One of the cornerstones of Christian theology is the notion of God’s immutability—the fact He does not mutate or morph over the course of time. His nature and character are fixed and do not change or evolve. At the same time, we read in the Old Testament where this immutable God occasionally asked His people to obliterate everyone, including women and children, when they swept through a community and conquered it. At times, God comes off as bloodthirsty … ruthless … murderous … barbaric. There is a major shift—something has clearly changed—between the endorsement of genocide in Israel’s conquest of Canaan and Jesus’ call to love our enemies in the Sermon on the Mount.
So—how do we reconcile this dilemma? Is God a moral monster that has curtailed his nefarious proclivities in recent years to where He’s now doing a better job of keeping his unseemly tendencies under control? Is He not immutable after all? Has He turned over a new leaf and become much less bloodthirsty and cruel since the days of the Old Testament? Or is there something else at work here?
One of the great turn-offs of people toward God is the occasionally scandalous picture we derive of Him from the Old Testament. And it’s not merely the periodic episodes of genocide. The idea God would ask Abraham to sacrifice his son—even though he acquiesced and relented and provided a ram that was caught in the thicket—is appalling to us. Some of the things He asked His prophets to do make Him come off as not just weird, but a bit deranged and unbalanced. What kind of God would place such eccentric and bizarre demands on His most ardent followers? To look at this God and say He is immutable and unchangeable—that His character does not shift or change over the course of time—boxes us into a very uncomfortable corner from which it’s hard to escape. In fact, many people can’t find their way out unless they try to ignore the whole thing and pretend it doesn’t exist.
How do we reconcile the God of the Old Testament with the God who is revealed to us in Jesus—the One the apostle Paul said is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15) and in whom “his fullness dwells” (v. 19)? There is an incredible disconnect and noncongruence between these two concepts. The mental pictures could not be any more dissimilar, and the feelings they evoke could not be any more antithetical and at odds with each other.
A number of years ago—when I was a teenager—there was a very popular bumper sticker that said, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it!” While I understand the aim and intent of that sticker, I also believe we occasionally bring that overly simplified mentality to how we read the Bible. Not to say we shouldn’t trust or believe what we read in the Bible. But that very black-and-white mindset can get us into hot water when it comes to some of the things we encounter in the Old Testament. For instance, we can conclude that genocide is morally viable and acceptable, even though we know that’s not the case. Reading the Bible through that lens can open the door to all manner of atrocity in the name of God—something the human race has proven all too adept at doing. The inhumanity and barbarity of the crusades … the forced displacement and relocation of Native Americans known as the Trail of Tears … the practice of chattel slavery by people who called themselves as Christians … all testify to our penchant to appease our conscience by projecting our sins onto God.
But to say that God is not immutable—that say that His essential nature is changing and evolving as time marches on—is equally disquieting. For if God’s character is not fixed, then the foundation of our faith is unsettled and up for grabs. A God who fluctuates … or vacillates … or is subject to change … cannot serve as an anchor for our faith.
Here’s where I’ve landed: I’ve concluded that what needs to change is not our understanding of the consistency or decency of God’s character, but how we understand the Old Testament. Lets go back to what Paul said in Colossians—that Jesus is the image of the invisible God in whom the fullness of His nature dwells. John affirms the same thing in John 1—that Jesus is the ultimate manifestation of God’s nature—He is the “Word made flesh” (v. 14). The conclusion of the New Testament is that Jesus is the fulfillment of everything the Old Testament pointed to—the preeminent act of God’s self-revelation.
Just as John the Baptist pointed the people of his day to the supremacy and superiority of Jesus, so the Bible serves a similar role. John was sent by God, but he was not God. He bore witness to the Word, but he was not the Word. Similarly, the Old Testament is inspired by God, but it is not God. The Bible is not the perfect revelation of God—Jesus is! The unblemished and flawless disclosure of God is not a document or a book: It is a person! The Bible’s purpose it to point us to Jesus, which means that our priority should not be directed toward the pointing finger but at that toward which the finger points. Of John the Baptist, the gospel writer says, “There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe” (John 1:6-7). In the very same way, we could just as easily say, “There was a book sent from God whose name was the Bible. It came as a witness to the light, so that all might believe through it.” The Bible is inspired … it is authoritative … and it infallibly and inerrantly routes our focus to the One who conclusively reveals to us the character and heart of God. But it is not to be worshipped … or deified … or put on a pedestal—that is reserved for Jesus and Jesus alone!
So—what are we to make of these heinous and horrifying passages in the Old Testament? Here’s what I’ve come to believe: The Old Testament is not so much a revelation of the character and nature of God as it is an account of Israel’s coming to understand the nature and makeup of their God. Along the way, they made some wrong assumptions. Some of their presuppositions and ideas about His nature and makeup, likely drawn from what the neighboring peoples of the ancient Near East believed about their gods, were amiss and way off target. But it was not God’s essential nature that changed; it was their understanding that shifted … and morphed … and evolved until God, when the time was right, burst onto the scene and definitively revealed Himself to us in the person of His Son Jesus. Just as the perceived movement of the sun across the sky is not the result of the sun moving but the earth spinning, so the seismic shift in the character of the God we see in the Old Testament as compared to what we observe in the person of Jesus is not the result of Him gradually morphing and changing over time, but of Israel progressively coming to a more complete and accurate understanding of who He was and what He was like.
When we approach the Bible in this enlightened way, it will liberate us from some of the feelings of confusion and embarrassment that accompany defending a God who supposedly asked some of His followers to do some reprehensible and disgraceful stuff. And, hopefully, it will also keep us from repeating some of the contemptible and shameful things that those who profess allegiance to Him, and who have used the Bible to justify and validate them, have done over the years.