I was at Starbucks the other day. I was reading my book “Perelandra” by C.S. Lewis when this guy came up to me and asked me what I was reading. I told him and then he left. Later he came and talked at me for about 20 min. Here is some of his severely bent world view:
You know God is a loving God and we are his children. I believe we are all his children even if you don’t believe in God.
“You know what I ask people sometimes, I ask them “hey if you had a child and he came by and knocked your coffee off the table you’d say, ‘no don’t do that’ and then maybe the child comes back and knocks your books off the table and you say ‘no don’t do that’ and then maybe he takes your laptop out. Then you take the toddler home and you put him in the bathtub and just let the water rise because you are angry and you drown the child.” I ask people sometimes, “what would you do to a person like that.” They say maybe put that person’s head under water or put that person in jail.
Now I don’t think God would just drown his children because he’s angry. So the story about Noah in the Bible, I just don’t believe that part; didn’t happen. I just don’t believe that God would do that to his children.
I also don’t believe God told Moses to have the Israelites kill all those people who they fought for the promised land. They would go to battle, win and then have captive all the women and children and God told Moses to kill all the women and children. That’s not just a few children it was a lot. It’s like filling New Albany High School full of children and killing them.
So I don’t believe God told Moses or the other people in the Old Testament to do that. But what I do believe is that even though Moses and those other people did horrible things.
So say you want to climb Mt. Everest and maybe your parents tell you “hey you can’t do that” but you work up for because it’s something you really want and you finally get to the point where you might be able to do it. I think that with God maybe before I was born I asked to be stretched in life so I could be stronger. I used to get mad when bed things happened to me like when I would get a flat tire or something and I don’t believe it’s God’s will that I have a flat tire, but I don’t get mad anymore because I just remember, hey I asked for this before I was born.”
Ok, there you go. Now let me tell you my favorite insight from C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy. Man is not inherently evil. Everything that Man does that is evil was originally intended for good. In the book men want to kill an intelligent alien race (which also had a spirit in the likeness of God). They were considered bent because it is natural to love one’s own race but bend for that to translate to the destruction of another race.
For this man it was true that God is a father and that God is loving. However, it is bend to then discredit the Bible based on moments where pain appears in the Old Testament. I will be honest, I have been greatly puzzled by God’s actions in the Old Testament. And I struggle with the killing that the man was so adamantly against. I can not discredit the Bible though or pick and choose what I believe from the text. It is what it is. I believe that God is bigger than a book, but I also believe that God speaks to us through the scriptures and they are divine.
If something is challenging it’s ok to be unnerved. It’s also ok to be shaken and rattled. Those very struggles we wrestle with are the very things that in the end make our faith strong.
