Categories: uncategorized
Date: 02 January 2011 20:18:51
OT Gen 2:18 - 4:16. Reading through I realised I could cope with alot of this if it was intended to explain to a pre-modern society how and why things were as they were, but I struggled with it as the inspired word of God. I think the pain in childbirth and the desire for a husband to rule over you was the bit that really got me as something which I could cope with as an explanation but not as something from God, even if he was a pissed off God.
NT Matt 2: 1-18. Reading through this passage I really think Tony Jordan sooooo got it with the magi bit of The Nativity. However, I was also deeply disturbed. The slaughter of the innocents may have been culturally more normal then, but to justify it by saying it was simply so that prophecy could be fulfilled sits very uncomfortably with me. What sort of God allows the slaughter of innocent children as part of a pre-ordained plan?
Psalm 2:1-12 then started on about the terrifying wrath of God, the ultimate king.
All in all I was left struggling. I worship a loving God, but the deity portrayed in todays readings appears to be a vengeful, tempremental, psycho. I think my problem at the moment is not with God, but with the writing and purpose of scripture. Looking at tradition, using reason and thinking of experience it appears to me that the type of God portrayed today comes more from power games played by those with authority than really from God. The writers of the bible, today, seem to be more examples of people using their power to put forward a particular view of God to others who they wish to control.