Realization #01) It wasn’t God’s fault
Realization #01: It is actually fallen angels (and not God) who commit the vast majority of the Old Testament’s acts of violence & “divine wrath”.
There are quite a few folks – Christians & non-Christians alike – who have wondered about the seemingly contradictory nature of God as He is portrayed in the Bible. On the one hand, the Bible tells us that God is an embodiment of perfect, unconditional Love (Psalm 100:5, Matthew 5:48, 1 John 4:8-16, et al). On the other hand, the Bible also seemingly portrays the same God in a very different light – as a God who regularly commits acts that can only be characterized as evil (Genesis 6:7, Genesis 19:4-5, Genesis 38:7-10, Exodus 12:29, Exodus 14:28, Leviticus 10:1-3, Numbers 11:1-3, Numbers 16:35, Joshua 10:10-11, 2 Kings 1:9-12, 2 Kings 2:23-24 et al). Many non-Christians rave in response, of course; claiming that such a contradiction essentially proves that God doesn’t exist at all. And many Christians – at least those with any semblance of an awakened conscience – struggle mightily to somehow justify continuing to worship such a bipolar deity at all.
Indeed, while growing up in America’s “Bible Belt”, I had often wondered myself: How could an all-Loving God kill all of Egypt’s first-born during the initial Passover? … How could an all-Caring God command a father to kill his own son simply to test his faith? … How could an all-Forgiving God rain down fire and burn up the inhabitants of two entire cities?
Well, it turns out that the answer is pretty simple …
He didn’t!
Allow me to illuminate …
When I first started reading the Bible, I often wondered about the many names used by its authors for God. Sometimes God was referred to as “God”, other times as “LORD”, and still other times as “LORD God”. Like most new readers, I simply assumed that these terms were synonyms – that all of them described the same God; that the authors were simply alternating those names to make it easier on their readers. In fact, most Christians I know, and even most of the Christian preachers I have heard, still believe this to be the case. And yet, if we look closely at when & how these different terms are used, we can see that it very well might not be the case. Indeed, as I later delved into the Hebrew manuscripts themselves, it became clear that the translators of the ancient texts didn’t use the terms “God” and “LORD” interchangeably at all, but rather used them to represent two entirely different Hebrew terms in those writings.
Basically, almost every time we read “LORD” in the founding pages of the Hebrew Bible (from Genesis 1:1 through Exodus 3:14) it represents one of two Hebrew terms – either “Adonai” or “YHWH”; both intimate names for the ultimate, eternal Source most of us know as “God” … In contrast, almost every time we read “God” in the Hebrew Bible, it is representing the Hebrew term “Elohim”, which literally means “gods” … that’s right – “godS”; a plural term, referring to more than one spiritual being!
;