aiki
Regular Member
You make it sound as though the two things - God being a merciless terror to the wicked and His being loving - are mutually exclusive things. Do you believe this?However, in my own experience, there have been times when I saw God as being a merciless terror and times when I wholeheartedly believed the words of John in that God is love.
But the words and actions we read of in Scripture are reported to us via his disciples. We read of Christ's words and deeds second-hand through the recollections of his followers. Why trust them to accurately relate the truth above the other contributors to the Bible?I found the underlying factor between these extremes to have been my faith in Christ: it wasn't until I began to believe wholeheartedly in the words of Christ and to follow His voice above every other that my perspective radically changed.
"Intuitively understand" sounds like just a fancy way of saying "make assumptions."That being said, I can intuitively understand how those who predated Christ could have misinterpreted the nature of God.
But Christ acted in accord with everything the OT revealed of the nature of God. Jesus, then, didn't reveal anything new about God; he was just a tangible, human manifestation of the God the Jews had worshipped for centuries.The definition of 'divine inspiration' with regard to the entirety of the scripture which I prefer is then that of a progressive revelation: the same nature of God was continually interacting with humanity up until the point that it was most clearly revealed through Christ in the flesh.
It is the love of God that prompts Him to warn us of the eternal consequences of our willful, unrepentant disobedience to His laws. Such a warning may seem coercive to some, but the motive for it is to protect and save, not force.Do you honestly believe that the love of God is coercive?
It sounds horrible taken in isolation from its context. But the passage from Leviticus you've cited follows after four earlier escalating attempts by God to produce repentance in His Chosen People are defied. God shows tremendous patience and mercy in the slow, incrementally-escalating method He uses to turn the wayward Israelites back to Himself. He doesn't just drop the hammer and crush the Israelites the first time they step out of line. Instead, He only moves to the harsh extremes described in Leviticus 26: 28, 29 after several earlier, less severe measures have been resisted.Here's a more blatant example for you:
"Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins. And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat." (Lev 26:28,29)
Do you believe that the nature behind such a message is the nature of Christ?
God doesn't demand the Jews' obedience "or else." On one hand God warns of His discipline if His Chosen People stray from their covenant with Him. On the other, God offers blessing and prosperity if His People maintain their fidelity to Him. God uses both positive and negative inducements, the carrot and the stick, to prompt the Israelites to walk with Him. And God does the very same thing in the NT (see John 10:10; Heb. 12:5-11; )
I've been within the Baptist denomination since birth. The fear of God was taught but never in isolation from His love, mercy and grace. I'm sorry to hear your experience was so different from mine.I'll admit, I have a chip on my shoulder because of Baptist theology. I was once a baptist as a child, and I still remember very vividly how the leadership had all the small children (roughly 5 years of age or so) shut behind closed doors where we had the fear of God shoved down our throats.
I don't see that the God presented to us in the OT is less clear or realized than the God we encounter in the NT.The question is, will we believe Him, or will we fall backward to the words of Moses and the OT prophets as the foundation of our faith?
Malachi 3:6
6 "For I am the Lord, I do not change...
Hebrews 13:8
8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Selah.
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