Bible Questions and Answers
Published 06/15/2016
Why is God so cruel, evil and vengeful in the Old Testament and so harmonious in the New Testament of the Bible?
Answer:
Is God cruel in the Old Testament or not?
Are you asking why God is so cruel in the Old Testament? That's a good question. First of all, the God of the Old Testament is exactly the same as the God of the New Testament. God in the Old Testament is incredibly loving and patient. God's patience with Israel is absolutely amazing. Time and time again they rebelled against Him and committed idolatry and other sins, but He chose them and He continued to forgive them and love them as His people. God disciplined His people, for example when Israel was destroyed by Assyria and Judah by Babylon, but He did so with the hope that they would repent and continue to be His people. God disciplined them because He loved them.
I invite you to consider the book of Hosea, which is an amazing metaphor for God's love and grace. Also, study the book of Jonah, which shows God's amazing grace. There is an almost unlimited amount of material in the Old Testament about God's grace. Let's look at Ezekiel, chapters 34-38. Again, we see God's plan and desire to save His people, to bring them back to the land to enjoy life in His kingdom. He has the same desire for us.
Both the Old and New Testaments contain warnings of judgment for those who do not repent. Let's look at Hebrews 10:26-31, “It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God,” where He warns that God is angry with those who reject Him! Hebrews 3 and 4 are full of warnings for those who do not seek God. God's love and His justice are real, and we put ourselves in danger when we ignore it. And these are the messages of the Old and New Testaments. Both Testaments contain rewards for faithfulness and obedience. In both there is judgment and punishment for those who rebel and refuse a relationship with God. Again, I don't see any difference in this.
One thing that is in the Old Testament that is certainly not in the New Testament is the example of war in the name of God (which may make the God of the Old Testament seem cruel). This is because the Old Testament talks about more physical things than the New Testament. In the Old Testament the rewards and warnings are more physical, while in the New Testament they are more spiritual.
The event from the Old Testament that usually gives the greatest difficulties (and I must say legitimate difficulties!) is war. Let me share some resources that might help put this war in God's name into perspective.
Example:
“This is what the Lord of hosts says: “I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel by blocking the path of the Israelites coming from Egypt. Go, attack the Amalekites and completely destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and donkeys.” 1 Samuel 15:2-3
It's tough! This is why God seems so cruel and even evil in the Old Testament. But let's look at a few important things:
- If this doesn't bother you in any way, I worry about you!
- The argument assumes that physical death is evil or something bad. This is a false assumption. Sin is evil, but death is not evil. Death is a transition, hopefully, to something better.
- God the Creator speaks here as a father says to his child: “I have placed you in the world, and I can take you back!” God has every right to do as He wants.
- God is not cruel in the Old Testament, but God has every right to judge.
- There is a question about the religion of the Amalekites. Sacrificing children, worshiping gods through having sex with a prostitute in a temple, and so on.
- The situation for the children in this case was hopeless.
- In the case of the Amalekites and other Canaanites, both God's love and His justice require a response.
- Either God was going to create a nation or he wasn't. If God creates a “nation,” it must have a physical territory and an army.
- God's plan is to choose a man and then a people through whom the Savior will be sent. God's plan to bless humanity through Jesus outweighs everything else.
- It is sinful to take the life of another out of anger, greed, or selfishness, but taking life during war is not necessarily a sin.
- Everything God did for Israel as a nation was done to limit their ability to wage war:
- No authority to create an empire.
- The creation of a standing army is not allowed.
- Cruelty, violence and rape are not allowed.
At least several tens of billions of people have died due to God's curse.
Some even tried to calculate how many people God killed according to the Bible, and counted something like two million (as in the picture for the article). Fools, you don't know how to count at all! For Adam’s sin, God cursed man with illness and death; by the way, natural disasters: earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, etc., are also the result of God cursing man: “cursed is the earth because of you” (Gen. 3:17). So, in fact, if we count all the natural deaths of people from disease or simply from old age, as well as as a result of natural disasters, then this is at least 4/5 of all human deaths, the rest are people killing each other. And if you count the entire history of mankind, you get at least several tens of billions of deaths! And we are not yet talking about animals, and no one counted how many of them were sacrificed during the Old Testament.
The cruelty of God also includes fatal and painful illnesses of children, as well as ordinary people. What are the costs of cancer? How much torment and suffering they bring! And this is also the result of God’s curse. We must be clearly aware of this.
And if God is cruel, then what does that mean? After all, if we decide that God is cruel, then it turns out that God is sinful, for cruelty is a sin . But God cannot be a sinner. God is the Absolute. Therefore, absolutely good and absolutely holy. If we decide that He is sinful, then He will no longer be absolutely good and holy, and will not be God, since He will not be an absolute. And then atheists and atheists will rejoice: “You see, an absolutely good God could not create such a cruel world! There is no God!” - they will say. How can such cruelty of this world be combined with an absolutely good God? Maybe there really is no God?
How do we know what is cruel and not cruel?
Stop, let's think logically! How do we know what is cruel and not cruel? How can we objectively judge someone's cruelty? We can judge only if there is an objective moral law on the basis of which we can say: “this is cruel, and that is not.” Otherwise, there can be no question of any objective assessment of cruelty or mercy! But if there is such a moral law of nature, then it turns out that there is also a Supreme Almighty Reason that invented it, for only the Almighty Reason can invent the laws of nature. And this Reason must be absolutely good, because on the basis of what we just tried to judge the cruelty of God, on the basis of some objective law of morality, which must come from some absolute good. And good cannot exist on its own. Good is always a good person, and absolute good - it turns out that there is an absolutely good Person, i.e. God Himself.
Why does God have the right to kill, but man, being the image of God, has no right?
God, being All-Good and All-Wise, always acts from good motives. His actions towards people are always measured against moral benefit. Here we should be amazed not at His severity, but at His long-suffering.
God is sometimes forced to act like a surgeon - to amputate the infected place so that the infection does not go further.
As for a person who kills against the will of God, taking the life of his neighbor, he takes away what does not belong to him. In some cases, murders deprive those killed of the opportunity to repent and perform good deeds in the future, which may affect their fate in the afterlife.
If we own a hotel and the residents of one of the rooms behave inappropriately, then don’t we have the right to evict them so as not to make the life of their neighbors hell?
Why is killing a person by a person a sin?
One of God's commandments is thou shalt not kill.
The verb used in it “רְצָח” “to kill” denotes immoral premeditated murder, as opposed to any killing in general as a result of an accident, in self-defense, during war or by a court decision (similarly in English - kill - any murder and murder - illegal). Since the Bible itself prescribes the death penalty by court order (in over 30 cases), this verb cannot mean murder at all, under any circumstances. Those. the watershed is the motive for the murder, its goal.
That. By the sixth commandment, God forbids taking the lives of other people, guided by personal motives for evil or selfish intent, and killing oneself out of despair.
Did the concept of personal responsibility exist at that time?
The concept of individual moral responsibility was common even to the first man, Adam. Moreover, both Adam himself and his wife, Eve, experienced the bitterness of responsibility for sin.
During the time of Moses, the concept of personal responsibility was written into the Law of Sinai. As for the representatives of the pagan tribes who then inhabited Palestine, the idea of personal moral responsibility was often overshadowed by the ideas of collective, tribal. The man vividly felt like a member of the community. In his moral (immoral) actions and deeds, he tried not to go beyond the general tribal norms of behavior and morality. Many sins practiced within certain tribes were not private, but widespread. Therefore, the curse that fell on the Canaanites, in view of their monstrous atrocities, fell on entire tribes (note that the pagan codes themselves implied the appropriateness of collective responsibility; for example, the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi prescribes: if the builder built a house so poorly that it collapsed and was buried under the rubble the customer’s family, then it should be killed – not the builder, but his family).
How to explain the presence of evil and cruelty in the world if God is absolutely good?
Okay, you say, but how can we explain the presence of so much evil and cruelty in this world if God is absolutely good? And how does this even fit with the fact that God is completely good? In fact, we need to understand two important things:
- The first is where did evil and sin come from, and who is its cause?
- The second is God’s attitude towards him.
Evil and sin became possible due to the fact that God endowed his creations with free will and at least some of them used free will for evil, i.e. went against the will of God. God is not the cause of evil and sin. Evil and sin are produced by those creations of God who have not used their free will correctly. Who violated the commandments and commandments of God. This is the source of evil in this world! From the Bible we know that the very first to go against God was a great and strong spirit, the angel Lucifer, who carried away up to a third of the angels with him, committing a rebellion in heaven. According to the Bible, this fallen angel tempted the first people on earth, and they fell into sin, their very nature changed, they became corrupt and sinful. And all the descendants of these people inherited this sinful nature. Therefore, all people are sinners. They inherit original sin.
As we know, God is good, absolutely good. This means that God is absolutely fair. And the fact that God is absolutely just means that He must absolutely punish evil and sin. For justice requires the punishment of evil. And absolute justice requires absolute punishment for any evil and any sin. This can be illustrated with an analogue of a mathematical formula.
Punishment = justice * sin, where God’s justice is ∞, respectively, punishment = 0, provided that sin = 0. But if sin is at least a little more than zero, then the punishment is also ∞. That is why everyone whose sin is not zero deserves eternal punishment! And these are all the people on earth!
The atheists' argument about the cruelty of the world versus the existence of God is pure stupidity
And what have we come to? And to the fact that the very ability to objectively distinguish between good and evil, as well as the awareness that this cruel world does not indicate the absence of God, but, on the contrary, His existence! And the argument of atheists about the cruelty of the world against the existence of God is pure stupidity! For if they deny the objectivity of morality, then how can they even talk about someone’s cruelty? This is simply absurd! Without the objectivity of the moral law, it is simply impossible to make such a judgment! And if they want to judge God with an objective moral law, then they must admit that God exists, for only an absolutely good supreme Reason could create such a moral law! Atheism is actually a very stupid and primitive doctrine that does not notice the obvious absurdities in its arguments against God.
God is not only just, but also loving and merciful
But God is not only absolutely just, but also absolutely loving and merciful. Therefore, He, realizing that it is impossible for sinners to cleanse themselves from sin and avoid eternal punishment, He Himself goes to meet them and takes eternal punishment for all the sin of all people upon Himself. God's Son Jesus Christ suffered once for all people, taking upon Himself all the eternal punishment for sin. And being an infinite God, He only had to suffer once and not for all eternity.
Therefore, if we want to get rid of eternal punishment, we must repent and accept the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for ourselves. But the sacrifice of Christ does not save our flesh from the consequences of sin; in fairness it must suffer and die. It's different for everyone. But everyone must get sick and die. For such is the just retribution for sin. And since all people inherit a sinful nature, i.e. original sin, then even children who have not yet been born are sinners, and therefore can get sick and die. And this will be fair, for God’s justice is absolute. But this does not mean at all that they will go to eternal torment; no, Christ’s sacrifice, of course, was for them.
As far as we can judge, did the destruction of the pagan tribes produce the expected results?
If it had not been given, then Christianity would not have become a world religion, but would have remained the lot of one people. During the Old Testament, God's providence was aimed at preparing humanity for the Coming of the Savior. Humanism was unknown to the primitive pagan tribes, but by the time of the Coming of the Messiah the situation in the world had changed. As you know, the Church of the first centuries grew with many (former) pagans.
People who criticize the Bible often fall into contradiction - first they see atrocities (the same human sacrifices) and are indignant “how did the Lord allow this!” Then, when they read about stopping evil in the bud, they are again indignant: “How cruelly they treated the poor Canaanites!”
The cruelty of the Old Testament towards the inhabitants of Canaan, which was conquered by the Jews, of course, seems terrifying. But the very fact that such an impression is created among a wide readership indicates that the extreme measure of influence on dehumanized peoples had its effect. Indeed, for many Old Testament people, wars and murders were considered the norm, taken for granted.
