Thus saith the lord
If you pressed Christians to name the sacred or foundational text of their faith, I believe 100% would eventually claim the Bible. It seems nearly impossible to believe in the Judeo-Christian God without its influence. That being said, Christians vary radically on the authority they attribute to the Bible…ranging from God uttered every word in its infallible and inerrant pages to it being a nexus of fictional, historical and mythical stories whose meaning morph as the faith community dances with modern life and culture in real time.
I began my Christian life with a fundamental view. During high school I remember believing God guided the hand a Moses as he penned the Pentateuch. But as I continued to study the Bible in college and ministry, the italicized statement above came apart. By the end my ministry, in order to maintain my own intellectual sanity, I dismissed the accuracy of the vast majority of the Old Testament. I was a Christian in spite of the Old Testament and not because of it.
All this to say (as I've said before here) the Bible stands as one of the greatest obstacles to Christian belief. I know of many now non-believers whose deconversion began when they got serious about reading the Bible.
In this post, I want to highlight one way the Old Testament’s (OT ) argues against the existence of the Judeo-Christian God. Before I begin, I acknowledge that the OT is engaging piece of literature and can be constructive in navigating this life. Personally, I love the grittiness and raw humanity of the OT narratives. Its main characters are as messy as us. Its various genres run the gamut of beautiful and redemptive to violent and depraved.
Ten more commandments
I’m not going to focus on the narratives, characters and themes, but rather specific Divine Laws; that’s right…laws God commanded his people to obey:
Leviticus 24:44 - 44 “‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves.
Deut. 25:11-12 - 11 If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, 12 you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.
Deuteronomy 21:18-21 - 18 If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, 19 his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. 20 They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” 21 Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.
Leviticus 21:17-23: 17 “Say to Aaron: ‘For the generations to come none of your descendants who has a defect may come near to offer the food of his God. 18 No man who has any defect may come near: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; 19 no man with a crippled foot or hand, 20 or who is a hunchback or a dwarf, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles. 21 No descendant of Aaron the priest who has any defect is to come near to present the food offerings to the Lord. He has a defect; he must not come near to offer the food of his God. 22 He may eat the most holy food of his God, as well as the holy food; 23 yet because of his defect, he must not go near the curtain or approach the altar, and so desecrate my sanctuary. I am the Lord, who makes them holy.’”
Exodus 21:7-8 - If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. 8 If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself,[a] he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her.
Exodus 21:17 - 17 “Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.
Exodus 21:20-21 - 20 “Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.
Leviticus 21:9 - 9If a priest’s daughter defiles herself by becoming a prostitute, she disgraces her father; she must be burned in the fire.
Leviticus 20:13 - 13 “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
Deuteronomy 22:28-29 - 28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay her father fifty shekels[c] of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.
I’ll stop with 10 and yes, I cherrypicked ones to fit my agenda. There are many generous, loving and redemptive laws within the pages of the Old Testament…but their existence does not exonerate the laws mentioned above.
Immoral Laws of a moral god
Any rational Christian would not only refuse to practice such teachings but would denounce them. I know of no Christians who keep these commands. Even if you tried, the secular government would arrest you for breaking the law. You’d most likely wind up in prison. These commands pose a serious problem to the Judeo-Christian God.
For many Christians the solution is simple: “We are Christ-followers! We are under the new covenant...Jesus’ teaching, not the Old Testament.” That’s what I would have said. I would have argued that Jesus came to correct the understanding of the OT Law...to show its true purpose. In other words, Christians would agree these commands are horrendous: immoral even!
This is great! I’m tickled to death Christians don’t practice these laws. That’s not the problem; the problem is if Christians believe these laws were ever authoritative for God’s people at any point.
If you say, “Yes, these laws were commanded by God and governed the daily life of his people,” then you have to wrestle with the nature/character of the God in whom you believe: a God who says the punishment for rape is a some cash and a wedding ceremony; a God who refuses to let the cripple approach his presence because they are dirty, inferior, impure; a God who says it’s okay not only to own slaves but to beat them as long as the wounds heal in a couple of days…
The problem is not, Does God command such things today? It’s, Did God EVER command such things? If he did, are such laws now good? Does that make them moral? If I walked up to any believer on the street and said, “I’m thinking of proposing a bill that would require rapists to marry their rape victim. Thoughts?” or “I’m writing a bill that would call for the execution of any man who has sex with another man. Suggestions?” No sane Christian would consider such proposals good or moral.
God as moral law
The only way to call these divine laws as good or moral is if you take the stance that God determines what is good, moral and ethical. In other words, God is not held to an ethical standard; he establishes it. So these atrocious laws are good and moral simply because they are divine laws. I have a few problems with this mentality.
First, this means God breaks the ethical code which he imposes on Christ-followers? He holds Christians to higher standard than he holds himself.
Second, such draconian and cruel laws starkly contradict the gospel narrative - a suffering savior laying down his life for his enemies. In other words, Jesus would take God to task over such laws (even though Jesus is God…yeah, that’s another post).
Third, even after all that you say, “He’s God. He can do what he wants.” Then I do not want to spend eternity with a being who commanded his people to commit atrocities for whom if Christians committed today, he would send to hell. “God is love”? No, this is a malicious and hypocritical being.
My Bible or your Bible? (My God or yours)
On the other hand...if you say God never really gave these commands to his people, then you are choosing to discount parts of the Bible as completely errant...wrong, a mistake, not inspired and without authority. That begins an interesting dance regarding what is authoritative in the bible and what is not. How do you choose? Who gets to choose? My gay friends would clearly choose to see Romans 1 and the passage in Corinthians regarding gay sex as non-inspired and not authoritative? Women would definitely choose to reinterpret the New Testament passages about women being silent and not having authority over a man (I Timothy 2:11-12).
Who chooses the authoritative sections of scripture: the racist, the fundamentalist, the cult leader, the misogynist, the feminist, the Catholic priest, the Orthodox Priest, the charismatic pentecostal, the evangelical, the Reformed professor, the progressive anglican clergy, the guy in his room with his study Bible, John Piper, Rob Bell, Dr. Dobson, Richard Rohr? As you begin to discount parts of scripture more and more of it unravels. It becomes difficult to know which God you actually believe in.
Re-writting God
These immoral laws found within the pages of the OT are only one of many problems with the Bible. These are not laws from an all-loving and powerful God who desires a relationship with his creation, but man-made laws conforming to the culture of that day and time. We see moral progression within the biblical narrative and we continue to see Christianity progress morally not because God is pushing humans toward a higher standard but rather humans have dragged along an ancient God and refashioned him to our likeness. God is our creation and continues to be so.