I Could Never Love The God Of The Old Testament

There seem to be comments on blogs, a lot of them actually, that go something like, "Jesus was all about love. That’s cool. I could follow that. But I could never worship the Old Testament God." There are also many, many blogs that address this line of strained thinking. So why add another? Umm, well, I can’t resist.
What the other blogs point out and what I reiterate is this. Jesus IS the God of the older testaments. Jesus said that He was and is eternal God. He said, "If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father." He said, "If you do not believe that I Am God, you will die in your sins." He is ‘the Word that came in human form’. The Word that Jesus claimed to be, is the revealed Word of the Old Testament. Enough about that.
The real issue that I want to look at is this. The reason that people take exception to the "violence" directed toward other nations, as depicted in the set of older testaments is our present-day tolerance for evil. Not only do we have a high tolerance for evil, we revel in it. It excites us. It makes us feel powerful and free; at least at first. We enjoy evil even though we are dimly aware that when it manifests itself in others it makes our communities worse places in which to live.
Yet evil is something for which a perfectly Holy God has zero tolerance. Some people can’t recognise evil until it crashes into a couple towers full of office workers. God recognises it in calling someone a fool, or in not repaying a debt, or in not loving one’s enemy, or in not respecting one’s parents, or in separating sex from a loving monogamous, committed relationship. Jesus tried to show how little tolerance God has for evil when he equated anger with murder and lust with adultery. And for what it’s worth, because Jesus is about love (His love for us), He preached far more about hell than He did about Heaven. He spoke about hell to warn those He loves about their tolerance for evil. Regardless, Jesus / God said in the older testaments that society could not survive if there was even a hint of corruption that was tolerated. If God comes across as angry in parts of the older testaments it’s because He was. He was furious that the paradise that He created for the objects of His love had been deliberately destroyed by those very objects ie. us. It’s like the anger we might feel toward a cancer that is killing our child. We want what is killing our loved one to be destroyed. Same with our Creator.
Look at it this way. Have you ever noticed that there is something really, really wrong with our world? When children kill other children, teachers and parents, when there’s been murder and war since the dawn of civilization, when it’s ok for a powerful segment of society to kill off a powerless segment because that segment is considered inconvenient or embarassing, when homeless people are beaten to death for recreational purposes, don’t you think that maybe there is something wrong with us? When tens of thousands of children are allowed to starve to death EVERY DAY, when millions of children are allowed to be sold into sexual slavery, when individuals who are emotionally stunted, sexually disoriented, morally bankrupt, relationally retarded and spiritually deluded are adored and followed with interest simply because they are beautiful and rich, when religious people kill other religious people in the name of ?, when we turn on those whom we have promised to love, don’t you think that means that something is wrong with us? When those who speak out against the lack of love in our society are called intolerant bigots and those who protest wars are labelled unpatriotic, don’t you think there is something terribly wrong?
Well, God / Jesus says there is something terribly wrong. He said that what’s terribly wrong is passed on from generation to generation like a genetic code. And He said that behaviours that do not begin in love and end in a society where all are protected should not be tolerated. In the Old Testament, Jesus / God, said that societies that were evil as a whole should be wiped off the map. Now, I can see how some might think that wiping out every living thing is over doing it. But just step back for a second or two. Do you know what kind of societies He was talking about? These were societies where child sacrifice was the accepted norm, no, the promoted norm. These were societies where individuals were so "spiritual" that offering their children as burnt sacrifices to their gods was ok. Think about that! What kind of society must it be where child sacrifice is not condemned? Can you imagine how corrupt and evil the rest of societal behaviours must have been for child sacrifice to be accepted behaviour? The amount of violence toward our neighbours that we tolerate and / or perpetrate today is nothing compared to what would have been accepted back then. Or is it?
In our Global Village, genocide is watched on the news with a ‘ho hum that shouldn’t happen. So what’s for lunch?’ kind of attitude. We do that because, "hey, I’ve got my own problems to worry about." In rural India unwanted babies are left by the side of the road for wild animals to eat. And that’s ok because, well, that’s their business. Warning our children about AID’s while pummelling them with messages that do nothing but encourage them to take part in behaviours that practically guarantee an STD is just business as usual. Sacrificing our children to the god of our corrupted self-love as we drag them through one sick relationship after another is promoted because ‘freedom to do what I want, think and say’ is the highest good in the land.

The point is, no matter what you think about behaviours and attitudes that are destructive to self and others, God thinks they’re an abomination.

The word love is used almost four hundred times in the Bible with almost 375 times being used to describe God’s love for us. (Interestingly the word love isn’t used even once in the Koran to describe God). Nevertheless, those 375 references to love are talking about the Old Testament God’s love for us. If you’ve missed it when reading the Bible, 1st Corinthians 1:18 and 2nd Corinthians 4:3 and 4 will tell you why. Any how, when you consider God’s willingness to die for us even while we are still hating Him, rebelling against Him and denying His existence, one cannot successfully argue that God doesn’t love us. But His love goes beyond His enormous sacrifice. His love extends to providing guidelines for behaviours. These guidelines are intended to show the importance of putting away behaviours that don’t originate in respect and love and protection for others, particularly for the weakest members of society. The ‘rules’ of the Old Testament God were meant to show that for society to survive there must be zero tolerance for behaviours that are destructive to self and to others. It would take too much room to explain why most of those rules don’t apply to us and our society.
Bottom line is, The Old Testament God came to earth in the form of Jesus because we were then and are now powerless to resist the temptation toward acts of evil. In fact we are drawn to them like a moth to a light bulb. We know what Jesus wants from us regarding loving our neighbour, but we don’t do it. We don’t do it because we’re not ok. Because we’re not ok, our families are not ok. Our communities are not ok. Our countries are not ok and our world is not ok. Sadly, we accept that we’re not ok and we even celebrate and reward the very things about us that are not ok.
I believe that some day we’re going to be called to account for this tolerance of sin in our own lives. This day of reckoning is coming because Jesus, the God of both the older and the newer testaments takes His Creation very, very seriously. He takes it seriously because the God of the Old Testament loves you more than you ever imagined or could ever wish to be loved.