I think there is a very fair question that any non-Christian can ask a Christian, and while I believe there is an answer to it I don't think it's an easy question. The question is: How can the god revealed in the Old Testament be the same god revealed in the New Testament? In the Old Testament God was going to war all the time, killing people left and right, nearly destroying all of existence, and requiring His people to follow very strict orders. Then we hit the New Testament and God is loving and compassionate telling us to turn the other cheek.
A couple years ago I received an email from a friend of mine asking me for my opinion on this because she had a friend that had sent her an email with his objections. Since I don't know who he is I'll just post his objection anonymously...
I have started to read the Bible, not to convert but just to know more about Christianity. How can you (you and every other Christian) reconcile the God of the Old Testament with the teachings of Christ? I am reading about God ordering massacres, financial rewards, condoning slavery, and describing himself as a "jealous God". Oh, and probably the worst for anyone on the Right, God ordered a tax on the people! Blasphemy!
My response I broke into two parts: (1) how can the God of the Old and New Testaments be the same God and (2) how could a just God do such "awful" things in the Old Testament (basically dealing with each specific objection he listed). Since my answer was pretty long I'm just going to briefly handle the first question and if anyone wants to read the entire response they can click here to read it.
The first question’s short answer is that God is both a just God and a loving God, and that the Old Testament focuses on His just side while the New Testament focuses on His loving side. This shifts the first question to whether it is possible to be both perfectly just and perfectly loving simultaneously. Now if there is a god either he is unjust and loving, just and unloving, or just and loving. The first two options are possible, but not worth spending time pondering. If god was unjust then good and bad would have no value because god would just do whatever he desires regardless of anyone’s actions, and if he is unloving than why should we expect anything good from him. So I’ll assume that it is intuitive that if a god exists he must be just and loving (otherwise god exists but nothing we can do on earth has any effect on him…which I find odd to think that an all-powerful being would create something and then be completely detached from it).
In order to illustrate how it is possible to be loving and just I’ll use an analogy. Let’s say that someone has committed a crime and the judge is about to sentence him. The judge would be just by handing down the harshest punishment possible (that is what the law requires), and the father of the criminal could show his love for his son by paying the fine to keep the son out of jail. Now if the judge was also the father than he would be both just and loving in this situation. This is exactly what Christ did when he died on the cross for our sins. God’s justice requires that sin be punished, but his love compels Him to redeem us from our sin. On earth we like to differentiate between sins and rank them based on which ones are the “worst”, but that is not what either the Old or New Testament says. It states quite clearly that any sin requires the punishment of death.
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 6:23 (NIV)
As for the Old Testament crack open Leviticus and you’re lucky if you can’t find the words “surely be put to death.” Note that death is not just death on earth, but a separation from God, eternal death. This is why Christ had to die on the cross to pay the price so that that we could be reconciled to Him. Otherwise we could not receive God’s love without God being unjust had He not paid the price Himself. This at least shows that it is possible to be perfectly just and loving, and how God accomplished this for us.
This answer obviously leads to the more difficult question of whether God's actions in the Old Testament are just (ignoring the irony around the fact that His creation is trying to judge God's actions). My response handles that question by focusing on the specific objections: God's vengeance and jealousy, slavery issues, financial responsibility, and God's politics (well actually just addressing the stereotype that Christianity = Republican). Give it a read if you're bored or actually interested.
A couple years ago I received an email from a friend of mine asking me for my opinion on this because she had a friend that had sent her an email with his objections. Since I don't know who he is I'll just post his objection anonymously...
I have started to read the Bible, not to convert but just to know more about Christianity. How can you (you and every other Christian) reconcile the God of the Old Testament with the teachings of Christ? I am reading about God ordering massacres, financial rewards, condoning slavery, and describing himself as a "jealous God". Oh, and probably the worst for anyone on the Right, God ordered a tax on the people! Blasphemy!
My response I broke into two parts: (1) how can the God of the Old and New Testaments be the same God and (2) how could a just God do such "awful" things in the Old Testament (basically dealing with each specific objection he listed). Since my answer was pretty long I'm just going to briefly handle the first question and if anyone wants to read the entire response they can click here to read it.
The first question’s short answer is that God is both a just God and a loving God, and that the Old Testament focuses on His just side while the New Testament focuses on His loving side. This shifts the first question to whether it is possible to be both perfectly just and perfectly loving simultaneously. Now if there is a god either he is unjust and loving, just and unloving, or just and loving. The first two options are possible, but not worth spending time pondering. If god was unjust then good and bad would have no value because god would just do whatever he desires regardless of anyone’s actions, and if he is unloving than why should we expect anything good from him. So I’ll assume that it is intuitive that if a god exists he must be just and loving (otherwise god exists but nothing we can do on earth has any effect on him…which I find odd to think that an all-powerful being would create something and then be completely detached from it).
In order to illustrate how it is possible to be loving and just I’ll use an analogy. Let’s say that someone has committed a crime and the judge is about to sentence him. The judge would be just by handing down the harshest punishment possible (that is what the law requires), and the father of the criminal could show his love for his son by paying the fine to keep the son out of jail. Now if the judge was also the father than he would be both just and loving in this situation. This is exactly what Christ did when he died on the cross for our sins. God’s justice requires that sin be punished, but his love compels Him to redeem us from our sin. On earth we like to differentiate between sins and rank them based on which ones are the “worst”, but that is not what either the Old or New Testament says. It states quite clearly that any sin requires the punishment of death.
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 6:23 (NIV)
As for the Old Testament crack open Leviticus and you’re lucky if you can’t find the words “surely be put to death.” Note that death is not just death on earth, but a separation from God, eternal death. This is why Christ had to die on the cross to pay the price so that that we could be reconciled to Him. Otherwise we could not receive God’s love without God being unjust had He not paid the price Himself. This at least shows that it is possible to be perfectly just and loving, and how God accomplished this for us.
This answer obviously leads to the more difficult question of whether God's actions in the Old Testament are just (ignoring the irony around the fact that His creation is trying to judge God's actions). My response handles that question by focusing on the specific objections: God's vengeance and jealousy, slavery issues, financial responsibility, and God's politics (well actually just addressing the stereotype that Christianity = Republican). Give it a read if you're bored or actually interested.
2 comments:
I really like your analogy. A lot of times God is like a love-sick father. Although we disobeyed him over and over again, he still wants to give us chance so that we could come back home to him. His love for us certainly hurts him most when we fail, and there is no way that we deserve that kind of love. So grace is all that we should ask for.
Although we tend to spend a lot of time and efforts on trying to understand God and rationalize his doings, sometimes we only need to recognize his existence in our life. He is here, and that's enough, like what happened in "Job". God didn't answer any of Job's questions, however he was perfectly content.
Oh well, I guess I read too much Philip Yancey.
I agree with Sherry. At least about the fact that we cannot rationalize God's actions as human. He does not act as a human or with human motivations. His motivations and plans are so far above us that sometimes we couldn't fathom the simplests of his ideas.
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