I was having a good chat with an
excellent friend of mine who is an atheist. We sadly ran out of time for
our conversation, but we left each other with some questions to think
about and answer. The first of his to me was, "If there are so many
different views from the same book (the Bible), how can we trust any of
them?" And the second, which it is my hope to answer in this post, was,
"How do you justify God based on some of the Old Testament laws which
aren't the most just or civilised?"
Both
of which are excellent questions. I will attempt to answer both, but
for now here is my attempt at writing an answer to the second (I find
talking much easier than blogging :P).
To the people who have been waiting for this, I'm very sorry, life has been busy and I've been struggling to answer this in less than a 3 page essay (there are lots of laws to cover). Instead I've decided to opt for a less satisfying but hopefully more useful way of answering. Instead of detailing all of the specifics, going through each type of law, looking in detail how the New Testament picks up on the Law and so on, I'm instead going to take a more general approach, which will leave many questions remaining, but should hopefully equip my friend/whoever reads this to work out the details, should they want to (or you'd be welcome to ask me more specifically too).
Of course, knowing me, this probably won't work and I'll end up having to post the 3 page essay. God-willing it will work, though, as I think a 3 page essay is more of a slog to read than my friend was hoping for.
We'll see.
On with the post.
"God's Morality and the Law."
I think the most helpful place to start would be to ask why God gave the Law to the Israelites, and then to explore that.
So, why did God give the Law to the Israelites?
The Bible tells us in Exodus 19, just before God starts giving out the first sections of the Law.
Have a look with me at Exodus chapter 19 verses 1 to 6:
"On the first day of the third month after the Israelites left Egypt—on that very day—they came to the Desert of Sinai. 2 After
they set out from Rephidim, they entered the Desert of Sinai, and
Israel camped there in the desert in front of the mountain.
3 Then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called
to him from the mountain and said, “This is what you are to say to the
descendants of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: 4 ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. 5 Now
if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you
will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, 6 you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.”"
God's making a deal with His people, the Israelites, having just rescued them from slavery and death in Egypt. His deal with them basically goes along the lines of, "If you fully keep my laws, then you can be my people, and I will make you holy (perfect and set apart), set you apart from all the other nations, and allow you to be with me."
From this we get the first purpose of the law:
1) To make God's people stand out from the nations around them.
If we look at the law with this perspective, things start making sense that didn't before. Let's compare and contrast a few examples of how the Law that the Israelites had differs to the way the nations around them tended to do things:
The Law The Way Other People at the Time Did Stuff
Feed the poor and vulnerable Exploit the poor and vulnerable
Reset wealth every (I think) 70 years The strong are rich, the weak are poor.
to prevent long term rich/poor divides
and to rebalance wealth
Women have some rights Women have no rights
The punishment should fit the crime I'll exact vengeance however I like
2 or more testimonies to verify a crime No real judicial system
Don't do prostitution, or sell people Prostitution! Sell your daughters too!
as prostitutes Have sex shrines to worship wooden idols!
Don't murder Burn your children alive to Baal
Don't self harm Self harm when people die so that gods
might let them have a better afterlife
Why can't I trim the edges of my beard according to the Law? Because that was part of the worship of false gods who people burned their children alive to at the time, and the Law is about setting me apart from them in a positive direction. (Which would no longer be necessary today, as beard trimming has nothing to do with worshipping Baal, but at the day it was)
The Law was a massive step forward for the people of the day. If the Israelites followed it then they would be the safest, fairest nation of the time.
Compared to the nations around them (and, with some laws, compared to us today), the Law would make the Israelites remarkably just, but it was by no means the whole way there. There were still big problems. It was only a step forward, not the whole leap, and there was a long way to go.
This brings us on to the second purpose of the Law. Remember the deal before? What was the condition? If God's people obeyed His laws fully, then they could be His people. But they couldn't. Even with a sacrificial system which enabled them to get retries, there was not a single one who managed to keep the Law fully.
2) The second point of the Law was to show the ineffectiveness of religion, and the need for something better.
Yes, that's right. The Law was designed to show up religion as useless.
I had better give my definition of religion at this point, as it may differ from yours. I define religion as, "A belief system in which participants have to earn salvation/enlightenment/whatever else by what they do."
By giving the Law, which wasn't even to the standard of perfection that God required, God was showing the Israelites/us that there's no way we can earn salvation. We just mess up. The Israelites couldn't even manage to obey the Law which didn't require the perfect standards of God and was just a step forward, how then could they stand any chance of keeping the Law if it had gone the whole leap and been up to the perfect standards of God?
The Law shows up religion, by my definition, as worthless and draining, as people are just too flawed to be able to earn a place as one of God's people.
The Law points us towards Christ, who provides a better way than religion.
(These ideas are not made up, they are picked up repeatedly in both the Old and New Testament. Although they will explain it with far fewer blunders than I probably have done! I can look at some of these with you. Romans and Galatians do this especially.)
So what then is my answer to your question? I think I understand it like this:
- Far fewer of the laws given in the Old Testament are as "bad" as you would think, just the "bad" ones are quoted far more than the rest.
- I also don't think that the Law shows us an exact representation of God's morality, but rather it should point us in the direction of it. When we see the laws as a massive step forward for the day, then we can start to see the direction which points towards God's morality. Things are taken another big step forward in the New Testament, but not because God's morality has changed (it's still more perfect than we can achieve).
- The Law should show us our sinfulness, our inability to match up to God's goodness and earn eternal life, and ultimately it should show us our need for Christ, who lived a sinless life, meeting God's standard's for perfection, and died on the cross as a substitute for us, so that we can have eternal life without having to earn it, simply by accepting Jesus' offer and giving our lives to him.
