Hello my friends!

I want to start by thanking you all for your responses to my last newsletter. Many of you shared the tragedies you or loved ones are facing right now. I was humbled and honored that you would share those things with me.

I want to invite us all to remember to pray for each other in this space. We never know what another person is going through. Prayer can help us to be mindful of those things in an intentional way.

Others of you responded with a question I have often gotten in the past. One regarding how to reconcile the God of the Old Testament with who we see God to be in the New Testament. Are they the same God? If so, how are we to understand some of the terrible things in the Old Testament with the example of Jesus in the New Testament?

We are going to look at a particular question from a subscriber and dive into this topic today. But before we do, here are some things that have me thinking this week.

RESOURCES TO CONSIDER

-A really important aspect to understand about the Bible is its Jewish roots and context. Christianity wouldn’t exist without Judaism. Jesus is a Jewish Rabbi and what we call the “Old Testament” is the Hebrew Bible. A good podcast to dive into this topic and understand both the Jewish perspective of the Hebrew Bible as well as the ancient, eastern context it was written in is called BEMA. I highly recommend it for gaining a deeper understanding of scripture.

-A great companion to that podcast is a book called “Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible,” by E. Randolph Richards, Brandon J. O'Brien. Just like every book I recommend, I don’t agree 100% with everything in its pages, but I think the authors do an incredible job of helping us understand how our Western lenses shape our reading of scripture in more ways than we know, especially lenses like individualism, capitalism, and the American dream.

-I have recommended this book before, but a really helpful and easy read on the Bible as a whole is called “How The Bible Actually Works,” by Peter Enns. It explores the purpose and intention of scripture as a call to wisdom rather than answers by looking at particular texts.

-Lastly, I am currently reading the book called “Jesus v. Evangelicals” by Constantine R. Campbell. It is a biblical critique of a wayward movement. Campbell even describes his own awful experience going through a divorce as a Biblical scholar within the Evangelical culture. It is a powerful and poignant read.

Alright, onto today’s content.

The God of the Bible

After my last newsletter went out last week, I got this response from a friend named Daniel:

“I really appreciate this exposition as a whole but I have to push back on the idea that “Throughout the entire Bible we see God pursuing humanity and all creation out of a deep and abiding love and a desire to end the tyranny of death.”

While that’s very true in the New Testament and in the very beginning of Genesis, God is not characterized by deep and abiding love for humanity for large portions of the Old Testament. God’s care is specifically for Israel and that care is often shown through the senseless obliteration and torture of surrounding nations. Even with Israel, the deepness and persistence of his love is debatable.

I guess my greater question for you is: Do you see a continuity between the God of the Old Testament and that of the New Testament?

Personally, I feel like we’re torturing the text a bit by trying to make that happen. The ideas that enliven the New Testament simply did not exist during the Old Testament period. In that earlier social and historical context, people found meaning and identity within a narrow, ethnic, and tribal perspective. As a result, the concerns of broader humanity did not play a factor.

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

-Daniel”

Daniel’s question echoed very similar questions I received from many of you recently and in the past.

It is an excellent question and one that is deserving of our time to think about together this week.

The best place to start with this question is how we approach the Bible as a whole.

I spent a large part of my life as a Christian approaching the Bible as if it was advocating one, literal, uniform, never changing idea about God from Genesis to Revelation. As if, no matter what page you turned to, you were going to find an apologetic defense of Christianity's God.

As I spent more time studying the Bible though, especially in seminary, I not only had this notion radically altered, but abandoned.

I learned that the Bible is a collection of ancient writings that span thousands of years of human history. I learned that its authors were as diverse and complex as the ancient context in which they were writing.

Most importantly, I learned that the authors were not recording a hard and fast, bulletproof idea about God for “me” to read. Rather, they were working out their own understanding of God on the pages of scripture in the way they encountered and experienced God. Once I saw that, I began to do the same for myself.

Understanding this helped me to understand that from Genesis to Revelation, I was literally watching an entire people group wrestle, develop, argue, and disagree over their perspective of God together and over a vast amount of time. Understanding this helped me to understand that that’s exactly what the Bible is inviting me to do as well. To be in conversation with others who are also working out and wrestling over their ideas about God too.

When we realize this, we will find that it is no coincidence that the name “Israel,” the name of God’s people, literally means “one who wrestles with God.”

I think when we continue to grasp this reality of the Bible on a deeper level, it helps us to better understand the dynamic, evolving picture of God it portrays for us and how we can interpret it wisely. It also helps us to see the God revealed by Jesus in the New Testament very present in the Old.

Let me use Jonah and Nahum as examples.

In Jonah, we see God wanting to save the city of Nineveh.

Nineveh was the capital city of the Assyrian empire. Assyria was one of the greatest super powers of that time and one of the most brutal aggressors towards Israel. They not only tore the nation of Israel apart, carried off the inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom, destroyed their temple, but they brutalized Israel's people in horrific ways.

God sending Jonah to Nineveh to give them a chance to “repent and be saved” would be like God sending a prophet to Hitler during the hight of his brutal conquest and atrocities towards humanity to give him the same opportunity.

It is why we see such stubborn refusal from Jonah. I would have tremendous difficulty if God asked me to do the same. My sense of justice would have me desiring God's wrath and vengeance like Jonah, rather than mercy and forgiveness.

Yet, as we see, Jonah finally relents, goes to Nineveh reluctantly, and his worst fears are realized. The entire city, from the king to the livestock, repent and God spares them.

The story ends with Jonah being angry over God’s extravagant mercy and love toward an enemy and God questioning why this would make Jonah so angry.

Then we have this other prophet by the name of Nahum.

Nahum's book is also about the city of Nineveh, but with the opposite approach and outcome.

In Nahum, God hates Assyria and wants to wipe it off the face of the planet.

Speaking of the destruction of Nineveh, the entire book of Nahum ends with this verse: "Nothing can heal you; your wound is fatal. All who hear the news about you clap their hands at your fall, for who has not felt your endless cruelty?” (3:19)

What are we supposed to do with these two different accounts of God? Did God destroy Nineveh or did God show mercy and spare Nineveh? Both give such a different picture of the nature of God.

If we approach the Bible like I once did, as if it is portraying a static and unchanging picture of God throughout, this would be one of those places where “the Bible contradicts itself.”

Yet, if we approach the Bible as its meant to be approached, as if it is showing us how people encountered God and how that encounter with God caused them to reimagine their idea about God over time, we come away with a much better grasp of what’s happening here.

Nahum lived at the time of Nineveh falling. Nineveh really did fall to Babylon in 612 BC.

Nahum is recording history and he interprets this history as an act of God.

The book of Jonah was written more than a hundred years later, after Israel returned from Babylonian exile, in 538 BC.

The author of Jonah isn’t interested in the slightest in recording history. The author knew that Assyria and its capital had fallen, just like everyone else would have known. If Nineveh had actually repented, it would have dramatically reshaped the course of human history.

The author of Jonah is using the genre of a parable to convey something extremely important. The author of Jonah uses dramatic imagery like a huge fish swallowing a prophet and swimming down to the place of the dead (Sheol) to spark their reader’s imaginations, just like it still does with ours today.

The author is explicitly not writing history, but a parable.

It is a parable to challenge Israel’s current conception of God. It is a challenge to reimagine God bigger than they were familiar with before. The author is asking this question, “maybe God is more inclusive, more forgiving, more gracious than we previously thought? Maybe God would even have us love our enemies?” That is starting to sound a lot like Jesus.

The reason for this shift? Israel had just spent almost a century in exile in Babylon. During that time they got to know their captors quite well. This eventually grew into a positive relationship for many. So much so that when the Persian Empire opened the door for Israel to return to their promised land, many of them actually stayed in Babylon. It would later become a major center for Jewish thought for the next 1,000 years.

Because of Israel’s encounter and lived experience with those who they long considered an “enemy,” it caused them to reimagine themselves and even their ideas of God. Hence the book of Jonah was written.

This is just one example within the Old Testament. Let me briefly name just a few others.

There is a wrestling over the theology of prosperity. Many passages will express the theme that “if you are good and do good, good will come to you!” Then there is the book of Job, which flies right in the face of that idea of God.

There is a wrestling over the God of Moses and the God of David. Many prophets became split over if God would bring a messianic king to rule like David did or a liberating prophet like Moses. You can see both narratives being wrestled over throughout scripture.

There is a wrestling over polytheism, pantheism, and monotheism in Israel’s history. They always believed in Yahweh, but it wasn’t until their exile in Babylon that they became monotheistic and worshiped God alone as one (Duet 6:4). This is actually one of the biggest miracles of the Old Testament. During that time period, any conquering empire would be seen as “worshiping the only true gods.” Israel going the opposite direction towards monotheism is absolutely astonishing.

1 and 2 Samuel wrestles with the notion of kings and gives an interpretation. Then after the kingdoms of Israel were split in two, the temple was destroyed, and many were sent to exile, we have 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles give the same story line, but a different interpretation in hindsight.

I could go on, but my point is that the Old Testament, and the Bible as a whole, is not giving us one static unchanging picture of God. Rather, it is showing us humanity’s honest encounter with God and how humanity’s perspective of God evolved and grew over time as they became more aware of this God. The Bible shows the ongoing revelation of God to the world, not the concluded finished revelation of God in the world.

This is such a vital paradigm to keep in mind when we are looking for the continuity between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament.

While we see Israel interpreting God as commanding the genocide of Canaanites in the book of Joshua, we later hear Israel’s prophets like Joel, Micah, and Isaiah saying that God will cause humanity to hammer our weapons into gardening tools and cause nations to not even learn war anymore.

While we see Israel interpreting God in a way that allows the mistreatment of the poor, women, and refugees based on ethnic grounds and the narrowness of exceptionalism, especially through the line of the kings (1 Samuel 8), we hear the prophets and God’s law in Deuteronomy demand justice for the vulnerable, the poor, the disenfranchised, and the oppressed.

As Christians, we can see the direct parallel between this picture of God and the God we see in Christ Jesus, who’s first public sermon proclaims the words from the prophet Isaiah (58:6; 61:1-2) in saying, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

We see Jesus come as the “Son of David,” yet liberates the people like Moses.

All this to say, the authors of the Old Testament are showing a great humility and willingness to not only continue wrestling with their ideas about God, but a willingness to allow their ideas of God to change and be reimagined based on their encounters with God. They even faithfully recorded their unfaithfulness in order to learn from their mistakes as an entire people. This is so honorable.

You see, if our beliefs about God never change, that is when we know we have created an idol for ourselves. There is a vast and critical difference between worshiping our beliefs about God and actually worshiping God.

When we who believe in God operate as if our beliefs about God are static and unchanging, we are leading with the notion that our finite ability to know God has somehow reached infinity.

We function as if we are now able to discern a cosmic and eternal God completely and perfectly. Within this framework, our beliefs about God are then placed on the same level of authority as God. This is religious idolatry.

What is more, within this framework, evangelism turns into inviting people into relationship with our own beliefs rather than with God. Humility teaches us that this is unwise and reminds us of our finite reality.

God is infinitely knowable. Therefore we should expect that our beliefs about God will change as our lives, experience, and understanding deepens. That is the journey of faith.

Unchanging beliefs do not work in any relationship. They hinder growth rather than cultivate growth. This is especially true in our ongoing relationship with a cosmic and eternal God.

So, as we read through the Old Testament into the New, I pray we follow Israel’s lead and we allow God to change our beliefs when needed rather than our beliefs be allowed to keep God in a box.

The world encountered the greatest revelation of God in Christ Jesus. It is this revelation of God in Jesus that helps us to reimagine our ideas of God, especially the ideas from our past, like Israel did.

As Brian Zahnd likes to say: "God is like Jesus. God has always been like Jesus. We haven't always known this, but because of Jesus, now we do."

Now I want to hear from you. Where do you see the picture of God reimagined in the Bible? When have you reimagined God and gained a deeper understanding in your own life? Are there examples you’d like to share?

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As always, thank you for reading!

I look forward to talking to you soon.

-Ben

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