God the abuser session 3
This is the third session in this series. In it, I cover Job and the Garden of Eden. Below are my notes:
Let’s deal with the Old Testament image of God and why the unbelievers and some Christians would believe God is an abuser.
Job 1:21-
21 And he said:
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
And naked shall I return there.
The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away;
Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Believers don't believe that God hears them. They believe that He ignores them or if He does hear them that He disregards their need because they haven't done this or that- or because they have done this or that. But this is not the case. It is us who do not hear Him. Even when He has taken the time to tell a prophet what to write down and then it has been translated into a language we can understand, we ignore what He said. We discount what He said so much that when we are faced with what He actually said then we have to either face that we were incorrect or we have to ignore what He said further. The passage above from Job is probably the most misused verse in the Old Testament. So many people who have been in the pulpit, who were the "mouthpiece" of God have extracted this verse to fit their theology and misunderstanding of the situation because they didn't;t really know what to say. They didn't really know the heart of God. If you actually read the entire verse, of course you can see how absolutely ludicrous it is to use as an example of how God takes things that are meaningful to us away!!! As a matter of fact, the New Testament gives us the truth about the heart and the intention of God in James 5
"11 Indeed we count them blessed who endure. You have heard of the perseverance of Job and seen the end intended by the Lord—that the Lord is very compassionate and merciful."
From the onset of the attack by the enemy of Job, we see the heart of the Creator to turn the situation and to give Job double what the enemy stole.. This is not how an abuser would behave!
The idea of God just willy nilly hurting His children was been a twist of the enemy since the beginning. It was, after all the wicked one who implied to Eve, that God had withheld something from her. that He had not made her like Himself. The story of God being abusive to His creation is very very old and it's purpose is to separate the hearts of the creation from the heart of The Creator.