Strange Fire

The debate continues on TM. The thread has been moved around a bit...to another section of the forum. I also think some of the posts were lost during the transfer process to another server. I haven't posted much of late. There is a lot going on in several areas of my life that have taken up my time and attention, but I do check in daily to see what has been written.

In one of the posts, someone brought up the subject of the "strange fire" mentioned in Leviticus (and again, briefly, in Numbers) that killed Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, when they offered "strange fire" to God. Her point was that since God struck these guys dead, and if we could not come up with a satisfactory rebuttal to the issue, then how could we say that God did not order the atrocities in the OT? I didn't reply, but it did get my thinker going. And I have continued to think about it....

When I typed it into google to get some perspective for this post, it is not surprising that many doomsayer have used it to warn against "strange doctrine".....which pretty much amounts to doctrine which does not agree with THEIR doctrine. No big surprise there.

So what have I been musing about? Well, there are several possibilities that I see. One is, of course, that God really did get pissed at Nadab and Abihu for offering unauthorized fire and struck them dead with some kind of fire that "came out for the Lord" to teach them all a good lesson. This, however, does not seem at all consistent with the God we see portrayed in Jesus.

Web sites like God's Last Call Ministries and God Quest might blame satan, since they seem to lean toward the thought that satan was the instigator of the elaborate rules and regulations of the sacrificial system and other Old Testament oddities and laws. I think there is a lot of merit to their writings and if you have not visited their sites, you should.

Another idea is that, perhaps, these guys took in some kind of strange fire that backfired. Perhaps it was some kind of chemical process or fluke that killed them. Everyone is familiar with the dangers of mixing Clorox with ammonia...and that a toxic gas forms. Who knows what they put in their fire pans? There are other natural type gasses that are poisonous...sewer gas for one. It can be lethal. People have died from sewer gas. (I realize this is a bit farfetched here with the sewer gas...so I remind you all that I am just musing about it) How about natural gas? Fire in the fire pan and natural gas escaping somehow from the earth could do some damage. How about carbon monoxide? How is it formed? (MUSING here...remember that!!) However from later passages dealing with this story, it seems that their clothes were, for the most part, in tact. So then what about lightning?

When my mom was a kid, at a Bible study a bolt of lightning somehow came in the house (through an open door or window, I think) and "rolled across the floor". She said it was like a big ball of electricity...so it happens. "Ah-ha!" those who hold to a literal interpretation of the acts and commands of God in the OT might exclaim at this point. If it was lightening then surely that was from God....and the "fire that came out from the Lord" was what he used to strike them dead. But not so fast there. Does that mean a golfer, out on a Sunday morning, opting out of church for the lure of 18 holes, who is struck by lightning was struck down by God? How about the little girl skipping across the open field when a thunderstorm hits? Or the hundreds of other people who are struck by lightning every year. We might have to stop then and attribute every lightning strike to the Lord's displeasure.

More musings...and perhaps more farfetched and perhaps not, were sparked by the writings I came across via google by a man named Alfred de Grazia. He is quite the prolific writer. There are dozens of writings on his websites among which are writings on quantavolution described briefly as follows....

an abrupt, large-scale change caused by, and affecting one or more spheres such as the astrophere, biosphere, lithosphere, atmosphere, and anthrosphere.

To make a long story shorter, he thinks that many of the things that happened in the OT (in particular some of the things associated with the Exodus, the tabernacle in the wilderness and the arc, and some of the times many of the children of Israel were wiped out. (Golden Calf incident etc) were from changes in the above listed "spheres"...and in electron/electric related things. He goes into great detail which I did not have the time to read...but it sure piqued my curiosity. He also thinks this has something to do with the Egyptian plagues. As a possible cause, he mentions a slow moving comet hovering near the earth for a long period of time. And any of these miraculous/terrifying things the Israelites witnessed that could not be easily explained with their limited reasonings, they attributed to their God (who in their eyes was a tribal type war god to begin with) There are several writings on Alfred de Grazia's web site related to this.

Also in this Q-series were The Lately Tortured Earth, which is a proposed revision of the conventional earth sciences; God's Fire: Moses and the Management of Exodus, which interprets the Exodus in the light of modern science and psychiatry, which offers a new theology and new considerations on the existence of gods; The Burning of Troy, a collection of special studies and memoranda and Chaos and Creation, which presents the general theory of quantavolution.

Just some things to think about when we ponder the fire that "came out from the Lord" Strange, indeed!

I want to write more about the OT. I've come across a few other articles and have some heretical thoughts of my own. But for right now, nap time beckons. Have a great Sunday!!!!!

Pneuma's view....

Like many things I present on this blog, I have not formed a definitive position. I don't believe for a moment that God ordered genocide....yet I am not sure if he ordered some kind of spiritual destruction which was misconstrued and carried out as literal destruction, or if "satan" had something to do with the OT atrocities (including both sacrifice and genocide....and harsh judgements) or if they thought they heard God...but didn't. Does Girard's theory apply to many of the things that happened in the OT? The sacrifice of one scapegoat after another....the safety valve to release the mounting pressure caused by mimetic rivalry? I don't know. Pneuma had some interesting views on these threads, ones that I will have to give some more thought. Here are some snippets from his posts:

I see God as giving these commands, but as God is spirit every thing He breathes must be taken by the spirit and understood by the spirit. And I think this is where Israel of old screwed up, because they took literally that which is only to be understood in spirit and went and literally did what God said to do. And as I have said we can see this same scenario played out time and again throughout history mostly by Gods own people, thinking to do God a service they literally killed millions of people.

.......all scripture is God breathed and must be understood in the spirit, that God is the same God recorded in both the old and new testament and the people of old screwed up just as badly then as they do today, misunderstanding Gods commands and went about doing things literally that were to be done spiritually, killing in the name of God thinking to do Him service.

It says that they went to war with the HOLY INSTRUMENTS.
What is our holy instrument of war?
Is it not the WORD of God, the SWORD of the Spirit.
When God destroys His enemies He does so by making them His friends.

And Pneuma is not the only one who sees things this way. It just so happens that Gregory Boyd is doing a series on the OT on his blog Random Reflections. In a recent post he talked about the views of Vernard Eller as explained in his book called War and Peace: From Genesis to Revelation

Boyd writes:

the fact that the New Testament clearly reveals that the warfare God wants us to fight is "not against flesh and blood" but against principalities and powers (Eph 6:12) lends support to Eller's view. Since we're supposed to read the Old Testament in light of the New Testament, it makes sense to suppose that God wanted the Israelites to engage in spiritual warfare rather than "flesh and blood" warfare. And this supports the conclusion that the Old Testament folks simply erred in allowing their "Nimrodian" mindset to adversely affect the way they heard Yahweh speak to them.

Pneuma, if I've misrepresented your views in any way.....please let me know.

Only For Those Who Turn To The Lord

The debate rages on at Tentmaker. It has moved to another thread called Positions on God-ordained Old Testament "slaughter" but it is still pretty much the same debate. Someone started a poll with the following four choices...

What is your position on the multitude of texts that speak of God directing or commanding brutal atrocities?

It was commanded as Spiritual "destruction" and was carried out as such (no literal killing)
0 (0%)

It was commanded as Spiritual "destruction" but was misperceived by the Israelites and carried out literally
1 (7.1%)

The "command" itself was a misperception, and thus the literal acts that followed were never commanded or ordained by God
3 (21.4%)

The commands were for literal human slaughter, genocide, infanticide, etc...
7 (50%)

1,2 or 3
3 (21.4%)

Total Voters: 14

So you can see that it is a tie....between those who think literal slaughter was commanded and those who don't. I came upon a verse in 2 Corinthians the other day...in a post on another forum that was not related to the OT stuff at all...but rather about the veil on people's hearts.

2 Corinthians 3:12 This wonderful hope makes us feel like speaking freely. 13 We are not like Moses. His face was shining, but he covered it to keep the people of Israel from seeing the brightness fade away. 14 The people were stubborn, and something still keeps them from seeing the truth when the Law is read. Only Christ can take away the covering that keeps them from seeing. 15 When the Law of Moses is read, they have their minds covered over 16 with a covering that is removed only for those who turn to the Lord. 17 The Lord and the Spirit are one and the same, and the Lord's Spirit sets us free. CEV

I took note in this passage of scripture that it says the covering is removed only for those who turn to the Lord and that only Christ can take away the covering that keeps them from seeing the truth. It does not say that a literal interpretation of the Old Testament events removes the veil. It doesn't say that understanding the "types and shadows" that some point to as the reason for the atrocities takes away the veil.

A few years ago, on the Tentmaker forum, someone said the following and it has stuck with me every since then....

You can read it in the Greek. You can read it in the King James, the NIV or the Concordant Literal but unless you read it with the spirit, you'll never hear Abba speak.

The verses in Corinthians tell us that the Lord's spirit sets us free. Free from what? Free from a literal interpretation of the OT? Free from trying our darndest to somehow reconcile the god who supposedly ordered the atrocities in the OT with the God we see represented in Jesus? The Amplified says:

16 But whenever a person turns [in repentance] to the Lord, the veil is stripped off and taken away.

What is it that we need to repent of? That is the $100,000 question.

Just a few examples:

Following are a few examples of the verses that were posted in the two threads on Tentmaker.

"Then I heard the LORD say to the other men, "Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all - old and young, girls and women and little children. But do not touch anyone with the mark. Begin your task right here at the Temple." So they began by killing the seventy leaders. "Defile the Temple!" the LORD commanded. "Fill its courtyards with the bodies of those you kill! Go!" So they went throughout the city and did as they were told." (Ezekiel 9:5-7 NLT)

This is what the Lord of hosts has to say: 'I will punish what Amalek did to Israel when he barred his way as he was coming up from Egypt. Go, now, attack Amalek, and deal with him and all that he has under the ban. Do not spare him, but kill men and women, children and infants, oxen and sheep, camels and asses.' (1 Samuel 15:2-3 NAB)

If even then you remain hostile toward me and refuse to obey, I will inflict you with seven more disasters for your sins. I will release wild animals that will kill your children and destroy your cattle, so your numbers will dwindle and your roads will be deserted. (Leviticus 26:21-22 NLT)

See anything wrong with this picture? Is this the God we see in Jesus? As my friend Brian says, "And if you find that you're trying desperately to force yourself to subscribe to some doctrine or theological system that contradicts what your mind and heart says about the God you've come to know...then there's something badly wrong."

Yep...there's something badly wrong with attributing the above verses, and the many, many others in the OT that describe similar situations and events to the God in whom no darkness resides. These verses and the acts they describe are dark indeed.......

How Could This Be God?

I have been AWOL since Easter. Several things have gotten in the way of posting on this blog. First of all, life in "real time." House, home, hearth....gainful employment, teenage children.... and all that those things entail. Also, I've gotten involved in some discussions on Tentmaker...that have taken up my time and my thoughts. There have been several really interesting threads but two in particular that have generated a lot of discussion. They started out at the request of Gary A...the owner of TM. He received a letter from someone listing 47 verses that described some of the more heinous things attributed to God in the OT. The letter said:

I have been reading about the belief that God will save everyone, but I still have a hard time believing in the God of the Bible at all. I read about the EVIL atrocities that were commanded by this God and I shudder. Really, how could any of this been of a infinitely loving God? Even if everyone is saved, I still have absolutely no idea how a God of love could order such profound inhumanities. If you can figure out some way of explaining this away, good luck to you.

Saying that God will eventually save everyone doesn't really make up for the fact that he commanded extreme evil at one time...

SeekerSA posted the verses in two separate threads called How Could This Be God? Part One and How Could This Be God? Part Two. Let the games begin...and begin they did. There are several very distinctive (and opposing points of view ) on that forum with very different explanations and ways of looking at the atrocities in the OT. And they came head to head on that thread. Actually, the thread has been locked for the past few days. The Administrator thought that things were getting too heated....or that there was a spirit behind some of the posts that he didn't like. It should be unlocked sometime today or tomorrow. You can read the thread...just not comment at this time. Part Two has been the most active thread of the two.

A new guy joined the forum...Captamajora....and I have been blessed and edified by his posts.

And so a new series is birthed here on my blog. I am going to take some of the finer points (that I agree with AND that I disagree with) and talk about them. It may be a long series...or I may get distracted by something else before I finish. (I think I still have a post or two to write in the Abraham/Isaac series). Let's see where we end up.

Another Passion of the Christ

Not the movie....but an essay of the same name, on the God Quest site. Not too far into the article the author declares

And he (Jesus) did not undertake his sacrifice to shield us from a “wrathful” Father.[ This is the intimidating, threatening, and centuries-old claim of conventional Christianity. A fraud so well conceived that it has prevented millions of honest people from entering into a loving relationship with the Creator.

---

But then he takes an unexpected twist in the section titled, "Is God Entirely Guiltless?" in which he ponders the question of God's guilt in allowing evil into the world. He quotes Jack Miles in Christ, A Crisis in the Life of God expresses it this way:

The pathos of those artistic enactments—those masses and oratorios, passion plays and memorial liturgies, and above all those paintings and sculptures in which the unspeakable is left unspoken—is inseparable from the premise that God is inflicting this pain upon himself for a reason. ‘The real reason’, as Albert Camus wrote in his haunting novel The Fall, ‘is that he himself knew he was not altogether innocent.’”

Now there's a pretty heretical thought...God is not altogether innocent? John G says says something similar in one of his writings called a Legal Mentality....

When Christ died for us He was not paying dues to the law but, with love beyond measure, meeting us where we were in our mentality that said, "We demand justice. You let the serpent in the garden. You penned us all up in disobedience. The buck stops at your desk. You should pay" (Rom. 11:32). And pay He did.

The Passion Essay goes on to say:

The cross is the expression of God entering into his own story, meeting the terms of justice for the divine responsibility of letting evil loose within the universe.

and later:

The passion of the Christ is, ultimately, self-inflicted. That is, for a greater purpose and good, God has chosen to do it this way. The one true and wonderful God has ordained that all should suffer and die, including himself.

or as my friend Roy says:

Then, Christ came. God in the flesh. Man had always blamed the Father for the fall. Inwardly the blood rage is there.

God has never shirked his responsibility regardless of what religion teaches. Search the scriptures and see. Man tries to take responsibility for this fallen creation. But, ultimately, God has never shirked responsibility for anything He has done. He balanced the scales in Christ.

He came as Man. He said, "You rage against me? You want justice? You think I should be punished for all you have suffered? Here, take out your rage on me. Here is the blood you have been searching for, longing for. It is laid down freely. Rage on me. I won't lift a finger to stop you."

And, He took responsibility for all the evils that have befallen man that day. He gave His life. This has never been adequately appreciated by religion. It needs to be appreciated.

As I post these very diverse thoughts on the atonement here on my blog, perhaps it will become apparent that the PSA view is certainly not the only view that makes sense...and is not the only view that is supported in the scriptures.....

Wayne Jacobsen's View of the Cross

Technorati Tags: Atonement

I stumbled upon Wayne Jacobsen when I was researching different atonement theories last year. The Cross as Cure Not Punishment came up in the google search results. It is part 4 in a series of talks called Transitions. He also talks about this in his book He Loves Me.

....the unanswerable questions should invite us to reconsider our distorted view of the cross. Since Adam’s fall we have come to picture God not as a loving Father inviting us to trust him, but an exacting sovereign who must be appeased. When we start from that vantage point we miss God’s purpose on the cross. For his plan was not to satisfy some need in himself at his Son’s expense, but rather to satisfy a need in us at his own expense.

And it was not his plan to satisfy the requirements of the Law...nor is the atonement about the fulfillment of the OT sacrificial system. Later on in the book he says....

But I am deeply bothered by the thought that in some way God was able to separate himself at the cross. The popular understanding of the cross seems to be that God the Father executed wrath on God the Son while standing at some discrete distance.

Such thinking not only denies the essence of God’s nature but then distorts what happened at the cross. Paul wrote that “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ…” God was no distant observer, but a participant. He didn’t send Jesus to do what he would not do; but God himself acted through Jesus to bring about our redemption.

Some have taken Jesus’ cry that his Father had forsaken him to mean that at the darkest moment, the Father had to turn his back on the Son. God cannot bear to look on sin, they argue, so that when our sins were laid on him, God had to turn his face away from his Son.

God has never run from sinful humanity. He didn’t hide from Adam and Even in the Garden. They hid from him as he sought them out. It is not God who cannot bear to look on sin, but that we in our sin can’t bear to look on God. He’s not the one who hides. We are. God is powerful enough to look on sin and be untainted by it. He has always done so. He did so at the cross.

I could not agree with this more. God was IN Christ reconciling the world to himself. Kind of hard to turn his head away if he was (as the Amplified renders it) personally present. And is not our great God omnipresent? Is there anywhere he is not? How is it then that he could not look upon sin? Even if I make my bed in hell, behold, he is there? He has been looking on sin throughout the ages. He personally (in the incarnated Christ) walked among sin on a daily basis.

God is not a wimp...he is not too delicate to look upon sin. He does not have to turn away from sin and in fact there is no hell hole too dark, no evil place too wicked...nowhere that he will not go to rescue his children. The Cross should show us that....

He didn’t just deal with our sins, but with the very nature of sin itself. By allowing sin to touch his person through the Son, he would be able to prevail in himself over that which we were powerless to fight. Through the physical body of Jesus, sin came face to face with the power of God, and as we shall see, God prevailed over sin completely.

He goes on to talk about God's wrath as a type of chemotherapy which was vented against Sin (the disease) and he see the cross as the antidote for Sin. Also check out his God Journey site. There are lots of resources there and a bunch of podcasts of conversations between Wayne and his side kick Brad Cummings. The podcasts are a hoot...and very edifying. He has an emergent church kind of spin on things. Oh...and he is not a universalist....but that one little detail is just a matter of time :)