Is the God of the Old Testament different than the God of the New?

QUESTION: How do you reconcile the Old Testament to the New Testament picture of God? Specifically I'm reading Deuteronomy 28 and the God of this book just does not seem anything like Jesus. In verse 63 it even says he will get pleasure from it... It just seems so different than Jesus and everything he was about.

RESPONSE: This is a very common issue when reading the Bible.  There’s this seeming difference in God's character between the two covenantal periods.  Specifically, the Old Covenant God of Moses is full of wrath, the New Covenant God revealed in Jesus is full of grace.

There are two main things to say about this apparent discrepancy.

1. When we look more deeply, the differences are not as glaring as they first appear.  In other words, when we look inside, everything that is revealed about God's character in the Old Testament is still seen in the New, (and vice versa) even if there's a different emphasis.
2. The different emphasis in God's attributes fits with a well-established pattern of "progressive revelation".  Which is to say that God does not reveal all of himself or his plans at the earliest stages of his interactions with the chosen people.  God's revelations progress in content and depth over time, so we should never, from our position here in the "last days," consider the earliest revelations to be complete or interpret them in isolation from the later stuff.

In dealing with Deut. 28 specifically and this list of blessings and curses, we are getting insight into God that consistently runs across both Old and New testaments.  The holiness of God is revealed inside this moral order: obey and be blessed, disobey and be cursed.  As in physics, so in ethics:  for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  The message is simple:  attune your life to moral reality, just as you do to physical reality.

You might think that outlining (repeatedly) the specific consequences reveals a harshness in God, but would we think a parachuting instructor was harsh if he detailed the graphic results of failure to obey his instructions?  Would we think his lengthy, redundant, legal waiver meant that he was being mean?  No, once we understand the stakes involved, the graphic warnings are actually seen as a kind of mercy.

This teaches us that not only is God a merciful parent (laying out consequences up front), but also God is just, and holy for he follows through with discipline (every curse mentioned here ACTUALLY HAPPENED!).  Also, the stark warnings reveal that God is fair, because God is treating them the same as the nations they would be displacing in the Land.

The point is, what the Jews are learning about God here is not diminished by the arrival of Jesus Christ.  This is Jesus' Father:

• no respecter of persons or nations, impartial and fair (Deut. 10:17).  
• whose rules are not arbitrary but based in his good, fair, and loving character.  So his law is built on love, forbidding unfettered self-interest, protecting the weak, foreigners, children, orphans, widows (10:18-11:1).  
• who chooses his children not based on their pedigree but because of His love! (7:13).  
• How is this inconsistent with the God revealed in Jesus' gospel which teaches us that God adopted us out of no goodness in us, but purely by unmerited favor (Eph 1:3-6)?

Christians did not stop believing in this Lawfulness, and Holiness of God just because Jesus revealed God's grace in a supreme way.  Look at Galatians 6:9 - "do not be fooled, God is not mocked, a man reaps what he sows."  In fact, the Cross makes no sense apart from these characteristics of justice and holiness revealed in the Law.  As much as the Cross shows off God's grace, the pain of it also reflected the terrible, ultimate punishment for sin.   No, the cross is God's grace AND justice together (Rom 3:26).

So to my first point:  there is justifiable wrath in the New Testament (Romans 1:18, 2:5, 5:9) and in the teaching and actions of Jesus (Matt 3:7, Luke 21:23, John 2:15), which is consistent with the picture of God we get from Moses.  Also there is amazing tenderness and grace in the God of the Old Testament which is consistent with Jesus (Hosea 2:14).

The consistent picture of God is simply that God is completely "other" - holy and perfect and hating sin.  Also there is one consistent picture of sin separating people from people and people from God and ultimately diminishing human life and leading to terrible outcomes; in the Old and New Testament.

To underline this, remember that the picture Jesus paints of the sinner apart from his Grace, is probably worse than the picture Moses paints of his People who are disobedient!  The Old Testament warned of people being pillaged and suffering greatly for disobedience, and yes death for many... but for Jesus, the disobedient will suffer eternal death (Luke 12:5)!

And look at the curses of Deut. 28, and how it paints the disobedient as groping, blind, oppressed, robbed, hungry, and powerless.  This isn't a contradiction of the New Testament, rather, it sets it up beautifully!  For how can we see the sacrifice of Jesus as a Rescue unless we can see in our own disobedience, the same kinds of helplessness God predicts for disobedient Israel?  We too were disobedient and wrecked and helpless when Christ came into our lives.  This is painting one consistent picture of human nature, and God's nature.

But perhaps you still struggle with the language Moses uses - in the language of Deuteronomy, it looks like God is sort of deliberately inflicting suffering on them (and gleefully!).  Yet who is the one who ACTUALLY decides to invoke the consequences God warned about?  The people do!  See, Moses didn't care to separate the primary cause from the secondary cause in his language, which makes it seem to us like God is more callous than he actually is.

Imagine primary and secondary causes like this:  I set up a booby trap in my home for robbers.  I say to you, don't go in there, you'll get smashed by my trap, it's for robbers.  Then you go in anyhow.  And guess what?  You get smashed!  Who smashed you?  Well, in a sense, I did, I set up a trap to smash - it was MY trap after all, so clearly I caused it.  But truth is, YOU caused yourself to be smashed, because I warned you away, and you went in anyway!

It's just like that here in Deut. 28.  It feels really rough because God says, I'M doing curse X, Y, or Z.  But God's actually simply allowing natural consequences to flow, rather than deliberately inflicting arbitrary terror.  In fact, God is only a secondary cause of the curse, we ourselves are the primary cause of the cursing.  In the New Testament Paul will put it like this, "God hands the disobedient over..." (Romans 1:28) so He releases them to do what ought not to be done, and then they suffer according to their choices.

So God's holiness, and his judgment on sin is consistent throughout the Bible.

Ok, now my second point.  There is progressive revelation here.  Yes, we can see judgment and wrath in the New Testament and even at the heart of Jesus very mission to save because it borrows the same language of God cursing the disobedient sinner to separation... (See John 3:36).  HOWEVER, in Jesus we get no sense of God “delighting” in the judgment which you pointed out (Deut. 28:63).  So do we have reason to think this may be not the whole story on God's attitude?  Yes, because of what ELSE is said about God LATER in revelation history.

For example:

Ezek. 18:23-24: Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked?” This is the declaration of the Lord God. “Instead, don’t I take pleasure when he turns from his ways and lives?

Because of progressive revelations, we can see Deut 28:63 as hyperbole.  We can see this in the context of the sarcastic, dramatic way that the ancient Middle Eastern mind would think and talk, not as proof of God's callousness.

If we take all Scripture as one, we rest assured, God is not happily cursing his people.  We don't interpret one verse in isolation or in violation of another.  So we learn from LATER revelation that God must have been speaking in Deut. 28 like an exasperated parents speaks.

In fact, I have said something similar to my kids - "If you don't put your bike away, I am going to run over it someday and I won't even be sad, I will not shed a single tear, I will just happily take that thing down to the dump!!"  Saying such a thing, doesn't mean I wouldn’t have empathy for my kids or wouldn’t feel their pain at loss - even if it was all due to their choices.  I would have empathy still, and so does God.  We KNOW this, because Deut. 28 isn't the only thing God ever said to us.

Also, when it comes to progressive revelation, how did this all play out AFTER he laid down the law?  In fact subsequent history shows, God laid out these curses, but then rather than invoke them at the first sign of disobedience, tolerated the worse kind of violations of his law for centuries before they finally reaped the harvest they had sown.  And in this demonstration of God’s patience we see yet another consistent insight into God's character which spans from Old to New Testament.  For the God revealed in Jesus also said:

2 Peter 3:9:  The Lord does not delay His promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.

So if you look deeper you will see not only the consistency in the Bible’s picture of God’s character, but also how all Scripture must be interpreted as a whole.

Was Sodom Destroyed In a Natural Disaster Like Pompeii?

QUESTION:  I was watching a documentary the other night on Pompeii and it was interesting because I had just read about the destruction of Sodom and Lot... I was wondering if this was the same story... But then they mentioned that Pompeii happened in 79AD so that's obviously not it... but it seems like the way that Sodom and Gomorrah may have been destroyed even.  Just curious if there was any history on this. Is there a good source to look up artifacts and things that have been found or proven?

RESPONSE:  So as you found out, Pompeii is in Italy and Sodom and Gomorrah in Israel, about 1400 miles apart, and about 2000 years apart in history.  They do sound similar in the apocalyptic destruction that rained down on both cities.  In the case of Pompeii, being much younger and in the shadow of a still active volcano, there hasn't been any debate about what happened or when. 

Sodom and Gomorrah on the other hand, have been debated as mythical cities for a long time.  In part because the modern scholars tended then (as now) to treat the Bible in the case of historical unreliability to be "guilty until proven innocent".  Also, there was no "smoking gun" in the area of Sodom, that is, no volcano present to explain the supernatural description of chaos and annihilation.  There was no obvious natural cause of "fire and brimstone" in the Dead Sea Valley.

But all that would change as the science of archeology progressed.  Digs in the Dead Sea revealed several candidates for Sodom and Gomorrah, called "cities of the Plain".  I've been here, it is one of the lowest places on earth - 1400 feet BELOW sea level, unbearably hot, and yet lush, because the Jordan river runs down a massive fault line in that deep valley watering the otherwise arid place.  So many cities cropped up here during Abraham's time.  Scientists finding all these remains have finally settled on a couple of very probable candidates for Sodom and Gomorrah.

Old cities usually are built on top of older versions of themselves in many strata, like a layered cake.  So when you find a mound and start digging, you are going on a trip through time the farther down you go.  In a strata that relates to about 3000 BC, in a city also named Numeira, they found a bunch of things that make them think this is Biblical Sodom.  Among other bits of evidence, the whole city shows signs of advanced, intense burning.  Skeletons are scattered everywhere, the gates are burned etc.

I'll let you read their case for yourself, it's VERY involved, but also very interesting:  Bible Archaeology Article on Sodom

Now, as to the HOW this happened, I assume as you do, that this judgment of God was likely some natural destruction, the timing of which was seen to be God's hand of judgment.  But what did God use, since there's no volcano?  Well, recall that this is a rift valley.  Earthquakes happen here all the time.  Also, recently (like in the 1970's) they discovered combustible petroleum materials under the valley floor, natural gas, sulfur, bitumen and oils.

So one theory is that a severe earthquake happened, and this unleashed combustibles into the air.  If they were lit by lightning or surface fires, you would have your hellish scene of fire from heaven, as gas was thrown into the air, lit, and burning material fell on the cities consuming them completely.

Now, one other detail you probably noticed.  Lot's wife turns back and is turned into a pillar of salt.  There's no need to insert a magical transformation at this point.  The Dead Sea where Sodom is located, is the SALT sea.  I swam in it, it's so full of salt that you CAN'T sink in it.  That means anything that gets put in it (including a person, if they didn’t decompose first) becomes "saltified".  Check this out:

It would have been a very Hebrew way of speaking metaphorically to say Lot’s wife became a pillar of salt.  But also highly accurate, because if you died in this Dead Sea disaster, your body would have been first covered in debris, and then permanently encased in Salt.  She likely didn’t believe the first tremors were going to ruin everything, didn’t just “look” back but actually turned back and re-entered the city, only to be consumed in the judgment God brought.

Are Children Who Die Without Christ, Damned?

Well, the short answer from Scripture is anyone who dies without Christ is damned.  But a more specific question is whether children, who can't profess Christ (because they aren't old enough), can nevertheless be saved BY him.  We believe this is possible for all Old Testament saints. for example.  And most Christians believe this can be true of young children and the mentally disabled as well.

Now, what’s important as we speculate on who may be saved apart from a personal confession of faith in Christ, is that we maintain the Bible’s GRACE alone, FAITH alone stance.  We can't go inventing new conditions of salvation.  If we entertain a new condition for salvation (like if we say, kids are saved because they’re just so innocent, or my Buddhist aunt must have been saved because she was so nice) then we’re diminishing our sin and Christ’s necessary role as Savior, and making Jesus out to be a liar (John 14:6).

AND this simply puts a burden on people most will never reach.  It's by grace so NO ONE can boast and so that as many as possible can be saved.  Who wants the condition of salvation to be by YOUTH alone?  That’s bad news for those of us who are not children!  Or by enough GOOD WORKS alone?  That’s bad news for people, like me, who are so broken and sinful.  So there are not many plans or conditions for salvation… there is only one:  by GRACE alone, through FAITH in Christ alone.  (Eph 2:8,9 & Acts 4:12).

Therefore, on what biblical basis (keeping the Bible's grace alone faith alone stance in mind) can we imagine that young children will be saved who cannot authentically name Christ for themselves?

The case begins with the fact our Lord himself used children as an example of those who through TRUSTING HUMBLE, FAITH, are models of what Kingdom people are.  He said, 

Matt 18:3 “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

This suggests that all little children enter the Kingdom.  

What is it about children that becoming “like them” makes you eligible for salvation? We must conclude it’s based on their child-like faith (through the merits of Christ), not their own “youthful innocence” or their ignorance of the gospel. They are not innocent even if they were born without specific acts of sin – if we accept that “in sin my mother conceived me” (Ps 51). 

Anyone who has raised children knows how early a rebellious streak shows up. Even toddlers can be taught a line, know it clearly, and transgress it very intentionally. In fact, Saint Augustine once said: 

“If babies are innocent, it is not for lack of will to do harm, but for lack of strength!”(Confessions, Book I.7) 

So they aren't innocent, even if they are ignorant of the gospel. So we mustn't argue that children, (or the mentally ill or pagans in other nations without a Christian witness) aren’t subject to condemnation because they don’t have the Law or understand it or don’t clearly break it. The basis of our just condemnation is written on every human heart in our conscience regardless of whether we are too young and cannot read a bible, or born outside the reach of a bible.  

Therefore, we must maintain that all are justly condemned and in need of grace (and this makes the preaching of the gospel the highest priority, in other lands and in our own households.) But having agreed to the need of even children to be saved, we agree with Jesus that they do seem to exhibit faith. And so they are saved by the merits of Christ based on the intrinsic trusting dependency of their youth and God's prevenient grace. 

In fact, rather than consider them cherubs of angelic purity, by Jesus calling them prototypical citizens of the kingdom, he was saying they were more like the “sick” he came for rather than the “well” whom he did not come for (Matt 9:12-13). Not surprising then that most children seem much more like the penitent tax collector than the moralistic, self-assured Pharisee (Luke 18): they are needy, rebellious, at times lost little sheep who fling themselves on the care of their Parents and find their trust rewarded with mercy. 

Now,another biblical argument for why children are all automatically saved, is the “age of accountability”.  While acknowledging the fact of our sin nature, we can see that this sin nature, while acted OUT from birth on, is never ACTUALIZED until an age when the child’s conscience becomes self aware of his personal participation in Adam’s fall. While there is no explicit argument in Scripture about what that age of accountability is, some feel the idea at least, is referenced by Isaiah in 7:16 (“But before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right…”). 

The age of 12 is most commonly associated with Jewish rites of passage into adulthood and “accountability”.  Before this time (whenever it is) of being ACTUALIZED in his sin, the child is not accountable and therefore covered under what Augustine called “prevenient grace” – the grace God gives to all humans prior to the engagement of their will or choice to commit specific sin.

The above reasons might be taken together as a sort of cumulative case rather than separate arguments for the salvation of children.  Regardless of how we approach this, knowing the heart of God is “not willing that any should perish” (2 Peter 3:9), we can more easily trust God with the unreached, or young children or anyone who cannot – through no fault of their own – make a personal confession of faith in Christ.

What are the biggest problems facing American Christians and the Church?

QUESTION: What would you consider to be the biggest issue facing the modern American Christian? And what problems are the biggest the Christian Church faces?

RESPONSE: This is a great set of questions.  I think that the two big issues I see relate to an area of orthopraxis (correct conduct) for believers in America, and an area of orthodoxy (correct belief) for the church overall.

AFFLUENCE

I think the biggest issue with America Christians is our conduct regarding our stuff.  In a word, Affluence.

My parents served for several years volunteering at a Christian training school for foreign nationals in Hawaii (I know, tough assignment!).  They developed many great friendships with people from Asia and Africa.  My parents related to me their surprising reaction to American prosperity and material comfort.  Almost to a person, their reactions were totally devoid of jealousy or cynicism or spiritual angst over God’s unfair distribution of goods.  Instead, to my parents’ shock, their response was almost universally one of pity!

You see, from outside American affluence these foreign Christians were “unplugged from the Matrix” and like those who took the red pill in the Matrix movie, they could see something clearly:  While those in the Matrix lived lives of relative comfort, they were also living a lie, numbed up, oblivious to the real world, and being used to advance a malevolent purpose about which they were clueless.  What a great metaphor for the siren call of stuff!

Jesus’ metaphor is even better.  He said, there would be those who would receive the gospel, like good seed, but that seeds’ productivity would be choked out by weeds. Jesus labeled them worry and “the deceit of riches” (Matt 13:22).  It’s hard to argue that wealth (and relative to the world almost ALL American Christians fit in this category) is seducing us.  The result is millions of Christians numb to what our gospel tells us is the real world:  Our next life which is our real life.  The result is millions oblivious to our mandate from Christ which is not to be rich, but to be “rich toward God”.  (Luke 12:21)

I don’t argue that a Christian can’t be rich AND rich toward God.  But my judgment is that American Christians currently pursue wealth as heartily as the world, without any reflection of how New Testament values ought to inform that pursuit.  If we do reflect at all, it often is to align with some version of the health and wealth Gospel, which turns Christianity into a God-powered program of pain reduction and pleasure expansion.  And you don’t need connection to a charismatic tradition to put a spiritual gloss on love of money either.  It’s just an inherent risk of living in the richest nation on earth.

But I’m afraid this is idolatry, plain and simple (Col 3:5).  And it doesn’t apply to the 1% (alone) but to the rank and file middle class people making up the majority of American Christendom.

How do we tear down this idol?   Well, prescriptions to impose universal vows of poverty aren’t helpful.  Neither is lifelong guilt about something we can’t control, being born in an affluent country.  Three key Christian truths have to be recovered:  

• One, God owns “my” stuff, so I need to manage it his way.  
• Two, the perspective of heaven says all wealth (and all suffering) is temporal and so a Christian doesn’t get obsessed with either.  
• Three, generosity mimics God and no one becomes like Christ without it.

When Christians get this, rather than monochromatic answers, I’ve observed diverse, and inspiring responses:

• In the case of some gifted entrepreneurs, unapologetically making as much as they can, after they set a standard of living, in order to give expanding excess income to the purposes of God in the world.
• Running businesses with Gospel principles which might lessen profits in order to create thriving work cultures that act as missions to employees.
• Willingness to downsize a standard of living, in order to leverage the extra time and money to church and family and the poor. 
• Openness to get out of the rat race partly or totally and be willing to accept callings to ministry where provision is much more a matter of faith.
• Leveraging affluence (money, cars and homes) for Kingdom stuff, such as fostering, adopting, housing unwed mothers, or welcoming immigrants and the homeless. 
• Declaring war on debt.  
• this one should be prescribed! No Christian, living by biblical principles would carry the kind of consumer debt average Americans do ($16,000/household).

Just imagine what the church could do if she repented fully of her enslavement to stuff and the debt that comes with it, and instead lived sacrificially, on purpose, for the Gospel?  That’s the sleeping giant no agent of hell wants disturbed, for, if roused, would surely shake the world.  But hell rests in peace, as long as individual Christians are content taking the blue pill.

PLURALISM

With the Church overall, I think the greatest challenge is from Pluralism and its assault on Christian orthodoxy – specifically the uniqueness of Jesus' message of Grace.

Social pluralism is, of course, a good thing. It says diverse religions should function tolerantly within the same society.  Ideological pluralism however, says that all religious claims are equally true.  Therefore, claims to unique knowledge are considered arrogant and inherently wrong.

This would simply be a problem for how to present an exclusive Christ in an inclusive age, IF the Church weren’t increasingly accepting ideological pluralism as its new creed.  That’s a much bigger problem.

The “Emergent/ Emerging” controversy in the Church today is very much like the "Modernist/Fundamentalist" controversy  of a hundred years ago.  Back then, Mainline denominations tried to accommodate the Faith to Materialism, and it lead to them giving up on core, historical, orthodox Christian assumptions – like creation ex nihilo, the authority of the Bible, the Deity of Jesus, the Atonement etc.  The Fundamentalists responded by delineating and holding fast to the unchanging core essentials of Christian belief.

Today, the Emergent movement, like the Mainliners before them, seeks to accommodate the Faith to postmodernism.  But this is leading it to adopt postmodern ideological pluralism.  Statements of faith in Emergent churches are considered passé, divisive and truth is never spelled with a capital “T”.  Like the Fundamentalists before them, the Emerging churches (totally confusing terms, I know) seek to win Postmoderns to Faith in Christ by rejecting the excesses of modernism, without abandoning, or diminishing the importance of objective Truth and Christian distinctives.

I sympathize with many of the impulses of the Emergent Movement.  They were alienated by the mega-church phenomenon where church relationships were superficial or legalistic.  They reacted against the emphasis on bigness, money, buildings, high-powered worship services and theological bickering.  So they came together around circles of authentic relationships, candles and sofas.  As postmoderns, they gladly reclaimed an emphasis on mystery in Christian thinking and de-emphasized harsh lines of who was “in” and who was “out” of the Christian faith.

And that, IMO, is where they started to go sideways and where the church is at risk.

If this was simply a move toward greater Christian unity, de-emphasizing the secondary doctrinal issues that often arrogantly keep Christians apart, recovering simplicity, I would be a fan.  The Christian faith has lots of room for humility regarding our doctrinal stances, and plenty of areas where we “see in a glass darkly”.  Christians can channel this postmodern urge to rally around what Lewis called “Mere Christianity”.  We can go that far – but only that far.  For Christianity contains, inescapable truth claims that define the Faith.  Without them Christianity is quite literally “worthless” to use Paul’s phrase.

In other words, a full accommodation to the postmodern mind which rejects objective truth, authority, “meta-narratives”, creeds and doctrine, is impossible – not without de-Christianizing Christianity.  And yet, that is exactly what is being tried.  Even in less hip, less trendy, more conservative evangelical traditions, I know of church leaders starting to accept the fundamental tenant of pluralism: that the Christian faith does not offer the world unique access to God through Jesus Christ.

The “only way” of Christ is, admittedly, a divisive idea.  

But can one reasonably believe that Christianity is Christianity without it?  What impelled the first apostles to move across the Mediterranean with the gospel?  Was it an Emergent “doctrine doesn’t really matter” impulse?  No, it was the belief that “there is no other name under heaven, given among men, by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).  Consider the role doctrine played in early Christian controversies.  Clearly the apostles had no problem calling some ideas “in” and some “out”, and the assumption that other religions/gods/teachings are false is behind everything you read, from Genesis to Revelation.

Perhaps the Emergent movement will become like the Mainline Denominations which have largely made themselves irrelevant by removing the stakes of involvement.  If you tell people your message is not really needed for salvation and that truth is found everywhere, why go to your church?  Not surprisingly mainline churches have been declining for decades.  It remains to be seen if the Emergent churches will also flag due to their relativizing of truth.  Most still retain the outreach energy of the evangelical traditions from which they sprang.

Also what may energize this movement away from biblical orthodoxy is a growing Alliance between “old mainline” and “new emergent” under the LGBTQ banner.  Again there’s a parallel – when the old mainliners removed the historic gospel, what remained was a social gospel.  Today, Emergents have rallied to the LGBTQ cause of normalizing homosexuality, which is simply another social cause that replaces the primary, spiritual mission of New Testament Christianity.

But that is simply further evidence of the place doctrine, history, the creeds and Scripture holds in the life of these new Christian communities.  This concerns me.  Without a strong commitment to all those things, the Church exchanges its unique Gospel birthright of grace, for a mess of postmodern, moralistic, relativistic  pottage.