Are some sins unforgivable?

God seems to think so:

Isaiah 22

12 The Lord, the Lord Almighty, called you on that day to weep and to wail, to tear out your hair and put on sackcloth.

13 But see, there is joy and revelry, slaughtering of cattle and killing of sheep, eating of meat and drinking of wine! "Let us eat and drink," you say, "for tomorrow we die!"

14 The Lord Almighty has revealed this in my hearing: "Till your dying day this sin will not be atoned for," says the Lord, the Lord Almighty.

Or is God kinda like us where he just gets so angry sometimes that he might say some things he doesn't really mean? Seems like God should be above that sort of thing. And does this jive with the all-things-are-forgiven God/Jesus of the New Testament?

Is this being too nit-picky? Do you just toss something like this out because it's a specific case and not generally applicable?

Job - Why Is This Book in the Bible?

To begin with, from ch 1, why does God feel like he has something to prove to Satan? God first tries to show off with Job because he's such an upstanding citizen. Satan suggests that's only because God spoils him. Then, to prove Satan wrong, God gives him permission to mess up Job's life.

Why does God feel the need to one-up Satan? Suggests insecurity to me. I would think the almighty God of the universe would just say, "Who cares what you think. Nobody invited you here anyway. Now bugger off." Doesn't make God look very good to me.

The next disturbing thing is that this story suggests God gives Satan, and presumably other fallen angels (demons), permission to screw with our lives - destroy our property, kill people we love, give us disease, etc. I guess God can do what he wants, but it kinda sucks for us. Especially because Satan is invisible to us and we can't even see that it was him that did it. Job never knew it was Satan that did all this stuff to him. Indeed, Job and his friends spend a tedious amount of the book wondering back and forth what he did to deserve the misery he was in. So we're just left wondering if it was God directly, random chance, bad luck, consequence of sin, or maybe interference by invisible evil gremlins.

Then there's the whole issue of God treating Job like a lab rat. "Hmm, let's see what happens to a good person if we torture him to the point of death." Again, I guess God can do whatever he wants, but again it doesn't make him look good. And while God didn't do all of these awful things to Job directly, he knew what Satan was going to do and he allowed it. The story implies that Satan wasn't allowed to do bad things to Job until God gave him the go-ahead. So to me it's just as if God hurt Job himself.

Whether the story of Job is literally true or just an allegory, it's included in the canon of the Bible to make a point. I just don't think it makes a good one.

I realize I'm very cynical. I'd love to hear some positive spin on this book if you've got it.

Who Gets Punished for Who's Sins

2 Chronicles 25

[Amaziah] did what was right in the eyes of the LORD... he did not put their children to death, but acted in accordance with what is written in the Law, in the Book of Moses, where the LORD commanded: “Parents shall not be put to death for their children, nor children be put to death for their parents; each will die for their own sin.” [ref. Deuteronomy 24:16]

And yet in Exodus 34:

⁶ And [the Lord] passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, ⁷ maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”

 And Numbers 14:18

The LORD is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.

So the Deuteronomy rule makes sense and seems fair enough. The other two do not. But God is just. What gives?

I suppose the implication with the Exodus and Numbers quotes is that there may be consequences to sin that have a lasting impact on your family. And that's probably how most Christians (and maybe Jews) would rationalize it. However, that's reading a good bit between the lines that may not be there because that's not really what it says. It reads as an active thing that God does - he punishes - not a passive thing in that he allows the consequences to perpetuate.

Thoughts?

Will God Forsake Us, Or Not

2 Chronicles 15

¹The Spirit of God came on Azariah son of Oded. ² He went out to meet Asa and said to him, “Listen to me, Asa and all Judah and Benjamin. The LORD is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you...”

Deuteronomy 31

¹ Then Moses went out and spoke these words to all Israel: ² “...⁶ Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Hebrews 13 also quotes that verse from Deuteronomy (for a new testament ref.).

Not sure what to make of this seeming contradiction. But I feel like these sorts of problem verses typically get ignored and swept under the rug by Christians. I'm just thinking, really? Does nobody read this stuff and have problems with it? Where's the discussion? Why does there appear to be discord in the message here?

2 Kings 10

2 Kings 10:30 NIV

The Lord said to Jehu, "Because you have done well in accomplishing what is right in my eyes and have done to the house of Ahab all I had in mind to do, your descendants will sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation."

What Jehu accomplished was slaughtering everyone in the house of Ahab, in cold blood - there was no war going on. And he got a nice pat on the back from God for that.

Should we revise commandment #6? You shall not murder... unless God tells you to.

What do you think?

Published with Blogger-droid v1.7.0

Human Sacrifice? (2 Samuel 21)

I hope nobody glazed over this little gem of a story. The Gibeonites wanted to kill 7 men from Saul's family as revenge or atonement for Saul having virtually wiped out their family/tribe (2 Sam 21:5-6). They arrived at this brilliant idea as a way to stop a 3 year famine that had been plaguing the land. Sounds like crazy "pagan" superstition to me.

From v.14, "After that, God answered prayer in behalf of the land." God didn't seem to object to this or try to stop it. Actually, it was acceptable to him because he apparently ended the famine afterward.

Thoughts?

Judges: Jephthah

Judges 11:30-31:

And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD: "If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the LORD’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering."

Then who comes out of his door when he comes home in triumph? His daughter. Ugh! What a knucklehead! What kind of a moron makes a promise like that? I can only guess that in that time it was typical to keep animals in the house and he must have expected a goat to walk out the front door. But it was still a house. Obviously a person could just as easy be the first thing out, right? Really bizarre story.

The other interesting thing about it is that it doesn't say that God tried to stop this sacrifice in any way. I had some hope that, like in the case of Abraham and Isaac, God might step in and say, "Hang on. Don't really do it. Here's a ram instead." Or something like that.

I'm just not even sure what to do with that story. Why is it in there? The author makes no comment on the event one way or the other, which doesn't help.

G.I. Josh

I'm a little behind and just finished Joshua. What struck me most was the violence. The whole book is about an aggressive campaign to establish a territory for the national of Israel. It was an offensive, not a defensive, war. How would such a thing be viewed today? Granted it was ordained by God, and, ostensibly, these were bad people being slaughtered. But slaughtered they were. Wiped out. Men, women, children, sheep, goats... What would the SPCA or PETA say? (Just being facetious there.) Seriously though, it was very violent and much of it was without mercy. It's an odd thing to attribute to the God that we're typically taught about in Sunday school in America. The God we are taught is all about being nice to others, being peaceful, turning the other cheek, all that stuff.

The other thing that struck me was the common refrain of "be strong and courageous" that keeps coming back in Joshua. It's an inspiring word of encouragement to keep coming back to.

Abraham Cursed?

Here's a head-scratcher for you:

Deuteronomy 27:22 says "Cursed is anyone who sleeps with his sister, the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother."

In Genesis 20:11-12 Abraham says of his wife Sarah, "...Besides, she really is my sister, the daughter of my father though not of my mother; and she became my wife."

So the great father of the Israelite people was a cursed man by God's own declaration?