Still Don't Underestimate Old Testament Advances

Following on from all that was said in yesterday’s blog post about harsh Old Testament verses, I had some further thoughts, because it’s good to remember how "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10), and how our wisdom is bound up in an unshakeable desire for goodness and moral rectitude. Perhaps what seems like God’s harsh Old Testament injunctions are, in fact, necessary sanctions against societies that have become so deeply corrupt and morally depraved over time that they are beyond hope of redemption. Maybe if we could get the truest sense of how far these tribes had fallen from basic goodness and cultural decency – perhaps like a modern day Hamas or Islamic State (ISIS) and the atrocities they committed in the Middle East – and pictured ourselves as being part of the enslaved victims under their cruel tyrannies, we might feel differently about the call for Divine justice to be wrought on the offenders.

You may say that even if that’s true, it doesn’t explain the calls for the women and children in these ghastly tribes to be put to death too. But even if we do ascribe those motives to God Himself (and it’s not evident that we can always do so), it is possible to conceive of conditions under which societies in those times could have become so wicked and corrupt that even the death of the entire tribe can become part of a broader Divine judgement, especially if the alternative of allowing the society to carry on with its wickedness is less preferable to the creation story than destroying the entire nation.

And in response to people who recoil at how harsh God seems to be in the Old Testament compared with the New, I think we have to be careful that we don't look past some deeper truths about what's happening. Because the proper reading of the Old Testament reveals the duality of a) A God who is good and sovereign in a way that's higher than we can imagine; and at the same time b) human beings who are, in a number of ways, much less morally, socially and culturally developed than people of today. I think that's at least part of the reason why some of the Old Testament presents moral cases that modern folk don't necessarily see as being moral. In other words, it's because the societies of the day were so comparably crude, primitive and barbaric that we have to understand how good and sovereign God is if we are to see those judgements as moral.

We might think of the situation as being a bit like a medical unit during an ancient battle zone. In the context of survival in war, with comparable limited resources and knowledge, some of the treatments might seem severe or barbaric by today's standards - but they were administered on the best understanding and tools available at the time. Similarly, God's interventions in the Old Testament, though apparently harsh by today's standards, were administered in the context of what He knew was the spiritual and moral condition of humanity at that time - and severe conditions often require severe measures.

In the end, we must remember that God's justice is always coupled with His infinite grace and mercy, even when we struggle to fully understand it. The Old Testament’s seemingly harsh judgments reflect not only the depths of human depravity but also the lengths to which God will go to protect the sanctity of His creation. God’s actions in those times were not arbitrary or cruel, because He is not arbitrary or cruel, but a reflection of His righteous and sovereign nature, aimed at preserving the goodness and flourishing of the world He had made. While we, with our limited perspective, may find these acts difficult to comprehend, we trust that God, in His perfect wisdom and holiness, was acting in ways that were ultimately for the good of humanity, preparing the way for the ultimate revelation of His love and grace through Jesus Christ. 

This is the same God who, in the fullness of time, sent His Son to bear the ultimate wrath on our behalf - offering forgiveness and redemption to all who would turn to Him in faith. It’s absurd to think that He is cruel and unjust – and only through superficially hasty reading of the texts and historical and cultural contexts could one believe otherwise. 

 

Don't Underestimate Old Testament Advances

 

I find it a peculiar solecism and irony that many people of today will have no truck with the so-called immoral teachings of the Old Testament. It is one of the most abject failings of the imagination. It's true that the tribes in the Old Testament were base and ignoble by the standards of modern Britain or America. But what you have to realise is that they were so bad, in fact, that those prescriptions we read about in scripture are actually quite advanced in the context of the day. They are radical steps in the right direction that, although startlingly under-developed by today's standards, assert moral culpability to nations that previously lacked it in such sophisticated codified form.

Moreover, nowhere else in the world at that time saw those kinds of advancements achieved even by human influence, let alone imparted by Divine revelation. Criticising those Old Testament teachings as immoral by today's standards is as foolish as criticising Britain in the Industrial Revolution for not being as materially prosperous as the Britain of today. In both cases, comparing the alternatives around them, their achievements demonstrate significant contextual advancements.

Truth, Beauty & Power

 

In my writings previously, I have talked about how beauty is connected to truth (see here and here). It’s beautiful to seek the truth, and beautiful things have an extra level of beauty by being true. Special & general relativity, the Fibonacci sequence, the golden ratio, the double helix of DNA, celestial mechanics and quantum mechanics can be thought of as beautiful intrinsically (especially mathematically) but beautiful on an even higher level because propositionally they are true. Even the 4 billion years of biological evolution on this planet, despite being “red in tooth and claw”, has beautiful mathematical ordinances that underpin it, and beauty in the vast and rich diversity of life we see all around us. Truth in is beauty, and beauty is in truth.

On the other hand, an artist or writer might be able to conjure up a beautiful alternative to Stalinist Russia, or a beautiful troupe of fairies, or a beautiful fantasy world of dragons, legends and myths – but they would be beautiful on the first level, but not the second.

Given the power of truth in beauty, and beauty in truth, I think it’s good to note three further things. The point that there is beauty in truthseeking ought to be very inspiring to us, and encourage us to seek the truth to make the most out of all the good that is on offer. Given 1, it’s plausible that the thrusting reservoir of ugliness, dissatisfaction, anxiety, confusion and division that has flooded our society in recent times has the primary cause of a lack of truthseeking at the heart. Given 1 and 2, it’s as essential as ever to be reminded that God is the truth, and the source of all goodness and beauty – and that the search for truth and beauty is a search for God, much like how a need for light and warmth is really a need for the energy of the sun.