Still, there's one that bothers me the most, simply because I feel that it's one of the most overlooked piece of Christian theology. That famous line in Dawkins' The God Delusion goes:
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
But that, in and of itself, isn't troubling. There are plenty of angry, vengeful god figures throughout mythology. The problem is that Christianity, at some points, preaches of a god of love and at others it preaches a god of vengeance.
From a theological standpoint, it's not a bad idea.
1 John 4:15-16 appeases the more moderate followers of Christianity:
If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.
Of course, god's love isn't unconditional. You have to accept Jesus, but that seems like a small sacrifice for god's love.
I include the demand for the acceptance of Christ because I think it's important that Christians acknowledge that even the most straightforward verse is conditional. The love of god, in a theological sense, is conditional. If you don't accept the religion, then god does not really love you. At least, not in the same way he might love you if you did.
Still, I get a lot of Christians who mention that "god is love." If that's how you define god, that's great. Then I hope you indulge in god every day of your life, but you're not really a Christian unless you go so far as to say that god is a little more than love. For Christian theology to exist, god has to be conscious and active and do the things the Bible claims he did, and that's where the contradiction is.
Since this is Paul who said that "god is love," it is only fair that we stick to Paul's definition of love. 1 Corinthians 13:4-6 reads:
Love is always patient; love is always kind; love is never envious or arrogant with pride. Nor is she conceited, and she is never rude; she never thinks just of herself or ever gets annoyed. She never is resentful; is never glad with sin; she's always glad to side with truth, and pleased that truth shall win.
The god of the Bible meets a few of these criteria, but certainly not all.
The god of the New Testament is vengeful, openly (the Old Testament goes without saying). Revelation makes clear that god will destroy the unbelievers and those not written in the Book of Life into a lake of fire (Revelation 20).
Moreover, when Moses received the Ten Commandment, god slipped a little note about himself into Exodus 20:5-6.
"You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
Now, the general apologetic defense is a semantic one, and not altogether bad. It goes something like this:
In a similar way, Jehovah expressed His love for Israel in the Old Testament by proclaiming to be “a jealous God” (Exodus 20:5; Deuteronomy 4:24). He was not envious of the Israelites’ accomplishments or possessions, but was communicating His strong love for them with anthropomorphic language. The Scriptures depict a spiritual marriage between Jehovah and His people.
Of course, this is a fair point. The Bible often projects god with anthropomorphic language.
The problem is that god describes the nature of his jealousy in that same portion of Exodus, so we know this isn't entirely accurate.
"For love is not resentful," (from that passage from 1 Corinthians) and so the author of the piece on apologetics writes that the jealousy is begotten out of love. So it makes sense that, in order to correct the contradiction in god's nature, the apologist attempts to disprove st. Paul by using semantics.
He insists that there is a differentiation between the word god uses for jealousy and the word that Paul uses. That may be true, but there is not a difference between the kinds of jealousy they are meant to display.
The figure of god portrayed in the "divorce from the people of Israel" that the apologist goes on to describe is an abusive husband. He kicks the crap out of his beloved bride out of resentment (though "love is not resentful"). The god that the prophets discuss is one who rains fire and brimstone on that wife, whether he has divorced himself from her or not.
We can apologize for the semantics of the piece all we want, but the semantics are meant to illustrate a behavior that god happily displays. Whether the connotation that the apologist takes from the passage shows a compassionate form of jealousy would certainly make sense, if god was shielding his people from the outside, instead of ordering him to slaughter the non-believers and then punishing them vigorously for refusing. Unfortunately, the behavior of god, as Dawkins points out, is not consistent with compassion, it's consistent with spousal abuse, and that, as the common domestic pamphlet is meant to remind us, "is not love."
2 comments:
Keep beating that dead horse Josh,you only make yourself look petty and vindictive.Unless of course that's what your going for in which case,congratulations.
@Josh,
I, for one, am glad to read your post, despite vin's comment.
@vin,
Saying he's petty and vindictive suggests that you agree that he's correct. Is there some subtle satire going on here, because the article is about a petty and vindictive god? :)
Post a Comment