Re: [asa] The Old Testament God is ..

Don Winterstein wrote:

[snipped out the examples Don cited]

> Now the atheist has been told that these words and incidents reveal
> God. Coming to the OT as a person with modern values, how is the
> atheist
> supposed to respect such a God? I won't back up every epithet Dawkins
> invokes, but it's clear that an outsider imbued with current standards
> of morality and political correctness will easily see that many of
> those
> epithets apply to God as revealed in the OT. I've often read these OT
> words with Sunday-school eyes and just drank it all in; but try
> reading
> with the eyes of an outsider. To an outsider the God of the OT is
> often a most unpleasant and unjust person.
>

I'm not sure there is any easy way out of the matter.

Actually, the sins of the fathers often do get passed down
many generations. This is why we parents, as teachers,
have a great responsibility. Our "example" has a major
impact. However, that was not what I intended to dwell
on.

The examples you cite (Uzzah, Elijah, and Elisha) are only
the tip of the iceberg. More difficult still are things
like Joshua.

My only way of coming to terms with that is to consider that,
unlike man, these were God's decision. Even then, it is really
hard to take with modern sensibilities about equality, fairness,
individual responsibility, free will, etc. But perhaps Calvin
is right that at least coming from God, we can pray and make
complaint to him about it, but from man, his cruelty and will
to do evil should only obliterate us.

At that time, the mentality of everyone and their views of each
other was much different from today. Set up this egalitarian
system in 5000 BC and see how long it would have lasted.
It depends strongly upon a culture that must be learned over
many generations.

Moreover, we must remember that, if we see Pharisees and
creationists and much worse people than that as bad, yet
we (obviously) cannot become even worse than the likes of
that, then we are only fooling ourselves. It is best to recognize
that _all_ of this is little more than a fragile paper tiger that can
be ruined in a flash; were it not for God's mercy. What we should
learn from this is that we often take the concept of equality,
individual responsibility, justice, rights, freedom and free will
for granted. I was not always this way, and it need not be that
way in the future either. It could just as easily be "a boot stamping
on a human face", and what could any of us do about it? So let's be
grateful and thank God for his mercy.

by Grace we proceed,
Wayne

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Tue Oct 17 17:19:40 2006