God of Jealous Grace

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After centuries of oral storytelling, thirty percent of the world’s population now adopts a benevolent god that blesses those who follow him. In these followers’ eyes, this god of Christianity, YHWH, has shown himself graceful and powerful through His miraculous works throughout the Bible and everyday life. While these traits are prominent, parts of the Old Testament shine a negative light on YHWH that may depict him as a temperamental creator that continually seeks justice at any cost, including the destruction of His own creations. The Old Testament develops a character of YHWH that is sometimes parallel but other times contradictory to the “real God” of the Christian belief. In an evil world sprinkled with undeserved blessings, humans seem to strive to make sense of why it happens. As a result, it could seem logical that our “real God,” who is powerful and loves us unconditionally, shows grace to those who are obedient to Him. When reading the Old Testament in this context, there are several stories that could help reaffirm the idea of a god who shows his grace to those who seek Him. After creating a pure and perfect world which he declared “good,” God experienced His first disappointment in humans. When He placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and instructed them not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam and Eve made the decision to disobey God and eat from it. According to the Old Testament, this decision gave Adam and Eve’s descendants (all humans) their sinful human nature, which as a result separated those who did not repent from God’s grace. Eventually the world was full of wickedness and a new side of YHWH came out. The God of unconditional love who is often thought of tended to be a God ... ... middle of paper ... ...ice his revulsion and gruesome plan of action to King Ahab. When King Ahab heard Elijah he began humbling himself and repenting by fasting and weeping (1 Kings 21: 27). Because of King Ahab’s drastic change, God showed mercy on him and delayed the repercussions of his reign for another generation (1 Kings 21:28-29). This passage also reveals the extreme jealousy and unreasonableness of God. He considered King Ahab to be one of the most evil rulers of Israel because he and his wife worshipped the gods that she had known all of her life. The descriptions of how the Lord would do abolish them (1 Kings 21:19-16), illustrate a god that should be feared. While God shows mercy on King Ahab because he repents, YHWH’s strong desire for justice is also withheld in this passage as the execution of His judgement was not eliminated but rather suspended for a generation to come.

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