Question about violence in the OT

[goout]

Critical point.

OT = God getting sick and tired of humans unable to obey his laws

NT = God lovingly offering his only son so that man can have a decent chance to get to heaven. God didn’t have to do it. Remember in Genesis it was fall of Adam/Eve that inclined man to sin , thus so many couldn’t abide Gods law in OT

Tends toward Marcionism.
God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. In fact God simply is…without reference to “then” and “now”.
Christ is God’s full, and final, revelation of himself. What you see Christ doing is the way God is. The way you see Christ treat violence, sin, death…that is God.
God reveals his nature fully in Christ. If you read of a God that is incompatible with Jesus Christ, that is not God.

 

[Jen7]

Well he’s not. I can’t change him!

 

[Jen7]

God reveals his nature fully in Christ. If you read of a God that is incompatible with Jesus Christ, that is not God.

He’s just reading the Bible & questioning how the OT deeds of God mesh with the NT words of Christ (such as turn the other cheek, for ex.) He’s not reading heretical exegesis.

 

[goout]

Well he’s not. I can’t change him!

This is orthodox Catholic thought on Catholic biblical interpretation:

So is this from the Vatican:
http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedi...ts/hf_ben-xvi_exh_20100930_verbum-domini.html sections 42 and 44 especially deal with this issue directly.

 

[Jen7]

This is orthodox Catholic thought on Catholic biblical interpretation:

Bishop Barron on Violence in the Bible

This. is. perfect.

I just emailed it to him. THANK YOU!!

 

[Genesis315]

God is the Lord of life. He gives life as a gift, so it is not unjust for him to take it away.

The temporal punishments and chastisements in the OT were figures of what Jesus revealed. Sins that led to death, like idolatry, etc. are generally sins that lead to damnation. The destruction of whole societies showed how such sins could corrupt the whole society. The eternal fate of such souls is not revealed in Scripture.

Sins are no longer punished with these pedagogical punishments, since the real, eternal consequences (which are much more terrifying) have been revealed by Christ. Such commands by God in the OT were extraordinary in their own day, and certainly are not operative now. In fact, since revelation has ended, they never can be again.

 

[goout]

God is the Lord of life. He gives life as a gift, so it is not unjust for him to take it away.

This is the standard rebuttal, along with “the innocent weren’t really innocent”.

It’s true that God gives and takes life. But that’s not the objection of her father and it doesn’t address the problem.
The objection of her father and others is this:
God commanding one group of human beings to kill other innocent human beings, and taking that passage of scripture in fundamentalist literalist fashion.

That’s the issue. It’s an issue of the proper interpretation of scripture in context, and a proper notion of what inspiration is.
No one disputes God’s omnipotence.

 

[Genesis315]

God commanding one group of human beings to kill other innocent human beings, and taking that passage of scripture in fundamentalist literalist fashion.

St. Thomas addresses this as follows:

The person by whose authority a thing is done really does the thing as Dionysius declares (Coel. Hier. iii). Hence according to Augustine (De Civ. Dei i, 21), “He slays not who owes his service to one who commands him, even as a sword is merely the instrument to him that wields it.” Wherefore those who, at the Lord’s command, slew their neighbors and friends, would seem not to have done this themselves, but rather He by whose authority they acted thus: just as a soldier slays the foe by the authority of his sovereign, and the executioner slays the robber by the authority of the judge.
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3064.htm

Obviously there is room for abuse here, such as a false prophet saying God commands certain deaths, when He does not. I imagine in those times God made it clear to His prophets, whose credibility He had proven.

In our time, since revelation has ended and God no longer gives such commands, we shouldn’t be fooled by anyone nowadays falsely claiming such.

 

[De_Maria]

This should be a warning to our nation, today.

 

[MiserereMeiDei]

God made israel wait 400 years for the sins of the inhabitants of the land to fill up before taking them out of Egypt and removing the 7 nations from the land of israel. 400 years of sin is a lot of time to repent. They didn’t.

 

[De_Maria]

My father was baptized Catholic but not raised in the faith.

Like me. I was baptized Catholic as an infant. But only my Grandma practiced the faith. Everyone else gave it lipservice. So, by the time I was a teenager, I was an atheist.

For years my mom has prayed for him to take RCIA.

You should all continue to pray for him.

This summer he signed up for his first ever Bible Study at their parish. He is SO disturbed by all the violence God seems to enact (the flood in Noah’s time, the plagues in Egypt, battles God told His people to initiate, etc.) He came to me last week genuinely confused.

You might try one of Scott Hahn’s Bible Studies.

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HOW could God not just permit but encourage and initiate these things??!

1. To punish evil nations and eliminate them.
2. To establish a Godly nation, in Israel, which would be a beacon
   of wisdom and knowlege that other nations would imitate.

I did not know what to say. Do ya’ll??

Isaiah 55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways—oracle of the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways,
my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

I’m not as gentle as your dad. But even I had to step back and wonder why, all these people who claim to know God, say that God is so gentle. God loves us. But God’s love for us is very tough. He doesn’t shy away from telling us so.

Hebrews 12:8 If you are without discipline, in which all have shared, you are not sons but bastards.

There is a reason why it is said that “fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” These things that we read in the OT are meant as a warning to us.

Deuteronomy 12:28 Be careful to heed all these words I command you today, that you and your descendants after you may forever prosper for doing what is good and right in the sight of the Lord, your God.

Warning Against Abominable Practices. 29 When the Lord, your God, cuts down from before you the nations you are going in to dispossess, and you have dispossessed them and are settled in their land, 30 be careful that you not be trapped into following them after they have been destroyed before you. Do not inquire regarding their gods, “How did these nations serve their gods, so I might do the same.”

1 Corinthians 10:10 Do not grumble as some of them did, and suffered death by the destroyer. 11 These things happened to them as an example, and they have been written down as a warning to us, upon whom the end of the ages has come. 12 Therefore, whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall.

Yes, God did eliminate many nations and used the Hebrews to eliminate many others. He did it for the good of mankind. And if we’re not careful, He might do it again.

That will probably not be the answer you are looking for. But, it’s the truth.

 

[MiserereMeiDei]

That’s the issue. It’s an issue of the proper interpretation of scripture in context, and a proper notion of what inspiration is

The context is israel conquering the land and cleansing it of idolatry and other sin that had been rising to heaven for over 400 years. Nations are judged whole, the innocent with the guilty.

 

[BT3241]

Israel did not follow Gods command and in the end they were corrupted by having mercy on some of the inhabitants of the Land.

 

[MiserereMeiDei]

Sadly so. 9,10

 

[tommy37]

Jen, I was first a Christian convert, then a Catholic convert and this used to bother me at one time as well. Now, it doesn’t bother me anymore so there is hope for your father.

One thing that got through to me was seeing it like this:

Imagine for a moment you have the power to create your own little people. You have a large property of 200 acres and you create your own people and set them up in your woods and they live there. You simply adore your little friends and they love you in return for giving them life. But in time these little people form themselves into tribes and begin killing each other. They completely forget about you. Then they begin doing really terrible things like killing their children in a bizarre effort to placate their “gods”. This is extremely upsetting to you because you don’t want to see them putting their little babies into a fire. They also are practicing really offensive sexual acts with other little creatures of the forest and practicing incest with each other. They are wreaking havoc in your woods. Also, you know there are no other “gods”. You are the one who gave them life and your woods to live in out of love. What they are doing is insane! They are not living in truth or love.

In time you have an intervention with one of the tribes to try to get through to the rest of the tribes. But they won’t listen. They have been warring with each other so long, the only thing they understand is force. Meanwhile the sacrifices continue, kids are stilling being burnt to death. What do you do? Some questions can be asked: Do you have the right to use the tribe you intervened with to kick the wayward tribes out of your woods using force, using violence? You can’t let this injustice go on. It goes against all goodness and decency. Do you have the right to destroy them all completely if you so desire? After all, you created them. It’s your property. It’s your plan. Ultimately, what say do they have in the matter? They’re creatures. And you have the power to raise up again any of those who are truly innocent someday.

This helps to take us out of our limited viewpoint and see it from God’s perspective.

Another thing that I had to learn in order to get past it was to realize that this was a really violent world. The only language these ancient peoples understood was power and violence–and success on the battlefield was really seen as proof that God must be on your side. So that’s exactly what God did. As Moses’ father-in-law Jethro remarked after Moses told him of all that God had done to Pharoah and the Egyptians, “Now I know that the Lord is greater than all the gods…” Ultimately, we have to pull ourselves out of our comfortable world of the 21st century America and try to see what it was like back then…continued…

 

[tommy37]

Continued…
I used to get upset at the command to kill all men, women and children. But we have to realize, it’s not like these kids were just sitting around innocently doing crafts and drinking juice. These kids were used to war. These people, the kids included, were knee deep in a violent, sexually depraved society rife with idolatry. There was probably rampant sexual abuse going on of both women and children. There probably were rampant diseases. The women and children were probably going through hell. So again, to get through to these people who were unrepentant God used the Israelites to get through to them. Sadly, these kids were destined to do the same things they were learning—sacrificing children and sexual corruption. This was a thoroughly corrupt society. There had to be an interruption of this cycle.

We have to come to trust God’s judgment. For instance, in Genesis 18, God assures Abraham that he wouldn’t destroy Sodom if there were only 10 righteous people there.
After all, the Bible tells us that they were cut down in the body but it says nothing about their souls. In the biblical view what happens to the body is not that important. It’s the soul that truly matters. The Bible doesn’t say that these people were all damned to hell. Were many of these ancient people eventually preached to by Christ when he went to preach to the dead? Who knows, maybe. One thing we know is that God is merciful. So maybe they had a chance to hear the Gospel as well. Again, we just have to trust that God knows what he is doing.

Paul Copan is a Protestant author who has written much about this issue. I haven’t found a Catholic author who has written about this. He has a book titled Is God a Moral Monster? I read an article of his on the subject but I just tried to find it and couldn’t. Maybe you will have better luck. But you could read the book and just highlight certain sections for your dad to read.

Also he has to understand, the Old Testament is not meant to be picked up and read without any instruction. It’s too complex for us. It is dealing with a way of life that is so far away from us as modern Americans. There needs to be instruction. I would highly recommend Scott Hahn’s A Father Who Keeps His Promises. This book shows the big picture of salvation history without getting tied down in the weeds of trying to make sense of it all yourself. It shows God’s love above all things. Another good book is Walking With God: A Journey Through the Bible by Jeff Cavins and Tim Gray. These books show us how to read the Bible as a whole, not taking things out of context.

Ultimately, we have to get to a point where we either trust that God was moving things forward, paving the way for the eventual coming of the Messiah or he is a sadistic killer. I think given all the other things we know, all the other verses about love and caring for the poor, and holiness of the saints for the last 2,000 years, we can come to see God as trustworthy. The question we have to ask is: Am I going to let how God dealt with ancient warring peoples affect how God wants to deal with me today?

I hope this helps!

 

[Jen7]

I hope this helps!

Tremendously! Thank you!!

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

No doubt. And it’s something each of us has to do on our own, including Jen7’s dad/ What I tend to see from apologists regarding these parts of the Bible are several tactics: One, sweeping things under the rug. Two, going full on into moral relativism (something Catholics are supposed to avoid). Three, and most prominently, is couching everything in a vagueness to draw attention away from the troubling passages to ones that call for niceness without specifics.

An analogy I’ve used before is a politician who claims to support veterans. That politician might say some nice things on their behalf, but when it comes to detailed action it tells a much different story (e.g. cutting finding for VA hospitals, or putting troops into unnecessary, dangerous, unending danger). The vague calls for niceness of God the Son do not trump the detailed list of items doubters cite regarding God the Father.

And if you actually read it you’ll find God has compassion on them all the time in the Old Testament. Also, the Son and Holy Spirit are both actively engaged in the Old Testament as well. God doesn’t change.

Can you provide specific examples of this compassion?

I can tell you selectively read scripture from this point. The Egyptians themselves chose to enslave the Hebrews because they were afraid of them the Pharaoh then personally chose to kill the children of the Hebrews.
As justice for these acts God hardened the pharaohs heart and punished them by also killing their children.

So every single Egyptian man and woman young and old was for enslaving the Hebrews? Every family who lost a firstborn deserved to have their firstborn male die? I thought the idea of blaming an entire group of people for the acts of one or a few went out with Nostra aetate.

And there’s no reason for God to have hardened Pharaoh’s heart, keeping him from releasing the Hebrews from slavery, except to extend the plot and kill more people.

Not if you read scripture. Everything is actually perfectly proportionate.

In the example I gave the passage about a man who was killed just for picking up sticks. Why do you feel this is not a disproportionate punishment? Do you feel such a punishment from an unchanging god should be used today?

God set forth a detailed set of instructions as to how his people could obtain and abuse slaves,

Again, this makes it clear you haven’t read it.

Are you saying that Exodus 21 and parts of Leviticus do not give specific examples as to one can obtain and abuse slaves? Why specifically do you feel I have not read it? What do you see that excuses those passages?

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

It’s always interesting to me when people are told to run and hide from disconfirming information. I’m sure the Branch Davidians told their followers the same thing, and Catholicism simply is better than that (even though I disagree with it).

Nothing makes an idea look weak then working doubly hard to avoid a dissenting opinion. Truth does not hide from scrutiny.

Read scripture, fully and completely, and don’t skim through it. You have to read and pay attention.

Yes. Read scripture. Read commentaries. Read books by those who disbelieve. Get the full spectrum of thoughts on a subject. Don’t just listen to one side, because you’ll never be sure if it’s the truth or not. Remain skeptical on all fronts. Be extra skeptical if you read something, and someone tries to tell that it means something else entirely.

Just remember what Satan said to Eve. Do not be like Eve who decided she could become like God and judge for herself what is good or evil.

A non-believer isn’t trying to be God. That’s a canard that goes beyond just being untrue. Non-believers simply stress the incongruity of a loving God seemingly performing very non-loving actions.

No, he’s done what atheists have done (as he is one, it makes sense) where they selectively pick out verses, say, “IVE READ IT!” and then leave off the context.

You can tell by the claims he didn’t read it because he’s leaving off important details.

I’m well-versed on the Bible. Please show thet you came to the conclusion that I hadn’t read the material by something other than you not liking my conclusions.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

Try “Hard Sayings” by Trent Horn. Helped me.

You and I will have to disagree that this a good book to tackle Jen’s dad’s issues on the Bible. I found it to be so riddled with whitewashing and logical leaps that I laughed out loud more multiple times and shouting “What?!” just as often. He should read the book so as to get multiple persepctive, but there’s at least some chance that he finds the defenses in the book as appalling as the passage in the Bible being defended.