At the risk of losing you before you give this entry a chance, let me beg you to read through this carefully. Make sure each statement, illustration and analogy makes sense before you go on. Not make sense from the point of agreement, but from the point of the words and sentences being clear and understood.
I have mentioned here before that I am reading “GOD According to God” by Gerald Schroeder. The subtitle to this book is “A Physicist Proves We've Been Wrong About God All Along.”
Again, please don’t leave your seat just yet. I want to examine this so I better understand it and hopefully you will as well.
I am sometimes afraid to try to summarize books into a blog because there is so much background and presentation laid out in the books that without simply quoting the entire book I drop things in without sufficient preparation.
If we would be totally honest we will have to conclude that what I believe the attributes of God are and what you believe the attributes of God are, will both be different from what anyone else believes the attributes of God are. It has to be true. And people who want to form collectives into congregations or churches or what ever with a singular mindset on what God's attributes are are searching for the impossible.
It is a bit like pain. Only on a minuscule scale. What I believe pain is and how severe I believe my pain is may be similar to but not the same as what others experience.
One of the standard questions in pre-hospital care is, “On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the worse pain you have ever experienced, how would you rate the pain you are currently experiencing?” It is not so much a way to rate injury or sickness as it is an assessment of where on the pain tolerance continuum the patient believes they are presently. Knowing that certain types of injuries cause more severe pain because of the area of injury, extent of injury, elapsed time since injury, and other factors allow judgment calls on severity of sickness or injury. Being able to apply all of those parameters a rescuer can better assess how a patient is doing at that moment.
How we see the attributes of God is more of an assessment of our understanding of where we are than it is a statement about God. The reality is that God is what God is, regardless of what we think He is.
Schroeder goes into great detail looking at some of the more familiar railings against God and the “Whys” that people ask about God. As in if God is so loving, why does He allow children to be killed by natural disasters and other uncontrollable events. Some say that God allowed and maybe even promoted things like slavery, polygamy, war and genocide. But if you read the scriptures carefully enough none of those things are considered normal or allowable by God except in very tightly controlled circumstances in very strict obedience to God's on going battle with evil.
God hates evil and evil doers when they will not answer an invitation to turn from evil. To keep His elect from evil God has at times ordained the annihilation of temples, altars, and even peoples worshipping other gods or promoting evil. But God is not a God of war. Nor of slavery. Check out the scriptural basis for slaves and you find in most instances the word has been mistranslated and should in our modern language be “worker.” On and on, Schroeder pulls back the veils that so many have looked through in learning about God.
When the Israelites crossed the Jordan River into then Canaan, the people who occupied the land were idol worshipers with religious rites that was in total opposition to what God wanted His creation to do. Most of the people groups of Canaan at that time sacrificed their first born child, be it son or daughter. No where in the Bible can we find a single event where God condoned child sacrifices. If you bring up Isaac you are still wrong because God was not going to allow that sacrifice to take place. That is obvious in the text.
So when Aaron and the Children of Israel encountered these people groups they were given the opportunity to turn from their idol worship and demonic religious rituals and serve the God of the Israelites. When they chose not to, then God had Aaron eliminate the people group. Different from the way we would go about it today, but still OK with God as we see God now.
Even when the way things were done in the Old Testament seems to contradict what we understand God to be today it is us that is without understanding rather than an inconsistent God.
This is the essence of this book by Gerald Schroeder. God is most likely not what the general population believes He is, and He is even not completely what the majority of the Christian community believes He is.
Many so called Christians treat God as the great gift giver and desire granter and the healer of ALL our diseases. Well, He is not. God gives good and perfect gifts. I’d dare say a lot of what we would like to have is neither good for us nor perfect.
God can heal all of our diseases, but He hasn’t promised that. He HAS promised us grace to persevere through anything that comes our way. I know of too many people who have gone through serious afflictions or handicaps in life who would say it was worth it. A life without want or trouble leads to self sufficiency and self reliance.
So if you want to shake up what your understanding of God is but with that shake up find deeper meaning and awe and respect and love for your creator, read the book
