Reading from Sunday, June 20

Look at this:



This is a game called Bit.Trip Runner for Wii. It is awesome, but this level had me screaming at the TV. Look how hard it is! It's unbelievable. What you may not know is that if you collide with ANYTHING (walls, steps, obstacles) you have to start from the BEGINNING of the level.

I beat this level tonight after about 4 hours of repeated attempts, and repeated F words. Sorry, God. Bit Trip Runner is the devil.

Reading for June 20
1 Kings 22:1-53
Well, I guess God was lying about not bringing destruction onto Ahab, because he is totally killed here, but it seems to be by his own boneheadedness. Ahab wishes to go to war against Aram again and decides to seek the counsel of his secular prophets. They all encourage him to go to war, ensuring his victory. Someone then suggests he ask a prohpet of God, so Micaiah is summoned to prophecy for Ahab. Micaiah tells Ahab that if he decides to go to war that he will be killed in battle and all of Israel will have no king. He also tells him that God "sent a lying spirit" to Ahab's other prophets so he would be convinced to go to war. Ahab ignores this and goes to war against the Arameans, and guess what - he is totally killed in battle. So his son takes over and he's just as bad as his father - same old story.

Now, a couple of things REALLY bother me about this story. First, God went back on his word twice. First he said Ahab was going to be destroyed, then he says, "Oh wait, no - I'll hold off and give the punishment to his son." Then he kills him anyway. You could argue that Ahab was given full disclosure and the decision to go into war - even after hearing the prophecy that he would be killed in battle - was entirely his own, there was still some trickery coming from God. Which brings me to my second point: "God sent a lying spirit to trick Ahab into going into battle?" Really? A lying spirit? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe that one of God's Ten Commandments, the commandments that he enforced with the constant threat of death, is to not lie. Should we now stone God for forcing others to lie? Or should we stone those who lied? Obviously they sinned because God forced them to.

And we're back on the "God was despicable in the Old Testament" kick.


Acts 13:16-41
OK, something just hit me, hard. A couple nights ago I was talking about the old addage "The sins of the father will be visited upon the son." Remember? And I was saying that it seems like that is the case a lot of times in the Old Testament where a father messes up and his son is killed because of it. Then I saw a parallel between God and Jesus - Jesus the son and God the father, which led me to a wild accusation of God actually sinning. I'm still on the fence about that one, but the connection was there.


Here, Saul is preaching to a group of Jews and keeps mentioning "our fathers" referring to the historical figures of the Old Testament - King Saul, King David and so on. He says that Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise made to "our fathers." See where I'm going with this?

So in the same way that a child would be punished for the sins of the father, in this case, the case of the world, the child was redeemed because of the sins of the father. That's pretty awesome.

Psalm 138:1-8
Beautiful

⁶ Though the LORD is on high, he looks upon the lowly,
       but the proud he knows from afar.

Proverbs 17:17-18
 ¹⁷ A friend loves at all times,
       and a brother is born for adversity.
 ¹⁸ A man lacking in judgment strikes hands in pledge
       and puts up security for his neighbor.

Alright, kids. Have a good night.