> > Is this the word of God or not? If not, is the Bible WRONG? > > > > > > " Exodus 21: 20 And if a man smite his slave, with a rod, and he > > > die > > > under his hand; he shall be surely punished. 21 But if he live > for a > > day or two, he shall not be punished, for he is his money. " > > > > > Why didn't God forbid slavery and other forms of savagery in those > times? Better, why did He even ENFORCE those practices? To conform to > men's rules at the time?
Helio: Good question! Eventually He will, and when he does, men's rules at any time won't amount to a hill of beans. We have some clues about God's cosmic intent in Romans 9:15-33. Particularly verses 21-24 in that context: "21 Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? 22 What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had prepared beforehand for glory, 24 even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?" The spirit of your question used to vex me until I started viewing God as a kind of cosmic artist, whose canvas is the universe and all things therein, and whose chosen medium is flesh and bones. Do not artists of all kinds use the materials at their disposal to shock and move us, i.e., to persuade us of something on a level that is not exactly logical but seems to get to the heart of things? This "level" is spirit, and we know it through the spirit, and yet we can reason about it with our minds and feel it in our souls. Consider the artist who makes a painting that reveals the ugly truth about racism, by depicting in graphic detail a black man hanging from a tree, dead, with flies buzzing around and everything. We can say, "Gee, why didn't he paint a pretty picture of a world without racism instead?" But we'd be missing the point. The artist wants us to agree that what happened was evil; he is not glorifying it. Even more the artist wants us to agree that his/her moral vision is correct, and that the painting proves it. So it is with God. You'd be misreading the OT rather badly if you thought God's Word was affirming of their behavior and laws, albeit his affection for them is also an important theme not to be forgotten. Being made in God's image, there is a bit of the artist in each of us--therefore He is always trying to communicate with us through both created (i.e., physical, fleshly) and revealed (i.e., spiritual) means. He has given us freedom and time to agree or disagree with Him, that who He is and what He has willed into existence is beautiful, and good, and just (notwithstanding what men have made of it)--but because we have for a time this opportunity to judge God's design, persuasion is necessary. He *could* have just forced everything to be according to his will from the get-go, and dispensed with all this "fleshing out" of the argument across space and time with us--but then, what kind of agreement would that be, if we had no choice? But we want to paint that picture, we want to "improve" on God's designs, "make the world a better place," or so our fleshly heart tells us--and this is where sin enters, that is to say, our separation from God. Our designs to make the world better always fail miserably, but that doesn't seem to dissuade us from trying over and over again. Satan seconds your question, and ups the ante. He believes he has a better vision of reality for mankind and the universe than God's--ostensibly one of unity and peace and brotherhood, but really of slavery to him and absolute conformity to his will--and he wants glory for it. He likes the "dispense with all disagreement from the get-go" method everyone seems ironically to wish that God had chosen. Every two-bit humanist philosophy to crop up across the ages by his design lures us with the lesser artist's vanity and vision to question the very nature of God, and eventually to hate Him. We want Satan to grab the artist's brush and the sculptor's chisel from God's hands and paint a reality that satisfies our desires while we are in the flesh--and he is all too willing to do it. Thus, we give up our life in the spirit--life outside the canvas, as it were--and worship flesh instead of the God who created it to show His love, not as an end in itself. We do this not really grasping the fact that eventually all of it is headed for the furnace, when the opportunity to chose God willingly will be over, and the time of decision for all eternity has passed, and His will would be imposed and all those who disagree with Him and choose the alternate vision in the flesh will be banished to the outer darkness forever. God made the decision even easier by coming down to the canvas Himself "in the flesh" for a time, in the image of a loving Son, to show us what it means to be one of His own, totally, completely in communion with Him--and desirous of the very justice you seem to think God in the Bible opposes. To recognize God did this and accept its meaning and all its implications is the ticket off the canvas. Everything else keeps us on the canvas and therefore condemns us to the outer darkness with it. At least, that's the nutshell version of what I think those passages speak to your question. I'm sure an actual theologian would recoil at my use of the artist metaphor here... but I think it captures why I stopped questioning and criticizing God's Word as such, and instead started trying merely to understand what it really says and means. - Bob > > HW > . _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
