God of the OT vs God of the NT…

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”  –Richard Dawkins from “The God Delusion”

I don’t know what all of those words mean, but it sure doesn’t sound like a very flattering depiction of God. While we see two very different pictures of God in the Old and New Testaments, they aren’t multiple personalities or different gods. Dawkins misses the point on a couple things in this quote (in particular that the Bible is fictional), he does argue a view that many people have of God, Christian and non-Christian alike. At first glance one sees the how Israelites “..completely destroyed everything in the city with the sword-every man and woman, both young and old, and every ox, sheep and donkey.”  (Joshua 6:21). In fact much of the Old Testament involves nations conquering Israel or Israel conquering nations. Besides the constant warring we see things like:

Redeemed…

For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect -1 Peter 1:18-19

“Redeemed”. It’s a term used quite a bit around Easter time. I believe we have a general understating in American culture about what true redemption means. But our cultural use is just a bit off. A movie review might read, “The surprise ending redeemed an otherwise boring movie.” We’ll hear about a sports team “getting redemption“. But, this kind of redemption comes only through experiencing failure then success. It is entirely a self-help, self-determined concept. The movie redeems itself, the team redeems itself. The Red Sox lose for almost 100 years, before gaining redemption by winning the World Series. But what happens when they lose the next year? Are they still redeemed? In Shawshank Redemption, Andy is wrongfully imprisoned but uses his time there to redeem myself by both escaping from prison and harming those that put him there. Andy redeemed himself. So in this world there are areas in which we can act as the redeemer. However, God is not of this world and Jesus’ kingdom is not either…