"Nature of God" query inspired by closed thread, but completely different question

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I just looked at the nth, now closed, thread about homosexuality and Christianity, and ran across this:

(Christianity and homosexuality - #17 by Ulfreida):

I’m no stranger at all to the “all mighty” of Judaism (who, for clarity, I am going to call HaShem, something Orthodox Jews say, and it just means “the name” in Hebrew, for my posts in this thread), being called all sorts of nasty things like violent and punitive. I even heard someone call the Christian bible “War & Peace”-- the “old testament” is war, and the “new testament” is peace.

I’m Jewish, and I find all this offensive, but mainly because it doesn’t seem true to me. Yeah, there are some harsh things that happen through the bible stories under the auspices of HaShem, but good things happen as well, and something he never does is send his own child to be painfully, publicly executed.

I’m not asking for debate on the topic, though-- please don’t let this thread go that way.

What I’d like to know is how the Jewish bible, or so-called “old testament” is taught to Christian children that they are left with the impression that the god there is someone it’s good to be over and done with. And what do they think, or are taught, happened in the inter-testamental times to change the nature of God?

2

I think the major factor is that Fundamentalist Christians regard their Bible as being unalloyed and objective truth (even the parts that are contradicted by other parts) rather than mythical retellings of oral traditions and allegorical tales meant to instruct some principle. That literal interpretation produces some interesting moral lessons:

There is, as far as I have seen, no real effort to rationalize the tonal shift between old testament and new. It’s kind of like a grindhouse double feature with the first segment made by Joe D’Amato and the second by Steven Spielberg.

Stranger

3

Yeah, the multiple genocides up to and including everyone (and, almost, every living thing) but eight people on Earth and there’s always the ‘here are the rules for slavery’ parts.

4

There is not a single, unified “way Christian children are taught.”

This is certainly an idea that some people have—Christians as well as those who have only an outsider’s understanding of Christianity/religion/the Bible. I don’t think we can point to one specific source for the idea. And there are plenty of Christians who have been taught, explicitly or implicitly, that God is God and that there is no distinction between the “God of the Old Testament” and the God of the New Testament.

5

Which still leaves the vast unexplained gulf between how that supposedly unchanging god is described in the OT vs NT. I can’t answer that question, but I believe that is a key facet of the OP’s questions.

6

I think you are begging the question and Christian children are not left with any such impression.

Like most Jewish children they don’t know of anything much happening in this time because they aren’t taught much about it.

7

I was raised in a fairly mainline Protestant church–actually pretty progressive as those things go–and I was certainly taught that God as presented in what we call the Old Testament was very harsh and judgmental, mostly about wrath and vengeance, whereas in the New Testament he was more about love and forgiveness. There was very much a sense of contrast between the two. Perhaps not that O.T. God was “good to be over and done with,” but certainly that there was a noticeable difference in how one could, and should, approach God.

I agree with Thudlow_Boink that there isn’t one single thing that Christian children are taught. There are thousands and thousands of Sunday school teachers throughout the country, and they’re probably all teaching things in their own particular ways. I’m not sure to what extent churches have a set “curriculum” in the way that public schools do, but I suspect individual lessons are going to vary considerably from place to place, time to time, and denomination to denomination.

We might take note of Marcionism, one of the early Christian heresies, which held that the Gods of the Old and the New Testaments were two separate, and incompatible, beings. So the sense that there is a difference between the two is certainly not a new idea.

8

I was brought up Catholic/Presbyterian in Scotland and my understanding from Sunday School, sermons, Gospel readings etc. is:

It’s not an inter-testament change. The change happens in the New Testament, when Jesus who is the Son of God rewrites both the Law and the Covenant.

For the Law, he distils all the commandments down to two: Honour God, and love thy neighbour. This is attributed to him directly in the Gospels, and Paul goes very big on it in his many letters. Jesus also says that in him the Laws are fulfilled and although Jesus does also say in Matthew that the Laws will be with us until the end of time, Paul again takes the first idea and runs with it, saying that once Jesus fulfilled his purpose through crucifixion and resurrection, he abolished the old laws, leaving only the two above.

The second part is the Covenant. The Christian Old Testament God made a deal with the Jews, to the effect that in order to be righteous they had to obey His Laws. Jesus offered a new deal. Through his sacrifice, akin to but infinitely more sacred than sacrificial offerings of animals, the slate was wiped clean and now the only way to be in a state of grace was to follow the teachings of/believe in Jesus. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, none come to the Father except through me.”

The other way that Jesus rewrites the Covenant is that he places both reward and punishment for following God’s teachings firmly in the afterlife. If you are meek and peaceloving and give away all your possessions and turn the other cheek like he says you should do, this will not necessarily lead to material reward. But when you get to Heaven, and the sheep are separated from the goats, you will get your reward from the many mansions there.

So Jesus enacts/represents a major rewriting of humanity’s relationship with the divine.

Therefore Christians reading the Old Testament see a “Father” who both has continuity with the God they worship but also has a very different relationship with His people. It’s a relationship based on strict rules, for transgressions of which strict and worldly punishments (pillar of salt, fire and brimstone, eaten by bears etc.) are meted out without very much in the way of mercy. The benefits of following the rules are also material - the land of milk and honey, the laying low of enemies, the protection and prosperity of the Jewish people are all on offer in this world.

The distinctive and to some extent contrasting natures of the New and Old Testament divinities is addressed by the notion of the Trinity - God the Father (very much a Patriarch who demands sacrifice from you) and God the Son, who offers Himself in sacrifice for you. By no means is God the Father over and done with, but the relationship between humanity and God has changed.

9

When I was raised Catholic (back in the 60s-70s) there was no distinction between the vengeful OT God and the loving NT Jesus. Maybe my recollection is tarnished by the years and my disbelief, but I thought the emphasis was on fearing God, nonbelievers being damned to hell, needing to confess one’s “sins” … As I recall, the tipping point in my disbelief was being told that the best Hindu or Muslim would be damned to hell. And the Catholic school kids were expressly taught that they were better than us public school kids.

I’m not going to say the Catholic church did NO charity or anything. But my impression was that its support for charity and forgiveness was more in the manner of lipservice.

10

In short, it is cherry-picking scripture to fit a theological, psychological, and or social need. Scripture is not univocal, or written in one consistent, unified voice (read the Quran to see what that really looks like). It is many voices, in many times and places writing to many different audiences that is the reality. In rejecting Roman Catholicism during the Reformation, some Protestant theologies were developed that led to some very conservative, radical ideas that departed from older traditions. This led to some Protestant denominations that were/are as dogmatic as the RCC that they reject. All of this is supported by select reading and emphasis on certain parts of the Jewish and Christian bibles and ignoring the inconvenient contradictions found elsewhere. Dogmatic cherry-picking is not unifying by any means, creating competition. Two dogmas go into a room, and only one comes out.

11

My experience and understanding and teaching is presently not how you state it. It is better defined in the words of Jesus “Before Abraham was, I am” John 8:58x. Jesus was always there, so the God of peace was always there.

What Jesus did was reveal this very plainly to us in the NT. Or to put it in context of the OP, Jesus reveals the God if Peace in the OT scriptures that was always there, and always the same unchanging God. Jesus revealed to us the relationship of God to mankind. We are the Father’s adopted children and will share in the inheritance and sibling-hood of Christ.

In the OT, it is commonly shown to be forms of God’s justice that humanity is held to without that adoption, but with many times God’s mercy shown to the Jews in particular. This justice is the standards we need to be held to to be presentable to God in ourselves, in our own name - which we can never measure up to. This is also the reason we now pray in the name of Jesus, as we don’t pray in ourselves, but are authorized by Jesus to use His name in our prayer requests to the Father as if Jesus Himself prayed it.

The difference is in the relationship. In the OT, using the law and God’s justice we fall to the status of ‘children of wrath’ as expressed in Eph 2 1-10 and the consequences of that wrath. With the grace of Jesus, we are now God’s children and His responsibility for our wrongdoings, our discipline and correction, and upbringing and which He will make right. Only God can do that and only Jesus can extend that to mankind, and thus Jesus is the only way to the Father. And in that Jesus, the Prince of Peace, was always there in the OT, and we can look and find Jesus in the OT scriptures.

This relationship is also seen in the OP when you used HaShem (the name), does indicate the difference in the relationship - not the difference in the God, as Jesus reveals that name to be our Father or Abba (Daddy) Father.

12

I was raised in the Episcopal church, Sunday school every week, and never heard any discussion of a change in the nature of God or a dismissal of the OT God.

But that may be because my brain just couldn’t make any sense out of the entire enterprise of religion (some of the comments in this thread remind me of how little meaning I extract from the labyrinthine mental gymnastics involved).

13

Not Christian, so I’m not answering your question, but I also wonder why our God killing people is worse than their God sending people to eternal torment.

14

But he orders Abraham to kill his own son. Which Abe ends up doing. I’ve been horrified by that story ever since I was taught it at age 5.

15

If the Christians didn’t regard the God depicted in their scriptures as being fundamentally different from the Biblical God, then they’d have no need for their own scriptures, would they?

16

You might want to read that passage again. He agreed to, but didn’t.

17

HUH? Is this a whoosh? You may need to go back and reread the story.

18

I’ve posted my take on that before. Abraham agrees to kill his son knowing that G-d will stop it from actually happening, He rushes off to prove his faith, trusting that no harm will acttually come to Isaac.

Note then when the Lord tells Abraham that Sodom and Gammorah will be destroyed and evrybody living in the cities will die, Abraham tries repeatedly to talk Him out of it. This is because Abraham knows that this time is different and no bluff.

19

Yes, that’s an excellent point. “God of Love”, my ass.

Like, people complain that the Biblical character “God” kills a bunch of people unjustly. Well, clearly people do die unjust deaths on a regular basis in the real world, and if God is all-powerful, which normative Christians believe He is, then God is obviously OK with that. So I’m not sure what’s so horrible about having myths where God takes direct responsibility for killing certain people. Obviously, if you believe in God, you believe that at some point God is going to kill you, and everyone you know.

It seems like there’s a category error where people think they can judge the Biblical God’s morality in the same way they would judge a human’s, but that makes no logical sense. How can you get mad at God for flooding the world…after He created it in the first place?! It’s like dropping a brick on your foot and complaining that the law of gravity isn’t merciful.

20

My apologies for poor editing. He was about to kill his son and had no idea God would intervene. I was horrified by the thought my father would kill me because God told him to.

And don’t bother quibbling, this is story being told to a 5 year old. I can’t imagine how this basis for several major religions was so well accepted.