"John (Burgy) Burgeson" wrote:
> Terry wrote: "What I was saying was that I don't have a problem
> with what happened in the Old Testament. God was executing righteous
> judgment against the Canaanites."
>
> I appreciate your candidness about that, Terry, while at the same time I
> have to say that I cannot fathom it. Not at all. I have seen one commentator
> say that the god of the OT is a "dirty bully," and while I also have a
> problem with that statement, it is also a fact that I simply cannot claim
> that an edict to kill the children and rape the young girls (as a god
> purportedly commanded Saul) can possibly be reconciled with the Father God
> whom Jesus proclaimed.
>
> Thought question. Tomorrow Billy Graham, the pope, and about every other
> respected religious leader you want to include issues a press release that
> they are proclaiming God's message and that the message is to nuke Iraq.
>
> Some would "cheerfully" urge compliance with this, I know. After all, didn't
> god once command just such an action?
>
> I doubt very much if you would go along. But why not?
>
> I suspect that were I able to time travel back to Saul's day, I'd advise him
> NOT to follow god's command, even if it cost him the kingdom. I would tell
> him that, IMHO, the message is not from the "real" God at all.
>
> If this be heresy, then that's what it must be, I guess.
>
> Cordially, to those who think differently,
1) But I suspect (as I noted in an earlier post) that if you had simply
been born in that culture
rather than carrying with you 3000 years of further theological & ethical
development, you might
have gone along with Samuel & "hewed Agag to pieces."
2) Perhaps more significantly: If this wasn't the real God, where - if
at all - was any revelation of the real God taking place at that period?
IF what you say is heresy there is an old tradition behind it, that of
the gnostics of the early Christian era who denied that the God of the Old
Testament, the creator of the world, was the Father of Christ. In particular,
Marcion rejected the OT all the parts of the NT which he thought too Jewish - in
part because of the type of arguments you make.
It's one thing to say that the "turn the other cheek" is an improvement
on "eye for an eye", & quite another thing to say that "eye for an eye" never
had any validity.
One has to be wary of domino theories but it is important to check out
implications of one's theological assumptions & criteria. It is not always easy
to stop.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Interface"
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