My last post, which has generated quite a few responses through my Facebook post, has prompted me to open up this post with a response that I had to a friend of mine. If you have not yet, you can read my last post and the responses here. As I see it if we are to understand God, the Bible, and our role in this life, we need to understand what the Bible says about those issues, and we need to wrestle with these issues, particularly the options that I am bringing up about God's character through out the Bible:
Option one the God of the Hebrew Scriptures is a different one than we see in the New Testament or...
option two God is the same and did not change and if that is the case then what do we do with the differences in let's say Amos vs Matthew, God is violent in the Hebrew Scriptures yet Jesus is non-violent in the New Testament.
For me I do not believe that God has changed and since Jesus is the incarnation of God and the one whom Christians are supposed to follow then he cannot be violent (ie kill other people)...Whether or not the violence in the Hebrew Scripture is actually God telling them to do this or if it is the author's interpretation does not change the fact that the New Testament authors interpreted it in a certain way and saw their world as a continuation of that narrative.
The New Testament authors were living in a time that was full of violence. The Romans used violence to show how strong they were, any time opposition arose, they would be squash in a violent way, mainly crucifixion, as a violent reminder that the Romans had the power, not the Jews. When the Jews read in the Hebrew Scriptures that they were supposed to be God's chosen people, then why were they still living in exile? The Messiah was supposed to overthrow the oppressors and restore Israel in the promised land; at the time many believed that only violence would bring peace, which given their history of would-be messiahs failing miserably through their violent revolts, should have been obvious that another would not work.
The first century Bible authors were brought up in this world kingdom. They were trying to fight the kingdom of this world using what their framing narrative had taught them, violence shows power, overthrow the oppressors with violence and you have the power (the same kind of Ideology that we have been using for years). Jesus came as a re-framed Messiah preaching a re-framed way to overthrow the oppressors, which was not taken positively by those who thought that their framing narrative worked and would work.
Jesus message worked, although not in the way the people wanted with peace instead of violence, to deal with evil, and we can learn a whole lot if we follow that framing story instead of our own...
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