Like a lot of people, I have always thought of this as one of the most difficult parts of the Bible to wrestle with, and I was wondering what types of questions came up in the Monday night group, and if any who weren't in that group have some thoughts about this as well.
I had a few thoughts about this, but will wait until a later post.
Any thoughts?
3 comments:
Mike I just finished listening to 3 of Ken Follett's fictional histories. Pillars of the earth, World without end and Fall of Giants. I feel very enlighted to comment on real history having just finished listening to fake history... Wars in the past were very violent and horrible times. That is not to say that the current war in the middle-east is not violent and horrible for those involved but it seems like recent wars Vietnam and Iraq and Afganistan are only violent and horrible for those soldiers and families who are directly involved in the fighting. I am almost ashamed to say that my lifestyle was not effected to one small degree by the whole middle east mess. The only pain I felt was seeing my 401k value cut in half. Not a big deal really. Its only money and I couldn't get my hands on it anyway until I reach retirement age so its just monopoly money. I guess one of the benefits I got out of the war was not having to pay $8/gallon for gas. Now that is cold hearted. WWI and WWII were nasty times for the whole world. No matter if you were a soldier or not you somehow felt the pain of that war. Blockades were created to starve whole countries. Economies fell, not just a few hundred points but totally crashed. The Germans paid billions of marks for bread, they had as I understand a million mark note that was less than $1.00 US. They would be sometimes paid daily and most tried to quickly convert that cash to food because by tomorrow the money may be worthless. If the war itself was not bad enough the winners of the war forced the losers to sign reparation treaties where the tax payers of one country would be forced to pay another country for their crimes. The money was also used by the governments to repay the war loans and military suppliers. I know first hand that a German Company, Bayer, lost their patent on aspirin as one of the war reparations of WWI. I don't have the answers that's for sure. If it were up to me there would be no wars and no death penalties, no abortions and no violence of any kind one man to another. But one has to think that in the case of war in this fallen world there may be a sound reason for an all out God ordained take no prisoners winner take all approach.
The OT God violence certainly is a hurdle, especially if one is trying to evangelize and one of those episodes comes up. Better to stick closer to the times of Jesus and the messages that he brought, but in times like this if the question comes up you can’t hide on it. The OT population wipe outs don't go away but the people do. It seems the often explained reason for this is that things were "so" bad and the times were “so” violent and sinful that God would wipe the slate (and land) clean of the people (which were mostly bad, but some were not so bad). We are then told that it was God’s solution to do this. Really? Couldn’t he have picked out the goodish ones and let them stay and then flushed the really bad ones? Kind of like picking out the marshmallow treats out of bowl of lucky charms and then chucking the remainder soggy oat things? I mean like women and children could have been good. Children especially… Pretty darn harsh! And while on the subject, I never really went much for the burnt offerings either. Seems like a lot of torching of innocent animals to atone for man’s sins. What’d the animals do? Noah, after doing is ark flotation with the family members, animals and all, lands and then he sacrifices (I think burnt offerings) about 1/6 or 1/7 of the animals. Poor innocent animals. Did God really appreciate man (the sinful one) sacrificing these animals’ lives for him? Didn’t these people have anything of value other than animals’ lives? I know we are supposed to adjust our minds to the valuation of whatever property and objects there were in OT times but it boils down to animals being killed for sinful man. Millions of animals have died and are dying in the Gulf of Mexico now because of the selfishness and greed of man. Man’s sacrifices of animals have become a part of daily business, stemming back to the OT?
This is a topic I also have always had trouble with. I just can't bring myself to believe it was all God's idea. Knowing that long past biblical times, men have fought wars, killing innocent people in the name of God or even believing it was what God wanted them to do, it seems to me it would have been the same then. Isn't that why we destroyed the American Indians? Divine providence. I even have an old history book that says God didn't give us this land to not have it developed. History is written by the winner. Hence we don't have the story from the point of Jericho inhabitants. So as the story of Joshua is told by the winners, of course they are sure God is on their side in war because they won. Whether or not it was all God's doing I'm just not sure. I find it all very confusing and frustrating. One of the reasons it is sometimes best for me not to get too caught up in the details and focus instead on the big picture.
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