I've been studying the Old Testament lately, the Hebrew Bible, specifically to gain an understanding of how the Judeo-Christian-Muslim God thinks. Time and time again, God makes it abundantly clear that the Jews are his special people and nobody else matters. When God promised the Holy Land to the Jews, it didn't matter that there were already people living there. When Joshua finally brings the Jews to the land flowing with milk and honey, they begin to obliterate anyone in their way. God tells them to kill men, woman, and children, take the spoils - the camels, asses, sheep, and goats, the gold and silver, and burn the place to the ground so that no one will ever even know there was a town there. This is how much God loves the Jews and the rest can go to hell. Actually, God never says anything about hell. He just says, "If you keep my commandments, and statutes, and judgments, and do them then ye shall live." And apparently, the rest of the world will just die. So, all the Christians who think they're are going to heaven are just going to die like the rest of us nonbelievers, because they're not Jews.
But, then along comes Jesus with a whole new bunch of rules - you can eat anything you want and you never have to wash your hands before you eat. You don't have to keep the Sabbath holy. Love your enemies. Sometimes he would quote the law of Moses, and other times he would ignore it. Even Jesus was just interested, at first, in the lost lambs of Israel. He told his disciples to go out two by two preaching, but he specifically tells them not to preach to the gentiles. Because they're all going to hell anyway.
God is capricious in the Old Testament, sometimes loving the Jews, and sometimes bent on destroying them for their wicked ways, specifically for worshipping other gods - God hates that, and expresses his jealousy many times in the Bible. Is it rational to be jealous of gods that are made of wood and stone? And God changes his mind - a couple of times he repents the evil that he planned on doing to the Israelites when things start looking better. How could he know everything if he couldn't foresee the Israelites repenting? This God has limitations.
And God plays games with people's minds. He tells Moses to send plagues upon the Egyptians for the release of the Israelites, and just when the pharaoh is about to submit, GOD hardens his heart, and he changes his mind. Over and over God lets Moses down. God could've just appeared to pharaoh and avoided the whole drama, but God seems to like drama.
And then Moses, who has done a ton of heavy lifting for God, doesn't get to see the promised land - all because he struck a rock a second time when it didn't yield water the first time as God had told Moses. Really God? The Israelites make a golden calf to worship, but they all get to see the promised land. Moses, though, who led the Israelites from slavery, wandered with them for 40 years in the wilderness, wrote the Torah, and had a close, personal relationship with God, dies on Mount Nemo, within tantalizing sight of the Promised Land. If God is so petty with one of his greatest prophets, then how much stricter is he going to be with you? How many of you are sinless? This is a God to be feared.
And then there's Job. Another righteous man whom God allows to be tortured by thee devil, just because God is so sure that Job won't crack. The devil claims that Job is just righteous because God blessed him with great flocks, children, slaves, and property. So, God allows the devil to kill his family - children, slaves, and flocks, afflict him with sores, and leave him in misery just to get him to curse God. At one point Job wants to die. And God is allowing all this. So, if he loved Job and let him be treated thus, just to prove a point to the devil, how is he going to treat you who are not even Jewish, and maybe not even righteous? Fear God!
Through the Prophet Samuel, God chooses Saul to be the first king of the Jews. But after a while, along comes David who wins the hearts of the people by slaying Goliath and having God on his side. So, once again, God sends an evil spirit into Saul and Saul decides David is his mortal enemy, at first trying to slay him with a javelin, then later trying to destroy David's new army with his army. But, it's God making Saul homicidal. So, God initially loved and blessed Saul, but later he abandoned him and Saul died by falling on his own sword. How much does God love and bless you?
Back in the beginning, God sets Adam and Eve up in Paradise, but instructs them not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So, if they didn't already have the knowledge of good and evil, then they wouldn't have known that disobeying God was a sin. They wouldn't know what sin was. They were like animals. Fruit is good. I know it's all just allegory, but it's just God again not acting rationally. (Have you ever considered that, if man were created in God's image - then God must be naked, for that is how he created them.)
And why does sometimes God speak to people directly, and at other times he speaks through prophets. Even King David, who asked God direct questions and got direct answers, sometimes was told of God's wishes through Nathan, the prophet. Or God would speak through an angel, like when he couldn't be bothered to tell Abraham not to murder his son. He let the angel do it. I mean, all God had to do was tell Abraham to stop - but maybe he thought that the angel was more dramatic. And, as we have seen, God likes drama. How dramatic is your life?
God is anything but loving. The God of the Old Testament is not the God that Jesus talks about. Jesus' God is a loving, compassionate, forgiving God. The God of the Old Testament only loves the Jews, and then, only when they are worshipping him. He destroyed everyone but Noah and his family once. He couldn't have loved all the people he destroyed. And we are a lot more wicked now than we ever were then. Who knows what other crazy notions God has in mind? Christians would say that fear of God is good. But the kind of fear that God inspires is crazy-guy-with-a-gun in a school fear, and we certainly don't need that. God is scary because of his unpredictability. God is scary because of his poor track record. God is scary for the way that he has treated his own special people, allowing them to be taken into slavery, to be persecuted for centuries, and allowing the Holocaust. And God is scary because so many people believe in him without a shred of evidence. Fear God - indeed.
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