ansNovember-12-13
6:34 PM
Astonishing as it seems, many Christians define the God of the Old Testament as heartless and evil and blatantly disregard his sensitive nature. As confirmed by many casual bible readers, some of the teachings and descriptors of God In the Old Testament may seem harsh and insensible. A more educated bible reader or theologian will plumage into the numerous dimensions of Yahweh's character and discover his very complex personality. After an in-depth look into the Old Testament, one can acknowledge many of Yahweh's interesting and righteous traits.
Contrary to what many think, God in the Old Testament is very much a liberator. God is very compassionate. He hears and pays close attention to the cries of the oppressed and then takes action. Yahweh liberated the Jews that were oppressed God "upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free" (146:7). God let Moses lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Moses led 600,000 people out of Egypt in the middle of the night. God kept them safe as He did not lead Moses and the Israelites through enemy land. Instead He led them through the desert and they journeyed toward the land God had promised Moses. God took care of his people just as He had promised. The Lord is righteous and "the precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The decrees of the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous" (Psalm 19:8-9). This quote clearly indicates how pertinent Yahweh is in His righteousness. He gave us laws that are right and for our benefit and He certainly will not let any of his people be unjustly oppressed.
God liberates those that fear and love him, yet He does ...
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... is a close and compassionate God who trusts in his people.
Some Christians will throw away the Old Testament saying that in it God is heartless. The God of the Old Testament is anything but heartless. He shows compassion for his creation throughout all of the Old Testament, a deeper more complex compassion than shown in the New Testament. Having Christians take a second look at the Old Testament and see Yahweh for who He really is will broaden the image and understanding of God for many people and as Christianity as a whole. This will also prevent people from separating God in both the Old Testament God and New Testament God and especially stop the myth that Christians should only follow one. Yahweh is an integral part of Christianity and being able to understand him will teach Christians valuable life lessons on how to better the world through the word of God.
In the first chapter of God Behaving Badly, David Lamb argues that God is unfairly given a bad reputation. He claims these negative perceptions are fueled by pop culture and lead many to believe the lie that the God of the Old Testament is angry, sexist, racist, violent, legalistic, rigid, and distant. These negative perceptions, in turn, affect our faith. Ultimately, Lamb seeks to demonstrate that historical context disproves the presumptuous aforementioned. In addition, he defends his position by citing patterns of descriptions that characterize God throughout the Old Testament. “Our image of God will directly affect how we either pursue or avoid God. If we believe that the God of the Old Testament is really harsh, unfair and cruel, we won’t want anything to do with him” (Lamb 22). Clearly, they way Christians choose to see God will shape their relationship with Him.
The New Testament portion of the Bible is widely accepted as the book of hope, grace, love and forgiveness. However, the Old Testament also provides evidence of God’s grace and love for his people. Richard Dawkins opposes this view of the Old Testament God .Richard Dawkins in his book, The God of Delusion states that the God of the Old Testament is a God who is unjust, unforgiving, and vindictive amongst many other negative human nature attributes. Richard Dawkins view of God in the Old Testament is far from a God of grace and love. The God of the Old Testament is a God who desires to have a relationship with his people .God created covenant relationships throughout the Old Testament, starting with Adam and Eve, then through Noah, Moses, Abraham and David. According to Eugene Merrill “a covenant is a written agreement or a promise usually under seal between two or more parties”. The Hebrew word for covenant appears in the Old Testament 285 times. The Israelites throughout the Old Testament would consistently fall short of the agreed covenant regulations with God, and God would continue to provide ways to reconcile with Israel. The examples of this are abundant and can be found in each book of the Old Testament. According to Richard Dawkins the God of the Old Testament is unforgiving, unjust, and vindictive. However the scripture can prove that through Gods covenant agreements, God was a God of grace, love and a God who has an unsurpassable capacity for forgiveness.
Hindson, E. E., & Yates, G. E. (2012). The Essence of the Old Testament: A survey. Nashville, Tenn: B & H Academic.
God is sinless, loving, forgiving and full of wisdom. God’s love is shown throughout the Old and New Testaments. Many times throughout the Old
God’s people found themselves in captivity in Egypt after the death of Joseph and the Pharaoh that had knowledge of the good done by children of Israel (Ex. 1:8-14). God saw the oppression of His people and sent Moses and Aaron to deliver His people from slavery (Ex. 3:10, 4:14-16).
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 the Old Testament God seems to be a very merciful, loving, and understanding God. In the New Testament the Lord shows his wrath a bit more often. I truly believe that the Lord is always forgiving and merciful growing up in a Christian/Jewish family. When I was younger I went to private school, studying and knowing the bible almost verse by verse. When I was around 12 my parents became Messianic Jews, meaning that they believed in old parts of the bible, mainly the Old Testament and the Torah. My parents called God, Yahweh, meaning,
Throughout the Bible God can be represented in a number of different ways. In some chapters of the Bible God can be found to be a compassionate, loving God, who would do anything for his people. To contradict this, in other chapters of the Bible God can be found trying to instill fear into people so that they believe in him, or do what he wants of them. In both instances it shows how different God can be seen and why believers can have doubts about how God really is.
In the Book of Exodus the relationship between god and man was similar to relation between a master and servant or in other words a king and a subject respectively. God says “you shall speak all that I command you”(Exodus,7:2), it is very clear through this vision that Moses had that God wanted to have dominion and control over peo...
The myths which prove the contradictory behavior of the gods, acting as both benefactors and tormentors of man, can readily be explained when viewed in light of the prime directive for man, to worship the gods and not “overstep,” and the ensuing “Deus ex Mahina” which served to coerce man to fulfill his destiny as evidenced by the myths: “Pandora,” “Arachne, and “Odysseus.” Humankind and it’s range of vision over the gods beauty and power portrayed them to be benefactors but unseemingly it depicted their affliction towards humans.
The question of why bad things happen to good people has perplexed and angered humans throughout history. The most common remedy to ease the confusion is to discover the inflicter of the undeserved suffering and direct the anger at them: the horror felt about the Holocaust can be re-directed in the short term by transforming Adolf Hitler into Lucifer and vilifying him, and, in the long term, can be used as a healing device when it is turned into education to assure that such an atrocity is never repeated. What, however, can be done with the distasteful emotions felt about the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Surely the citizens of those two cities did not themselves directly provoke the government of the United States to deserve the horror of a nuclear attack. Can it be doubted that their sufferings were undeserved and should cause deep sorrow, regret, and anger? Yet for the citizens of the United States to confront these emotions they must also confront the failings of their own government. A similar problem is found in two works of literature, Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound and the book of Job found in the Tanakh. In each of these works a good man is seen to be suffering at the hand of his god; Prometheus is chained to a rock by Zeus who then sends an eagle to daily eat Prometheus' liver while Job is made destitute and brought to endure physical pain through an agreement between God~ and Satan. To examine the travails of these two men is to discover two vastly different concepts of the relationship between god and man.
In Judaism, God is seen as having a contractual relationship with the Jewish people where they must obey his holy laws in return for their status of the chosen people. God rewards or punishes Jewish people based on whether they obey or disobey his will. In parts of the Old Testament, however, God does show mercy or forgiveness, and in later interpretations God’s laws such as the Ten Commandments are followed
In Judaism, God is seen as having a contractual relationship with the Jewish people where they must obey his holy laws in return for their status of the chosen people. God rewards or punishes Jewish people based on whether they obey or disobey his will. In parts of the Old Testament, however, God does show mercy or forgiveness, and in later interpretations God’s laws such as the Ten Commandments are followed not only out of loyalty to God but also because of their high moral character.
Every author depicts information in light of purposes and themes. Sometimes these themes are moral issues, emotions, or existential concepts. In the case of the Old Testament, the authors wrote books that highlighted various ideas such as love, obedience, and suffering. Despite various subtopics, the Old Testament clearly demonstrates the theme of God’s faithfulness to his followers.
In conclusion, the harsh words used to describe God was a driving factor as to how similar Jeremiah and Israel were; their predestined birth and faith with God. The descriptions of God and Israel in Jeremiah’s words is quite similar yet God was describe as a warrior and Israel as his enemy. However, Jeremiah and Israel are quiet similar in many ways yet their faith toward God is completely different. Both their birth were predestined by God and led to many journeys; at this point where Jeremiah laments, he still sees the holy and good in God and continues to praise him. In contrary, Israel mocked the prophet God has chosen, Jeremiah and even threaten to denounce him; their faith toward God declines causing God to send Jerusalem into exile in Babylon.