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More On the God I Don’t Understand

Yesterday I had some thoughts on Christopher J. H. Wright’s The God I Don’t Understand, and today I’ll continue some of those thoughts, if you don’t mind.

Speaking of the “offence of evil,” I agree with Wright that God’s curse way-back-when does not refer “to an intrinsic (or ontological, if you like such words) curse on the whole natural order, which, at a particular moment in human history (the fall), changed the way the planet actually ‘behaves’.  Those who take such a view have to say that earthquakes and other such phenomena in creation that are dangerous or destructive (or even just apparently nasty from our point of view–like animals eating each other), only came into existence as a result of the fall.  Before the historical fall of human beings, then, there would have been no such thing as earthquakes.

“But there is no evidence that our planet has ever been geologically different from the way it is now, or that animals were ever nonpredatory, or that tectonic plates in the earth’s crust were somehow perfectly stationary before the human species emerged and sinned.  On the contrary, the available evidence suggests that the early history of the planet included even more catastrophic events long before the emergence of human life….”

“Of course, if one takes the view adopted within some forms of ‘young earth creationism’, that the whole universe had only been in existence for five literal days before Adam and Eve arrived, then there would not have been much time for earthquakes or tsunamis before the fall.  But I am not persuaded by that position.

“Rather, it would seem that the earth being the way it is, as a living, moving, incredibly complex planet, is an essential part of the very possibility of our living on it.  God made the universe with a view to human creatures living on this small planet in one particular galaxy, at this stage of its natural history, when the conditions are such that biological life can be sustained at all.  I don’t pretend to understand why the earth has to be like this, such that moving slabs of the earth’s crust can heave the ocean temporarily over the shore.  I might like to wish that it could be otherwise.  But I don’t think I can be presumptuous enough to tell the Creator, ‘You should have thought of some other way of making a home for us.’

“So I find it unconvincing to put down all things in nature that are unpleasant at the best of times and cataclysmically disastrous at the worst of times as nothing other than the outworking of God’s curse in response to human sin.”

Wright continues.

“However, what we cannot and must not go on to assume or affirm is that the actual people who suffer the effects of natural events like earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, hurricanes, floods, and so on (whether connected or totally unconnected with human activity) are worse sinners, and therefore stand more under God’s judgment, than those who are fortunate enough to live somewhere else than where the disaster struck.  It is one thing to say that there may be elements of God’s judgment at work in the natural order as a result of prolonged human wickedness.  It is another thing altogether to say that the people whose lives are snuffed out or devastated by a natural disaster are the ones deserving that judgment directly.”

And I am just as appalled as Wright at the following “Christian” responses to disasters.

“Yet, in the wake of the tsunami in December 2004, that is exactly what some people actually did say, leaving me wondering whether I was more shocked and angry with God or with the appalling things some Christians jumped up to say.  Certainly I was profoundly sad when a grieving pastor from Sri Lanka, where whole churches were washed away, emailed me to ask if it might be interpreted as God’s judgment on the Christians of Sri Lanka.  Why should he even begin to think that it was, or that they were any more deserving of such judgment that Christians in India, or Britain, or America?

“What words are there for the website of a church in America that asserted that it was a matter of thanksgiving that 1,900 Swedish people had been killed, as God’s judgment on the wickedness of Sweden’s sexually licentious culture and laws?  How does that kind of callous nonsense differ from the Muslim cleric in Britain who said that it was Allah’s judgment on the sex tourists in Thailand (who were the ones most unlikely to be among those enjoying a day with their families at the beach when the waves struck, one imagines).  The sheer crass arrogance of such responses staggers the imagination.”

He’s right.  It’s maddening.

Now, what is our response to the evil that pervades the earth?  Well, one response is lamentation, and the Bible is full of it.  But somehow, in the church, it’s not acceptable to lament or rail, or if it is, there’s a stipulated time period on it.  Wright says it this way: “I feel that the language of lament is seriously neglected in the church.  Many Christians seem to feel that somehow it can’t be right to complain.  There is an implicit pressure to stifle our real feelings because we are urged, by pious merchants of emotional denial, that we ought to have “faith” (as if the moaning psalmists didn’t).  So we end up giving external voice to pretended emotions we do not really feel, while hiding the real emotions we are struggling with deep inside.  Going to worship can become an exercise in pretence and concealment, neither of which can possibly be conducive for a real encounter with God.  So, in reaction to some appalling disaster or tragedy, rather than cry out our true feelings to God, we prefer other ways of responding to it.”

This, too, makes me sad.  How many of church-going people have hurting hearts, never to be repaired, simply because they’re afraid to voice simple and reasonable questions of the God-fearing and God-loving people around them?  Or God, for that matter?

I was impressed with Wright’s inclusion of Richard Dawkins’ scathing analysis of God in his book The God Delusion.  So many Christians have read the following quote and have barked indignantly, “What the hell is he talking about?!” as if it does not reflect at all the God they read about in the Bible.  [I want to ask, “What Bible are you reading?”]

Here’s the quote:

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, filiacidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

Whew.  Try that one on for size.  But it seems true when you read the character of God in the Old Testament, especially.  So what do we do about it?

And this is one area I will differ from Wright.  Wright counters Dawkins’ argument by claiming that there are as many instances in the Old Testament of God’s love as there are examples of His anger, but when Wright goes to give examples, he gives only one story example (that of Abraham asking for mercy for Sodom and Gomorrah).  The others are all wordy passages from Psalms and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Hosea, extolling the virtues of God.  Wright has forgotten one important element of storytelling and that is: You can’t tell anyone how a person is, in words.  You have to show your audience.  Tell stories.  Give situations of the kindness and goodness of your character.  It is not enough for me, the author, to tell you that Joe Schmoe is a hard-working nine-to-fiver who would never be unfaithful to his wife.  You wouldn’t believe me, unless I unfolded scene after scene of him diligent at work, thwarting womanly advances, and so on.  The same goes with God.  Wright should have known to give story examples of God’s love, not simply quote what the prophets said about Him.  They could have been brown-nosing, for all we know.

I lost interest halfway into the book, simply because I don’t care about the many postulations about the rapture and about heaven (and I’m not quite to the cross in my research, so I skimmed that part).  I think I’m the type of person that cares about what my responsibilities are in the here and now.  How can any of us know the future?  And does it really matter?  [It’s along the same lines of the debate on whether or not Jesus had a belly button.  Seriously, this was a topic of discussion at a Christian college I attended for two years.]

One question I was left with, however, was this: if God is all-powerful and all-good, why does it matter to Him if people worship other gods?  Why is it mandatory that everyone worship Him?  It seems a little insecure of Him.

I’ll quote Wright here, where he’s giving possible explanations for the Canaanite genocide that God supported (and commanded):  “…Rahab the Canaanite and her household are spared because she believed in Yahweh the God of Israel.  Deuteronomy 7 makes it clear that the problem with the Canaanites was not ethnicity (which is why I dislike the word “genocide” with its ethnic overtones), but idolatry.  Rahab shows that somebody who renounced the gods of Canaan and came to worship Yahweh the living God was spared.  It also shows that there was a way for Canaanites to avoid the destruction, if they chose to.”

Why?  Why is it that only those who spoke of God as the only God were spared?  Why is it so important to God that all people believe in Him, and Him alone?

I’ve never understood that kind of jealousy, if He’s truly given us a free will.

Am I missing something?

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