Editing Talk:Fast Fridays: 30 Minutes for God (section)

== Why is the Old Testament God so mean? (revelation and salvation history) ==

common objection to our faith is the the OT God is mean. 

There are various approaches to answering this question, including

* OT is not literal (Sodom/ the Flood, exaggerations, esp. regarding war)
** so those events in the OT are either allegorical, moral, or not the whole truth
** ex. God tells the Isrealites to kill all the Caananites, yet, the Israelites end up marrying Canaanite women... which is it?
* God was only killing people who themselves were really mean

Seems to me that Jesus answered it best in Luke 13:4: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/luke/13?4

<blockquote>Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them*—do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem?

By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!”</blockquote>

Let's step back:
The Israelites were not special, they were special because God chose them as his vehicle for salvation of all mankind.

A couple conclusions must be drawn from that:
1. The Israelites, as a people, were no better or worse than any other peoples at the time; indeed, we see this over and over again when they violate God's word
2. God necessarily sustained them as a people through to the Incarnation of Christ. 

The OT shows us just how brutal and beautiful ancient life could be. Sodom (), the rape of the slave girl (Judges 19:25), the Rape of Tamar (2 Sm 13:1)

Concubines were everywhere. In defense of Jerusalem, God struck dead 185,000 Assyrians (Is 37:36) and after invoking the same against 80,000 Greeks, to show God's power, Judas Macabeaus hangs Ncanor's head and arm on the wall of the city (2 Mac 15:35). (Btw, Henry VIII did the same to Saint John Fisher, but Fisher's head retained an eerie liveliness that freaked out people, so his head was flung into the Thames.)

God gave us free will. There is no sin if committed unwillfully (when raped by her brother, Tamar did not sin). By extension, we must choose not to sin, choose to return to God (sin is separation, so we must un-separate ourselves) freely, consciously, and willfully. 

Tell a 12th century B.S. exile from Egypt that a stone some crazed dude who brought you into the desert and caused you much suffering carries the word of God. We see the easy fall back upon idolatry: build a statue of a calf like the Egyptians did<ref>[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apis_(deity)]</ref> and we'll have milk and honey like we did back in Egypt.  These people weren't just uneasily persuaded, they were hard to change, for their reality was not with the Living God.

They lived in a violent world, and the idea of God the Father was alien, weird. We recite "Our Father" so much without really considering what it means to have a father in our God, to have a Living and present God.

To the extent that God revealed himself directly to the Israelites, they still had a hard time with it. Did Jacob wrestle God himself? Did Moses see God's face? God came at them, as they like to say these days when excusing dumbing-down Christian doctrine, "where they're at."

If that's the case, then the people of 30 AD were ready for God. In fact, we see a remarkable progression of Old Testament violence from divine to human agency. Whereas, around 600 BC, God dispatched 180,000 Assyrians, in 180 BC the Maccabees had to take down the 80,000 Greeks themselves. Both events were manifestations of God's greatness, but the latter event was in faith in support of man's actions, whereas the earlier event was a show of God's power unto itself.

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