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The Evil of God

By Jeremy Myers
6 Comments

The Evil of God

evil GodSo as I work on my Commentary on Jonah, I have run into a question which is raised by the text, and I want to ask it here.

The question is this:

What kind of God do we serve?

How is it that the “God of the Old Testament” can have the same values and goals as Jesus in the Gospels? How is it that Jesus can tell us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, while God in the Old Testament tells Israel to kill their enemies, men, women, children, and animals, and leave none of them alive?

I know that this is an age-old question, and I sincerely doubt that I am going to solve it on this blog, but I want to raise the question anyway.

As far as I can tell, there are four main solutions offered by Bible scholars and teachers.

1. God was Wrong

This first option is that God is a monster. We cannot explain away this despicable behavior by saying that God can do what He wants, or that there is a mystery to God’s actions which we will never know this side of heaven. God commanded things which would get Him condemned in almost any court of law in history.

Many atheists have come to just this conclusion about the God of the Bible, but for bible-believing followers of Jesus, this option is not the best. There are better, more reasonable answers for what the Bible says about God.

2. The Bible is Wrong

A second possible explanation is that the Bible is full of errors. Some people argue that although the Bible says God commanded these atrocities, He didn’t actually command them. The Bible is wrong in what it says about God.

[Read more…]

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Bible Commentary on Jonah, Theology of God

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God Does Not Rape

By Jeremy Myers
9 Comments

God Does Not Rape

God does not rape. He woos.Rachel Held Evans has a great guest post today from Elizabeth Esther about the will of God and the will of humans. She writes this:

It wasn’t until recently when I was reading about the persecution of Romanian Christians under Communist rule that something changed for me. According to the late Patriarch Theoctist of the Romanian Orthodox Church, “Man has a very powerful will—so powerful that even God Himself does not break it. And by this [God] is actually showing that man is in the likeness of God. Without man’s will he could not make any progress on the way to goodness. So out of all the gifts that God grants the human being, we believe that freedom is one of the most important.” (Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer, p.126).

The entire post is great, and I encourage you to go read the rest.

While I used to believe that God forced His will upon us, it one day occurred to me that this was similar to rape. Even if it was out of His love for us, love (by definition) cannot be forced upon someone else. It can only be freely offered and freely received.

How does God win us over? The same way a man wins over a woman – through wooing, kindness, generosity, acts of love, tender words, service, self-sacrifice, priceless gifts, and sometimes, feats of strength. Yes, God is a show off. If you don’t believe me, have you watched a stunning sun set recently? Have you looked at a snowflake? Have you studied a tree?

No, God does not rape. He woos.

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Theology of God

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