Lost Faith after reading the Old Testament

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ConfusedOne

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Hi Everyone!
Before I start I want to say that I’m not trying to be rude or start anything negative I really want help with this because I want my faith back.
I was raised Catholic and have practiced my whole life up until the last 6 months. I went to Mass daily. I feel like my faith has slowly died since reading all of the old testament. Now I feel like my hope is gone because I can’t reconcile that God was that petty and in turn this makes me question the whole bible. I was stunned at some of the things in there that are really ludicrous. Not so much the laws but the scriptures where God was supposedly talking to the old prophets. For example Ezekial. God told him to cook bread with human dung and lay on his side for a year… a woman was raped so she was cut into 12 pieces and scattered around Isreal. King David singing songs about smashing babies heads against rocks. I just can’t believe this is inspired by God. It just seems insane. This stuff I just can’t believe. It’s crazy!~ It made me question my beliefs totally. I came to the conclusion that there was no way I could believe in a God who would tell people to do these things. Now I feel lost and depressed because I can’t take it seriously. I really want to believe God is there but now my faith is smashed. It seems that the more I read the old testament it made me feel that the new testament lost credibility. IF the new testament wasn’t linked to the old testament I would have no problem with what it teaches. I’ve prayed and prayed but I can’t get past this. Its depressing. My priest has tried to understand but there is a major language barrier when I try to explain to him.
 
Really? Because I’ve read it twice and am still Catholic.
 
Hi, could you give a list of the passages?

The Bible is meant to be read in the context of the times, and the culture and way of expression of the times.

We might be able to shed a bit more light on a few of the passages. Ie many cultures cook with dung, and use human dung.

War was bloody , and still is.

Hopefully we can help. As each passage should be linked to passages immediately before and after it, and read in the context of the book it is found in.
 
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Sure! I will compile them tomorrow. I really appreciate your help!!
It wasn’t so much the war passages I understand why that happened. It was things like telling them to do certain things. Like cook with dung and etc. I just have a hard time believing God would tell someone to do something that odd.
 
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I never read the Bible prior to coming back to Christianity two years ago. I started with the Old Testament, and I think- despite my shock at things like you described- it was better for my faith to start with these things. As I read, I knew that things less troubling and more perfect were coming. I kept saying to myself, “Jesus is coming soon.” I read all the books (minus the psalms and proverbs) before completing the New Testament, then went back for those, finishing the Bible in April.

I understand where you’re coming from. Sunday school didn’t prepare me for the Old Testament. A few things help me reconcile the dark passages of Scripture. Firstly, I recognize that this was a different time period, and these cultures were radically different from our own. The explanation I was given, is that God “worked with what He had”- a violent people- and shaped them over the years to prepare them for Jesus and the teachings He brought with him.

Secondly, I acknowledge that God, being all knowing and all good, did what He did for a reason. The reason, I imagine, was to save as many people as possible. One example that comes to mind (I can’t remember the speaker or the verses) is when God commamded the slaughter of a group of people. The speaker I heard provided some background on these people. If I remember correctly, they themselves were a violent people, and they frequently performed child sacrifices. In commanding the extermination of these people, He was both ending their cruel practices, and sparing the children from committing the same evil acts that their parents did. In other words, He was saving their souls. It hurts us today to read about these things, but we have to recognize that God ultimately knows better and does better than any of us.
 
Thom18
A lot of that makes sense! Thank you! I had read the OT a lot growing up. It wasn’t until I started reading up to study a lot of deeper things that I started to really think about some of the passages. I really appreciate your view point it was helpful! <3
 
I was going to suggest reading it again. The first time I went through it was just to do that…get through it. It was hard. The second time I went through it I took it slower and read part of the old, part of Job or the Psalms, and part of the NT. It was eye opening how much connection there was between the OT and the NT. Like God telling one of the Kings to go ahead and ask him for anything and the King said no I’ll not test God… so God said then I will tell you-- a virgin shall conceive and have a son… wow. I’ll have to look up exactly which books I’m referring to… but there were so many ties. Another was Abraham taking Isaac up on the mountain to make a sacrifice… and when he got there God said don’t lay a hand on the boy. And Isaac said but father where is the sacrifice and Abraham said God will provide. And sure enough there was a ram caught in the bushes. Then when Jesus went to be baptized by John in the Jordan and John said to the people–there is the Lamb of God! Another Wow moment for me.
 
Petra <3
I’m thinking of going through the whole thing again. But thought I would read the gospels first. I really liked Malachi and Daniel.
 
ConfusedOne said:
I really want to believe God is there but now my faith is smashed. It seems that the more I read the old testament it made me feel that the new testament lost credibility. IF the new testament wasn’t linked to the old testament I would have no problem with what it teaches. I’ve prayed and prayed but I can’t get past this. Its depressing. My priest has tried to understand but there is a major language barrier when I try to explain to him.
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You have been told that unless some one guides you, you won’t understand Acts 8:31. But CAF is a good resource, used it. I was indeed enlightened over the years here. I just hope the new platform won’t discourage the old timers from continuing sharing their wisdom.
 
Ezekial. God told him to cook bread with human dung and lay on his side for a year
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Eh… God told him to use human dung as a fuel. It’s still not uncommon in Europe and around the world to use cow dung as a fuel for heating stoves (maybe not so much for cooking in the West), but human dung was regarded as unclean because of God’s command that it be buried. This whole passage serves two purposes: as repentant penitence under the old Covenant and as a prophecy for the siege of Jerusalem and what the people of Jerusalem would face when that occurred, namely, that “clean food” would not be available by the end of the 390 day siege (not that the number of days Ezekiel lays on his side is not only about repentance, but also represents the number of days the close siege lasted). It’s important to note that he’s not eating bread cooked with dung as the dung INSIDE the bread, but the dung being used to fuel the oven is supposed to be human.
a woman was raped so she was cut into 12 pieces and scattered around Israel.
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Erm… not quite. Your use of the word “so” implies an incorrectly causality between the events. The woman was a concubine who was being escorted by a levite priest. On the way home, the two were staying with an old man in a village when men came and wanted to rape the men. They (cowardly) gave the woman to the men, who raped and killed her. She did not die by being cut into 12 pieces. Her body was then cut into 12 pieces which were sent to the tribes of Israel as a notification of the brutality that had been visited upon the woman (not BECAUSE she was raped). The tribes then mobilized against the tribe of Benjamin and fought a civil war when the Benjamites wouldn’t produce the rapists to face justice. In fact, the Benjamites were almost wiped out in consequence for the raping and killing of the woman.
King David singing songs about smashing babies heads against rocks
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From my understanding, King David didn’t write psalm 137. Psalm 137 is by a Jewish prisoner in Babylonian captivity… Babylon being an evil empire which had visited great atrocities on the Jews in their attacks. The Jewish prisoner, who knows that the fall of Babylon is already prophesied, is personally responding to the taunts of his captors with wishing that they experience the same atrocities. At no point does it say that God endorsed the author’s opinion, but you’ll find that often in the psalms: authors working out their various emotions in many different ways. There are quite a few lamentations, for example, that say that God is far from His people and forgotten them. We know this isn’t objectively true, but as an expression of human emotion for the author we are seeing what the author is feeling in that time.
 
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actually old and new testament shows the two faces of God …that is one shows the strength and the other the mercy…u may find difficult while reading old testament because people f that time does not understand what is showing other side of face when one beats us on one of the side because of the mentality…God needed utmost respect as He is Holy…therefore when for people at that times having won in the war was a sign of greatest victory whereas people don’t think how many people have died of our country or of others …in each time of humanity God wants respect which is holy in the manner of people…for example killing animals for God in OT for people it was like offering in the best way they can but we cannot accept this in this 20th C…bt fr us like serving others is considered as holy which were not as mentality of old people at that time…so we may find cruel bt its fact …this all shows the change of human thinking and says to us it is not only following orders but to do it with full heart to God…thts y Jesus ws angry when he found pharisees used to pray just to show others though was a rule or a law…but active paticipation is required
 
promethian_rule said:
Ezekial. God told him to cook bread with human dung and lay on his side for a year
Eh… God told him to use human dung as a fuel.
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Interestingly wikipedia says this:

Human feces can in principle also be dried and used as a fuel source if they are collected in a type of dry toilet, for example an incinerating toilet. Since 2011, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is supporting the development of such toilets as part of their “Reinvent the Toilet Challenge” to promote safer, more effective ways to treat human excreta.[12] The omni-processor is another example of using human feces contained in faecal sludge or sewage sludge as a fuel source.
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First, reactions like this are one reason why at least some Church clergy have discouraged people from reading the Bible on their own.

Second, I agree that you need to read it in the context of the time. Most commentators take the poo bread passage as Ezekiel being asked to cook the bread over a fire that used human poo as fuel, not to eat the poo itself. Dung has been used as fuel for a fire pretty often in human existence, although it’s generally animal dung, like dried cow patties and the like. People were using cow dung in the US in the 1800s. When there is no wood and no natural gas pipeline, you gotta use something. Using human dung is a bit more problematic because of the bigger ugh factor and because as I understand it, it was ritually unclean. From a practical standpoint, I am not sure that anyone has done any studies on whether cooking over a human poo fire smells worse or is worse for your health than cooking over a cow or camel poo fire.

As for the woman who was raped and cut in 12 pieces, her rape is presented as an abomination, and the sending of the pieces was to show that all areas of Israel were responsible for this bad act. The rape is presented as a terrible abomination, which is how we also view rape today, so I’m not sure what your hangup is, unless you’re concerned that a loving God shouldn’t permit a lady to be raped, which is a different issue.

We just had the discussion in another thread about how the OT Is an insular and frequently violent story of a people struggling to survive oppression that needs to be read in the context of its time but is occsionally hard to handle because of the level of violence and vengeance and weird (to us) rules and everything else. It can be related to the New Testament but sometimes that requires a good commentary, an open mind and perhaps creative thinking. If you’re going to lose your faith over it, read the New Testament instead since that is the new covenant that we’re now following, and get your OT readings at Mass where the priest can explain them so you don’t get squicked out.
 
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A lot of people commenting are analyzing the detail of the stories and trying to reconcile them or re-interpret them. While this approach is possible, I don’t think it’s the best way to answer the original poster or answer the general question.

Read Dei Verbum, one of the reports from Vatican II: “…the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation."

The catachism says something very similar (naturally) on p. 32:
“In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words.

In order to discover the sacred authors’ intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking, and narrating then current. ‘For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression.’”

Or you could read Garry Wills, who, when discussing all the differences in details in the Resurrection stories in the four Gospels, simply says “So what?” Any logical Catholic would say the same thing. So what.

So what is “truth” in the Bible? The message that leads us to salvation. Instead of analyzing every little detail about some incident that happened 2500-3000 years ago, you should be taking a broader approach: “What is the point of this story? What is the author trying to illustrate?” Without having read any of the passages the OP refers to, I’ll suggest that almost all stories have a very simple and straightforward moral, usually something like “Obey God” or “Put God first” or “God is all powerful.” The details of the story are irrelevant. To emphasize those is simply to show you don’t understand the main message.

If you read the chapter on inspriation and revelation in the Jerome Biblical Commentary, the author (a Jesuit) actually comes right out and says the OT contains “moral error” (I could be wrong on the exact term, but that’s the meaning). Which makes perfect sense. Keep in mind that religious concepts evolve over time. What might be acceptable, and even commendable, in 1000 BC (King Solomon having 1,000 concubines, etc.) would be seen as unacceptable and even sinful even 1,000 years later, let alone 3,000 years later. Morality evolves.
 
To my shame, I’ve never read the Bible cover to cover. This post has inspired me to do so.
 
Erikaspirit16 said:
A lot of people commenting are analyzing the detail of the stories and trying to reconcile them or re-interpret them. While this approach is possible, I don’t think it’s the best way to answer the original poster or answer the general question.
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Yes… and no.

The general intent, I would hope, in providing explanations to the particular passages that troubled the OP the most, would be to demonstrate that it’s necessary to understand the passages in their contexts: where they fit in with the rest of the story in the particular narrative, not to mention where they fit with respect to the people and cultures of the times and places in the narrative.

I think that this is the general answer that we can provide.

On the other hand, the approach that says “don’t analyze every little detail” doesn’t seem appropriate, either. Perhaps it should be “recognize that, in every little detail, a broader narrative is being painted, and realize that the message of salvation from God is being depicted as it is lived out by His people – sometimes lived out faithfully, and sometimes lived out poorly.”

The notion of the “evolution of morality” – or the assertion that there’s “moral error in the OT” – doesn’t really wash, either. If you’re simply saying that immoral acts are described in the OT, though, that’s reasonable.
 
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