The following comes from a Medium reader who offered a short list of mostly Old Testament verses that clearly seem at odds with what we expect of a loving God. [He also offered similar challenges from the New Testament which will be covered in a later post.]

• Slavery: Exodus 21… seems to accept slavery without condemning it.
• Genocide: In Deuteronomy 20 and 1 Samuel 15, God commands the killing of entire populations, including children.
• Treatment of Women: Passages like… Deuteronomy 22:28–29 requires a rape victim to marry her rapist.

This reader ends his respectful observation with the follow point…

“These are serious concerns. If we say the Bible is inerrant in every word, we also need to grapple honestly with the implications of these texts.”

Attempts to reconcile this Old Testament God with our own sense of right and wrong typically take four forms.

• The God of the Old Testament (OT) is not the God of the New Testament (NT).
  The originator of this belief was Marcion of Sinope in the second century. He put forth the view that the OT God was a lesser god and was replaced by a benevolent God found in the NT who was revealed by His Son, Jesus Christ. Of course, those who hold this view today are really saying the Bible is not to be trusted as a unified, divine document. Instead, we need to focus exclusively on the love of Jesus in passages such as Luke 10:27b and trust that all will work out at the end of our lives.

Luke 10:27b - [love] your neighbor as yourself.

• The second view is that Christianity is full of lies and falsehoods that infect weak-minded people into believing in a God or gods that either don’t exist or have little interest in mankind. The Bible, both OT and NT, may have some value, but the lessons offered can best be learned by living life in the real world. Sadly, this is the group with no faith in God.

Hebrews 11:1 - Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

• The third group are those Christians who don’t worry about all this theological stuff. Some are baby born-again Christians and others are those that have been inoculated with dead Christianity (works-based and unsaved). In either case, attempting to understand the challenges of a systematic Biblical Christian theology is not of interest.

1 Corinthians 3:1-2 - But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready,

• The fourth group comprises those Christians who accept an inerrant Bible as written by God and penned by man. Scripture is considered the foundation of our faith, hope, and trust in a loving God who has sealed us until the day we will be with Him for eternity. As the Medium writer stated, “if we say the Bible is inerrant… we also need to grapple honestly with the implications of these texts.” Ultimately, the answer, not acceptable to Christians or Non-Christians is…

2 Corinthians 5:7 - for we walk by faith, not by sight.

We are not God

My simple, yet humanly unacceptable answer is that… we are not God.

God gave us a brain to think and reason. He gave us a moral code to follow. Some of that code (human-to-human not human-to-God) rests in the heart of all mankind. This includes such universal guidelines as “do not kill” and “do not steal.” Of course the Lord offered much more detail in the Bible on what He expects of His children.

The frustration for man is that God is not bound by the same rules He calls us to accept.

That is largely because of three things,

(1) we can only view His actions through the lens of a sin-cursed world and

(2) our personal sin nature. Finally, and most importantly

(3) because we are so limited in seeing and understanding the world from God’s viewpoint.

God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent and supreme. The simple fact is that He neither has to defend nor explain Himself to mankind. In a human context, this is similar to why a two-year old, ignoring the advice of their loving parents, may not understand why putting their hand on a hot stove will burn them. Perhaps a better illustration is that adults understand that when their child has cancer, the “cure” can often be extended discomfort which the child can only begin to accept by trusting the adults involved.

Unacceptable

Of course the view that our morality (which God put in our hearts and calls us to by His Word) is not to be applied to the Lord, creates anger and rejection in many, and confusion in others. Below is my list of top five questions to ask God on the other side of the grave…

1. Why did You allow Lucifer to become Satan?
2. Why did You allow Satan to tempt Adam and Eve?
3. Why do You allow pain and suffering?
4. Why do You oppose abortion if very few who are born go to Heaven?
5. Since life is so precious, why did You command the Israelites to kill every Amalekite man, woman, and child?

Theologians throughout the ages have offered human answers to these questions. And, perhaps some are valid. However, if viewed honestly, a full understanding of just the five questions above is hard to reconcile with One who has the power to have never allowed sin and pain to enter the world in the first place… a God who allows the majority of those born to spend eternity in Hell. There is a good reason why evangelism is not for the faint of heart.

God is not Bound by our Opinions

The Old Testament adequately covers the point that our human ability to fully understand why God does what He does is both woefully shortsighted and generally irrelevant.

Job 23:13 – But he is unchangeable, and who can turn him back? What he desires, that he does.

Psalm 115:3 – Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.

Psalm 135:6 – Whatever the LORD pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.

Isaiah 55:8 – For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.

Job 38:4 – “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.

Conclusion

The Lord offered us a love letter, the Bible, as an attempt to help us live in fellowship with others under a code of moral ethics that maximizes the joy of life’s adventure. More importantly, He offered His Son as a substitution for those times we fail and do wrong. By accepting God’s grace in providing for salvation through faith in Christ, we will spend eternity with Him in Heaven. However, the key to having the Holy Spirit in our hearts today and the hope of Heaven tomorrow is dependent on our faith… that we serve a good God, a loving God, a compassionate God… at times in spite of our limited understanding or opinion to the contrary.

1 Corinthians 13:12 - For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Human-based intellectual honesty regarding an understanding of God needs to be tempered by the reality that we know so little about the Creator of the universe… when viewed from His perspective. We need to trust through faith that all will be made clear once we see Him face-to-face.

John 3:16 - “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.