Are we supposed to be new? Everything I do feels as if someone has done it before. As humans we have been eating, sleeping, and communicating for ages and ages. Everything is repeated, I just want to be free. I'm tired of wondering why a God would choose the Israelites alone and not all mankind and why He would proceed to order the death of so many of those he did not "choose". I'm tired of reading David in Psalms talk about how much God loves him, how only the blameless can be saved, and how the "evil" people, the enemies, the wicked and dirty and unlawful others will be crushed by the wrath of God. I really am not liking Psalms, because amid all of that "How great is your love, everlasting, unshakable, shelter me", amid all of the pretty power point slide verses is some wicked stuff. It catches me. It makes me wonder, am I in the group that is crushed, or am I in the group that for no reason God choose to make blameless and kill those who in the other group? Because it appears as though back then, those were the only two options. I just want to live in peace. Can I trust a God who does all of these things that I have read about?
I know I can say that the Old Testament took place in a different context, that God stays the same in the fact that He doesn't always look the same to us, and that God will do what God will do, but why would God do that then and not be able to do it now? Why is it acceptable to kill your neighbor 4,000 years ago, but now its not? The other nations must not have been the Israelite's neighbors, they must not have been human. Dirty dog Gentiles (sounds a lot like genitalia, now that I think about it. Another unclean thing; why would an unclean thing be created at all?) deserve to be killed. They violate the laws that no one ever told them about. The same is true for those in the Middle East, or maybe those in the Middle East can say that the same is true for us. Dirty dog infidels.
I just want to make a difference, but the more I am striving toward my goal, the more I find reasons not to continue. Yes, God ordered the killing of thousands of men, women, children, and animals. Yes, he did catalyst some holocausts. So much I want to find ways around this. So much I want to read a verse that says, "but in this battle and the massacre of thousands of people, (insert Israelite leader name here) was wrong, and God's anger burned at the sight of the undeserved killing". I haven't yet found that verse, and I don't think it exists. It must have been deserved.
Did Jesus really change things that much? And I don't really want to hear from the typical evangelical Christian about this, because I have heard the answer before and it doesn't take me anywhere. I want what I want for every question I ask: an answer that will not stop me in my journey with a false sense of security but one that will carry me forward into more questions, more answers, more questions. I don't want a neat little package of words, I want a canvas I can actually paint on.
So why, why did Jesus change things if he changed them at all? Did he simply offer a new facet of what already existed, or did he really drastically change the rules of the game? Possibly more important, is God still the same? Would He still order a righteous massacre of thousands of people? Is there still such a thing, and if not what made it go away?
I want to do something new.
That is some hard stuff to chew on. I've wondered the same things from time to time. It sucks that there are these "chosen" people who'll live for eternity, and the rest of us will be thrown to the side. In the Old Testament the Israelites constantly spat in God's face and said "We can do better without you." Obviously this is not so pleasing to God, so he allowed the constant warfare and capture of His "chosen" people. He wanted to show them there faults. If you read the book of Hosea, God is making an example of Hosea to show His people what they do to Him. It's a great analogy. Hosea takes a prostitute as his wife and he loves and cherishes her to death, but then one day she just leaves and returns to her old ways. God uses the story and says "This is what you do to me."
ReplyDeleteSo yea, it's difficult to grasp the purpose of the chosen and the ones that aren't. It would seem that God's love is so great that He would just save us all. I honestly don't know my scriptures very well, but I'm sure God has given us His reasons somewhere. Everything that God does is incomprehensible. We're never sure of His reasons.
i'm not sure if i qualify as a typical evangelical christian, so i'll respectfully hesitate to respond... but hi, Bekah.
ReplyDeleteBekah,
ReplyDeleteI am kind of responding to a couple of your posts about the old testament. If at any point you feel that I am being repetitive or typically evangelical, please feel free to disregard this.
I know it's hard to imagine a world in which God would swiftly judge anyone he deemed at evil. The Bible opened up for me when I realized that all those pages to the right of Psalms AKA the Prophets reveal the heart of God for repentance. Many of those pages reveal God pleading with Pagan people to change and turn to Him. But they didn't. These weren't your ordinary vanilla neighbors much akin to our Canadian friends. God's beef with the Canaanites weren't that they forgot to cut their grass or that they painted their houses different colors.
The canaanites were known for their disregard for human life. One example was how rampant child sacrifice was in their culture. They would literally pan fry their children over a giant skillet. It was for the grace of God that their culture ceases to exist.
In another post you refer to God's commandment for a raped women to be married to her assaulter. In our minds, this is akin to torture. But this law was meant as a provision of grace. God was working in appropriate ways in their culture. A raped woman would have no way to provide for herself. The law of God provided grace for those women so they would be provided for in a culture that would have tossed them out of the street.
It's when I saw how much grace actually existed in the old Testament that I appreciated God all the more.
Bekah, I am so thankful that you are NOT taking your faith for granted. Keep these questions coming. My prayer is that the more you seek Christ in scripture the more you will see that our minds can't fully comprehend the complexity of God and his dealings with humanity. In reality, God ALWAYS deals with us in kindness and grace. May we be increasingly aware of God's grace in our lives.