Ask Steve:
I don't like the OT God
I’m confused about all the bits in the Old
Testament about God, war, genocide and
those draconian, violent and abusive laws.
Are we really supposed to believe it all? Jesus
seems to show us a much more compassionate
and loving side of God. How does the Old
Testament view of God relate to the teaching and
attitude of Jesus who talked about loving your
enemies rather than exterminating them?
This is an extremely complex and divisive question. If God is love, why does the Old Testament contain so much material that, on the face of it, depicts him as fierce, wrathful, violent and vengeful? Why does it so often report him as supportive of a justice system filled with oppressive and discriminatory measures? And what about the various rounds of ethnic cleansing?
As a new Christian, I was utterly confused both by the huge questions all this raises and by the fact that no one ever seemed to acknowledge that there was a problem. As a result, I assumed that I must be the only one who didn’t get it.
Then I went to theological college, where I was sure that the issue would be dealt with thoroughly. So when my lecturers said nothing, again I assumed that the problem was mine. I left college and began to realise that there was a huge intellectual hole at the centre of our understanding of God as revealed through the Bible, which we all simply ignored for fear of upsetting the powers that be.
So, as I’ve grappled with the Bible and various questions over the years – in debate and discussion with many others – this is how I’ve come to understand things.
God’s relationship with the children of Israel took place in the messy and often brutal reality of their day-to-day life in the ancient Near East. War and unrestrained violence were commonplace. Every nation boasted a god of power to defend their cause and justify their cruel acts of aggression and revenge towards others. It was hard for Israel not to get caught up in the same mindset. When they went to war against their enemies, the expectation was that Israel’s god, Yahweh (the Lord Almighty), would demonstrate his power, destroy the opposing armies and, in doing so, vindicate his own name as well as Israel’s belief in him.
That’s why, if we focus in on individual Old Testament verses and stories, it’s easy to fall into the trap of seeing God as a vengeful despot. It is as we step back and focus on the overall direction of Israel’s relationship with Yahweh that the bigger picture become clear. Only as we do this do we grasp God’s struggle to communicate his love, not just for Israel but for the whole human race, which was to eventually culminate in the arrival of Jesus – through whom, at long last, we see God’s true character and nature without any distortion.
In the light of Jesus’ life, example and teaching, it turns out that Yahweh’s association with the violence of the Old Testament era was never a true expression of who he was as much as the result of his determination to stay involved with his people.
Likewise, when placed against the cultural backdrop, what you describe as ‘those draconian, violent and abusive laws’, can be seen rather differently. For instance, the wellknown ‘an eye for an eye’ saying (see Exodus 21:24; Leviticus 24:20–22; Deuteronomy 19:21) takes on dramatic new meaning. This passage is used even today to justify retaliation, but it is actually a unique ethic of constraint put in place to limit, rather than justify, excessive violence and vengeance. Possibly no other Old Testament text has been the victim of more misunderstanding and exaggeration. In a world filled with a ‘you take my eye, I’ll wipe your whole family out’ approach to conflict resolution, it was there to establish the revolutionary principle of a maximum penalty beyond which it was unjust to go.
The Old Testament is the record of how Yahweh slowly leads the people of Israel away from their misshapen and distorted ideas about the divine, themselves, their role in the world and their ethical responses to others, as he introduces them to himself and a different way of living and being human.
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