It’s an urgent question that many accusative atheists are asking these days. And, frankly, the world of the Biblical narrative can be jarring to read about. Genocide, tribe blood feuds, stonings, slavery, polytheism, etc. Let’s be honest, there are some pretty barbaric things going on in the Bible – and how do we make sense of that? Apologist Paul Copan addresses these topics and more in his book, Is God a Moral Monster? If you’re looking for more specific information to explain specific Biblical scenarios, his book is worth reading. [He also published two more in the series: Is God a Vindictive Bully? and Did God Really Command Genocide?]
If you’re comfortable hovering at 30,000 feet above the issues, here are some overarching thoughts to help you reconcile the “God is Love” narrative with some strange details in Scripture.
1. The Bible narrative is descriptive rather than prescriptive
Remember that the Bible is, in many respects, a history book capturing slices of everyday life in human history. It accurately reports how people lived then, not necessarily how we should live in our time. For example, two of the patriarchs, Abraham and Jacob, had more than one wife. The Bible never celebrates polygamy; it simply reports that it was practiced. Indeed, the Bible also honestly reports the family conflicts that resulted from their deviation from the monogamous union model in Genesis chapters one and two. A second example is when the sons of Jacob deceived the Shechemites when they dishonored Dinah (Genesis 34). After deceiving the Shechemites into being circumcised, Simeon and Levi seized their opportunity and slaughtered the entire village out of revenge. In both of these examples, the Bible is reporting, not supporting, these human decisions.
2. The Law is tailored to human culture (yet leads upward)
Sometimes we have the view that the Mosaic Law is a sort of eternal word given from heaven that is perfect and unchanging. It is true that the ten commandments particularly represent a distilled core essence of the Law – universal truths applicable at all times and among all peoples. But a better way to understand much of the 613 commands given in the Law of Moses is God slowing down to parent specific children at a particular time in history. God’s law is adapted to the immaturity of the people. We can see Jesus making this very observation.
Example 1: Divorce.
Watch how Jesus informs his audience in Matthew 19:8 and how God’s law was modified to accommodate hard-hearted people. “Jesus replied, ‘Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.” Jesus then points them back to God’s original design and desire. In God’s attempt to mature his children, his legislation has some degree of flexibility built into it.
Example 2: Cities of Refuge
The Cities of Refuge law (Deuteronomy 19) effectively differentiated between manslaughter and first-degree murder. Interestingly, God didn’t abolish the existing human tribal tradition of a clansman (kinsman redeemer) going out and taking a life-for-life to avenge the slain person. Instead, God created an entire institution, the Cities of Refuge, that accommodates the existing tradition but holds it accountable so that it isn’t abused. The Cities of Refuge law slowed the legal process down, gave a fair hearing to the person responsible, and prevented tribal feuds. In this law, we see a second picture of God practically working alongside human traditions but moving them towards his values and justice.
Example 3: Using Humans as Farm Equipment
Slavery rendered in the Mosaic law was not the same as slavery in the United States antebellum South. In the slave-South, a slave was the absolute property of a master and was stripped of all human rights. That was also true under some of the Roman system and much of the ancient Mesopotamian world as well. Slavery in ancient Israel, by contrast, was a form of economic debt-servitude; it was a financial arrangement to get out of debt.
Deuteronomy 15 gives us a window into the existing institution of Israeli slavery. It was voluntary. It was a way of staving off destitution. Once debts were paid, the servant was free to go. Broader national laws were designed to free people from their financial indebtedness (e.g., the Jubilee, Leviticus 25,27). The slave was legally protected against injury inflicted by the master (Ex 21:26-27). And a master who killed his slave would face the death penalty (Ex 21:20). The Anchor Bible Dictionary’s essay writes, “We have in the Bible the first appeals in the world literature to treat slaves as human beings for their own sake and not just in the interests of their masters.” (p.129). Jewish scholar Nahum Sarna also observes, “This law, the protection of slaves from maltreatment by their masters, is found nowhere else in the entire existing corpus of ancient Near Eastern legislation” (p.136). Though this short explanation doesn’t cover all of the unfortunate circumstances addressed in the Mosaic Law, we see the general principle that “Israel’s laws provided safety nets for protection, not oppression” (p.139).
Example 4: The Strangeness
To modern ears, God seemed obsessed, in the Mosaic Law, with overregulating strange details in people’s lives. Those details included clothing laws, farming laws, dietary restrictions, tattoo prohibitions, beard lengths, and sexual ethics. Many of these commands were intentionally designed to be societal boundary-markers to isolate Israel from its pagan neighbors.
We must remember that God called Israel to be a peculiar tribal people, a holy nation set apart to worship him, live in his values, and be a light and blessing to the nations.
They were a tribe under God’s good leadership and not under the idolatrous and oppressive rulership of Baal or Molech, for example. God’s concern for the external demarcations was connected to his desire to safeguard their moral purity. This is not that different from parents today who are concerned about who their teenagers hang out with and what movies or music they listen to. Cultures communicate implicit values and possess an invasive quality. God was not trying to exhaust them by overregulating their lives; he was inviting them to be different.
3. The God who intervenes
Copan writes, “Sinai legislation makes several moral improvements without completely overhauling ancient Near Eastern social structures and assumptions.” He describes God as acting practically and observes, “God didn’t impose legislation that Israel wasn’t ready for…God encoded more feasible laws, though he directed his people towards moral improvement” (p.74). This is precisely what makes God so patient and the Bible so difficult to interpret. How do we distinguish between the timeless God and the humanness that he steps into? What do we learn about the heart of God, and what do we learn about ourselves? Or again, what is God’s unchanging truth motivating the laws, and what are hide-bound human habits? These are difficult questions to answer.
The ultimate answer comes to us in the final revelation of Jesus Christ. He was the perfect representative of the Father’s character (Hebrews 1:1-3). He stepped into human skin, chronology, and culture but showed us the way to the Heavenly Father (John 1:14, 18). Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount argues how the law is an external guide, but the deeper truth is having a heart that loves God and is yielded to God’s truths. The details of the legal code and how it is applied may change with cultures, but what God is really after is the adoration and commitment of his people. As the prophet Jeremiah wrote, “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people” (31:33).
Often in the modern era, we look back in judgment at the strangeness we find in the Bible. We do this precisely because God’s moralizing laws have been improving much of Western sensibilities and legal codes for two thousand years. We also tend to judge the God of the Bible out of our own ignorance of how God works and how patient he is to partner alongside of human institutions, cultures, and legal structures. That is the scandal of an incarnational God. He embeds himself into our human institutions, yet incrementally moves us towards himself.
Next week, we will answer one of the hardest questions of all. Did God really command genocide? How do we reconcile the God who claims to value human life with his command to eradicate it? See you next week.
Citations: Copan, Paul. Is God a Moral Monster? Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2011.
Tags: love, jesus, code, bible, culture, judgment, character, ancient, revelation, israel, mosaic law, moral, gods, virtue, institutions, maturing, laws, bully, strange, tribal, outdated, barbaric
