God Behaving Badly By Lamb

God is depicted in the Old Testament with a very bad reputation. David Lamb is an old testament professor and he addresses some of the reasons for this bad reputation. In Lamb’s book, God Behaving Badly: Is the God of the Old Testament Angry, Sexist and Racist? In his book, there are seven specific citations addressed that provide proof and evidence for those who would believe “God behaves badly.” The examples that Professor Lamb chose are: angry or loving, sexist or affirming, racist or hospitable, violent or peaceful, legalistic or gracious, rigid or flexible, and distant or near. With each chapter that Lamb writes, it provides multiple biblical narrative accounts and establishes a basis for the particular argument aimed against God.

In the article, “Is Your God Dead?,” George Yancy makes a compelling argument on the idea of social activism. The argument proposed by Yancy in his article is influenced by the negative remarks human beings have made with each other based on gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation. There is a sense of discouragement being made among each other because we do not like to be view alike. Yet, we have been told by religious figures that everyone is made by the image of Jesus Christ. Yancy is trying to achieve realization in his article. In doing so, Yancy mentions various examples of unholy actions distributed by people. Along with that, Yancy correlates his argument with Heschel’s article on “How dare we come before God with our prayers when we commit atrocities against the one image we have of the divine: human beings?,” in order to further emphasize the key concepts of religious

The description of Yahweh found in Exodus 34:5-7 is a significant and influential passage from the Old Testament text which is foundational for biblical theology, since it provides the most complete description of both the name and the nature of God found anywhere within the scriptural canon. Its significance can is noted by the fact that this passage is quoted and referred back to at least eleven times throughout the Old Testament including in the books of Jeremiah, Joel, Numbers, Nehemiah, Lamentations, Daniel, and 1 Kings.. In order to fully understand the meaning and purpose of this passage, several other passages must be considered which serve both as anticipatory texts and texts which provide contextual meaning. One such text is found in the thirty third chapter of Exodus. The passage from Exodus 34 is especially significant as many characteristics of Yahweh are revealed to Moses by Yahweh Himself. Another important aspect of this passage is its poeticism and the fact that it reveals the innate characteristics of God in such a way that demonstrates literary beauty and rhythm. Many phrases and expressions in this passage are presented in pairs. This is augmented by the fact that this passage, in the broadest sense, serves to emphasize the two aspects of God which are most basic. These two aspects are His love and His justice. The purpose of this paper is to examine and analyze this passage in Exodus 34, as well as several contextual texts, in order to attempt to grasp

In recent years, Old Testament ethics have received massive challenges and criticisms from new atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and feminists like Phyllis Trible. Trible describes Old Testament as the “texts of terror” which encompasses a history of genocide, rape and cruelty against both women and the vulnerable. Dawkins takes a step further to describe the God of Old Testament as the “most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully” (Dawkins 2006, p. 31). Although

Hosea’s use of the marriage metaphor in relation to the nature of YHWH and Israel’s relationship was ingenious in the sense that it gives us a special insight into the divine-human relations. However it raises some serious problems for those concerned with the texts that may be interpreted as excusing violence against women. In the case of the Hebrew Scriptures, the image of the husband physically retaliating against his wife is almost unavoidable, and his right to do so unquestionable, to the extent that divine retribution is based on the notion that the deity has the right to punish the people.

A very good question to ask a Christian is: What is the gospel? Shockingly many Christian have the same belief, but different answers. Reading this book opened up my eyes and helped me understand more about what the gospel is. In this book it explains in four chapters these four main points: God, Men, Christ, Men. First, it explains who God is, he is the creator of the heaven, earth, human and animals, he is also perfect, almighty, and compassionate. Yes, all those things are true about god, but there is also a view of god that people do not like to hear. God does not leave the wicked unpunished. God loves righteousness and justice. In Genesis 6:11 the bible says that the world was corrupted and full of violence so god said to Noah that he was going to put an end to it and he did. Since god is a perfect god and cannot see sin in order to clean the world of sin he had to send down his wrath.

An oft swept under the carpet Biblical story is that of the rape of Dinah and her brothers’ subsequent murder of an entire city. Reminiscent of The Rolling Stone’s “Gimme Shelter,” Chapter 34 of Genesis exemplifies sin in the Bible to the point where the story can be looked at many ways and the blame can be placed on many different people. There is the rapist himself, Shechem, there are the murderous sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, who slaughter a defenseless city, and there is the weakness of Jacob himself, willing to bargain his daughter away after her defilement. At the height of all the the sin though, is the absence of God in this story, who does not condemn nor punish either the actions of Shechem or of Simeon and Levi. That is not to say God is absent from the story though, in

One distinction not mentioned is the reference to historical features allocated to the setting of the Bible’s stories. Coming with the passage of time arrives different societal norms; therefore, it is important to put historical context into play when examining the violence in the Bible. It is well known that earlier time periods were subjected to more extreme forms of violence as a part of everyday life and culture. Hence, the violence, specifically the ban, was not an uncommon feature or reality to the people represented by the Bible. Thus, one can question whether the violence set forth in the Bible should be ridiculed as severely due to its origin stemming from such a harsh time in human history.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s book Not in God’s Name provided an interesting way at looking at characters in the Bible in a different light. Sacks feels that reading the Bible literally can cause many problems since people are not gaining everything that is truly meant from the text. Literal readings can become dangerous since people are not really understanding the messages from the stories. They are seeing the violence and the favoritism, and that is what can lead to antisemitism and other hate groups. Sacks proposes ways of reading biblical stories in an unconventional way that paints those displaced at the heroes. The main point of the book is that love is particularly, and you can choose how much you love someone, but justice is impartial, and everyone deserves to be treated equally.

Takes on the difficult undertaking of ensuring that the New Testament is accurately understood within what he perceives is the correct historical setting. Berkhof primarily intended this book for his students at Calvin Theological Seminary where he taught for nearly 30 years. Introduction to the New Testament incorporates the research and labors of many past scholars, and church Fathers, and presents it in such a way as to make “Introduction to the New Testament” a diverse

The chasm that we experience as humans, in both African legends and Judeo-Christian scriptural accounts, are explained by narratives of human actions that were offensive to God, and thus caused Him to become less involved in the lives of humans. In his article “ Genesis 11: 1-9,” Solomon Avotri thesis essentially is that The African Blue Bird myth and the Biblical story of The Tower of Babel, demonstrate man's attempts to seek immortality, due to man's alienation from God. Avotri, begins making the connection by introducing the western reader to the African story of The Blue Bird. In this story, god – in the early days – dwelt among men on earth, and man lived in bliss. However, one day some angry women beat Him, for they were annoyed

I would like to start this paper by formally saying thank you. Thank you for showing me just how small minded and foolish human beings are cable of being. In your book “The God Delusion”, you discussed the bible, specifically the Old Testament, as immoral and should not be used as a moral compass for people to use to give them a sense of direction in their life. Also, you mention the “God character” in the story never doubting the massacres and genocides that accompanied the seizing of the Promised Land, making one think that He practiced genocide and encouraged it. Not only that, but you mentioned the constant punishment – death penalty – the people of God faced when they performed the acts of “cursing your parents; committing adultery; making love to your stepmother or your daughter-in-law; homosexuality; marrying a woman and her daughter; bestiality (and, to add injury to insult, the unfortunate beast is to be killed too) … [and] of course, for working on the Sabbath” (Dawkins 246-250). Lastly, you claim that Jesus Christ – the Son of God; the being that makes up one-third of the Trinity – is different from God or even a “better” version of Yahweh and “undoes the damage and makes it all right” (246-250).

In this essay I will discuss how God is represented from early on, to later in the Old Testament. Throughout the Old Testament, God acts many different ways. Each author shows us their own take on God and his actions, leaving him looking both good and bad. Compared to the New Testament, this God seems to be much worse. There are many examples of God being shown in both positive and negative light, but overall I think God is represented as a caring and loving, yet also harsh.

Deuteronomy 6:1-15 produces a number of conflicting emotions and thoughts in the mind of the critical reader, because the image of God it paints is at once loving, considerate, vengeful, and jealous. Furthermore, because this passage is so demonstrably focused on education and teaching, the reader is forced to consider whether the God presented in Deuteronomy is actually a God someone would want a child to know. This is a God that promises to bless his children and their children, but at the same time threatens his children with ruin and destruction should they stray from his commands. By analyzing the historical, literary, and linguistic context of this passage, one can get a better understanding of its particular depiction of God and his relationship to humanity. In turn, one may answer the question regarding if this is a God children should know with a resounding no, because the God depicted in this passage is a dangerous, deadly God whose messages of love and fear were not meant for contemporary audiences. Instead, while the positive actions God encourages remain relevant to contemporary audiences, the deadly threats that are included with this encouragement have been obviated through the coming of Jesus Christ.

In God’s Testaments, His wrath is a human witnessing to the disasters sent from heaven as a sign against all the godlessness and evil in people. Of course, parallel to God’s wrath is His love receivable from heaven for the good in need of His blessing. In retrospect to His anger is knowing the Bible or how God’s word divides the human race into two classes; the good people and the evil people. Souls who are good have a true faith in Christ, their spirit is blessed by God, they live a heavenly life on earth, and they as they are continuously improving by the Holy Ghost. For example, by wrath, one’s original self-centeredness is subdued and slain as they live a reborn life through the ever-present grace of Jesus Christ. On the other side of them are the souls whose house is evil, who have not been improved in heart, who live in self-centeredness, under the dominion of appetite as they seek and eat good, and by “self” is their only definitiveness of life.