You realize you cant get out of the garden of eden without god coming off as a lying dolt (whole serpent just like god thing.) It just went down hill from there.
For people who use the OT to try and prove that God is an awful tyrant...
by tec 54 Replies latest watchtower bible
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snowbird
Tammy, you are appreciated. Sometimes, I can send roses, sometimes I can't. This is one of those times that I can't. Sylvia
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tec
Chris - I did not mean to imply that the events recorded in the OT never occurred- only that the views of the Israelites upon those events may have been skewed. The Israelites were ordered to wander the desert for forty years because that generation of people did not have faith in God, or in what God had promised them. Was it harsh? Perhaps. But life is hard. So it isn't the state of our circumstances that matters, but rather the state of our hearts that is important.
The entire point that I was trying to get across was that the Israelites did make mistakes in their understanding and applying of the law. Jesus came as a light, to show us the truth about his Father. So it is to Christ that any Christian (a follower of Christ, not a follower of some organization) must look to understand God.
But perhaps that was too general a statement, too much of a band-aid type thing. So I'll elaborate.
a) I've already established that there were mistakes in the understanding and applying of the law.
b) We do not know the hearts and minds of the surrounding nations in the OT. War is ugly and brutal, no matter the intents or circumstances. The surrounding nations could have committed far worse atrocities than anything the Israelites did - we know that they did perform child sacrifice. Unchecked, we have no idea what they may have done or continued to do. Only God knows, and it is presumptuous to think that we - in our few years and limited perspectives - could judge the one who knows the hearts of every man and the one who has witnessed our history firsthand. Even if we just consider today... that's the hearts and minds of 6 billion men, women and children that God can see into. That's quite a perspective compared to our own.
c) We cannot comprehend what God has planned. We can't even know firsthand what death is until we are dead, or understand what the resurrection or heaven fully holds for us. God might not view physical death in the same way that we do. Job prayed to go there until God's wrath had passed. Also Isaiah says in 57: 1-2: 'The righteous perish, and no one ponders it in his heart: devout men are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared form evil. Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in death.'
Because of these many things, we cannot know God, except through what Christ came and showed us.
How angry do we personally get when another person judges us? Their views might be wrong or based on hearsay. They haven't walked in our shoes, nor seen into our hearts, nor do they have any idea what our thoughts and plans for the future might be.
Imagine God... been here from the start; knows the hearts and minds of all; has tried to teach us how to live good lives over and over again, and we have misapplied his law and ignored his attempts to correct us... even before Jesus. (ex. Micah 6:8 - He showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God) But we are quick to refuse to listen, and just as quick to blame him for our suffering after we reap the results of having ignored him.
Now here we are in a world of our own making, judging and condemning God - without knowing his *heart* (or the hearts of those he has judged), nor having walked in his *shoes* - and ignoring the one man he sent to teach us the truth, and to show us that, even after all of this, He offers us grace and forgiveness and life without cost.
My heart bleeds - for God and for us - and I don't know what else to say.
Tammy
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tec
Thank you, Sylvia.
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The Oracle
conclusion: it appears that the being called God / Yawheh / Jehovah by the men who wrote the old testament is not a very nice person.
that is really the bottom line.
it takes a whole lot of rationalizing to excuse away his actions.
peace to all
The Oracle