"The tragedy of common sense
it that it is not
very common."
(Albert Einstein)

"Politically correct Christianity
is tolerated but despised.
Full Gospel Christianity is
respected but persecuted."
(Unknown)

"If you marry the Zeitgeist
you will soon become widow."
(Goethe)

"To reach the source of a river
you must swim upstreams."
(Stanislaw Jerzy Lec)

"I note that all those,
who are positive to abortion
already are born."
(Ronald Reagan)

Is God of the Old Testament a bloodthirsty tyrant?

A while ago I received a mail (written in Swedish) with the following arguments (as subject was given "Barbarism in the Bible"):

You have written quite a lot about how God is the God of Love, that he loves every human being etc.

But how do you argue the parts in the OT that, to me, do not appear to be much more than pure barbarism? When, for example, the Israelis attacked the Midianites on God's orders, and Moses then gives the order that all the people shall be massacred, except for the virgins, who the Israelis will keep to themselves (Numbers 31:7-18). Then there is also some sick law saying that the rapist shall marry the victim, if the victim is not married (Deuteronomy 22:28-29). Then God requires you to kill people for a variety of things, for example sorcery (Exodus 22:17), homosexual acts (Leviticus 20:13), curse of their parents (Leviticus 20:9), worshiping other gods (Deuteronomy 17:2-5), to claim you are a prophet though you are not (Deuteronomy 18:20-22), working on the Sabbath (Exodus 31:12-15) and many other "crimes".

This does not sound like a loving god, but a murderous and insane god. Since you Christians believe Jesus is God (NT is certainly more appetizing than GT) then this certainly means that Jesus (according to your faith) has said these things!

Can you defend these parts of the Bible, besides with moral relativism ("It was different in those days…")? If moral relativism is the only defense, would you not expect nobler deeds from God (who moreover is loving!) than from people?

Before I get into the actual topic I note with interest that the person concerned uses the English names (the mail was written in Swedish) of the Old Testament books (henceforth, commonly abbreviated to OT). This suggests that he probably found the above arguments on some atheist website with English text (maybe not the very essence of what he writes, but the scriptures). And here occurs the first problem. It is impossible to understand the Bible by merely taking note of fragmentary quotations, taken from a website that supposedly is made solely to defame the Christian faith. That by reference to a few Bible verses just read the very verses and nothing more is one thing. That without prejudice, in order to try to understand what the Bible text is trying to tell us, read the Bible from page one and straight through (which I myself have done several times — it was partly this that led me to my leaving atheism and become a Christian), is a completely different thing. There is a crucial difference between these two ways of approaching the Bible. No serious seeker would try to approach the Bible in the first way. The Bible must, like any other literature (possibly excepting dictionaries etc), be read coherently. And the text must be contemplated and meditated over. Psalms 119:160 says: "The entirety of Your word is truth". The sum of the Bible's message is therefore the truth. Isolated, disconnected Bible verses are just incomplete parts of a whole.

It is obvious that certain people come with the above type of argument only to discredit the Bible and the Christian faith (I am not saying that this correspondent applies here — I have no perception whether he is an honest seeker or not). They have pre-determined that Christianity is wrong. Anything that speaks against the Christian faith is then taken as evidence that it is wrong, and overlook too often that what is right. They don't hesitate to quote Bible verses taken out of context, that seem to prove what they want to say, and neglect the overall message that the Bible conveys.

Even the honest seeker, who is actually interested in seeking to understand the Bible message, may experience problems with GT's image of God. But not only seekers, also many Christians, maybe even most Christians, wrestle with the contrasts of the image of God between the Old and the New Testament. In many instances they may feel there is no right answer and tend to sweep the problem under the carpet and pretend it doesn't exist. However, this question is very important for anyone wanting to understand the Bible and is well worth trying to answer in a credible way.

With that said, I will now try to explain how I see it. I submit no simple, absolute answers. The problem is difficult and we cannot understand everything (please observe, this limitation goes for atheists as well).

Starting with the quotes above, they are in themselves correct. It is true that OT talks about harsh penalties. It is also true that the Jews sometimes, according to the Bible text, received "orders" from God telling them to do things that we today perceive as cruel, harsh and unloving.

As for the harsh punishment, there is another side of the story. OT also talks a lot about mercy and grace and has, at the time when it was written, a remarkable degree of law and order, where for instance several witnesses were required for someone to be convicted of serious crimes, such as murder. An example of each citizen's strong legal position is when king Ahab had to arrange a mock trial to access Nabot's vineyard. (1 Kings 21). In all countries at this time the king took he wanted, and at best, he compensated for what he took (if he was in a good mood). But in Israel this was not the case. Only after the king had bribed false witnesses to say that Nabot had blasphemed God, he could seize Nabot's vineyard. There is so much more that could be said about OT's law, but then we come away from the subject (more details about the Old Testament legal system can be found here). However, I want to comment on one of the claims of the writer:

Then there is also some sick law saying that the rapist shall marry the victim, if the victim is not married (Deuteronomy 22:28-29).

In all cultures at this time slave owners could treat their slaves at their own discretion. Naturally, it was a financial loss to kill or beat a slave so that he/she became disabled, but there was no punishment for it. It was free to rape female slaves. Here the Jewish law is unique. If a Jewish slave owner raped his female slave he had to marry her and she became a family member. The status of women among the Jewish people was (and is) incredibly strong (when I say "incredibly strong" this statement must be placed in its historical context). To be Jewish is inherited from mother to child. If you have a Jewish father but a non-Jewish mother you are not automatically a Jew, but if you have a Jewish mother you are always counted as a Jew, regardless of who the father is. I fail to see anything sick in such a law. On the contrary! Jewish law had a remarkably high morale and rule of law if you compare with the norms of this time.

The writer asks whether God in OT is different from God in NT. God in OT is portrayed as viscous and bloodthirsty (a sentiment often put forward by militant atheists), while Jesus seems to have a much more sympathetic image (which doesn't prevent some atheists to call Jesus an oppressor — he claimed for example that a Truth existed, which to them oppresses free thought — free thought being more important to post modern man than true thought, i.e. to think right). Thus, the conclusion is that Jesus' teaching is incompatible with OT, which ultimately leads to the Bible contradicting itself and losing credibility (for a discussion on this subject in more detail, please click here.

Now this may not affect the Christian faith itself in any significant way. Christianity certainly has its origin in OT, but its main source is in NT. Jesus' teaching is the foundation of the Christian faith. In many ways, Jesus did go against contemporary Jewish clergy (though it was more about their interpretation of OT, and not OT as such). Without the Old Testament as a background, it is very difficult to understand the New Testament, especially certain terms like the belief in a coming Messiah and blood sacrifice. But possible problems in OT are more of a problem for Judaism than for Christianity. As a Christian you cannot disregard OT, but NT contains nevertheless a fuller revelation of who God is (I will soon come back to this) and if you want to understand who God really is, one must primarily look to Jesus (I develop this more here).

People who have never read the Bible, often and seriously, tend to perceive Jesus as merely gentle, kind and tolerant — a nice guy — and in stark contrast to the judgmental God who is revealed in OT. The fact is that Jesus has exactly the same attitude towards evil as God in OT. Let me give you some examples:

On one occasion Jesus says to the scribes and Pharisees, "You serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell?" (Mathew 23:33).

About the children he says, "But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe unto the world with your seductions! For it must need be that seductions come; but woe to that man by whom the seduction comes!" (Mathew 18:6-7)

On one occasion when Jesus teaches the Pharisees, he says, "You are of this world, I am not of this world. I say therefore unto you, that you shall die in your sins: for if you believe not that I am he, you shall die in your sins." (John 8:23-24)

Jesus is totally uncompromising in his message. For those who repent of their wickedness, and pray for forgiveness, he is full of compassion and love. Prostitutes and other people in the bottom layer of society he meets with abundant love. But those who ought to know better, for example the Pharisees, who had appointed themselves being the true interpreters of Scripture, and who gave a false teaching to the people, are greeted by a completely different severity from Jesus. For he who consciously and deliberately chooses evil, there is no longer any grace. Only judgment remains. Therefore Jesus says to the Pharisees in John 9:41, "If you were blind, you should have no sin: but now you say, We see; therefore your sin remains." And the judgment that Jesus speaks of is eternal death. So in this respect there is really no difference between OT and NT. Both Lord Jehovah of the Old Testament and Jesus of the NT condemn those who deliberately choose evil, but show boundless mercy to those who are weak and full of remorse.

The difference between OT and NT is on another level. Not in the actual attitude towards evilness, but in the consequences. In OT the punishment for sin and wicked actions will be immediate and in physical form, that is, already in this world. In NT, after the death and resurrection of Jesus, punishment comes after death, and not in physical but in spiritual form. NT speaks about the "spiritual death" and that the people who do not want to have anything to do with God, will get exactly what they want. They will escape having anything to do with God — forever. This is the everlasting death. Since God is the source of love, and they will be disconnected from this source through spiritual death, it will probably be a dark and dreary existence, lasting forever. This seems like a terrible punishment, one that God does not dispense with pleasure. Quite the reverse, it is a consequence, not by God's choice, but by our choices and actions. So God is not contradictory when it comes to evil. It is written that God hates evil, and this applies both to God revealed in OT and God revealed in NT. The punishment talked about in NT is probably much more terrifying than the physical death, but seems more remote than physical punishment. In OT punishment often occur through other peoples. For example, when Israel falls away from God, the country is attacked by various nations (Assyrians, Babylonians etc) and the Jews end up in oppression and captivity. Occasionally the Jews acts as executioners of punishment towards other nations and peoples. That God, for example, allowed the Jews to expel the Canaanites was owing to the fact that the Canaanites, among other things, were involved with child sacrifice and had thereby forfeited their rights to their land. I will shortly come back to this.

In a few paragraphs I will now try to explain the problems:

 

1. God has never revealed more to Man's intellect than Man has been able to receive. Therefore a growing revelation of who God is develops gradually in OT and is fulfilled in NT. In Hebrews we read:

Many times and in many ways, God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but now in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son… (Hebrew 1:1)

God has spoken to Man many times and in many different ways throughout history. Jesus is God's final word to Man. If we do not listen to Jesus, God has simply nothing more to say.

Through Jesus, we can understand so much of the nature of God as is humanly possible for our limited minds to understand (many atheists are of the opinion that their intellect is unlimited, the question is whether they are right). In John 14:9 Jesus says, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father". Jesus — who is God — has revealed to us who the Father — who is also God — is, and through Jesus we can know the Father. Anyone who is Christian and have met Jesus, know that God is good and only good. This means that we interpret the Bible based on this insight. Although sometimes we may think that God's actions seem cruel, and we may think that God should be more merciful and forgiving, Christians who know God are aware, that God is good and there must be strong reasons for his actions. It is much like a small child who knows that mom and dad love the child. Sometimes the child may not understand why the parents do what they do, yet the child trusts that their decision is aimed at the child's best.

The above does not mean that a Christian disconnects his brain and swallows anything. God wants us to think and understand. But basically it means that the Christians have a fundamental trust in God's goodness and realize and accept that we cannot understand everything (not even the atheist understands everything — but now I almost blaspheme so I better hurry on).

As I write this I feel how Mr. Enemy of Christianity gets all excited. "So you can actually disconnect the brain and commit any atrocities in the name of God?! Yikes, that's why religions, especially Christianity, should be banned. They are behind all wars and all cruelties in the world!"

Firstly, religion is not behind all wars and atrocities in the world. During 1900s Marxism and Nazism murdered far more people than were totally killed in all religious conflicts and the like throughout mankind's previous history. Essentially, there is nothing principally wrong with religions and ideologies, there is something wrong with Man. This is the Bible's clear message. Certain ideologies and religions can bring out the best in Man, while others bring out the very worst. My firm opinion is that Christianity has an amazing ability to bring out the absolute best in people. I now speak about true Christianity, about people trying to follow Jesus and having Jesus as Lord of their lives. Mother Theresa represented Christ in a very clear way. The priests burning "witches" at the stake did definitely not! They were rather representatives of the Devil! Trusting God's goodness does not mean slavishly doing anything a pastor or a priest tells you to do. Everything must be considered, says the Bible. And it must be examined in relation to the teaching of Jesus! Many Christians have, in their solitude, been discussing with God, yes they have been angry at God when they don't understand. I myself have sometimes accused God and asked how he can allow children to suffer and starve. Sometimes I felt that I had some kind of answer, sometimes not (actually, the whole book of Job is about just that — how God can allow suffering in the world). Basically I realize that we cannot understand everything, and sometimes we have to move on without understanding. In any case, there is nothing in Jesus' teachings that can be used as justification to commit evil acts. To commit evil acts one must act in opposition to Jesus' clear teaching.

God has never revealed more to Man than he has been able to receive. There are pastors in different contexts who have felt that they received visions from God, and moved too fast when it came to changing the parish work and then failed in getting the support of their congregations. It often ended up with the pastor getting fired, or with a split in the congregation. The pastors who, based upon the vision, were supported by their congregations, have done this by teaching and explaining, and by justifying and giving the people time to change.

OT is full of examples where God apparently had exactly the same problems with his original "parish", that is the Jewish people. The Jews leave God, time and again, because they do not understand God's will and plans. God wants to be their king, but the Jews want to have a normal, human king that they can see with their own eyes. Eventually they got what they wanted, otherwise they would probably have abandoned God yet again. All the time they fall into idolatry and the like, and God has a tough job keeping them on the right path. They want to worship idols that they can see, and not an invisible God. Therefore God has repeatedly been compelled to accommodate their requirements and through various physical attributes (for example the temple and the sacrificial system), to give them a sort of physical presence.

God has therefore been limited in his actions and been forced to move slowly. Although God had prepared the Jews of the coming Messiah, through prophesies and in other ways (I have several articles on this in my section on Christian faith), Jesus appeared, which of course showed the true nature of God, so radical that the priests were completely furious at his teaching, and in the end they agreed to kill him. Many of Jesus' followers also left him when they felt he was too radical. We must therefore assess the God who is revealed in OT by this limitation. In OT one finds an image of God, which rather shows how the Jews understood God at the time when the various books were written, than a full image of God. If we are to understand who God really is, we have to look at Jesus.

The image of who and what God is like, thus slowly emerges in OT. In Isaiah more and more of God's goodness appears. In chapter 10:1 we read:

Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees. You write, but violence laws you write, to turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless.

And in chapter 58:6:

Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loosen the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke? Is it not to deal your bread to the hungry, and that you bring the poor that are cast out to your house? When you see the naked, that you cover him; and that you hide not yourself from your own flesh?

OT must be understood in this light.

 

2. The Bible, both OT and NT, are written my humans. This differs from the Qur'an, as Muslims believe, is dictated to Muhammad by the archangel Gabriel. Each letter of the Qur'an is there because Allah wants it to be there. The Qur'an therefore gives no room for interpretation, but must be read and understood literally. The Bible, however, is not dictated by God or angels. Scripture says "….driven by the Holy Spirit men spoke from God" (2 Peter 1:21). That is, people have been using their own frame of reference and experience and their own cultural background to express the message that the Holy Spirit laid down in their hearts. There are of course verses claimed to be directly dictated by God, such as the Ten Commandments, but when this is the case it is clearly evident. The Bible, therefore, must be generally interpreted. One cannot read the Bible text straight up and down. And even less, to pick isolated verses from the text. Although these quotes are accurate, they nevertheless represent a bigger lie than a truth, given what they omit.

The Bible contains a variety of text types. There are rules of conduct, laws, prophesies, revelations from God, Jewish history, poetry etc, etc. Everything written there is not recommendable. On the contrary, the Bible contains much that instead warns us not to do this or that. Since the Bible is a historical book, describing historical events with live people and their actions, both good and evil people are depicted. This means that there is very much described in the Bible that is not reflecting the will of God and his nature, but are instead showing the fallen Man's weaknesses and capacity for evil. Yet there it is, for various reasons. Partly because, in a history book, you must include what has happened, be it good or bad, and partly because you can learn something from history. By taking part in other people's mistakes and weaknesses, you can hopefully avoid repeating them yourself.

Each type of text must be understood from what it is trying to tell us. Poetic praises cannot for instance be used to decide on scientific issues. Some rules are time bound and not universal (such as you should not eat pork, which probably had purely medical reasons, the risk of trichinosis in pork). Etc.

Although I believe that the Bible in its entirety is true, some stories may have some shortcomings when it comes to Man's perception on how God looked at things. The events described are certainly accurately rendered as such, but regarding God's motives, they can probably be incomplete and perhaps sometimes so incomplete that they are misunderstood by the modern reader, who also is limited in his view of looking at things. It is not only the authors of the Bible that were children of their time. So are we. It is enough to consider the straitjacket of political correctness that looms over our country and decides what thoughts a normal Swede dare to think. Today's people probably lack as much in this respect, as did people 2000 years ago. Today we all like to think that we are far above those living thousands of years ago in terms of humanity and tolerance. Reality shows, however, that we are as limited and narrow as people were then. And just as inhumane. We must not forget what happened during World War II, as one of the leading cultural peoples of the world (the Germans) perpetrated perhaps history's most barbaric atrocities. Or what happened in Yugoslavia just 20 years ago. We love to tell ourselves that we are different, but reality speaks another language. Just think of the approximately one million children who were murdered in Sweden since free abortion was introduced! And we even dare say that this is done out of love for these children. That is evil at its worst!

My argument number two thus amounts to that the Bible must be interpreted by reference to the context of the text, and the culture in which it came about. To understand OT it is not enough to have a correct translation. We also need to understand the way of thinking in the culture where OT emerged.

 

3. Let me relate to the previous point and extend the argument a bit. All translations contain difficulties, uncertainties and weaknesses. To translate between two languages, as essentially different as Hebrew and Swedish, always leads to deficiencies in relation to the original text. If you try to include both the beauty, imagery and content of the text, you are forced to compromise. This, combined with the cultural differences I mentioned in the previous paragraph (between the authors of OT and today's readers of OT), leads to problems understanding especially some parts of the Bible text. A more detailed discussion on this would be too long to be meaningful. Moreover, I am not a linguist, so most of it would be a repeat of what others say. But with the help of examples, we can at least get a pretty good idea of what I'm trying to say. I therefore refer the interested reader to my section about contradictions and problems in the Bible (see a.o. the articles "God "hardened Pharaoh's heart", that is God is supposed to have forced Pharaoh to sin, and then punished him for it" and "Is Psalm 22:17 (one of the strongest prophecies on Jesus' crucifixion) a deliberate mistranslation?").

 

4. Many things that God says and does are "time bound and particular", that is, they apply to a particular time and a particular context. Thus, one cannot draw general conclusions about the nature of God from specific historical events or single contexts in the Bible.

A theologian friend (who wishes to remain anonymous) pointed out the above to me. I feel that this is a very important point (of course in relation to the rest of this article) when it comes to understanding the true nature of God. In a mail he writes the following:

One thing that many Christians seem to have trouble with, when it comes to OT, is that the many things God says and does are actually time bound and particular. OT's scriptures are a testimony that point to a God who acts in history; a God who engages in the destinies of a certain people [the Jewish people] and certain named individuals, and who sometimes seems to make decisions and give orders which are ad hoc formulated for the situations that this people and these persons are in.

There is a perception in the Church, which I think goes back to Justin and other Fathers, that if something is true then it must be so for all people at all times. Thus, it must be universal and eternal, rather than particular and time bound.

Justin is one of the first Christian writers who explicitly divides the Mosaic law into different parts. To Trypho Justin says that some content in the Mosaic law — namely that which is "natural, eternal and universally good" — is written for all people, while other parts (for example, the ritual law) were written for the Jews because of their hardness of heart. The parts of the latter type are of no value to Christians, according to Justin.

This inability and unwillingness to see something truly divine in the temporary and particular, I mean, without going into details, is inspired by Greek thought (especially Platonism and Stoicism) and it is still shaping our view today. The Enlightenment and Kant have in modern time also reinforced these ideas.

But the truth is of course, that the Bible is not an incarnation of Plato's Highest Good, or the Stoic Rational Principle, but a divine testimony. A testimony of God's acts in history, revealing God as far away from all Platonic concepts as you can get. This is a God who is not afraid to get his fingers dirty in the human sphere. This is a God who rejoices, gets angry, cries and takes revenge. A God who takes sides — for the good and against the evil. A God who enters into covenant with some but not with others. A God who chooses a people above all peoples in the world to bear his glory and revelation, and a God who became man at a given moment in history, in a given geographical and cultural context.

It is this God the Bible is talking about, and I think it's important to have just that in mind when we read the Scriptures of the Old Testament. The true divine cannot be separated from the temporary and particular, but is part of it, because God always works in the human, time bound reality.

Suppose a junior school teacher trains himself to be a university teacher. She (or he — to be politically correct) will treat his/her new students (university students) in a very different way compared to how he/she treated the young children in first grade. This does not mean the person is schizophrenic or contradictory. It just means that when you interact with different groups, you have to adapt accordingly. Otherwise it will not work. When a democracy is in conflict with a dictatorship, you have to act differently than if it concerned another democracy. Compromises will not work against dictatorships since dictatorships perceive any attempt to compromise as a sign of weakness in the opposing party. History teaches us that hardness and relentlessness is the only thing that works in this case. That God appears differently in OT than in NT, need not mean that God is contradictory. The explanation may be as simple as that God acts differently in different contexts, both in space and time. It is not God who is different, the contexts are different.

 

5. But even if we take into account the four points above, it is clear that God is extremely tough and uncompromising against evil and against the people who deliberately run evil errands. Why then, is God so angry with evil?

After the Fall, the world was laid under the empire of evil. My interpretation of the Bible is that the Devil, during the era depicted in OT, had physical power on earth, that is he could even act physically. Adam had given to the Devil the authority over the Earth, that Adam had received from God (according to Genesis). Luke chapter four tells us about how the Devil tempts Jesus.

The Devil led him up high and let him see in a glance all the kingdoms of the world and said to him: "I will give to you all this power and glory, for it has been delivered unto me [by Adam — Krister's comment] and to whomsoever I will give it. It you worship me, all these things shall be yours." (Luke 4:5-7)

After Jesus' resurrection, it seems that the Devil's physical power over the earth was broken (as to why, I try to explain this in my section on Christian faith). The devil was, and is now limited to act only through people, which he through lies, threats and temptations get to do his will. Jesus calls him not for nothing "the father of lies". Many of those who in recent years in total madness have stabbed people to death, even small children, claim they heard voices. Something, of course, psychology and psychiatry dismiss as nonsense (they don't deny that the madman heard voices, but they dismiss it could be real voices that do not have their source in the madman's brain). The monumental inability of these sciences to cure people with that kind of mental problem (except for drugging them) suggests that perhaps they should rethink their theories. Furthermore by definition, science must, to be able to function, exclude the supernatural from their models. If supernatural forces and influences do exist, science will therefore never be able to give a complete description of reality.

Anyway, I am convinced that Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and others were under strong demonic influence. In the case of Hitler, many of his generals have described that when they approached him, they felt such fear that their legs nearly buckled under them (and they can hardly be characterized as weaklings). A TV program shown on Discovery a few years ago, ended with the following comment, "His kingdom died with him. Without him — the abode of evil — the Nazi dictatorship dissolved like a ghost." (I write more about this here)

Now, if the Devil during OT's era had the power I think he had, there took place during the early Biblical history an extremely decisive battle of life and death, between the evil and the good. A battle that could easily have led to the evil taking over the whole world. Maybe God sometimes had to resort to extraordinary measures.

When I saw the movie trilogy Lord of the Rings, which is about the fight between good and evil, I felt a deeper understanding of how hideous evil is. In part 2, thousands of women and children are trapped in a barricaded room. Outside, the Orcs (the bad guys) tries to get in, to kill and eat all the people. Words and negotiations would not work, the only thing that could stop the Orcs is physical violence. I could not help but thinking, "Would it really be wrong to kill all the Orcs to the last man?! To totally annihilate the species of Orcs!"

One thing that history teaches us is that you cannot negotiate with evil. It looks at every concession from the opposite side as a weakness, and immediately moves their positions forward. Evil never makes any concessions, other than for tactical reasons, and these concessions are never designed to arrive at a compromise solution that would benefit both parties. Instead they ask for ceasefire, only to build up their forces even more and thus, in the end, crush the opponent. There are countless examples of this. Allied concessions to Hitler in hopes to avoid war, Kuwait's concessions to Saddam Hussein's claims to avoid occupation, etc, etc. The war in Europe and the occupation of Kuwait came anyway. Israel today has the same situation with regard to negotiations with Hamas and Hezbollah. Evil is impossible to negotiate with. It wants everything and gives nothing in return. God know this, and therefore God is absolutely, one hundred percent uncompromising when it comes to evil. The man who chooses to fully show solidarity with evil becomes an enemy of God. The Bible is very clear on this. It even says that it will be terrible for the one who is evil and who prides himself on his evil, to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrew 10:31) It's a completely different thing with the sinner who struggles with his sin and yearns for something better. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled." (Matthew 5:6). That is, a person living a faulty life but yearning for something better, is met by God's infinite mercy and love. But he who challenges God by his wickedness, and shows no remorse, cannot expect any mercy.

 

6. I also think that people who live in such a safe environment as we do in Sweden, tend to belittle evil. Evil is obnoxious!!!!! Evil is terrible!!! There is no good in it at all, only evil!!! Evil will always lead to terrible suffering, although it may at first seem to have some positive traits. The Nazis had for example some good points in the beginning, when it came to the economy and unemployment of Germany. But evil always leaves utter devastation in its wake. We do not understand evil abomination to the fullest, because we ourselves are evil. Therefore, we understand perhaps not God's terrible anger against it. Kind of like a chain smoker who doesn't know how bad he smells because he is totally imbued by the smell of smoke (for a further discussion on the nature of evil read here).

The camp prisoners who were forced to pick out the corpses of men, women and children from the gas chambers and then run them off to the crematory ovens, looked into the naked face of evil. The little girl who was kidnapped and then raped and murdered has also seen the naked face of evil. Maybe you have to have been through similar horrific experiences in order to fully understand the nature of evil and thus God's intransigence with it. Incidentally, I have a hard time believing that anyone who really have met evil in all its obscenity, would have any desire to watch a horror movie. Such films attract possibly spoiled, Western youths, who are dying of boredom and are too lazy and apathetic to create their own meaning to their lives.

Let us imagine a city somewhere, where a virus mutated into a full-lethal variant, against which no antidote exists and that one hundred percent kills all infected. The virus also spreads extremely easy, yes so easy that it is virtually impossible to stop the spread. Experts agree that this virus will kill everyone on earth if not stopped. So far the virus has not spread outside the city, but it's only a matter of time before this happens. In such a situation, I am convinced that you would choose to destroy this city and all life in the city — men, women and children and all animals — everything! The people in the city are anyhow doomed, and if the virus spreads it will mean death to all mankind. Obviously one would make such a choice if there was no other option. I say IF THERE WAS NO OTHER OPTION (please do not misunderstand me!)!!!!! Maybe evil is just such a virus. And maybe this was the situation during the time of the OT. The only way to stop evil was to destroy it and the people who were obsessed with it.

Genesis, chapter 19 tells us of the righteous Lot who lived in Sodom. At one time he had two male guests (who were in fact angels — but Lot did not know this at first). The people of the city, both young and old (the text says) gathered outside Lot's house and demanded him to send his guests out so that they could rape them. When Lot refused, they tried to force their way into the house. Now Lot was rescued by the two angels who struck the people with blindness. Otherwise, both Lot's family and his guest would probably have been torn to pieces by the mob.

When reading this you realize how monumental evil must have been in Sodom and Gomorrah. So monumental, that God chose to destroy these two cities and all the people who lived there. Maybe there was no other way out, otherwise whole mankind would have been destroyed.

I also believe there are two more aspects here. Firstly, we thus underestimate evil, but we also underestimate Man and Man's value. As pointed out above, the fallen Man does not understand evil in all its obscenity. We think it is probably not so bad, when in fact it is far worse than we think. Nor do we understand the value of Man. If we did, we would understand how awful it is when people murder each other, bully each other and torment each other. One example of how vile evil is, may be child sacrifice.

This is an old tradition in the countries around the Mediterranean. At one point, when Carthage was besieged by an overwhelming enemy, 500 children was strangled to appease the gods. The enemy army broke up, and Carthage was rescued. The Jews, who in Biblical times (exactly as today) were surrounded mainly by enemies, were strictly forbidden to engage in child sacrifice. The Bible calls child sacrifice "an abomination". Among the people who lived around Israel, child sacrifice was a normal part of everyday life. It was, for example, common to sacrifice the first-born child to the local idol/idols. On some occasions the Jews were affected by their neighbors and fell into this terrible practice. In 2 Chronicles 28:3 we read, for instance, of the Jewish king Ahaz:

Yes, he had also cast molten images for Baalim. And he burnt incense in the valley Hinnom, and burnt his children in the fire, according to the abomination custom of the nations whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel [it implies here that Israel was allowed to expel the people of Canaan because they were dealing with child sacrifice].

A few verses later we read that "The Lord his God delivered him (king Ahaz) into the hand of the king of Aram" (this punishment came direct in physical form, as I pointed out earlier). God never accepted that the Jews were involved in child sacrifice, so he punished them immediately. Personally I think, as I said before, that the reason for God expelling the people who lived in "the land of Canaan", to allow the Jews to live there, was that these people involved themselves with child sacrifice. Thus, they lost their right to the land. The intransigence and hardness that God sometimes exhibits towards certain people can certainly in these cases, be due to their involvement with child sacrifice and other things that God regarded as abominations. This brought about God's wrath.

If you are reading this and are not a believer, you probably think that all this talk about the Devil and evil is pure mumbo-jumbo. Of course, a materialist does not believe in the existence of a supernatural reality (which in no way disproves the existence of such a reality — it only shows that the materialistic world view is consistent). But the question was how the God of the Bible could allow, and even participate, in things that appear to us today as extremely cruel, while Jesus speaks of forgiveness and love. An explanation for this must of course be based on the reality that the Bible depicts, and not from the reality of the materialist, where God does not even exist. If God does not exist, the whole issue becomes meaningless. The question is not about the existence of God, but whether the God of the Bible is contradictory or not. This can only be assessed within the worldview of the Bible. Contradictions can only be resolved within the system under study (just like the question of contradictions in geometry only can be resolved within the formal system of mathematics).

 

Conclusions:

1. The full revelation of God's nature slowly evolves and grows in the Bible. The image of God as portrayed in OT, especially in the beginning, is true but incomplete.

2. The Bible is written by humans based on their imagination, and the concepts and understanding of that time. The Bible must be interpreted and translated, not only linguistically, but also culturally (so that we, based on our way of thinking, can understand what the Biblical text is really trying to tell us).

3. In some cases it is almost impossible to translate the Bible tex,t so that all different aspects of the text are encompassed in the translation.

4. Many things that God does and says are "time bound and particular", that is, they apply to a particular time and in a particular context.

5. We tend to underestimate the danger of evil and of evil abomination. Therefore we do not understand why God is so implacable against the people who choose the way of evil.

6. Evil is like a deadly virus. You cannot compromise with it because it wants everything. It must be eradicated!

The Bible says that no evil can enter heaven. In Revelation 21:27, we read of paradise/heaven:

Never shall any unclean thing get in there, nor any person acting outrageous or untrue, but only those that are written in the Lamb's book of life.

God cannot allow anyone who has the least bit of evil in himself to enter heaven, as it would contaminate everything. So strong is the force of evil. Therefore it is written in the chapter before:

And whosoever was not found written on the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

Luckily, it's not about Man having to be perfect. He cannot himself do away with his evil nature without the help of God. To become one of God's children we have to confess our wickedness and imperfection before God and plead for God's mercy. The punishment for our evil is already served by the crucifixion of Jesus, when God himself came down to earth and took our punishment upon himself. This grace is available to all who want it, but Man must reach for it by confessing his sins, for the grace to be available. God therefore asks not of us that we must be perfect. In his Sermon on the Mount Jesus says:

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. They shall be filled. (Matthew 5:6).

You are therefore not blessed because you are righteous, because no one is. But if you are yearning to be, and recognize and acknowledge your shortcomings, then you become righteous by God's grace. For those who claim to be righteous and without the need of grace, or even openly run the errands of evil, all that remains is the lake of fire.

(The above text should be seen as a draft. There are surely many aspects I have not mentioned. The topic is very difficult and I have never come upon any real satisfactory explanation. I am therefore thankful for constructive criticism).

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