Cultural?

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by edjen01

which Bible?...or how many?...understand that when St.Peter & St.Paul were writing...the Bible to them was the Hebrew O.T. and/or the Torah. Ironically...most english bibles don't include all of these.

I'm a little confused by that last statement, perhaps you meant the Apocrypha? In which case you would be correct about "... don't include ..."

Originally Posted by edjen01

regarding "God's will" being revealed...I'm not sure if I understand what this means. Did something become God's will because it got written down?...or was something God's will and then it was written? how does this playout with all the Hebrew history that is in the O.T.?

The problem a lot of people have with understanding the Bible is that they attempt to view it through the eyes of a fundamentalist. Even many skeptics and professed atheists look at it this way - though with some disdain.

The Bible that we have today exists as a compilation of material that has been through an extensive sorting and review process that has occurred over centuries, even millenia of time.

We don't have a book that shouts at us, "Thus saith the Lord!!!" Rather, we have a compilation of writings that people have sought out, used, discarded, rediscovered, redacted and recompiled over time. It is a work of an evolutionary process.

The "Bible" is the work of humans attempting to understand what it was that God was doing in their lives when they were in times of trouble, or even in times of blessing. It's a sort of a backward glance at "what happened?" that is useful for helping us to form a framework to understand what is happening, and possibly what will happen.

Essentially, "whatever happens" is "God's will..." I know that's a pretty lame way of surmising, by I think it's also pretty accurate. I like the analogy of Elijah's cave.

When he was hiding out from Jezebel's wrath and revenge Elijah took refuge in a "cleft" in a rock on the "Mount of God," Horeb. You know the story, he heard the storm but "God was not in the storm," not in the earthquake nor the fire that fell from heaven (1 Kings 19:10-18).

The Bible (OT anyhow) is the "still small voice" that was left over after the tumult of the Babylonian captivity and the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple there. The Jewish people had tried to "find" God in the destruction, and He wasn't really there. They tried to find Him in the return, but He still proved elusive.

To understand where God had been throughout their national existence (and nonexistence!) they had to tell and retell the stories of their patriarchs and founders. The truth of their suffering was so horrible that they refused to associate the goodness of God with those events, except perhaps as punishment for the sins of some of their elders.

For life to have real meaning they needed to find a "good" God, or at least the "goodness" of the only God. But why the suffering? It would be easy to see the justice in the suffering of the backslidden kings (2 Kings 25:7) and the corrupt and wealthy (2 Kings 23:35 and 2 Kings 15:20). But why innocent children (Isaiah 13:16 and Hosea 13:16)?

For complex issues like that you need stories to attain understanding and wisdom. Simple aphorisms and tidy little "God is always good all the time!" types of messages fail to illuminate these issues. The alternative would be to deny that life has any meaning at all.

I actually considered this point for some time; but I was dissatisfied with the conclusions. The error (as I see it) is in expecting the Bible to be summed up in a little Chick comic book like fashion of Fundamentalist perfection. The Bible itself is attempting to explain something of much more profound significance. It's unfair to the book itself and it's message to impose our expectations upon it. We should wait, like Moses had to for forty years, for the God involved in this to reveal Himself.

He is "I AM that I AM," and not "whatever Pelathais needs at the moment but something else tomorrow 'cause I'm busy and got plans."

[mizpeh]

But why the suffering?

Wasn't the suffering of God's own chosen people a result of their rejection of His law given to them by Moses? Didn't God forewarn them what would happen in Deut 28 and through the many prophets he sent to them telling them to turn back to God, their Rock? Until He reached the time when the space of repentance had ended and the time for judgement had come?

And through the suffering, furnace of affliction, didn't God bring forth a people who NEVER went back into idolatry? There is some good that comes out of suffering/chastisement.