The Irrational Voice of God in Scripture

 I did not want to believe in the bible when I began my spiritual journey. If you read stuff like Numbers 31 God seems like a Viking deity when he commands the Hebrews to rape and pillage the Midianites. In addition to that, there are numerous examples in the OT that make God look evil. Based on these things I really struggled to become a believer.  However, due to some spiritual experiences, I came to the point where I was willing to try to understand the message in scripture.

 

I think it was about 25 years into my studies of the bible, both personal and academic, that I found myself becoming an atheist. The academic arguments out there that the God of the Bible is evil are difficult to refute. In dealing with these arguments, the problem that I had was that I could not deny my spiritual experiences and in one of those experiences the being that I encountered identified itself with the bible. As a result, I continued to struggle with the bible and tried to rationalize what seemed irrational.

 

The big breakthrough that I had that helped me to make sense of everything was learning about the 2 powers in heaven theory. There was this Jewish Scholar in the 70s, Dr. Alan Segal, who discovered that there was a belief in early Judaism that taught there were 2 versions of God in the bible. His research helped explain why God would often in the OT switch from the first person to the third person in the biblical text.  His teaching was better modified by the biblical scholar Dr. Michael Heiser. Basically, there was the belief that there was God in heaven and a version of God on earth, God’s vice-regent or representative. This belief eventually became a heresy for the Jews by the time of the 2^nd century. It became a heresy because Christians were using it to justify that Jesus was God on earth.

 

Another breakthrough came by learning about how the early Hebrews understood theosis. I speak at great length about that here in the link: ( Theosis: An Introduction ). Much of what I learned about that is to the credit of Dr. Margret Barker. Basically, when the ancient priests, prophets, or kings, would enter into the Holy of Holies they would become a god or sons of god as they were called. These people were venerated as gods on earth and what they said was considered to be God’s words. So all those, “thus saith the Lord” were basically those people conveying their experience of God and on God’s behalf.

 

I do not doubt that some of the OT prophets spoke on behalf of the Lord, I accept the canon and teachings of my church on scripture, but it should be obvious what’s not of God. Sometimes you need a shovel in trying to make such judgments. However, as I pointed out in my theosis presentation one of the things that these so-called voices of God have in common is that they are all dead. Our Lord Jesus Christ is not dead, he is the real thing, the true voice of the Father. Consequently, I try to approach what I read now in the OT from his perspective. He had no trouble shoveling through it. The greatest example I believe is how he dealt with the woman caught in adultery. God commanded such people to be destroyed, at least Moses’ voice as God said so.  

 

I am writing all this because I hope it helps people to keep believing in the scripture. In the academic world that I knew I had seen many people fall away from God because of their studies. I also would have been someone who fell away if I did not stay true to my experience. Thankfully, the truth was out there, and I hope this truth that I shared will help others in the same way it helped me.