If we draw near to God, we experience His love and His grace. When we move away from God, we do not feel His love or grace, because there is no love apart from God.
The idea of the “wrath of God” comes with a certain amount of discomfort, but we should never be afraid to confront the most difficult questions or statements. Truth is truth, and God and truth must necessarily be harmonious. Richard Dawkins says,
“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.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
The angry God of the Old Testament problem is often a line of first defense (or is it offense?) for those who do not believe in God, or at least do not believe in “the God of the bible”. It is a problem that believers wrestle with too.
The sermon in church today was on the book of Ezra. Ezra 8:22 reads,
“The gracious hand of our God is on everyone who looks to him, but his great anger is against all who forsake him.”
When I started this blog, I promised some autobiographical accounts, not that anyone is waiting with baited breath for them. True to my word, though, I will oblige.
I just revised one of my first blog posts, One of My First Light Bulb Moments. In that post, I recounted some early revelations about the Bible that marked my spiritual journey while I was still an unbeliever. I recalled my observation of the intricate harmony of the Bible and acknowledgement that the Creator of the world could communicate to us if He desired to, and He could also protect that communication if He wanted to.
I had these thoughts as I read the Bible for the first time in college. There were other thoughts too. The additional thoughts were not as philosophical; they were much more personal and uncomfortable.
In fact, reading the Bible made me feel uncomfortable. It was sharp. It seemed to expose my heart. It seemed to suggest I was at enmity to God. I virtually squirmed as I read it.
Though I read the Bible as part of an academic class on world religions, I approached each world religion as part of my own journey for truth. Not just the world religions class, I approached every class in college as part of my truth journey. I was eager to delve into the meaning of life. I was very much a product of 1960’s and 1970’s culture in that respect.
I did not really recognize the discomfort I was feeling as I read the Bible until I came across the following verse:
For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)
There it was: staring me in the face was an explanation for why I felt so uncomfortable. I at once desired to put the Bible down and leave it alone and to press further like a person exploring a cave in the dark with trepidation. God seemed unapproachable to me, and the conviction I felt was painful; yet I could see there was something there.
The Bible, unlike most religious texts, is unique in confronting the sinful, imperfect nature of man in all of the pride, selfishness and pettiness that we so clearly see in other people, of course, but are much less likely to see in ourselves. The Bible uniquely reflects that pride, selfishness and pettiness back at us. It forces us to be honest with ourselves.
It was many months before I learned a lesson that changed my life forever. If we do not turn from the conviction, but allow it to have its way with us, God’s Word brings us to the cross.
At the cross we see God, intentionally divested of His glory, dying as a sacrifice for us, redeeming us from the sin that is in us. We are not left to be perpetually convicted of our sins; we are shown the way out of our condition that God provides. When we confess our sins and believe, we find the glorious truth of salvation, forgiveness of sin and relationship with our God and Creator.
“[W]hoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned….” (John 5:24)
We must first see ourselves for who we are, as difficult and uncomfortable as that can be. The Living Word does that: it exposes the sin, but it also shows the way to mercy and forgiveness. It is sharper than any two-edged sword. The painful exposure of the sin that resides in us gives way to the healing that we desperately need by the same Word that smites us.
I do not believe that these scientists have any religious inclinations; at least none that I am aware. The experiments do not necessarily mean that God is behind the phenomena. The experiments do show, however, a positive correlation between positive words and positive thinking; and they show a correlation between negative words and negative thinking and decay and degeneration. Continue reading “Words have Power”→
From a Lecture – Dr Peter Williams – New Evidences the Gospels were Based on Eyewitness Accounts
The Bible is ubiquitous in our society. More people have an opinion on the Bible than people who have read it, or at least much of it. The text was written over a period of 1500 years by about 40 some different people. As a literary text, I was struck when I first read it (for a class in college) by how complex, yet harmonious the Bible is. There was an internal authenticity that spoke to me.
While our society tends to view the Bible as just another book, a piece of our history and common culture, something that people tend to like (the most read book), but nothing to be taken terribly seriously, people of faith view it as the Word of God, sent from heaven, a revelation of God’s purpose and design for mankind. Few people really study the Bible in-depth and detail from an “objective” view. Maybe no one does. We come to it with our preconceived notions, and we look for support for what we already believe is true.
I have a great deal of doubt in the human ability to be objective. Scientists who live by the scientific method, in my opinion, can be as guilty of bias as the common man, and are all the more culpable for claiming it is science. But that is the subject of another discussion.
At the same time, there are stories of people who set out to disprove the Bible who come to believe it is true. Many of them in fact.
I did not approach the Bible initially like that; rather I approached it as I approached everything in my life during my search-for-truth-phase: I assumed there was truth in the Bible like there was truth in the Bhagavad gita, the Quran, Khalil Gibran, Aristotle, Plato and all of the philosophers, and Emerson, Shakespeare and all of the great writers. I still believe there is truth in that assumption. Truth is truth no matter where it is found. If truth is attainable and knowable, people from all over the world should have some grasp of it.
As a much older person, I have also come to believe firmly in the human capacity to ignore, overlook and dismiss the truth. There is so much at stake, chiefly our own pride and self-esteem. We commit to principles quickly sometimes, and we hold fast to them in the face of contrary evidence because we do not want to be wrong, especially once we have invested ourselves in developing those principles.
We have fears and insecurities that we try to cover, and we try to protect ourselves from being exposed. There are probably hundreds of reasons, big and small, that we miss the truth – big truths and little truths. It takes a lot of energy to be on the lookout for truth, and many of us do not have that energy or the time in our fast-paced, busy lives to be that vigilant.
Much has been made of the apparent inconsistencies and contradictions in the Bible and a seeming lack of archaeological and historical evidence. The inconsistencies and contradictions that I have checked out are largely due to lack of knowledge, misunderstanding, or purposeful attempts to miscast the text. Archaeological and historical criticisms are based more on lack of evidence than contradictory evidence. Modern discoveries do more to substantiate the Biblical text than to disprove it. Still, we will likely never have absolute proof of the veracity of the Biblical text this side of heaven.
As intelligent beings, or at least beings capable of intelligence, we can not rationally claim to be all-knowing or all-understanding. We are finite creatures with no legitimate claims on ultimate truth – at least none of us can claim it with a straight face or a sound mind.
With that said, I have found no reasons to discount the Bible as the authentic revelation of God in the 40+ years since I came to be a believer. In that time, I have found even more reasons to trust it.
Navigating by Faith 