Is God as depicted in the Old Testament, the first part of
the Bible, which deals with the history of Israel, a cruel and blood thirsty
God? Is He different from the kind and merciful God projected by Jesus Christ
in the New Testament, whom he called Father? Why is there so much of war and
bloodshed in the Old Testament? Is this the reflection of cosmological or
spiritual warfare or just a happening on the earth? In what way is Christianity
different from Islam, which is said to have bred terrorism? Many of these
questions are raised by the skeptics and believing Christians wonder where the
truth is.
I thought I will take up these issues one by one in the next
few blogs and try and answer these and many other related questions and try to
clarify doubts. My non-Christian friends may wonder why they should go through
these, for it does not concern them. I would suggest to them to read these just
out of curiosity to know what the Bible is dealing with and definitely it is
not wrong to know these things even if one is not a Christian. After all knowledge
widens your horizon and it is good to know what another person’s scripture talks
about. For, even though I am a Christian, I have gone through Bhagavad-Gita and
Upanishads, the Hindu Scriptures. It adds generally to your knowledge and
understanding. Hence I would encourage my non-Christian friends also to read
these accounts and benefit from it.
Taking up the first issue, whether God of the Old Testament
is a cruel and blood thirsty God, this premise itself has been framed by the skeptics
and atheists, based mainly on the commands of God to Israelite to exterminate
the old inhabitants of the Promised Land, Canaan. God, who ordered the wiping
out of these inhabitants, including the children and sometimes the animals, is
seen as an ethnic cleanser, racially biased and genocidal God. I will deal with
only this issue in this blog, just for the sake of convenience and to avoid the
blog becoming too long.
When God promised Abraham that He will bless Abraham’s
descendants and give them the land of Canaan to inherit, He also foretold him
that his descendants will be strangers and slaves in another land and that they
will return after 400 hundred years and occupy the Canaanite land, belonging to
the Amorites and many other nations. Genesis 15:13-21. God specifically
mentioned that ‘in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity
of the Amorites is not yet complete.” Genesis 15:16. Amorites, the local
inhabitants, God in His foreknowledge knew, will grow in depravity and in sin
much more; still they were given 400 years to repent of their evil ways and
return to God. Since they did not, judgment of God came on them and their land
was taken away from them and given to the Israelite.
What were the sins of the inhabitants of the land Canaan in general
and that of the Amorites in particular? Canaanites worshiped Astarte or Ashtoreth;
also Moloch; children were given ‘fire baptism,’ in that they were passed
between the arms of the brass statue of Moloch, heated red hot from inside, in
an act of dedication and the children were burnt to death. These gods were
given children in sacrifice, a horrible cult, which God of the Old Testament
said He detested it. Israelite are warned not to follow these abominations,
for if they do the land will vomit them also. Strict sexual laws were given to
Israel, to avoid incest, homosexuality and bestiality.
God commanded them,
“Do not defile yourself with any of these things; for by all
these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you.” Leviticus
18:24
“lest the land vomit you out also when you defile it, as it
vomited out the nations that were before you.” Leviticus 18:28
God called these the ‘abominable customs,’ which the Israelite must avoid, for the Lord their God was holy and expected them to be holy too.
“You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God am holy.”
Leviticus 19:2
The skeptics forget this that the God who commanded the Israelite to exterminate the older inhabitants of the land Canaan, did so because of the
abominations they practiced and in spite of the time given to repent of their ways
they continued in such abominations and the land vomited them out. It was a
judgment from God. God is merciful in that He gives people time to repent and
turn from their sinful ways. If they do not do that, then they have to face judgment
from God. God’s wrath is to be feared, though His mercies are never ending.
The Canaanites also indulged in fertility cult; temple
prostitutes, both male and female were dedicated to the perverted needs of
their gods and goddesses in their temples. Men and women were pressed into
prostitution in the service of these gods. It is similar to what one has
witnessed in our own land, a few decades earlier, in some places in practice even
now, the Devadasi system, where women were dedicated to the Hindu temples and
literally used sexually to gratify the desires of the temple priests or
poojaries; similar is the Yellamma Temple in Karnataka, where young girls get
dedicated to the goddess and then pressed into prostitution and later end up in
the red light area in Mumbai. One finds inseparable connection between idolatry
and licentiousness in olden times in Egypt, Canaan and until recently in our
own country. These were abominations to God and He warned the Israelite not to
indulge in such activities. God is pure and holy and expects His people also to
be holy and separated from such depraved practices. No wonder He commands His
people, Israel to completely wipe out the people of Canaan.
God warns the Israelite to guard them against incest, bestiality,
witchcraft, omens and sorcery, all of which were practiced by the Canaanites.
He commands,
“When you come to the land which the Lord your God is giving
you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations.
There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son
or his daughter pass through fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a
soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer,
Or one who conjures spells, or a medium or a spiritist, or
one who calls up the dead.” Deuteronomy 18:9-11
Witchcraft or sorcery or being a medium, all make use of the
evil spirits to perform; these are not the good angelic spirits, but the fallen
angels, who rebelled against God and got shunted out of heaven. Dabbling with such
demonic spirits will lead to heavy toll and curse and end finally in eternal
separation from God, the agony of which will be unbearable.
God wanted the earlier inhabitants of the Promised Land to be
completely wiped off, not because of wanton cruelty or capricious blood
thirstiness. He was protecting His people from copying these abominable customs
from the surviving members of these nations and hence commanded that they be
utterly put to sword. Two major commands God gave Israel were that they should
not intermingle with these nations by marriage and that they must keep themselves
separate from such people, even in their diet.
“Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give
your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son.
“For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to
serve other gods;” Deuteronomy 7:3,4.
Again in Deuteronomy 20:17, 18,
“but you shall utterly destroy them: …
Lest they teach you to do according to all their abominations
which they have done for their gods, and you sin against the Lord your God.”
That is the main reason why God wanted the Israelite to
utterly destroy the Canaanites. God was trying to shape Israel as a holy
nation, with no such horrible practices, so that they can be a model and
example for the other countries and nations to see, admire and follow,
realizing the desire of the true Lord God of this universe. “Be holy, for I the
Lord your God am holy,” is the strain that runs through the Old Testament.
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