I vividly remember watching an episode of the now defunct Oprah talk show where Oprah Winfrey talked about why she couldn’t worship God as revealed in the Holy Bible. She had opened her Bible one day and had come across one of the various places in the Bible where God was referred to as a “jealous” God. According to her, she based her rejection of God on the fact that there must be something wrong with a God who is creator of the heavens and the earth and yet is plagued by such petty human emotions like jealousy. I have also heard of other people, mainly celebrities like Oprah, who have rejected the God as portrayed in the Old Testament. In these days of political correctness they say they are appalled by the violence portrayed there. They would have liked to write their own Bible but since they can’t, they have rejected God and the Bible and created their own god and have their own rules (which owe nothing to the Bible). Then there are those who are controlled by their desires who see the Bible as nothing but a rule book which consists of do’s and don’ts and are turned off by that. (Is that really what we’ve made them believe?). They have also gone on to make up their own rules as they go. At times, they choose and pick the parts of the Bible they like. The especially like the parts which talk about God loving people as a justification of some of the base desires they have and they reject the other parts. Especially the parts they don’t understand because they don’t want to understand it. The funny thing however is that even though they’ve rejected God and the Bible and are ashamed of both, some of these people like to refer to themselves as “Christian”.
I must confess, I really don’t think much of political correctness. I also haven’t really given much thought to the violence, blood and gore of the Old Testament. They have a problem with a God who takes sides to unleash war on others. For me, the events in the Bible are not things to justify or repudiate or second guess. They were things that happened. Mine is to learn a lesson from the stories about God’s dealings with the nation of Israel and to come to a knowledge and understanding of God from those stories. God’s part is to reveal himself, mine is to see the revelation and believe. I understand that there are those who like to question everything because it gives them a sense that they’re cerebral and rational human beings which in turn is linked to a sense of pride in their own abilities and competencies. They feel a sense of pride in the fact that they’re too smart to believe. That’s not my brief. The people who are turned off by the violence forget that it all happened in a day and time when war was the only way territory and a place to call your own were won. Till today, wars are still being fought. I really haven’t heard any one of those people complain that much about the wars America is fighting. No one can deny that America has always insisted that any war it gets into must be for its own strategic interest. We’ve had wars in Iraq (the first and second parts), Afghanistan, and Vietnam where America was the main aggressor. The usual claim is that these incursions are to help keep American’s safe. That means it’s okay if America fights wars to keep its citizens safe as long as they keep God out of it.
We understand from Genesis that God made man in his own image and after his likeness. It therefore means that the emotions we experience are from God himself. To give an analogy, if I were able to clone a woman and all I wanted was for her to love me and me alone, yet I gave her free will to choose whether or not to love me and she went chasing after other men or things instead of me, I would be angry too. But God’s main emotion when we go chasing after other things is sadness. The Oxford Advanced Leaner’s Dictionary defines the word jealous in relation to God as “(of God) demanding faithfulness and exclusive worship.” I believe that captures the essence of it. God is not jealous in a negative way with dark, nasty thoughts. But his jealousy is one motivated by love when a creator sees his creation going astray and not fulfilling the reason for which it was created.
John 3:16 tells the whole story of the Bible in a few words. God loved us so much that he sent Jesus to the earth to die for us. Hebrews 4:15 says that we do not have a high priest which “cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted as we are; yet without sin.” I don’t know about you but I’m grateful that God came down to know what it’s like to be me. I also like the fact that God is relational with me. He feels the things I feel. He knows where I sit. I know God is not ashamed of me because the Bible tells me that he loves me. 1 John 4:19 says we are able to love him because he first loved us. Why should I should I be ashamed of someone who loved me enough to send his only son to die for me? God is not ashamed of me (neither is he ashamed of Oprah for that matter. He loves all of his creation). And I’m not ashamed of him either.
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