In
reading the news, I am astonished at the irrational logic of some morally
bankrupt people. I’m sure you’ve all read similar stories. For example, a burglar
sues a homeowner because, while hiding in the attic, the ceiling gave way causing
them to fall to the interior room and hurt their back. Or how about the
careless, speeding driver that hit a legally parked car and then sues the owner
of the car because it was in his way. There are so many other examples. Sadly,
sometimes because of crooked lawyers and loopholes, the innocent parties end up
having to pay.
If
there is one individual that is indeed completely faultless it is God. Yet
surprisingly, people still want to blame negative experiences on Him. One early
account of God predicting this very blame-shifting fault-finding attitude is
mentioned in Deuteronomy
31:16, 17. In the latter half of verse 17, God predicted that, after Israel’s
disobedience and subsequent punishment from God, including his refusal to “talk”
to them (through prophets), the nation would conclude that it is because God is
not with them. Note that they didn’t say it was because they were disobedient.
It was because God wasn’t with them -- it was God's fault, not theirs. (Verse 18 is what gives me the impression that Israel was indeed just finding fault with God and not repenting. Had they expressed repentance, he would certainly return to them. Here in Ezekiel 18:25,
we find an instance where the Israelites where indeed emboldened to accuse God
of not acting/thinking correctly.) In some ways that reminds me of a child who
blames a parent because the parent didn’t stop the child’s bad behavior.
The
scripture in Deuteronomy doesn’t really say whether the nation of Israel would
later go on to reason that since God wasn’t with them, maybe they need to seek
him out and find out what they did wrong. Indeed, this did happen on more than
one occasion. It also needs to be remembered that Jehovah was not speaking of a
particular instance in the above passage but just that, in general, they would
leave him (through disobedience) and then they would conclude God was no longer
in their “midst.”
It is also
noteworthy that this account in Deuteronomy is not speaking about a particular
law (even though the “sin” God mentions in the above passage is a breach of the
first
and second commandments). Rather, God is talking about an honest and
sincere relationship with him (or rather, the failure of it). Those principles
(of dishonesty, insincerity, disloyalty, and more) are the reasons God said he
would reject Israel. It is an important point to keep in mind because of false
reasonings that people use today. Today, people likewise blame God when things
are not going the way they want. Many seem to think that merely sitting in a
pew in church once a week (or less) will appease God. Developing a true and
deep relationship with God is just not something they have time for in their
busy lives. But as demonstrated in the above passage, God is not fooled.
Much
can be learned by reading the Hebrew/Aramaic Scriptures (the “Old Testament”).
There are many intricate and fine details about the personality of Jehovah that
can be gleaned by doing so. (Several years ago a man told me: “You Jehovah’s
Witnesses are like every other so-called Christian religion. You read just the
New Testament but never read the Old.” I assured him he was completely wrong on
that point and even demonstrated to him how my personal Bible reading completes
the whole Bible in 11 months and that I have been doing this for years. Then I
pulled up my blog and showed him a number of examples where the Hebrew Scriptures
were the key and highlighted passages. Finally, I showed him how our official
literature uses the Hebrew writings extensively. He did not respond.)
While
the broken and corrupt legal systems today may allow innocent people to suffer
at the hands of unscrupulous ones, such twisted reasoning will never succeed
with God.
No comments:
Post a Comment