Reading from Thursday, September 9

Howdy.

Reading for September 9
Isaiah 3:1-5:30
These couple chapters give some context to God's side of the story for the events of the Old Testament. He compares Israel and Judah to a vineyard, saying that he picked out the choicest plot of land and used the best seeds and took special care of the vines, protected it from intruders and yet it only yielded bad grapes. In the same way, God gave the Israelites their own beautiful land, protected them from other nations, loved and cared for them in times of need, and yet they continually turned away from him.

What strikes my interest in this section is God's apparent distaste for violence. Look here:

  And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed;
       for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.

My problem with that is that God was the cause of much bloodshed and the reason for many cries of distress. So someone is wrong here - either Isaiah is incorrectly assuming that God dislikes violence or the authors of the older books incorrectly attributed the violence to God's hand. Or maybe I'm wrong - actually I am probably wrong because later in this reading, Isaiah writes about how God will punish his people for their continually disappointing behavior. Maybe God doesn't like people to commit violence but it's fine if he does it. Maybe he doesn't like doing it himself, but he has to to shape and mold his people - a kind of "this hurts me more than it hurts you" thing.

Anybody got any ideas about this apparent inconsistency?

2 Corinthians 11:1-15
Paul gets into the idea of avoiding false apostles. Pretty standard stuff, nothing mind blowing.

Skip.

I never realized how little theology was in this book.

Psalm 53:1-6
I remember this one - this is a Psalm that clearly outlines the need for a savior.

² God looks down from heaven
       on the sons of men
       to see if there are any who understand,
       any who seek God.
 ³ Everyone has turned away,
       they have together become corrupt;
       there is no one who does good,
       not even one.

We always have to remember that we are all sinners. No one is better than the other, we are all broken, awful creatures, but thanks to my main man, JC - we don't have to suffer in our sin. 

Proverbs 22:28-29
 ²⁸ Do not move an ancient boundary stone
       set up by your forefathers.
 ²⁹ Do you see a man skilled in his work?
       He will serve before kings;
       he will not serve before obscure men.

Goodnight. If you're into video games, I just beat God of War III last night and reviewed it on my other blog. You can check that out here if you're interested.  Thanks, kids.