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From: homeier@aero.ARPA (Peter Homeier)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: The horrifying Old Testament
Message-ID: <501@aero.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 11-Oct-85 17:24:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: aero.501
Posted: Fri Oct 11 17:24:41 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 15-Oct-85 10:43:08 EDT
References: <627@dicomed.UUCP>
Reply-To: homeier@aero.UUCP (Peter Homeier)
Organization: The Aerospace Corp., El Segundo, CA
Lines: 168
Summary: 

[this line is thrown in the teeth of any line-eaters around!]

Kathleen Cornelson writes

> I was raised in a Christian home and truly believed in a loving,
> holy and good God.  As I grew older my beliefs led me to read the
> Bible, that I might "meditate on the word". As I read the Old
> Testament I became more and more horrified. The many violent and
> cruel acts which God demanded of his chosen people seem so
> inconsistent with the gentle God I had been taught to believe in.

> ... How do you other
> Christians deal with this. I don't really want to give up the
> religion I grew up with, the God that I truly believe in, but is
> the good and loving God that I believe in the same one
> that they talk about in the Old Testament? I don't think I like
> that God.

Kathleen, thank you for writing this letter, asking about how people
felt about God being shown as so loving in the New Testament, and then
seeing a different image in reading the Old Testament.  I can see that
it may have taken some bravery to pose the question, as it is obviously
so easy for other people to just come down strongly on the side of pro-God,
without really grappling with the problem that you are having.  I feel like
I know some of what you are asking here, having gone through some questioning
like that myself.  Perhaps some of my experiences would be helpful to you.

One thing I would like to stress is that I think that it is wonderful that
you are asking this question, which appears to be something you have been
thinking about for some time.  Some people, out of fear of being thought
unorthodox, would not ask, and might even suppress the wonderings as just
not being proper things to think about.  But I feel that if God is good, as
I believe Him to be, then He is patient with us and will help us to discover
what He is like, if we really do want to know.

In the years while I was growing up, I formed a set of values, by which I
ordered my life as best I could.  This included some things like "No sex
outside marriage" and "No drugs".  It also included "Don't be angry".  For
some reason, I had come to the conviction that to be angry was wrong.  I
suppose some people had been angry with me at some point when I was young,
and I resented that.  Or perhaps I had been angry, and had been punished
for that.  In any case, I just considered anger to be wrong in all
circumstances.

Now when I started getting to know the Lord and reading the Bible, this made
me very puzzled when I read the part about Jesus driving the money-changers
out of the Temple in Jerusalem.  I just could not accept the proposition that
Jesus, who I knew was perfect, could be angry.  When my friends asked me what
I thought Jesus was doing, I said, "He's just being very forceful.".  Well,
perhaps that sounds a little silly to you, but at the time, it was the only
way I could reconcile my set of values with what I saw Jesus doing in the
Bible.

Well, it turns out that in the years since, I have gradually changed my set
of values, hopefully under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  I now feel that
it's all right to be angry in some circumstances.  Certainly there is a wrong
kind of anger, that is filled with hatred and a desire to hurt people.  But I
think that there is also a good anger, which is a rightful indignation at
something bad going on, that spurs one on to help others, to free them from
oppression.

Now this change did not come overnight.  I struggled with this for quite a
while.  Gradually, I came to trust that what the Bible was telling me about
right and wrong was more solid than my own homebrew system.  I don't mean to
imply that I just blindly said, "Well, that's what the Bible says, so I have
to believe that.".  It was a harder process for me.  I had to feel things out,
to make it my own, what I believed was right and wrong.  But I found the Bible
more and more persuasive the longer I studied it.

I think that a lot of things may not be reconcilable right now between the
Bible and the understandings that any of us have, including me.  I think that
one of the main things that I have gained over the last ten years as a
Christian is a patience, a trust in Him that somehow He really does have a 
good answer to the impossible questions, some answer that really and
completely answers them in a way that fully satisfies, even if I can't
understand it right now.  One of the neatest things I've experienced as a
Christian is having some terrible unanswerable question at some point in my
life, where there seemed for example to be a contradiction in the Bible;
and then some years later discovering the answer to that apparent contradiction
being such a glorious truth that it amazes.  And the wonder is that when I
look at the two scriptures that appeared to be in conflict, I can now see 
that they are like two different views of a single flawless gem, and each
perfectly expresses its view, better than any other way it could be expressed.

I think that the main question you may have to settle now is, do you believe
in Jesus as being who He said He is, the Son of God?  Do you believe that God
raised Him from the dead?  God really is a loving God; I know that because
the Bible says so (like in 1 John!), and also because I experience His love
for me every day, in big ways and little.  I know that there are a lot of
very hard things said in the Old Testament, and I do believe that it is the
same God.  But I think I will suspend judgement on God until I understand
things a little better.  Please don't let things like that block you from
coming to God and getting to know Him.  He has such warmth and loving kindness
ready to shower on you.  You know, God deeply desires our friendship!  He
wants to spend time with us, to love us and be loved by us, as a father with
his dear children.  In 1 John, it says, "God is love".  To me, this isn't
a theological statement, it's a personal statement!  God really does love me!
And He loves you too, Kathleen.

Now when you feel secure in that love, then you feel free to ask God to explain
those things He did in the past, and He won't get mad at you.  You know that
He won't leave you.  I find that He sometimes will not always give me an
answer, though.  Sometimes He says, "Not now, Peter", and sometimes even
"That is not for you to know.".  This can be annoying, but since we have our
basic love relationship as our foundation, I can just go on, trusting Him
that He knows what He's doing.

Now, lest you say that I am dodging your real question, I will try to explain
my understanding, imperfect as it must be.  I don't expect you to accept this
straight off, indeed I would hope you wouldn't, but would seek and think it
out for yourself, checking the Bible for what it says.

One thing that may account for the difference in tone between the two
Testaments is that in many ways the Old Testament was a prefiguring of Christ
and the salvation of the individual through faith.  Thus, the nation of Israel
stands for the individual Christian, and the other Cannanite nations around
stand for various spiritual conditions or influences, for example,
hard-heartedness or wickedness.  We as Christians are encouraged to love the
sinner, but hate the sin.  In the Old Testament, this manifested itself in
warfare between the Jews and the other nations.  It really typifies a person
battling sin in himself.  Of course, those were real nations too, with real
people in them.  But those nations really exemplified those spiritual
conditions that they represent in the allegory.  Those people were incredibly
depraved and wicked.  There was Satan worship going on in the name of Baal,
and children were being sacrificed, and worse.  For those people to die was
just as right as if a mass-murderer were executed today.

There are many attributes of God that I love to think about, like His
goodness, His eternal nature, His ultimate strength.  But one that is
somewhat uncomfortable to think about is God's holiness.  It's all right
that God is holy, perfect, without flaws or imperfections.  But then to
think that He cannot tolerate anything unholy in His presence is frightening.
To think that He cannot tolerate, by His very nature, the existence of sin,
makes me run to the cover of grace that I have in the blood of Jesus, for
I am a very imperfect Christian.  But then, under that covering, I have come
to see that this is not out of some wierd kind of pride, where God is saying,
"All right, you guys, you do it MY way because I'm king, and that's the way
it is!".  But rather, it is because of God's great love for us, that He sees
the horrible results that sin inevitably drags people into, and His heart
breaks with sorrow when He sees how we maim ourselves and crush whatever is
fine and clean and free in us, for a moment's pleasure.  I am convinced that
God is not so much angry at sin for sin itself, but out of a jealous love for
us, that He would preserve us from the horror that we sow for ourselves.
In fact, I am convinced that all of the times that we see God in some
judgement in the Old Testament, if we really knew the truth, we would see
that those things that seemed so unloving, were really the deepest expressions
of His love for us.  For example, it took great plagues on Egypt to get Pharaoh
to release the children of Israel from slavery.  It took David killing Goliath
to let Israel to live in peace.  And sadly, it took the Babylonian captivity
to humble Israel after it had forgoten God and fallen into cruelty and
oppression of weak people.

I hope that this is of some value to you.  I would just like to end by
resaying two things:  I am really very glad that you have the courage to work
through these things.  However, don't let them keep you away from the arms of
your very loving God.

                              Your friend,

                                  Peter

-- 

Peter Homeier                                  ______
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