There are many in the Christian faith who wonder how to understand God in the Old Testament versus the God of the New Testament. How do we understand a god who. in the Old Testament, could wipe out humanity and almost every creature on earth with a flood, a god who could ask a father to sacrifice his son as a test of obedience, or a god who could ask people to go to war and kill every man, woman, child, and beast versus a god in the New Testament who sent his son to die for us, who, through Jesus, taught about loving your neighbour as yourself and included, even the lowliest, to dine with him, or, who healed people and brought them back from the dead? How do we understand how we can have such a violent god in the Old Testament and a loving god in the New Testament.
Many will say they prefer the god of the Christian scriptures over the god of the Hebrew scriptures for this reason. Some will even ask why we bother with the Hebrew scriptures at all? Why don’t we just throw them out? But if we throw out the Hebrew scriptures because of the violence, do we also throw out the Book of Revelation, from our Christian scriptures, which is more violent than much of the Hebrew scriptures? What about the letters written to new Christian communities that seem misogynistic, calling upon women to be silent and obey their husbands? Some might suggest we throw out everything but the gospels, only focus on the Jesus stories, but what about when Jesus shares stories with violence, telling stories of slaves being beaten, slaughtering enemies, or throwing a wicked and lazy slave into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth? Where do we stop cutting away scripture because it doesn’t fit our ethics? I wonder if there would be much left after we were finished.
The stories in the bible were written at a very different time. The Hebrew scriptures were mostly likely written down after the Israelites had returned from exile, a time when they were trying to rebuild after their temple had been destroyed and many had been taken from their homeland, some never to return. The Christian scriptures were written while their land was occupied by the Roman Empire, and again, their temple destroyed, and many rebellions quashed violently by Roman soldiers. It was a violent time and these writings reflect that.
Not to say we don’t also live during a violent time. People are being bombed all over the world. There are still honour killings, and mismanaged politics cause famine and warfare. There are still genocides. Murder and abuse occur on the streets and in people’s homes. Our writings and our forms of entertainment reflect this violence, in art, in video games, YouTube, and in the theatre. Violent stories for a violent age. But this, of course, is about people. People are violent, but what about God? Maybe the question is more about whether having a violent god perpetuates violence in our world. Does belief in a violent god encourage violence among people?
To that question, I do not have an answer, but let me take you in a different direction. We were all children at one time. Did you ever view your parents as harsh, critical, judgemental or wrathful, or just completely crazy? If you had written about your parents as a teenager, how might they be portrayed? Would they be the the heroes or the villains in your story? If you were writing about them as an adult, would it look different? As we grow out of our teenage years and grow in experience and hopefully wisdom, and for some of us having raised children of our own, our perspective of our parents might change. Many of you are grandparents. Do your adult children sometimes ask you why you spoil your grandchildren, but you were never like that with them? Have you changed or have your circumstances changed? Or both?
Maybe the story depends on who’s telling it and when it’s being told. If we look at the people of God, as a whole, we can see them growing in experience, sometimes wisdom, and sometimes we see their perspective of God changing also. Maybe the people of God are progressing in their perception of God, from a God who demands you love your neighbour, to a God who weeps over the suffering and the sin of the people, to God in Jesus, who suggests we love our neighbour as well as our enemy.
There are a number of passages in either testament that give examples of God’s love and there are also a number that show God’s wrath. The truth is, throughout the bible, we will find passages that challenge us and passages that bring us comfort, but if we shy away from the ones that challenge us, we will lose some of the most beautiful stories in the bible and some of the stories that have the most to teach us.
Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot about “confirmation bias.” Confirmation bias is when we don’t read what makes us uncomfortable, we don’t listen to those with whom we disagree, we avoid what is distasteful or against what we believe. Facebook and other social media sites work like this. We don’t often see viewpoints with which we disagree because we only friend those who agree with us or we unfriend someone whose views are not ours. It creates an echo chamber so that we only receive what is agreeable to us and confirms our already firmly planted biases. In order to grow and learn and understand topics in more depth, we have to be open to being challenged, we have to be exposed to those viewpoints that are distasteful or disagreeable, we have to enter into worlds that might make us uncomfortable and test our firmly held opinions.
It’s why I love the bible. It’s so full of stories that are strange, and challenging, and completely horrific and terrible. It pushes my boundaries and causes me to ask questions. Is this what really happened? Why did it happen this way? How does this help me to understand the people from long ago and how might it help me understand people today? How are these stories still relevant and what can we learn from them?
The bible is the story of our faith ancestors and they have a lot to teach us. Sometimes we need help navigating through the history, context, and culture and this is one of the reasons why we come together as a community, to help us get out of our echo chambers and learn from one another.
Until we live in a world where there is no violence, we need to tell stories of violence. Until people have stopped suffering from hunger, homelessness, and lack of health care, our stories will continue to speak of suffering. Until there is no sin in this world, we will continue to tell stories of sin and the destruction it creates. In other words, when God’s kingdom finally comes upon this earth, we can then put away our violent stories. We can then only speak of a loving God. What we write about God is a reflection of who we are but as long as we continue to work towards God’s kingdom that reflection will change. May it be so. Amen.
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