Who is the God of the Bible - the One we believe in? What is
he like?
I wonder how important this question is. Does it matter to
know what he is like? What difference will it make if we know and that we know?
Sometimes it seems that the God of the Old Testament and the New Testament is
so very different.
The God of the Old Testament seems to be a harsh ruler that
is looking for any opportunity to strike his people down – the God of the Law. In
some sense it is not too bad – it is clear cut. If you do good you will be fine.
The problem is that, should you break the law, you’re in for big trouble. God seems to be so harsh, unloving, uncaring. Many things that happen (sometime
even by God’s command) in the Old Testament are very, shall we say, ‘unchristian’.
As Bright, an Old Testament theologian, says, “There is much in the Old
Testament – and it ought frankly be admitted – that offends the Christian’s
conscience”.
Have a look, for what it is worth, at what Dawkins, the
outspoken atheist, has to say about the Old Testament God.
Maybe it is important that we ask ourselves again what ‘kind’
of God we’re dealing with (what ‘kind’ of God we’re worshiping) and how important
it is for us to know. As Bright says, we might
end up worshipping the wrong god.
Welcome to the blogo-sphere, Basie! Some good questions in your inaugural post - looking forward to some answers!
ReplyDeleteBight's comment is interesting. I wonder, though, why it might be that Christians are offended by much in the Old Testament. Might it be that our view of God is too small - that we've "domesticated" our view of God to the point where he is more of a grand-father figure than the Sovereign Lord?
Perhaps Hebrews 12:18-29, reflecting on OT Israel's experience of God in comparison with that of Christians is a good place to start addressing the question of what "kind" of God we serve.....
Hey Basie, thanks for the invite to this site.
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of God do we worship? I have heard people say that Christianity suffers from schizophrenia with a 'bad' God in the Old Testament and a 'good' God in the New. Was it Marcion who wanted to get rid of all references to the 'Jewish' God from Christianity because he was evil? And then there are the Gnostics. Don't get me started on the Gnostics...(but since its come up...)
I think that we have moved into a new Gnostic era with the High Priestess Oprah preaching her non-specific non-judgemental idea of god as a benign force. Jesus as a proto-Gahndi, an insightful Spock-like being without the Vulcan death-grip...but with the mind-meld so He knows what we feel!
For me, God in the Old Testament and the Emmanuel in the New mirror each other. Want wrath of God? Check-out Jesus in the Temple court with a cat-o'-nine-tails.
We have given the world a nice Jesus, meek and mild, almost insipid. For example, Christmas is popular 'cause we can keep Jesus in the manger; innocent, harmless, non-threatening. Easter isn't popular for the same reason; a bloodied man demanding our attention. He threatens our equilibrium from the Cross.
(An aside: imagine if all our nativity scenes were realistic? Imagine if we sprinkled goat urine and cow dung around the manger? If we had a Mary, soiled with after-birth, and pale from loss of blood? An anxious Joseph worried about his wife and infant son surviving infection and the cold? A manger scene as confronting as a bloodied Cross: would Christmas still be as popular?)
We like our Jesus nice. People like to quote Jesus' "...let he who is without sin cast the first stone." But the last bit where Jesus says to the woman, "Neither do I condemn you:GO AND SIN NO MORE." No, that last bit never gets a guernsey.
A judgmental Jesus? An angry, righteous Jesus? An "I am the (only) way, the (only) truth, and the (only) light" Jesus? Oprah would much prefer John Lennon...and so would too many other people. Imagine there's no heaven...and by default no one to call us to account.
Thanks for your comments Jim and Nic.
ReplyDeleteYea, I wonder whether we're not more in the business of creating god(s) in our image than being changed to reflect God's. The difficulty is that we "children of our time" and it is not easy to distinguish whether we read our ideas of God into the text or whether we falling back on a previous generation’s (being children of their time) ideas of God. I come from a strong ‘legalistic’ background and because I saw and experienced what it did and come to realise that it misses God’s grace, I tend to steer far away from this thinking. At the same time, I see a new ‘gospel’, inclusive and tolerant without any understanding of reverence for or truth of God.
At this stage, my contemplation will focus on what God is like as portrayed by the narrators of the Old Testament – trying to see how they view and portrayed God. However, I’m still a long way off. Thanks for taking the time to join my journey.