Monday, February 13, 2006
The Character Of God
On Saturday, The Blogcorner Preacher looks at Deuteronomy 20 wherein God commends the Isrealites to "not leave alive anything that breathes" when they conquer a city, and opines
Is God; therefore, evil? Of course not! But we certainly are not smart enough to figure out why not.
We cannot hold God to our standrds, in fact only the opposite can happen - we must he held to His. Clearly He understands love in ways that we cannot begin to get our heads around. I can offer many things here - that the good of the Isrealites mandated this action and that preserving them for the coming of Christ is the most loving act possible, but you would think God could find a better way. Or could He?
But somehow I think the real answer is to learn how to live in the mystery. Somehow I think our response to this question should be simply - He is God, I am not. The character of God is most complex indeed - I think we need to learn to like it that way.
Related Tags: God, faith, Christianity, love, ethnic cleansing, mystery, character
God also includes the "why": so that the Isaelites won't be taught those "abominable practices."I am struck by how complex the character of God truly is, and how little we can understand it. God is love, and yet He orders His people to do something that to our eyes seems utterly evil.
A modern term for one people killing all of another so that there will be no intermingling of ideas is ethnic cleansing. And yet it is God who is the author, in the plainest of terms. This isn't a quirk of translation. The essential meaning did not change from the original Hebrew.
Is God; therefore, evil? Of course not! But we certainly are not smart enough to figure out why not.
We cannot hold God to our standrds, in fact only the opposite can happen - we must he held to His. Clearly He understands love in ways that we cannot begin to get our heads around. I can offer many things here - that the good of the Isrealites mandated this action and that preserving them for the coming of Christ is the most loving act possible, but you would think God could find a better way. Or could He?
But somehow I think the real answer is to learn how to live in the mystery. Somehow I think our response to this question should be simply - He is God, I am not. The character of God is most complex indeed - I think we need to learn to like it that way.
Related Tags: God, faith, Christianity, love, ethnic cleansing, mystery, character
