How do people marry up old testament God and new?

[JustKiddingBob]

I'll start by saying I was a church goer. I believed, I had faith, I went every Sunday and was part of a church. Now, I'm not really any of those thinfst. Lots of things have happened since then that have shaken my faith beyond repair, it's not that I don't believe necessarily but more so that I no longer have any respect for God if he is real and don't believe he's the God people will try to tell you he is (omnipotent, benevolent, all kind, all loving etc etc). Essentially I no longer know whether he is or he isn't and if he is, what kind of force he is.

But one thing that has always got me thinking, even when I was a church goer, is how do people marry up this all loving, all kind, father like God we're told about with the monster that is talked about in the old testament? He really was to be feared in the OT. He was cruel, and murderous and frankly, pretty damn scary. So how do you marry that to the picture that's painted of him now?

If God is real, then he is the same God as described in the OT. The same God that murdered thousands, told his followers to kill their sons to prove loyality, commanded the killings of women and children etc... and therefore, something to be feared is he not?

He probably chilled out a bit when he had a baby.

You might, or might not, find this video useful:

Old Testament God v New Testament God (Fr Mike Schmitz)

There are many images of God in the OT. One of them is of the God who commands the ban or herem which means devote to destruction. There is also the image of the God who walks in the cool of the evening in Genesis, the God who won't destroy the people of Nineveh even though Jonah wants God to and the God of mystery in Job. There are constant references to God's loving kindness and justice and mercy.

It isn't straightforward.

Because the OT was written and rewritten by many different people over hundreds of years it gives a many facetted view of God. I suspect it includes a developing understanding of God so one way to look,at it is that as people emerged from the Bronze Age, which is where the story of Abraham and Sarah is set, they learnt more and more about the God. God becomes less of a projection of human wants and needs, the mighty warrior, and more of something more complex. Remember that Genesis was written late so the image of God speaking the world into life is different from the history of the people remembered through songs and story and how they came to inhabit Canaan.

The image of the stern, remote judgemental God is one that most mature Christians have rejected. I rejected this image of God in my teens and was very surprised to encounter the God of love (and surprises) at university. It is complicated and not helped by churches that preach a judgemental God. I love Richard Rohr and Henri Nowen daily meditations. That is very far for the God of the ban.

As a pp said, the OT was written and rewritten by many different people.
I believe that Jesus came (NT) to dispel the old and erroneous belief that God is a cruel God and all the "eye for an eye" stuff was replaced by a God of love and "turn the other cheek". This was the New Covenant.
All Jesus's teachings are about love and kindness to all, which is what I ,and most Christians I know, try to follow.
I stress that this is just my view, and welcome other viewpoints.

People have always created and reinterpreted religions and gods to represent what suits them. And when your holy book is known to be a mish mash written at different times by different people, it is surely easy to dismiss all the bits you don't like or the contradictory bits as wrong or simply a product of the social attitudes of the time. People don't like the stern, scary god, so they choose to believe in the newer, fluffier version. Not because there's any more evidence for that version (obviously there's no evidence for either version!), but because it's more appealing.

God is unchanging. He has been a loving creator for all eternity. The old and new testaments were written by human beings, who gradually have evolved a more sophisticated understanding of the nature of God through the intervening millennia.
A primitive Israelite living in a warlike patriarchal tribal society thousands of years ago would visualise God as a powerful authority figure, smiting enemies and visiting wrath on sinners. But by the time of Jesus, people were beginning to be able to grasp Christ’s portrayal of God’s true nature of infinite love and self sacrifice. So the two testaments do not show two different Gods, but rather one simple and one more sophisticated human interpretation of the same God.
Perhaps in another 2000 years our descendants will think our concept of God to be overly simplistic too!

Babdoc - I really like how you've explained that. I think it's the only perspective that makes sense - God doesn't change but humanity does.

The story of the Great Flood is pretty important and so is the freeing of the Israelites from Egypt. If you're going to say they were made up that's a serious change.
The Jewish Passover is about the night god killed a child from every family in Egypt who wasn't protected by the blood on the door so I'm not sure how you could do away with that.

But you can't keep either without recognising that the OT god was a monster. Killing babies to impress a king?

LastTrainEast, if a disease affected Egyptian children but not Israelite ones, the ancient Israelites wouldn’t think “Ah, it must be our superior hygiene rules” - they’d think “Ah, good, serves them right, that must be God smiting the unholy oppressors!”
Similarly, when Jerusalem fell and the Israelites were taken away to captivity in Babylon, they didn’t say “We were beaten by a more powerful army”, but “God must be angry with us and this is our punishment.”
The great flood did occur in the Middle East in very ancient times - it is thought it may have been when the Black Sea found a way through to the Mediterranean. There are flood stories in many of the local religions. It was told in allegorical form in the Noah’s ark story, again assuming it was a punishment from God, and exaggerating it to cover the whole world.
Nowadays we don’t believe that a murdering God sends tsunamis etc - they are just a feature of the natural world.
Modern Christians believe God intervenes in our lives in subtle ways via the Holy Spirit. Always available, always loving, like a good parent, but allowing us the free will to make our own mistakes and draw our own conclusions.

Perhaps I may add that a God who willingly suffered an agonising flogging and crucifixion, out of sheer love for humanity, surely demonstrates - and unequivocally - that He is no violent murderer.

Babdoc you're right of course. The whole thing is stories told by primitives to explain events they didn't understand. None of the supernatural stuff is real and of course that includes the creation story that's also in Genesis.

Not sure why we'd even assume the crucifixion happened. It could have in some form. I certainly wouldn't be surprised to find there had been a preacher of some kind the stories were based on, but whoever wrote about that was certainly telling a fictional story and was in that time and place sophisticated enough to know that he was doing so. This wasn't someone misinterpreting natural events, but deliberately spreading fake news.

He tells us (amongst other things) that the dead rose from the graves and walked around the town talking to people. Had that happened everyone would have written about it. That's a pretty big detail to invent.

Still there are many Christians who think it all actually happened and that the Bible is the word of god. Some even try to insist that excerpts from the book be treated as laws.

Anyone who does claim it is real must then face the fact that they would be worshipping a monster. That is the dilemma isn't it and it will be interesting to see how people do handle it.

The OT is an ancient, ancient document, focused on a ME culture. You couldn't get more different to our culture, now!

I love the OT though, so poetic and rich and passionate. I like that, being a passionate sort myself lol. I see God's fury as God's fury about those he loves being hurt and damaged and exploited - any parent can relate to that. I suppose I see the OT as a fight between good and evil. Simplistic, maybe, but I do believe God is good - so whatever I dont understand I assume it's because I er, don't understand what it's really about.

The NT is a bit more challenging lol. Very philosophical, less direct. But lovely.

Probably an ignorant interpretation but that's how I see it.