Does God order hits on people?

I stopped for a bit to eat earlier today. There was a stack of the local newspaper so I picked one up to read. On the front page was a story that saddened me. There was a photo of an elderly woman who had been murdered.

Her killer was the woman who lived in the apartment above. When the killer was asked why she did it she replied that she was following orders from God.

My view is that she is crazy. I don’t think any deity told her to kill anyone. But I have to wonder how theists know what did, or didn’t happen.

How would a Bible-believing Christian know whether or not God had ordered the woman to murder?

There are two possible ways, that I can think of, both problematic for the Christian. One is that God doesn’t speak to people. That, however, would rule out Moses, Abraham, Paul and many others. Christians regularly say that God speaks to them in some way or another. One of the hymns I remember from my childhood said: “And he walks with me, and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own.”

I’ve had Christians inform me that God told them to witness to me. It hasn’t worked so apparently God got it wrong.

Pat Robertson thinks God gives him weather reports. George Bush thinks God directs his foreign policy. (God’s record is pretty dismal actually.) Christians of all sorts regularly are told to listen to the voice of God. Not only do they talk to him but they expect him to talk to them.

I don’t see how the Christian can claim that God doesn’t speak to people. So that avenue of escape isn’t open.

The other escape hole they have is to argue that God doesn’t order murder. Unfortunately for them the Bible is full of incidents where God allegedly did order murder.

So, if there is a God, and if God speaks to people today, and if God also has a history of commanding the death of sundry types of people, they exactly how do we know that he didn’t order this woman to murder the old woman?

They could technically argue that the Bible isn’t accurate. It may recount God speaking to people and it may have him ordering the killing of people but the real God doesn’t act this way. The Bible got it wrong. But if the Bible got it wrong then precisely where do they get their view of their Christian God? It couldn’t be that God speaks to them as that would put them back into the bind they are attempting to get out of.

My answer to the bind is simple. The woman is crazy. I know she is crazy because there is zero evidence that a god exist and thus no evidence that he speaks to people and orders hits on old women.