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 misogynist, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
(Richard Dawkins)
I don’t know from what inner turmoil, hurt, or mistaken ambition the venom for which Richard Dawkins has become somewhat infamous comes. Nor do I know why, if he truly believes the God notion to be utter nonsense he is so haunted by it––I mean he has said it loud and long enough for the whole world to hear, so why not get on with whatever he finds positive, good, and generative? Why doesn’t he find his own horse to ride instead of beating what he thinks a dead horse belonging to his neighbor? When I consider it from this angle, I find it sad that he is so troubled. But I feel no great compulsion to argue with him in some Quixotic effort to change his mind (or your mind if you share his same faith) which would probably be both disrespectful and futile. But I do want to say something I hope might be helpful and encouraging to those Christians who struggle with those Old Testament texts that render us confused about the character of God and leave us in a dark place––causing us to wonder whether the God of the Old Testament is indeed the loving God of Jesus Christ and Christian Scripture.
The Problem
There are too many disturbing passages to cite them all in a brief essay such as this, but here are three of sufficient terror to provide some orientation to the problem, and that call into question the character of God for anyone who possesses any feelings of tenderness, of human sympathy, or common kindness.
But as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breaths remain alive. You shall annihilate them––the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzite, the Hivites, and the Jebusites––just as the Lord your God has commanded, so that they may not teach you to do all the abhorrent things that they do for their gods, and thus sin against the Lord your God (Deuteronomy 20:16-18).
So Joshua defeated the whole land, the hill country and the Negeb and the lowland and the slopes, and all their kinds; he left no one remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded (Joshua 10:40).
Thus says the Lord of hosts, “I will punish the Amalekites for what they did in opposing Israel when they came of Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare the them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey (1Samuel 15:2-3).
I want to say especially for conservative Christians who may find raising questions about the integrity and goodness of God more frightening than these texts themselves, that there is really nothing to fear in being honest to God. As strange as it may seem, the biblical model is one in which everything in real life gets used in building, strengthening, deepening our relationship, our connection, our communion, our intimacy with God––and that includes doubting, wondering, arguing, pleading, and even accusing God of not acting like God. And if you find yourself on a dark night journey such as this, you should know that the dark night journey, though difficult, is nothing to fear. If undertaken with genuine courage and humility such struggles in the night will serve only to deepen your consecration to God and to prepare you for some greater work of love.
What will not help you is a strict literal reading of the Bible. Angry and militant atheists like Dawkins and Chris Hitchens are entirely enthusiastic about a fundamentalist reading of Scripture since it enables them to caricature, parody, and attack Judeo-Christian belief as illogical and ridiculous. They are more than happy to use a literal reading of the Bible as a weapon against people of faith. But there is also a larger problem to a literal, legalistic, and one dimensional reading of Sacred Scripture; and, it is this: Spending our time trying to explain away the difficulties created by a more literal reading, distracts us from the deeper, spiritual, meaning of the text.
Assumptions
When we read the Bible we always read it with many assumptions––some of which are true but many which are false. But we seldom question our imagination, and think that the thought picture in our mind has captured the gist of the text. When you read: “And God said. . .” what do you assume? Do you imagine Abraham, or Moses or Isaiah, or Deborah hearing a baritone voice from heaven; or, are you sufficiently informed by Scripture itself to know that it was or may have been what came to them in a dream, or vision, in a mystical experience, as an epiphany, or as a moment of insight or enlightenment in which there were no audible or inaudible words at all––a moment of sudden spiritual clarity. What we have in Scripture are not the actual and irrefutable words of God, but the assertion of a given text that here is what God communicated to an Abraham, a Sarah, Moses, Isaiah, or Mother Mary. And have you ever noticed that questioning and testing whether a message is from God is not only tolerated in the Bible but encouraged––does what is communicated resonate deep within, is it rooted in justice, does it prove over time to be true, is it consistent with reason and the long tradition of wisdom? “Beloved,” Saint John writes, “do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” What I am suggesting is that the next time you read or hear the assertion that God is a monster commanding genocide that you ask not only what the Biblical text they are referring to says, but whether in testing the passage you believe God really commanded such a thing––even if a biblical writer sincerely thought God had commanded a war of extermination the question remains as to whether that writer got it right or not.
The Norm of Interpretation Is a Person
Jesus in his controversy with the Pharisees regarding Sabbath observance said something rarely noted or emphasized but highly significant. It occurs in Matthew 12:6. Although a fascinating line you could remove it from the text and never know it was gone. Jesus says there, “I tell you that one greater than the temple is here.” For the Christian Jesus is Lord of all. Christ is greater than the temple, greater than institutional Judaism or organized Christianity, greater than the Law of Moses, the prophets or the writings, and greater than the Apostles, martyrs, saints or the canonical documents of the New Testament. Classical Christianity believes that everything, absolutely everything, is to be interpreted in the light of Christ. Every text of the Bible, every word, thought, and action of every individual and of the church, every doctrine, prophecy, and teaching is ultimately validated or invalidated by the light of Christ’s love, wisdom, and grace. The final criterion of whether a passage of scripture is God-breathed or inspired is the person of Christ.
Inspiration
Our quandary has, of course, a great deal to do with our assumptions regarding the inspiration of Scripture. The question here is not just whether we believe Scripture is inspired, but what we think inspiration means, and how that informs our further assumptions about the Bible itself and the kind of book it is. For some reason it seems difficult for people in general to grasp the idea that the Bible is both a human and divine book. To say that it is divine does not mean that God took control of the hand of each writer to compose Scripture according to exact specifications, but that God’s Spirit, or literally God’s Breath, went out and moved in such a way as to energize the hearts, minds, and writings of the writers so that through their writings we are able to discover God as the chief glory of our lives. Yet, the Bible is also a human book with human flaws. To say, that Scripture is inspired simply means that God was somehow involved in its creation so that it speaks to us, speaks into the great mysterious depths of our being. If someone believes that every word, comma, semicolon, and period is there in the Bible because God determined it should be there, then they are stuck with explaining what is horrifyingly inexplicable. If on the other hand there is no God, or no God who speaks intelligibly to our souls, we are indeed lost and alone. But, I believe there is another way. It is not a way that I alone have discovered and on which I have proprietary rights, rather it is the understanding of inspiration that runs back hundreds of years in Christian thought––back through the patristics (the early great leaders, saints, and teachers of the church) to the apostles. It is the perspective which sees the Bible as both a human and divine book. This view acknowledges God’s involvement in the creation of Scripture, as well as the strong and independent human element that is ever so obvious. This means that morally problematic statements or actions attributed to God need not necessarily be accepted or defended as such.
Or, I can put it this way: Not every statement in the Bible needs to be accepted as inspired Scripture. Look at the 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (KJV). It is the primary text for any discussion on the doctrine of biblical inspiration:
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
I have quoted 2 Timothy 3:16-17 from the King James Version, not only because it was the version I grew up with, and was the one which was most often used in Bible studies, but because for many conservative Christians, although no longer their preferred translation, it remains, even if somewhat in the background, the source of a basic misunderstanding of inspiration. I will explain further in just a moment, but first let’s try again with a different translation––this one by the famous scholar and Bible commentator William Barclay:
All God-inspired scripture is useful for teaching , for the conviction of error, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work.
And here is my own:
Every God-breathed writing is profitable for instruction in this way of life, for producing a change of heart, for amending character defects, and for training in kindness.
Notice Paul does not say all scripture, (literally all writing) is inspired (literally God-breathed), but that every scripture or writing inspired by God is profitable or useful in learning how to practice the Christian faith. What Paul says has a number of implications. One is certainly that there is writing or scripture that is not God-breathed, or, if you prefer, inspired. In his own writing, which Christians recognize as Scripture, Saint Paul distinguishes between his own advice and the command of Christ ( 1 Corinthians 7:10, 12, 25). I therefore have no difficulty, when someone like Dawkins uses the Old Testament to indict God as a genocidal maniac in replying, “That I cannot believe!” I know full well of course that such words were in fact said, but I don’t think they come from God. I know they are there in the text, but I do not believe they are the words of God.
Animated and Warmed By The Breath of God
Anyone who wants to know the God of the Bible, the one God of both the Old and New Testaments, will need to embark on a long journey. You might imagine J. R. R. Tolkien’s four fantasy novels, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, as somewhat analogous. To really understand each character as a person who is growing and being changed by events, for insight into Tolkien’s understanding of good and evil and spiritual struggle, you have to, in some sense, enter the adventure with them and participate in the rushing and receding tide of their conversation––of their life together. It has to be read with an awareness of fictional Middle Earth’s history for that is key to understanding the present crisis, and with the consciousness that it is all going somewhere, moving toward a great unknown climatic event and resolution. In much the same way, the Biblical story is the story of the developing spiritual consciousness of ancient Israel that went through a number of stages over a period of nearly two thousand years between the arrival of Abraham and Sarah in the land of Canaan and the Advent of Christ. Later stages and developments do not nullify or make the earlier untrue, but rather reveal their deeper meaning and something about the trajectory of the whole story. Sometimes, as Thomas Cahill notes in his book The Gift of the Jews, these developments occurred slowly and at other times in great spurts. Given the quilt like nature in which Scripture is put together, its errors, and contradictions, it is difficult to believe that every single word is inspired. But given the beauty of its coherent pattern we can believe it reveals a meaning deeper than words. And, as Cahill goes on to say, “We believe that the experience on which this story is based is inspired––that the evolution of Jewish consciousness taking place as it did over so many centuries, was animated and kept warm by the breath of God.”