Struggling with The Tyrannical warrior God of the Old Testement

[MindOverMatter2]

No, no one knows anything as **fact **- it is a matter of faith. The wages of sin are death. They worshiped different gods, inhabited the promised land and were commanded to be destroyed by God. If anyone is in hell, a good case could be argued that they are. God can do what he wants with his creation - like a kid with a sand castle. From the human perspective it seems cruel, and not a universal God but rather a tribal one. He doesn’t have the interest of **all ** men in mind.

The God of the OT doesn’t seem like the God of the NT, Although minus horrible parts i do see a vague description of God that metaphysically resembles the God of the NT despite amphomorphic elements.

 

[jonfawkes]

The God of the OT doesn’t seem like the God of the NT, Although minus horrible parts i do see a vague description of God that metaphysically resembles the God of the NT despite amphomorphic elements.

How do you discount the “horrible parts”?

 

[Della]

No, no one knows anything as **fact **- it is a matter of faith. The wages of sin are death. They worshiped different gods, inhabited the promised land and were commanded to be destroyed by God. If anyone is in hell, a good case could be argued that they are. God can do what he wants with his creation - like a kid with a sand castle. From the human perspective it seems cruel, and not a universal God but rather a tribal one. He doesn’t have the interest of **all ** men in mind.

First of all, we are not all God’s “children” in that we get a free pass for our sins. No loving Father lets his children get away with being bad without correcting them. God wishes us to be perfect as he is perfect but if we deliberately reject him he will not stand in our way.

Secondly, the OT accounts of the destruction of Israel’s enemies say nothing at all about their eternal fate. Certainly those who worshiped false gods knowing it was idolatry would be guilty of that sin, but those who don’t know it’s idolatry couldn’t not be condemned for that.

Thirdly, the Israelites were the decided underdogs who didn’t have great numbers or human power on their side. They were able to defeat their enemies because God gave them the power to do so.

Fourthly, the pagan nations were all descendants of Noah and his sons. As such they had left the worship of the one, true God for idols made in the image of animals, etc. Individually they may not have known, but their founders knew and so led their families/tribes/nations astray. We see a similarity today with our Protestant brethren who were founded by those who knew the Catholic Church was Christ’s true Church, but rebelled and formed their own bodies and beliefs. Those who’ve come after who never knew all this are not guilty of rebellion, as were their founders. The founders were formal heretics. Their 2nd/3rd/4th generation followers are material heretics who are not culpable for the sins of their founders. Each of us are judged according to what he knows not wholesale, as you have stated it. So, innocent children who died would not go to hell, nor those who knew no better. It was idolatry that God was stamping out, not non-Israelites, as we see in the story of Ruth and Boaz.

And lastly, the peoples of the OT lived before the Incarnation and the Age of Grace. Before Jesus’ birth men were judged strictly according to their actions. Now God has reserved judgment by pouring out his grace upon all mankind, not just the Israelites. He had reserved his grace for Israel in order to preserve them because from them would come the Messiah, the Savior of all Mankind.

This whole topic really requires a college level course on biblical history and theology. There is no way we can give a full and satisfying answer on a forum such as this. Nor should those without any biblical teaching/training decide for themselves what God was doing in the OT. Such individual judgment is always faulty and incomplete (I include myself in this assessment). It’s why we trust the Church in such matters which has studied such matters for over 2000 years and knows the mind of God better than any other institution or individual. Christ gave his Church the authority to teach his word–which includes the OT. So, let’s trust Christ in these matters and the Church he established to teach us about them.

 

[tonyrey]

The massacres were intended to keep the Israelites from the temptations of Ba’al worship.

It is unnecessary to respond to this notion of God…

 

[Flavius_Aetius]

Oh yes, i know.

But they did not have to worry about walking in public, seeing girls wearing practically no clothes. They would not have to worry about turning on the tv and watching commercials promoting adultery. They would not have to worry about going to the store, seeing magazines promoting sex and showing naked girls and naked men. They did not have to worry about going onto a site that they feel is safe and seeing naked women plastered all over as the advertisements. They did not have to worry about cybering over the computer or on the phone. They did not have to worry about seeing people have sex at nude beaches. They did not have to worry about going to the club and getting grinded on.I know they had bath houses, but that was about one of the only things back then that could be perceived to some of them as sexual. They also did not have to worry about PORN. The kids back then would not have to see their toys promoting sex. they did not have strip clubs back then either. At least I don’t think so? I know they had hookers, but not nearly what we have now.

And we all know that the media and technology seems to be everything these days especially to younger kids. They also did not have to worry about subliminal messages, in which many of them contain sex.

Don’t get me wrong, I know many of them had some sort of sexual sin, but it was not nearly as much plastered into their minds like it is these days.

I can tell you it is so hard going into even just one store not having something SEXUAL in it.

Fight with me about this all you want, but sex is everywhere these days (more than it was back then!). And many would agree with me. This is why so many people have lusting and masturbation problems.

PS: I do not think they had sex toys back then like they do now and the probably did not have sexual clothes like they do now.

I have yet to hear from historians of the type of ‘showy’ underwear and bikinis from christ’s time.

Ever heard of the magazine cosmopolitan?

Every single magazine they produce which is read by MILLIONS of people always has about 10 pages dedicated to sex. I have even read tips on there on how to cheat and get ‘away with it’.

Are you kidding me? You really think they had stuff similar to this back in Jesus’s time? You have to be kidding me.

While I won’t deny the modern society it horribly sexually inclined; there is no way you could compare it to the debauchery that was Sodom and Gorromoth! This was a city where two strangers (the angels) were at risk of being gang raped and the solution to the situation was for Lot to allow this mob to rape his daughters instead. When the city was to be destroyed there were less good people in it than there are fingers on one hand.

 

[tonyrey]

The God of the OT doesn’t seem like the God of the NT, Although minus horrible parts i do see a vague description of God that metaphysically resembles the God of the NT despite anthropomorphic elements.

The Jews were (and are) the Chosen People who were unique with their monotheistic concept of God as “He Who Is” yet they were primitive in their belief that He wanted animal sacrifice and harsh punishments. Revelation has to be graduated and correspond to our stage of development. The prophets were ignored before Jesus was born and even when He was on earth the teaching of Jesus was rejected because of human weakness and ignorance as well as arrogance and malice - as it is today. It would have been pointless for Him to have lived earlier.

 

[BlueShadow123]

While I won’t deny the modern society it horribly sexually inclined; there is no way you could compare it to the debauchery that was Sodom and Gorromoth! This was a city where two strangers (the angels) were at risk of being gang raped and the solution to the situation was for Lot to allow this mob to rape his daughters instead. When the city was to be destroyed there were less good people in it than there are fingers on one hand.

Yes I know the story. But that one story is nothing compared to what we have now. Because now it happens ALL THE TIME EVERYWHERE.

 

[BlueShadow123]

I think you are basically right in your analysis. Sure, there are a few remarkable humans out there who savor risk and aren’t deterred one bit by the death penelty (could even be excited by it); but most people are averse to risk.

The only problem with such a draconian system, with * all * systems of justice that use fear of punishment to deter crime, is that they do not make better people. If someone refrains from theft, murder, adultery or any other wrong doing because they fear punishment then they are still a murderer, a thief, an adulterer in their heart. Society is preserved, yes, but the individual is still damned.

.

Everybody knows right from wrong though. And if the punishment was death, they would know not to mess with the law. That law essentially be there for the other peoples safety.

Who ever said that if the law was death, we would not have counseling? That is what those who felt like killing would essentially get.

 

[The_Exodus]

Mindovermatter,

I can appreciate your struggle. But it may be that the people of the Old Testament were just extremely wicked. Consider the supposition “IF such people were tremendously wicked, is it not just for God to punish them?”

Now, if this supposition can be accepted, then the question at hand shifts from God’s “character” to the wickedness of the people. Wouldn’t you agree?

 

[Windfish]

Mindovermatter,

I can appreciate your struggle. But it may be that the people of the Old Testament were just extremely wicked. Consider the supposition “IF such people were tremendously wicked, is it not just for God to punish them?”

Now, if this supposition can be accepted, then the question at hand shifts from God’s “character” to the wickedness of the people. Wouldn’t you agree?

And that’s precisely what we see with the Canaanites. God told Abraham that the Canaanites that were occupying Israel had not fallen into depravity enough to be judged. In other words, he gave them time to get their act together, but they didn’t, and God pronounced judgment on them like He will for all of us.

 

[Steel_Pinwheel]

The Jews were (and are) the Chosen People who were unique with their monotheistic concept of God as “He Who Is” yet they were primitive in their belief that He wanted animal sacrifice and harsh punishments.

I believe the Catholic Church teaches as the Bible teaches, that Jews are not God’s chosen people. Christians are God’s chosen people.

Revelation has to be graduated and correspond to our stage of development. The prophets were ignored before Jesus was born and even when He was on earth the teaching of Jesus was rejected because of human weakness and ignorance as well as arrogance and malice - as it is today. It would have been pointless for Him to have lived earlier.

I’m sure Jesus could have accomplished the same thing at any point in history. But, God has his own plans. I said in an earlier post that one reason for the old covenant was for a demonstration. He wanted us to see how far from righteousness we are, even when going to extreme to put down negative influences.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Mindovermatter,

I can appreciate your struggle. But it may be that the people of the Old Testament were just extremely wicked. Consider the supposition “IF such people were tremendously wicked, is it not just for God to punish them?”

If God came down one day and simply took all the souls of the Canaanites, leaving lifeless cadavers everywhere, I could accept this, simply because God is the giver of life and thus does not have to sustain any being in existence. If that’s what I had read in the OT there would be no need for a thread such as this. But the moral situation is more complex then this. The question is not punishment as such, but it is the manner in which people are treated in the old testament. When you have God commanding the murder of men and children by human hand via the edge of a sword and then saying that you can have the wives or the daughters for your selves; alarm bells start ringing in my head very loudly. The reason for that is simply because it is evident to me that this is exactly the kind of thing that a cult leader or a king would say in order to justify intolerable evils; because they know that we would never accept those abominations otherwise. God is a very powerful concept and I have to take its tendency to be abused in to consideration when looking at any religious text. The same problem occurs when I am faced with slavery in the OT. Its difficult for me that there was slavery in the OT, but I have always tried to find some way of justifying it, despite the fact that I am black. However, when you have a slave master coercing a slave to give up his freedom by holding his wife and kids hostage, alarm bells start ringing. Yet Moses has the audacity to say “let my people go.” You can justify detaining somebody against their will up to a point when given a specific context (criminality, etc) , but there is only so far you can stretch that before it becomes apparent that you would say anything to justify something that comforts you; you would justify evil. I remember shouting at my mother once for telling me that God promotes slavery in the bible. I told her that wasn’t true, you can ask any priest. To my embarrassment what do I find in the OT? Slavery. But I still don’t believe that the true God would support slavery. The OT is putting words in Gods mouth;

Believe me when I say that I wish I could agree with you; it would be a lot simpler than trying to develop an add-hoc reconciliation between the OT and the NT in the attempt to explain why one should still believe in Jesus Christ when there is evidently difficult and questionable material in the OT; let alone avoid heretical views. These difficulties make my job as a Catholic apologist almost impossible. If it was not for the fact that I am metaphysically convinced of Gods existence, then I have to say that perhaps I would not be a Christian right now, and perhaps if I was brave enough I would have committed suicide along time ago. Christian philosophy is the thing that keeps me believing in this life, believing in people, and taking it seriously; otherwise I could not tolerate human-beings or existence in general.

Thus when I look at the Old testament and try to offer justification for the things in it, I have to ask my self, am I being honest or am I merely making unreasonable concessions for a comforting belief that I wouldn’t ordinarily make if we wasn’t taking about eternal happiness. I think, or at least I feel that’s what I have been doing. I don’t want to do that any-more. I don’t believe that God wants people who turn a blind eye to things that look obviously extremely immoral. I don’t believe that God, who is love, would say that you can have the wives of dead husbands for yourselves. The only way I can preserve an honest rational faith it seems is by admitting that there is moral development in the bible and thus the Old testament cannot be viewed as teaching us how we should treat other human beings when they offend us.

Am I being a heretic, I don’t know. But perhaps I am too tired to worry about it any-more.

 

[Windfish]

MindOverMatter, why don’t you respond to me?

 

[OrdinaryMelkite]

Personally the episode in the Bible that has always bothered and disturbed me was the one with Elias and the “mocking children.” They mocked Elias as a “baldy” as he was travelling, and he responded by sending two bears to wipe them all out.

I have always had problems with that. That is why Elias is one of the very few Biblical Characters whom I STRONGLY dislike.

It is doubly distressing since I am (mostly) Bald-------and I can’t imagine me having the Power and Anointing from God that Elias had and doing that. I ain’t THAT sensitive about my Baldness.

I have always wondered-------what kind of a God would allow one of his Prophets to do something like that?

I console myself by thinking that maybe Elias maybe “misused” his power at that moment (God had nothing to do with what happened) and God punished Him at a later time-----that was not mentioned in the Bible.

 

[OrdinaryMelkite]

I think a Good perspective on this Subject comes from (of all people) a Protestant Minister named Andrew Wommack.

Even though I’m an Eastern Catholic, I occassionally listen to and enjoy folks from other Non-Catholic Denominations. Pastor Andrew Wommack has a weekly program here in the Protestant (mostly Baptist) Tv Station here in Augusta, Ga.

Trust me, though----I mostly watch EWTN and listen to Ancient Faith Radio.

He has a series of Programs entitled “The War Is Over,” meaning God stopped his Anger towards the Human Race when he sent His Only Son to Die For our Sins. Because Jesus Christ died for the Sins of Mankind, that redeemed Us somewhat in His eyes and the previous Righteous Anger He Had for us.

So God did NOT have to do the things he did in the OT days anymore. Jesus “stopped the War.”
Wommack is Protestant, but he had a good point. Some of the posters in the previous posts have alluded to sort of this same fact.

 

[Elijah_Baley]

If we’re going to seriously look at the Manichean heresy, we must not simply concentrate on its false depiction of God in the Old Testament but also on its false depiction of God in the New Testament. There’s a reason Aslan is a lion, and that is because Jesus is not a kitten. This idea comes through myself, but is properly attributed to Peter Kreeft. I wholeheartedly recommend his lectures.

Another, better idea that I also had nothing to do with is that God during the time of the Old Testament was still God the Father, and would thunder at his people when he had to — not out of hate but out of love, much as a father of a two-year-old child does not try to explain “love your neighbor.” Understanding God through the metaphor of him being the Father is 90 percent of the work in understanding the Bible.

 

[Windfish]

Personally the episode in the Bible that has always bothered and disturbed me was the one with Elias and the “mocking children.” They mocked Elias as a “baldy” as he was travelling, and he responded by sending two bears to wipe them all out.

I have always had problems with that. That is why Elias is one of the very few Biblical Characters whom I STRONGLY dislike.

It is doubly distressing since I am (mostly) Bald-------and I can’t imagine me having the Power and Anointing from God that Elias had and doing that. I ain’t THAT sensitive about my Baldness.

I have always wondered-------what kind of a God would allow one of his Prophets to do something like that?

I console myself by thinking that maybe Elias maybe “misused” his power at that moment (God had nothing to do with what happened) and God punished Him at a later time-----that was not mentioned in the Bible.

What makes you think you are to regard Elias’ act as good?

You are not a Muslim. They think all messengers (i.e., prophets) are without sin. We are Catholic. We do not believe that. The only member of the human family free from sin is the Blessed Virgin Marry.

I am frustrated that MoM2 is not responding to me. The fact of the matter is, there is moral and theological development in the Bible. This is undoubtedly true, and the Christ himself acknowledged this when the Pharisees asked about his changes to Mosaic Law. In Mt 19:8, Jesus said to them that because of the hardness of their hearts, Moses permitted them to commit acts (like divorce) that were not originally intended by God. So it is clear that there is moral development as God works with the limited moral understanding of His people.

So, broadly speaking, MoM2 is well within orthodoxy, but it is a matter of discussion whether or not his particular interpretation of the slaughter of the Canaanites is correct. It is possible, but we should strive toward what is true, not toward what is easy. Agreed? As for slavery, I think the arc of moral development explains that, but it is also very important to understand that slavery in that time and place was not at all like what American whites did to black Africans and Americans. Not at all.

My suggestion, MoM2, is to not isolate yourself on this. I doubt very much that you are an expert on Jewish history, language, culture, etc. at that time, and that might provide some proper context with which to view this with more clarity. I have a very long blog roll, and I think I know a few people who are wicked smart on this subject who visit those blogs - I’ll see if I can contact them and see what they say.

 

[Windfish]

If we’re going to seriously look at the Manichean heresy, we must not simply concentrate on its false depiction of God in the Old Testament but also on its false depiction of God in the New Testament. There’s a reason Aslan is a lion, and that is because Jesus is not a kitten. This idea comes through myself, but is properly attributed to Peter Kreeft. I wholeheartedly recommend his lectures.

Another, better idea that I also had nothing to do with is that God during the time of the Old Testament was still God the Father, and would thunder at his people when he had to — not out of hate but out of love, much as a father of a two-year-old child does not try to explain “love your neighbor.” Understanding God through the metaphor of him being the Father is 90 percent of the work in understanding the Bible.

Indeed. Aslan is a terrible lion. But good.

 

[Elijah_Baley]

Christ as a lion, as described by Peter Kreeft. Excerpted from ."How to Win the Culture War He provides the audio.

But is not the God of the Bible revealed most fully and finally in the New Testament rather than in the Old? In sweet and gentle Jesus rather than wrathful and warlike Jehovah? The opposition is heretical. It is the old Gnostic–Manichean–Marcionite heresy, as immortal as the demons who inspired it. Our data refuted; our live data, which is divine data and talking data. Thus His name is the “Word” of God. This data refuted the heretical hypothesis in question when He said, “I and the Father are one.”

The opposition between nice Jesus and nasty Jehovah denies the very essence of Christianity—Christ’s identity as the Son of God. For let’s remember our biology as well as our theology. Like father, like son. That Christ is no more the Son of that God than Barney is the son of Hitler. …]

But, is not God a lover rather than a warrior? No, God is a lover who is a warrior. The question fails to understand what love is, what the Love that God is is. Love is at war with hate and betrayal and selfishness and all Love’s enemies. Love fights; ask any parent.

Yuppie love, like puppy love, may be merely compassion [in] the fashionable world today, but father-love and mother-love is war. God is love indeed, but what kind of love? Back to our data. Does Scripture call Him “God the puppy” or “God the yuppie” or is it “God the Father”? In fact, every page of this Book bristles with spear-points, from Genesis 3 through Revelation 20. The road from paradise lost to paradise regained is soaked in blood. At the very center of the story is a cross, a symbol of conflict if there ever was one. The theme of spiritual warfare is never absent in Scripture and never absent in the life and writings of a single saint. But it is almost never present in the religious education of my students at BC. “BC,” by the way, stands for “Barely Catholic.”

Whenever I speak of this, they are stunned and silent, as if they have suddenly entered another world. They have. They have gone through the wardrobe to meet the lion and the witch. Past the warm fuzzies—the fur coats of psychology disguised as religion—into the cold snows of Narnia, where the white witch is the lord of this world and Aslan is not a tame lion but a warrior. A world where they meet Christ the King, not Christ the kitten. Welcome back from the moon, kids.

As for the latter explanation, we have God as the Father, as described by Fr. Barron. It starts at 3:21.

 

[OrdinaryMelkite]

What makes you think you are to regard Elias’ act as good?

You are not a Muslim. They think all messengers (i.e., prophets) are without sin. We are Catholic. We do not believe that. The only member of the human family free from sin is the Blessed Virgin Marry.

I am frustrated that MoM2 is not responding to me. The fact of the matter is, there is moral and theological development in the Bible. This is undoubtedly true, and the Christ himself acknowledged this when the Pharisees asked about his changes to Mosaic Law. In Mt 19:8, Jesus said to them that because of the hardness of their hearts, Moses permitted them to commit acts (like divorce) that were not originally intended by God. So it is clear that there is moral development as God works with the limited moral understanding of His people.

So, broadly speaking, MoM2 is well within orthodoxy, but it is a matter of discussion whether or not his particular interpretation of the slaughter of the Canaanites is correct. It is possible, but we should strive toward what is true, not toward what is easy. Agreed? As for slavery, I think the arc of moral development explains that, but it is also very important to understand that slavery in that time and place was not at all like what American whites did to black Africans and Americans. Not at all.

My suggestion, MoM2, is to not isolate yourself on this. I doubt very much that you are an expert on Jewish history, language, culture, etc. at that time, and that might provide some proper context with which to view this with more clarity. I have a very long blog roll, and I think I know a few people who are wicked smart on this subject who visit those blogs - I’ll see if I can contact them and see what they say.

I always thought (even in my sinful New Age days) that we as Christians were to understand that most of the Acts committed by the Prophets in the OT were in one way or another either “caused” or “sanctioned” by God/Yahweh.

I was once told that whereas Elias merely “cursed” the children, it was Yahweh who sort of “sent” the bears. So in a way he Sanctioned/Caused the Catastrophe upon the Children. And that had always unnerved and distressed me. It upset for may years my image of a “Just God.” I WAS able to solve that Moral Problem by saying that Go dprobably did NOT cause the Bears to appear and therefore Elias was punished later on.
I guess I was wrong.

You make a Good Point, though. Never though of it that way.

You’re right in the sense that I’m NOT obligated to consider Elias a “Good Prophet.”
I was simply adding my two cents to the discussion. I SORT of understand what the OP was talking about.

And I mostly agree with your interpretation of the Slaughter of the Canaanites and God’s intentions in it. Good show.