Lisa Colón DeLay

God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob...perhaps putting the smite on someone.

On Wednesday, I have something special for ya’ll. My interview with David Lamb will be posted. It’s one of the most interesting interviews I’ve ever done. In his new book, he covers smiting, among other things. It’s called God Behaving Badly: Is the God of the Old Testament Angry, Sexist and Racist?

In advance of this über cool post, I want to throw out something to chew on.

What bothers you most about God? Just be honest. Maybe nothing does, or maybe you think he smites people recklessly in the Old Testament accounts. Maybe you think he has Anger Management Issues… whatever it is, let’s hear it.

Then we’ll tackle (or approach might be the more accurate word) at least some of those things this week.

Also, feel free to check out these related previous posts:

The Man Upstairs Fallacy

Confusing God with the dad you got (Also features best “worst dad” photo. seriously.)

God with a Spatula (Does God spank us?)

 My personal review of David Lamb’s God Behaving Badly (at amazon)

Human Brutality, one of the World's worst evils.

Here is a response to a difficult subject: Evil and human suffering. Your comments are valuable here. Thanks for reading.

The following are comments from a former classmate Marty Schoffstall as placed within the comment section on blog site of Theology Professor Ken Miller.

From Marty:

Dr. Dorsey [professor of Old Testament Studies] says that the story of the prophets (a rather large portion of the canon) looks like this:

(1) God Is Allowing Wickedness…
For a season…. and the wicked to succeed in their opposition to Him to temporarily triumph over Him (and over those loyal to Him). He may allow them to spurn Him, mock Him, humiliate him, or persecute those who remain loyal to Him.

(2) God is redirecting their evil….
to accomplish his own good purposes. The deeds of the wicked play into God’s hands and are used by God to further his own semi-secret agenda. [During this time when evil appears to prevail], God’s children are encouraged to: (a) Trust God, (b) Wait patiently for the time when God will intervene and right all wrongs, (c) Remain loyal and obedient to him.

(3) Finally, God dramatically intervenes…
to defeat his enemies. God is vindicated the wicked are punished; and those loyal to God are rewarded.

Now as my old friend friend Dr. Cunningham from UVA who was a very competent Roman Catholic Theologian on the side used to say:

“…mercy and justice are always in tension. We want mercy for ourselves, and justice for the other…”

Eventually we grow a little wiser and want some mercy for the other as well; however, we can never give up the concept of justice completely. Some decisions are so revolting (like genocide) that they must rigorously opposed, some people are so broken (like serial killers, serial kidnappers, etc) that we invest enormous time and money in the criminal justice system to stop them, they are horribly corrosive to society, they must be stopped.

How do you respond?