You'll Never Hear Abba Speak.....

This is another edited post, originally birthed on a thread at The Beautiful Heresy. It is in response to a newcomer and their questions about UR and the discrepancies and inconsistencies we find in the Bible. Go to any skeptics/atheist site and you will find lists of them. Trying to reconcile them literally will lead to twisting scriptures or ignoring scriptures or explaining them away because everything really cannot be made to fit. This is such an important issue in how we see God. If we get him wrong in the OT then nothing really fits after that. My prayer is that everyone seeks his leading with an open mind and open spirit....

A long time ago on the Tentmaker forum someone posted (about scripture) that you can read the Bible in the King James, the NIV, the Concordant….but unless you read it in the spirit, you’ll never hear Abba speak. I always remembered that. It is alarming and scary to read about the tamperings, the missing chapters, the JPED theory of the OT etc. etc. etc. You can go to any atheist site and find hundreds of discrepancies pointed out as proof that the Bible is worthless. I so disagree, but truly, Jesus did not promise that he would send us a book, leather bound with 66 chapters to lead us into all truth. He promised us the Holy Spirit…the comforter…..and through his guidance and leading he will (eventually) lead us all into all truth. I also heard (or read…can’t remember) someone say that Jesus is the Living Word of God. The Bible is the written word of God. Since we know that Jesus was fully man and fully God (so that there were aspects of humanity in his Living Word) so also we should expect to find aspects of humanity in the written word.

I don’t for one moment believe that all the atrocities in the OT were ordered by God. I believe he was ultimately responsible, because, truly, the buck stops with God but he didn’t whisper in Joshua’s ear….”hey….see Jericho over there…..this is what I want you to do”. There are several theories about the who and the why in the OT….but it is too broad of a topic to go into in this post. (There are several articles on this blog about that very topic. Most of them are under the tags of OT/Sacrifice/Girard)

I find those who insist that scripture is inerrant, still discount, dismiss or explain away verses that do not fit their theology. They might not admit they do…but it seems apparent to me. I can tell you my method. I filter everything through Jesus, the image of the invisible God, if you’ve seen the father, you’ve seen me. We have four gospels that tell virtually the same story….with minor variations. A pretty good picture of how Jesus thinks, reacts and interacts. I think we can clearly see, in the words of the Gospels, what his character and nature is like...and NOT like. (which is the exact representation of God’s character and nature)

His behavior does not fluctuate wildly…from forgiving and loving to wrath filled ragings. He seems to declare that people have some responsibility in all of this and calls for their repentance. He seems pretty up front and honest, in spite of the fact that he often speaks in parables. He told his disciples that there were many things he longed to tell them but they were not ready (could not bear them) so that seems a good reason he disguised much for the masses. Since Jesus' character never seemed to falter or change….and since he is God….and since God never changes, the only option that makes sense to me is that the stuff in the OT that does not fit with what I see of Jesus…just is not God.

Why the discrepancies? I’m not sure. I’m inclined to think that if scripture could be totally reconciled with itself we would be more inclined to worship the book. I think some people worship the book now. And I think he wants us to come to him. He wants a relationship with us….not just a Bible Study session. On Tentmaker someone said recently that we sometimes forget that the “author” of the book is right here with us….yet we ignore his presence sometimes and “read the book.” She wondered if he was with us in the flesh sitting there beside us…if we would ignore him and read the book. I thought that was a gem. How true it is.

That reminds me of the words of Jesus himself when he said in John 5:39-40.

"You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you'll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about me! And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren't willing to receive from me the life you say you want.

Does Total Determinism Make God a Liar?

I think one mistake determinists make in their"determination" of those who don't think every thought, wink, blink, move, hiccup is predetermined is that those who believe in limited "free will" believe God is standing back, wringing his hands agonizing over his next move. "Oh...look what they did now!!!! "HOW will I EVER fix it?" Their God is so small. He has to have every single little detail figured out or he can't pull it off.

I've always liked my friend annie's quarantine idea. This life/realm/earthly existence is a quarantine for humans to be made into his image and likeness, to become immune to sin...and yet nothing that happens here can taint eternity. That would work for the total determinists point of view as well. You know...put us here...determine every single move in order to accomplish his purpose as quickly as possible...and perhaps even with as little pain as possible. There would be no wasted horrors or atrocities because of man's carnal nature...and no unnecessary acts of goodness that we might be moved to perform because of the spirit living within us, Unplanned acts of kindness might drag out the process of learning good and evil etc. He could manifest his sons in the most efficient manner possible. Sort of like training to be a navy seal. Intense, but efficient. I could buy that. I don't think I would necessarily like it...but I could buy that.

But then what does that do the Bible? What does that do the the hundreds of verses that would become nothing more than lies?The verses about sacrifice, the verses that declare we have some choices to make in this life and can resist his will. The verses that go on about the children of Israel and their stiff necked rebellions? It makes so much a lie. And I guess at the root of that is the fear that if God would lie about so many things (unless you have the total sovereignty decoder ring and understand that what he says is not necessarily what he means and that you need that relative/absolute understanding and that he says one thing but really means another...but that's okay...because he is God afterall and does not have to live by his own laws or according to his own nature) So if he would flat out lie about so many things...then how do I believe the promises of eternal life, universalism, that he will never leave me or forsake me? If scripture plainly says he did not command the children of Israel about burnt offerings when they came out of Egypt...but he really did....then how can I believe the other stuff? And that verse is of course one of many, many verses made into nothing but a sham by the God of total complete determinism.

Picking and Choosing

Some of my next few posts will probably continue to be edited versions of things I've written on a message board (Beautiful Heresy) in a discussion about sovereignty, free will and the OT atrocities.

I would never argue that there are not verses throughout scripture that proclaim that very thing. But I fully believe we ALL choose which verses we will embrace and which we will ignore based upon our own particular theology.

George Bernard Shaw was quoted as saying:
"No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says; he is always convinced that it says what HE means."
I think he might have hit the nail on the head with that one.

Those who proclaim total determinisn and the accuracy of the OT atrocities might say:

"Out of the mouth of the Most High proceedeth not evil and good?" Lam.3:38

And I can volley back the verse that declares:
For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness; No evil dwells with You. (Psalms 5:4)

I could also point out that their verse is a question…and the verse preceding is also a question (Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not?)
But that might be splitting hairs.

I could also point out that another infamous total sovereignty proof text is also a question.
Amos 3:6 asks the rhetorical question shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?

A better choice might be:
I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the LORD, do all these things.' Isaiah 45:7

Or they could say:
The Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of thy prophets. II Chronicles 18:22

And I could toss back:
That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: Hebrews 6:18

To which they might reply:
God sends upon them a strong delusion, to make them believe what is false. 2 Thes 2:11

And not to be one upped I might say:
God is not a man, that he should lie. Num 23:19 (the lie in this verse also means “deceive”)
And I might even add for good measure
Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. James 1:13

So, my point is that we all edit scripture….we all choose what we will believe and what we will ignore. We might devise elaborate explanations and complicated reasonings to explain it all away but what it really boils down to is we pick and choose to fit our theology.

I know I have said this before….but I base my view of scripture on what the four gospels show us about Jesus and on the witness and guidance of the holy spirit who resides within me. If it does not fit with the image of the invisible God portrayed in Jesus then I don’t accept it as being of my Father (someone on TM said in a post….Jesus came to RE-present God since mankind’s view of his true character and nature had become so distorted). I’m going to go with the character and nature I see presented in all four gospels. Jesus did not command atrocities. Jesus did not preach judgment. Jesus did not demand “justice”…but rather mercy.

As far as evil, I'm not sure. I will say that even though the mystery of iniquity is after all a MYSTERY….I do believe God is responsible for evil. The buck stops with him. But I also acknowledge that he declares he created the destroyer to destroy…and in so doing takes one step back from actually doing evil. Believing in at least a limited amount of free will for satan and for mankind (and there are a whole lot of verses there that could be volleyed back and forth on THAT issue but again, everyone would pick and choose based on what we want to see) I do not necessarily have to see God orchestrating each and every detail of all the rapes and murders and horror that abound in our world today and that have abounded down through history to believe he is sovereign. For some reason outside of my scope of knowledge….looking through the glass darkly, I acknowledge that there must be a darn good reason God allows evil and suffering to continue in the world because I know he is a good God and since he does not afflict willingly or grieve the sons of men for now it must be unavoidable.

In The Desire of the Everlasting Hills Thomas Cahill said “In the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Job, God refuses to explain why good people must suffer. In the New Testament, he still does not explain, but he gives us a new story that contains the first glimmer of encouragement, the only hint of an explanation, that heaven has ever deigned to offer earth: ‘I will suffer with you.”

And he promises that he will work all things together for good…and I believe he will.

Clothed in the Attributes of Satan

A quote by Helen G. White:

The understanding of the people of God has been blinded, for Satan has misrepresented the character of God. Our good and gracious Lord has been presented before the people clothed in the attributes of Satan, and men and women who have been seeking for truth have so long regarded God in a false light that it is difficult to dispel the cloud that obscures His glory from their view."

This quote seems to apply to those who adhere to a strictly literal view of the Old Testament. They cling to the words in scripture, afraid to let go of anything contained in those 66 leather bound chapters no matter how heinous or downright WRONG they appear. I have been pondering a lot of late about the OT. Well, actually...not just of late. It has been a source of frustration for me ever since I began to really question the theodicy issue. The problem of evil...against the backdrop of a good God. Something is amiss in that equation...but that is for another post, another time.

I think the quote by Helen G White applies to the standard Christian party line belief of the OT, the sacrificial system and the atonement. God has been clothed in the attributes of Satan.

Justifying Murder?

There is a discussion going on at The Beautiful Heresy about the atrocities in the OT...and whether God ordered genocide....whether "god" ("satan") commanded it (and empowered it)...or whether it was the carnal nature of the Israelites mixed with their desire to possess the land that spurred them on to jihad. I'm definitely (surprise) of the opinion that the first option is not an option. God is not the author of the OT atrocities. I sway back and forth between the other two choices. Anyway...since my time is sometimes so limited, I am going to post excerpts from the thread, edited just a bit, here on my blog.

One of the posters took issue with the idea that it was equivalent to condoning murder if one believes the genocide in the OT was right because "God commanded it." I don't see it that way.

I think you justify murder when you justify the killing that occurs amidst all the rape and pillage and plundering in the OT….killing everything that breathes….oh….and take the gold and silver for “me” because God “ordained” it. I think that was indeed murder. When I watched the movie Apocolypto, it occurred to me that those scenes of horror give a glimpse of what the Israelites did to all the “ites” when they stormed into the cities they had “dedicated” to God. And that carnage is attributed to God. “Surely God is fighting for Israel” they declared….and perhaps he was. He declared in several places he would send the “hornet” before them and drive the nations out little by little. But hey…why dink around….the land was theirs…..it was the PROMISED LAND….and who cares about all the people who lived there beforehand. Perhaps God’s plan was more along the lines of a migration…..little by little would indicate that.

Perhaps the purpose of the God ALLOWED jihad in the OT was to show them what was in their hearts and to show us what is in our hearts. Granted, God has final responsibility because he allowed it to occur. The buck stops with him…..just like the buck stops with him when a premature infant dies or a teenager is killed in a car crash or a young mother dies of cancer. He alone grants life, and he alone has the right to take it. It is when fallen humans enter the picture and they “hear God” tell them to wipe out civilizations or individual human beings (Achan comes to mind here….although his is only one of many) that I think man’s carnal nature or satan or whatever name you want to attribute it to takes over and causes man to take matters into his own hands.

When I lived in Cleveland there was a horrible story about this really religious guy….who took his young son….under two to the foundry where he worked. “God” told him to sacrifice the boy in one of the blast furnaces. He did. That was about fifteen years ago and I don’t remember all the details….but there is a more recent case that describes a mom in Texas who actually killed her daughter by cutting off her arms because she thought God was telling her to (and I guess if you believe in total determinism it WAS God telling her to since he ordains and plans each and every detail of each and every little thing that happens) I originally read about the story in the Religion News Blog. There are several posts about Dena Schlosser, the Texas woman who sacrificed her ten month old daughter to God by cutting off both of her arms a few years ago. r. She also tried to sever her own arm at the shoulder. I think it serves as a chilling example of just how far a religious belief in the killer god of the OT and mental illness can plummet someone into a macabre world of horror. It is not a pretty story. The baby died. Donna Schlosser was deemed insane and is in the same mental institution as Andrea Yates. As a side note, in another article on the site called Women Who Killed Kids Form Friendship it talks about the friendship these two women share.

Some disturbing excerpts from the article:

Dena Schlosser saw a TV news story about a boy being mauled by a lion and thought it was a sign of the apocalypse, a delusion that led her to sever the arms of her baby Margaret, Dr. David Self told the jury on the sixth day of Schlosser’s capital murder trial.

“She felt she was basically commanded, in essence, to cut Maggie’s arms off and her own arms off, and her legs and her head, and in some way to give them to God,” said Self, who evaluated Schlosser in the months after her arrest.

Self said Schlosser remembered being at an electronics store with her husband the day before the killing. The woman recalled John Schlosser mentioning Maggie’s “little arms,” and she thought of him as a Biblical patriarch planning “something big” because he was buying a clock radio, Self testified.

Self also said Schlosser felt compelled to dress Maggie “as finely as possible” because she planned to give her to God or Doyle Davidson, the pastor of Water of Life Church in Plano, which the Schlossers attended several times a week.

“It is layer upon layer of this craziness, this psychosis,” Self said.

“She didn’t understand why she was being locked up in jail for following God’s will,” Self said.

This extreme example is the concern my friend annie voices when she asks, “who is going to make the "correct" determination of who heard the voice of "God" commanding them to kill and who is just a classic paranoid schizophrenic?” If we believe everything that happened in the OT was the will of God…which Dena Schlosser obviously did….and we believe in a God who orders jihad…..and in penal substitutionary atonement….and revels in sacrifice….well….the belief that he wants us to cut off our baby's arms as a sacrifice to him is not unthinkable. And who knows....what "types and shadows" might come out of it to teach future generations of Christians. And let’s not even go into the story of Andrea Yates, the other mother who drowned her six children…..

I believe God's character is perfectly displayed for all to see in the image of the invisible God described in four gospels. If we've seen him, we've seen the Father. I find little resemblance between Jesus and the "god" who commanded the atrocities in the OT. And so I have no problem attributing the atrocities in the OT to Satan or satan or fallen man....but not to the God we clearly see in Jesus.

Abraham and Isaac - Maccoby's View

I came upon a web site...don't ask me how....that might have spurred on this "series" about the binding of Isaac. I think it was during some googling...I mean research... on human sacrifice. The web site featured quite a bit of the text of the book called The Sacred Executioner by Hyam Maccoby. The part about Isaac piqued my interest. Just for the record, I am not saying that I believe what Maccoby has to say...but I will admit it got my thinker going. First of all, he is an atheist...and he looks at much of scripture as myth. Girard believes that scripture uncovers the truth of sacred myths but I think Maccoby believes most of scripture is simply myth...made up stories of legend and folklore... meant to teach a specific lesson.

The purpose of the story is to show that God Himself ordained that animal sacrifice should be substituted for human sacrifice. At the same time, the story contains no moral revulsion from the very idea of human sacrifice. On the contrary, it is imputed to Abraham as extraordinary merit that he was willing to sacrifice his favourite son, Isaac, at the behest of God. We see here the dynamics of the historic move from human to animal sacrifice: on the one hand, this is a revolutionary step, by which a higher morality is brought into effect; on the other hand, the benefits of human sacrifice cannot be lightly relinquished, and the transition from human to animal sacrifice must appear plausible in the sense that animal sacrifice must acquire the same aura of reverence and holiness that previously belonged to human sacrifice.

He goes on to say:

In the Abraham-Isaac story as we have it in the Bible, the double aim is secured by having a father willing to sacrifice, but a merciful God who forgoes the sacrifice, allowing the substitution of an animal. In the original story, in which the sacrifice actually took place, there was no doubt some resurrection motif, by which the foundation of the tribe was miraculously renewed. Some traces of this original story, as we shall see, have been preserved in the Midrashic legends.

So Maccoby believes that it was the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice Isaac that prevents the move to animal sacrifice as something second rate. Since this event "marks" the beginning of a new society...there could be no event that would require a bigger, better sacrifice. Maccoby says it this way:

If the universal God was willing to accept an animal sacrifice on such a cosmic occasion (for the founding of the Israelite tribe was an event of cosmic importance, set as it is against the background of the Creation of the universe and the choice of Abraham from all the nations and families of the earth), then there was no need to require human sacrifice on any subsequent occasion whatever, and the institution of animal sacrifice can be relied on to do anything for which human sacrifice was previously held to be efficacious.

Maccoby also seems to believe that the sacrifice of Isaac actually occurred but that the "myth" in scripture was cleaned up a bit.

More on that in the next post.....

Fatherhood of God..the end...

I can't believe I've actually completed a "series." This would be Part 7...but I am calling it "the end" because it is the final post.  It's been in my drafts for a while...forgot to actually post it.  I wanted to post a link to an online devotional patterned after the well known writing called "The Father's Love Letter".  The Devotional is an online version of the book.  It has a short writing for each of the 53 or so points of the Father's Love Letter.   It's been around for quite a while but it is very touching and heart warming.