So far, just off the top of my head, I can think of maybe five or six genocides that have occurred so far. That includes the "Earthicide" that happened during Noah's flood - that being, God killing every living thing on Earth. I would assume that since Noah and his family were they only ones saved, that means that random children and elderly people were also killed in the flood, not just the mass of evil people.
And yet I've never met anyone who had any sort of negative reaction to this story. Why? God killed everyone on the Earth, not just a single race of people. I think because in stories like the Midianites and the people of Jericho, the people are brutally murdered by people, in Noah's flood, people die because of a force of nature. There is a disconnect between God murdering people and people murdering people. When we hear that a person kills someone else for personal gain - which is what the Israelites did - we have a gut reaction of "that's wrong", "that's horrible", "the murderer must be punished" and so on.
But when things like a flood - or to put it in modern terms - Hurricane Katrina happens, we have no one to blame except God, and most people don't know how to react to that. You can't put God on trial, you can't accuse him of murder - but when a huge group of people are killed by what is legally referred to as an "Act of God" how are we supposed to react to him?
--- --- ---
So my friend, Pete said this in reaction to my last post:
If you can accept the Midianites, I don't see how Jericho would be a problem. Personally, I wonder what God would have to do to become unacceptable. 5 genocides, 500 genocides?That's true. If I had come up with a justification of the Midianites slaughter, why would another genocide that occurred the same way make me change my mind?
I need to accept that there are some terrible things that happened in the Old Testament before God's grace could be poured out on humanity in the form of Jesus. As I've noticed and written about before, Jesus' teachings are often in direct contradiction to the laws of the Old Testament. I also need to remember that I'm a Christian, not a Jew and that my faith is based on the teachings of Jesus, not the teachings of Moses or the God of the Old Testament.
So while the majority of the laws of the Old Testament can be dismissed because of Jesus' sacrifice, it doesn't make the Old Testament any less important. If we didn't have the stories of history of the Old Testament, Christ's sacrifice would mean nothing. He would have died for people that did not need saving. The wedge between God and humanity that was created by Adam and Eve, and the inability of God to coexist with man forced God to pour out this unbelievable wrath on everyone.
Humanity was tied down by this massive burden of being born into a sinful nature, and Jesus took that burden away so we could be free.
No comments:
Post a Comment