In Christianity, what gives the sweet and loving post-Jesus God more validity than the wrathful original one?
Or is just that an erroneous assumption on my part brought on by overattendance of moderate, non-Bible-belt churches?
I’m posting in GQ on purpose and hoping that this won’t degenerate into a I-think-you-think. I’m not trying to start a debate; I just want to know whether this is the de-facto standard view of the Christian God these days, and if so, why that is. Might there be cites that are at least internally valid to the religion (e.g. scripture quotations) regardless of whether they’re “factual” in the larger sense?
I appreciate your intent, but I really don’t think there is a “standard view of the Christian God.” Responding to this is necessarily going to entail varying viewpoints and opinions; there is no single factual answer or objective standard. So this is better discussed in GD.
The cynical answer would be that most religious people don’t actually read the bible and so have little to reconcile. They are also pretty well unaware that their deity started off life as a Storm God that kept getting bumped up the pantheonic hierarchy until eventually chosen to the one big one.
The scriptural answer will probably be that the Old Testament was a) not the literal word of God nor a history of His actions, but rather is a series of fables meant to be educational to people, God isn’t really all that destructive, and b) imperfect and much interfered with by humankind before being set down permanently.
As to why believe it, that’s because Jesus proved himself by the performing of miracles and he said they are the same God.
Second, the Christians that I grew up around would reject your question as invalid because God Never Changes. Hence, he did not change at all between the OT and the NT.
But, you protest, the OT God is very different from the NT God. To which they reply, God Never Changes. Hence, he did not change at all between the OT and the NT. And because you asked the question, your Sunday School teacher will tell your parents and you will have to spend the rest of the day in your room.
The OT was written when god was a teenager, raising hell, getting into fights, vandalizing the world with floods, torturing pious men.
Then around 0 CE God had a kid and mellowed out. Spent time at Ikea, looking at preschools. He had his tattoos removed and got a job where he had to wear a tie.
Then by about 500 CE, God retired and started listening to right-wing talk radio. He’d shout at kids to keep off his damn lawn and talk about when he was younger kids would pray five times a day and obey the fucking dietary laws… mutter mutter…
Our God has always been a loving God and Always will be. He is the same God that the Muslims refer to as Alaha, unfortunately the Muslims do not like to think God could love us infidels and want us dead and gone.
The Cross is a symbol of Gods love for us as we can never be good enough on our own to be heirs of the kingdom we long for.
All we have to do is acknowledge the Crucifiction and the Resurrection and believe that Christ Jesus died for our salvation to be saved by Grace. This could only come from a God that so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son!
And we need to pray for the salvation of those that make light of this wonderful God we serve.
Actually, the image of the OT God as primarily or exclusively wrathful is the result of a fair amount of cherry-picking of verses. There is no question that the OT God is portrayed as wrathful on some occasions, but it is hardly his overwhelming characteristic. There are passages in the NT where God is portrayed as pretty harsh. There are also a lot of places in the OT where he is portrayed as benevolent. One thing that tends to tip the balance is the nature of the writings.
The OT contains a lot of narrative where God is either using violence to protect his people or he is using the rod to correct his people. You are hardly going to find the same depictions in NT biographies of a preacher or in letters that are basically sermons. The God of the Revelation of John is hardly a meek and loving God.
If we look at Isaiah, (for example), we find three sections. In the first section, (Chapters 1 - 39), written before the Babylonian Captivity, we find God threatening doom to the Judaeans who are embracing false gods or to foreigners threatening Jerusalem. It would be odd to find a lot of peaceful or kindly statements in such a work. In Deutero Isaiah, (chapters 40 - 55), we find the addresses made to a people who are already captive, (but who may soon be freed), and aside from a brief shot at the Babylonian Empire, it contains no seriously harsh images of God. Rather, God is portrayed as a rescuer from disaster and praised for is generosity. In Trito-Isaiah, (chapters 56 - 66), God is (mostly) portrayed as the ruler of the world, but the message is that the Jewish people will be the source of God’s light to that world. Again, there is no portrayal of God as harsh.
I’d suggest you pray for those that willfully subvert their intellect and dull their doubt with mindless and empty platitudes. A mind full of cotton isn’t something to be praised.
I think, once you kill almost every single living being walking on earth, you are pretty much marked as a wrathful person.
“Sure, Elizabeth Báthory killed more than 500 people in her castle. But that doesn’t mean I would call her wrathful. She also did other stuff. She was a very good knitter.”
Yeah, the flood; torturing Job and killing his family; Sodom, Gamorrah and Lot’s wife; the plagues; holding up the insane serial killer Samson as a hero and so on. YHWH is just a major douche in the OT. He’s not a God so much as a dragon on a hill that you have to placate with blood sacrifice so he doesn’t burn your village.
Strength in numbers. More people believe in (and familiar with) the deity described in NT vs the OT.
No Bible quotations, sorry. You can’t look within the Bible for cites to reconcile inconsistencies. You have to look to exegesis/doctrines/commentaries/SDMB for that.
It takes place in the NT. In the OT, God tried a combination of Law and Love. He was like the parent of a young child - giving the child rules, backing them up with punishment, but also showing love at times.
However, this was not getting through to mankind.
God then went the 100% love route, and pushed all punishment until after death. Prior to Christ, God might get mad enough to smack you down (floods, plague, locusts, turning your wife into a pillar of salt, etc.)
Now, he just says, "Look - I have shown you the way. I am done with the direct interaction. You have the rules, I sent you an example to follow - THAT YOU KILLED, so now it is YOUR choice whether or not to follow the rules and make it to salvation. You can also choose to not follow the rules, and see where that gets you.
In the meantime, God kicks back in heaven waiting for the prodigal son to come home, joyous with those that listened and sad for those who refuse.
But they were all baaaad. Ditto the Sodomites. After this, the OT god pretty much left everyone alone except for those who messed with his people, and his people who strayed. Sometimes. Sometimes the straying king died in his bed of old age, and the virtuous king died early. But when these people died, they were just dead.
The nice NT god, on the other hand, seems to cram people into hell. He may not directly kill lots of people, but he sits back and watches while tons die in earthquakes and floods. All in all, not much to choose, and we’re all better off that he doesn’t actually exist.
Of course you can. The Bible is not monolithic. Different books have different viewpoints, styles, and intended audiences. There’s no prior reason that one part of the Bible cannot be used to interpret another part.
Maybe I misunderstood the OP’s intent but I’m not aware of any Bible quotation that says something like, “the God in NT looks inconsistent to the God in OT but use the NT God as your reference because it supersedes the old one.”
If you have a chapter & verse that explains explains that idea on its own without external interpretation from you or any theologian then please cite. IMO, Matthew 26:26-28 “new covenant” does not answer OP’s type of inquiry.
The wiki page on The New Covenant is far better written than anything I can crank out:
Summary: The ENTIRE NT is the New Covenant. The fulfulling of OT prophecy in the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ is what changed the game plan for the Christian branch of the Abrahamic God’s followers.
I misunderstood you. When you said one “can’t look” I thought you meant it’s “not reasonable to look”. I see you actually meant “there are no verses that directly address”. I think it is reasonable to look within the Bible for self explanations. I do not know of any verses that do directly address it.
I’m not sure it’s fair to exclude external interpretations, since that is a necessary component of any textual analysis.