Mike Winger, a Christian preacher who runs a giant online ministry, recently said believers should listen to the voices in their heads if they believe God is telling them to kill someone.
It was a reference to the biblical story of Abraham, who is told by God in Genesis 22 to kill his son Isaac as a sacrifice. At the last possible second, God says, “Just kidding!” and everyone has a good laugh. The moral of the story, some say, is that we’re supposed to obey God even when it doesn’t make sense because that’s the sort of obedience God demands. (Even though a more honest assessment would focus on the cruelty of God in that situation.)
On his YouTube show recently, Winger was asked by a viewer (at 1:28:45) what he thought about murderers who say God “made them do it”? Instead of dismissing all those killers as kooks, because God doesn’t actually speak to them, Winger took the opposite approach, saying it was always wise to listen to God… then included a caveat saying God probably wouldn’t ask you to kill anyone, as if that makes everything better.
Well, I’m going to say something controversial that will absolutely delight atheists, ’cause they like to take… not all atheists… some internet atheists… like to take things out of context and use it to make me look bad. I don’t care… You’ve already hated me anyways. It’s not like anything changed. If anything, I’m just glad people, like, hate-follow me. Like, at least that’s there. You know, maybe they’re hearing the Gospel. Maybe, God willing, there’s, like, some truth of Christ that will eke through there…
So I’m gonna say something here: If God really told them to do it, then they were right.
If God didn’t tell them to do it, then they were wrong. And they were just a murderer. And a delusional murderer who’s blaming God, which just makes it worse.
God does have a right to tell… now, let me now let me give an analogy that might help people swallow this better, because I feel the rejection that people would have to this naturally.
Let’s say that… America gets involved in a… just war… Or… let’s just say that you have a police officer who is getting involved in… some kind of, like, school… horrible school shooting-type thing, right? And he gets permission from the government, and from the local police department and all that, that when he sees a person on campus with a gun, he just opens fire.
And so he shoots them. And then someone’s, like, “How dare you shoot that person?” And he goes, well, like, “The government told me to.” There’s an element of this that… really is the facts, like the government actually just gave him a badge and a gun and approved him and gave him policies that he’s supposed to operate by. And so, in a sense, the government just told him to, and that is an actual defense. Like, if that wasn’t in place, then you’d have to have other legal justifications other than… the government told him.
Maybe in court, they would say “No, no, this was urgent enough” or “We would we would break the normal rules,” that kind of thing. Military is the same way.
Now, the government’s flawed. So the government might tell you to do something, and they’re wrong. Like in military, there could be a war that’s unjust, and saying the government told you to isn’t a good enough excuse, because there is a God in Heaven who disapproves.
But if God Himself actually tells you, and He’s like, “Hey, I am the ultimate governor of all of life, and I have judicially said that person is going to die, and I’m telling you to do it,” yeah.
Now, historically, as a Christian, do I expect this to happen? Not really.
Biblically, does it happen? Do we have, like, is the Apostle Paul, like, every few years, he’s just, like, turns into Jason Bourne and he’s, like, “God told me to kill Simon the Sorcerer”? No. No, the worst thing the apostles have done was to tell someone you’re not part of our church anymore if you’re going to keep living in sin like that. You know, God takes care of them.
Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world, otherwise my servants would fight, so we don’t fight to establish the Christianity… to establish the kingdom.” Like, this is “God told me not to.” In other words, I don’t, because God told me not to.
So, as a Christian, in principle, if God tells you to kill someone, yes, you should. It’s God.
But in practical reality, I really don’t expect this to happen. Not that there could never be an exception, but if anybody comes up to me, and says, “God told me to kill so-and-so,” my default is to think they’re probably wrong, because there’s a lot more weirdos out there than there are people that God is telling to do something like that. There’s my answer.
In short, if Christians think God is telling them to kill someone, Mike Winger believes they should go through with it. But he doesn’t think it’ll happen. But—and Winger irresponsibly fails to point this out—there’s literally no way to tell the difference between the “weirdos” and those who are actually speaking to God, which means this all just boils down to whether you approve of the murderer and agree with who the victim(s) should be.
This is all a theoretical game for Winger. But by pretending people can actually speak with God, he’s suggesting there are times when the voices in believers’ heads require follow-through instead of serious psychiatric help. There’s no way to discern the people using God as an excuse from those carrying out the Christian God’s hit list, which is a major flaw in this thought experiment.
Instead of telling the truth and admitting God doesn’t send those murder messages to anyone, he literally tells people who genuinely believe God wants them to murder people to go through with it. Because that’s what his faith taught him to say.
Winger does this because he’s already given himself an out. If someone murders her children or strangers or anyone else, then says they acted on the Christian God’s orders, Winger will just dismiss them and say they were deluded. This all just boils down to whether a murder is acceptable to him. And he’s admitting to his nearly half-a-million followers that there are times when that will happen.
It tells you a lot about his broken theology.
(via Godless Engineer)