Random thoughts about God

[matril]

Here's the question: Is it more important for God to be all-powerful, or benevolent? Not that one excludes the other, but when considering the nature of God, which is more crucial? At the risk of presuming, I would say that the majority of people nowadays would answer on the side of benevolent. We're not too fond of Zeus with his lightrning bolts, generally. But go back a few millenia, and I think we'd find quite the reverse to be true. Who cared whether God was nice? They just hoped He was mighty enough to exert some control over a chaotic universe. In fact, when word of the Hebrew God began to spread, the general consensus was raised eyebrows. How strangely sentimental, they thought, to believe in a god who took an active interest in the welfare of his worshippers.

See, I think that's why the Old Testament is so off-putting to our modern sensibilties. The God of the Old Testament was actually quite benevolent in comparison to other gods worshipped at that time, but the record-keepers wouldn't have focused as much on the benevolence part. It was important to emphasize God's boundless power in a world that tended to worship a lot of small time gods rather than one all powerful God. So everything was seen as being under God's control. If a famine happened, it was God's doing. If any army invaded Israel, it was God's doing. If the Pharaoh hardened his heart against Moses' requests, it was God's doing. Well, if God had literally hardened Pharaoh's heart, without him having any choice in the matter, it would be rather cruel to have him drown in the Red Sea as punishment. What really happened, I assume, was Pharaoh chose to harden his heart, and God allowed it. His allowance was crucial to maintainng the idea that He was still all-powerful. The notion that a mere mortal could make a choice that was out of God's control would have been appalling to the mindset of that time period. If something happened, anything at all, and God did nothing to prevent it, then to their minds, He caused it.

:shrugs: I acknowledge there's still plenty in the Old Testament that seems problematic. I just like to think that in addition to God being benevolent and all-powerful, He's also consistent. :)

Comments

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

Very interesting - I like your take on it. Another point I'd make is that at least with early Christians (not so sure about pre-Christian Jews) the "other gods" weren't seen as being delusional small-time substitutes for the real thing, they were seen as being very real, and very demonic - clothed like angels of light, deluding people into worshipping them. If the OT writers thought of them the same way, that would be extra impetus for emphasizing that THE God was capable of even more violence than the little fellows :).

(Though that still doesn't explain Job. I tend to think of Job as being a very early example of a didactic novel, written by someone with a truly dark sense of humour; I'm betting that Job's Comforters were modeled on his in-laws :))

[matril.livejournal.com]

I personally hope that a lot of Job's story is metaphorical. (Certainly most of it is a big long poem, anyway.) The idea that he suffers so horribly at the devil's hand, with God's tacit approval...yikes. I've got to think the narrative was just coming from a very, very different worldview than ours.