1 Samuel 15:3 and the killing of David and Bethsheeba’s innocent child. How does anyone who is religious get past these moral hurdles?
They don't actually read the Bible or understand what it says.
What moral hurdles? Or are you claiming you know the fate of the child after it died or that you can assume the necessary infinite perspective on the incident so as to evaluate every single factor which precipitated the death and every single single outcome and effect resulting from the death and, finally, how that fits into the overall plan it is a part of. Such a perspective is necessary to attempt to pass any ethical judgement on a transcendent, omnipotent God as revealed in scripture. In fact, one can't question God on moral grounds without presupposing he already exists.
Frankly, what's one baby, in comparison to the millions upon millions of innocents that atheism killed in just one century? Talk about moral hurdles.
Who *killed* the child?
What is the hurdle that you speak of?
The Lord, during the time the OT was written, wanted, commanded, that Israel destroy that which was evil.
God is Good, all the time.
His ways are not ours.
It is NOT about being ‘religious’. It IS about trusting in God, accepting Jesus as your Savior.
At the end of it, James T. Kirk allows a woman to be run over by a truck. he not only doesn't stop her from being hit, he stops Doctor McCoy from going to her aid.
From McCoy's point of view (and the point of view of a viewer who only sees the last moments of the episode) kirk has done a truly horrible and evil thing. He has allowed an innocent young woman to die when he could have saved her. What a piece of filth! But anyone who has watched the whole thing knows he did this because if she survives she will start a political movement that prolongs WWII and eventually allows Adolf Hitler to get atomic weapons. Human civilization ends, evil reigns, millions and millions die. Knowing all this, we see that Kirk not only saved the world, he did it at great personal cost because he loved the young woman in question truly and deeply.
God knows the whole story and we don't, so sometimes the things He does seem cruel or out of character when really He's doing good for the long haul that we don't and can't understand.