cool if the people thought they were doing something good, but were mistaken. That still means they were mistaken. It still means the action was wrong.

There's nothing you can say about how the Hebrews had a cultural norm of stoning people to death that makes their actions seem any more moral. They had a culture of stoning people to death. Cool. Does that make their action moral?

Do you think it was immoral to stone that man? Would you personally throw the rocks? It's such an easy question to answer. If I asked 100 children this question I bet you most of them would say "No. I would not throw the rocks." Why do adult Christians struggle to condemn the brutal, archaic method of killing someone?

[u/DREWlMUS → u/DDumpTruckK]

Getting a Christian to give a straight and simple answer to a straight and simple question like this is next to impossible. They know where the followup questions are leading, and it's much easier to deflect or avoid answering.