How Can You Worship God?

[Treks]

Hello

I know this questions has been asked a million times before. If you have links to previous good threads on the topic, please share them. This is a genuine question.

When you read the OT, and you read about God instructing the Israelites to massacre men, married women and children, and distribute the virgins amongst themselves; when God hardens a people's hearts so they will not accept peace just so His people can massacre them; when God's hand is the driving force behind such brutality; how do you worship him? Like, how do you rationalise that this being is full of love and is worthy of your worship?

It almost seems like Jesus was not only a sacrifice to atone for humanity's sins, but as a peace offering of God himself, to soften the relationship between himself and the humans.

Feel free to PM me if you'd rather not post here.

Many thanks

 

[Aupmanyav]

You could have discussed this in General Religious Debates forum.

 

[Windwalker]

When you read the OT, and you read about God instructing the Israelites to massacre men, married women and children, and distribute the virgins amongst themselves; when God hardens a people's hearts so they will not accept peace just so His people can massacre them; when God's hand is the driving force behind such brutality; how do you worship him? Like, how do you rationalise that this being is full of love and is worthy of your worship?

Because these are how primitive people imagined God socially and culturally, and entwined with these primitive images of God are those who are poets and mystics. Baby and the Bathwater. In other words, don't read these things a the "facts" about God. Humans always imagine God in many, and evolving ways. Take what speaks to you, put into context the rest.

 

[Treks]

You could have discussed this in General Religious Debates forum.

I'm not looking for a debate. I'm sincerely wanting to hear from Christians how they rationalise worship of God given the reports of his actions in the Old Testament. I'm hoping someone can clear it up for me in a way that I can then accept, as I'm open to learning about Christianity and getting to know God, if I can see that he's worth getting to know.

 

[Vouthon]

Hey Treks,

Thank you for the question!

"...God stands far above the anger,
rage and indignation
ascribed to Him by primitive imagination..."

- Angelus Silesius (1624 - 1677), German Catholic mystic

​

Our idea of God can never truly represent Him as He is because He is infinite while our minds are finite. Throughout the writings of the Church Fathers the inadequacy of human thought to comprehend the Divine Essence is continually reiterated.

This informs our understanding of the "Old Testament" depiction of God.

To take these descriptions "literally" is what we refer to as the error of 'anthropomorphism':

The limitations of our conceptual capacity oblige us to represent God to ourselves in ideas that have been originally drawn from our knowledge of self and the objective world. The Scriptures themselves amply warn us against the mistake of interpreting their figurative language in too literal a sense. They teach that God is spiritual, omniscient, invisible, omnipresent, ineffable. Insistence upon the literal interpretation of the metaphorical led to the error of the Anthropomorphites. ​

The Catholic Church believes that God revealed Himself progressively in the Tanakh to his Chosen People, a progression that reached its revelatory culmination in the New Covenant. Thus in the Catechism the Catholic Church explains:

204 God revealed himself progressively and under different names to his people
​

Since then, although public revelation was completed with the death of the last Apostle, we have been progressing continuously in our understanding of divinely revealed truth - a process known as the "development of doctrine".

Here is what Vatican II said:

"...The plan of salvation foretold by the sacred authors, recounted and explained by them, is found as the true word of God in the books of the Old Testament: these books, therefore, written under divine inspiration, remain permanently valuable...Now the books of the Old Testament, in accordance with the state of mankind before the time of salvation established by Christ, reveal to all men the knowledge of God and of man and the ways in which God, just and merciful, deals with men. These books, though they also contain some things which are incomplete and temporary, nevertheless show us true divine pedagogy. These books [of the Old Testament] nevertheless show us authentic divine teaching. Christians should accept with veneration these writingswhich give expression to a lively sense of God, which are a storehouse of sublime teaching on God and of sound wisdom on human life, as well as a wonderful treasury of prayers; in them, too, the mystery of our salvation is present in a hidden way..."

- Dei Verbum, Vatican II​

Here is how the Early Father Origen approached this issue:

Origen (c. 185 - c. 254)

And now, if, on account of those expressions which occur in the Old Testament, as when God is said to be angry or to repent, or when any other human affection or passion is described, (our opponents) think that they are furnished with grounds for refuting us, who maintain that God is altogether impassible, and is to be regarded as wholly free from all affections of that kind, we have to show them that similar statements are found even in the parables of the Gospel; as when it is said, that he who planted a vineyard, and let it out to husbandmen, who slew the servants that were sent to them, and at last put to death even the son, is said in anger to have taken away the vineyard from them, and to have delivered over the wicked husbandmen to destruction, and to have handed over the vineyard to others, who would yield him the fruit in its season. And so also with regard to those citizens who, when the head of the household had set out to receive for himself a kingdom, sent messengers after him, saying, ‘We will not have this man to reign over us;’ for the head of the household having obtained the kingdom, returned, and in anger commanded them to be put to death before him, and burned their city with fire. But when we read either in the Old Testament or in the New of the anger of God, we do not take such expressions literally, but seek in them a spiritual meaning, that we may think of God as He deserves to be thought of. And on these points, when expounding the verse in the second Psalm, ‘Then shall He speak to them in His anger, and trouble them in His fury,’ we showed, to the best of our poor ability, how such an expression ought to be understood.

(De Principiis, 2, 4, 4; ANF, vol. 4)

For those who do not understand these and similar expressions in the sacred Scriptures, imagine that we attribute to the God who is over all things a form such as that of man; and according to their conceptions, it follows that we consider the body of God to be furnished with wings, since the Scriptures, literally understood, attribute such appendages to God...

We speak, indeed, of the ‘wrath’ of God. We do not, however, assert that it indicates any ‘passion’ on His part, but that it is something which is assumed in order to discipline by stern means those sinners who have committed many and grievous sins.... It is manifest, further, that the language used regarding the wrath of God is to be understood figuratively from what is related of His ‘sleep,’ from which, as if awaking Him, the prophet says: ‘Awake, why do You sleep, Lord?’ and again: ‘Then the Lord awoke as one out of sleep, and like a mighty man that shouts by reason of wine.’ If, then, ‘sleep’ must mean something else, and not what the first acceptation of the word conveys, why should not ‘wrath’ also be understood in a similar way?...

(Contra Celsus, 4, 37 and 4, 72; in ANF, vol. 4)​

 

[Vouthon]

Some other Fathers:

St. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 - c. 215)

Here again arise the cavillers, who say that joy and pain are passions of the soul: for they define joy as a rational elevation and exultation, as rejoicing on account of what is good; and pity as pain for one who suffers undeservedly; and that such affections are moods and passions of the soul. But we, as would appear, do not cease in such matters to understand the Scriptures carnally; and starting from our own affections, interpret the will of the impassible Deity similarly to our perturbations; and as we are capable of hearing; so, supposing the same to be the case with the Omnipotent, err impiously. For the Divine Being cannot be declared as it exists: but as we who are fettered in the flesh were able to listen, so the prophets spake to us; the Lord savingly accommodating Himself to the weakness of men.​

Arnobius (d. c. 327)


Whatever you would say of God, whatever thought you might conceive about Him in the silence of your mind, it misses the mark and is corrupted in expression; nor can it have the note of proper signification, since it is expressed in our terms, which are adapted to human transactions.

(Against the Pagans, 3, 19; in JUR-1, 263)


Marius Victorinus (fl. 355)


. . . from our own actions, we give a name to the actions of God, considering them as being His in a supereminent way; not such as He really is, but as an approach to what He really is.

(The Generation of the Divine Word, 28; in JUR-1, 396)


St. John Chrysostom (c. 345 - 407)


Why does John say, "No one has ever seen God?" So that you might learn that He is speaking about the perfect comprehension of God and about the precise knowledge of Him. For that all those incidents were condescensions and that none of those persons saw the pure essence of God is clear enough from the differences of what each did see . . . they all saw different shapes . . . no one can know God in an utterly perfect manner, as to His essence . . . they were not able to have a clear knowledge and an accurate comprehension of Him, nor did they dare to gaze intently upon His pure and perfect essence, nor even upon this condescension. For to gaze intently is to know.

(Against the Anomoians, 4, 3; in JUR-2, 92)


St. Augustine (354-430)

It is true that wicked men do many things contrary to God's will; but so great is His wisdom and power, that all things which seem adverse to His purpose do still tend towards those just and good ends and issues which He Himself has foreknown. And consequently, when God is said to change His will, as when, e.g., He becomes angry with those to whom He was gentle, it is rather they than He who are changed, and they find Him changed in so far as their experience of suffering at His hand is new, as the sun is changed to injured eyes, and becomes as it were fierce from being mild, and hurtful from being delightful, though in itself it remains the same as it was.

(City of God, 22, 2; in NPNF 1, Vol. 2)


Whatever God begins to be called temporally, and which He was not previously called, is manifestly said of Him in a relative way; such things, however, are not said of God according to accident, as if something new had acceded to Him, but plainly according to an accident of the creature with whom, in a manner of speaking, God has entered into a relationship. And when a righteous man begins to be a friend of God, it is the man himself who is changed . . .

(On the Trinity, 5, 16, 17; in JUR-3, 76)

Therefore He loved all His saints before the foundation of the world, as He predestinated them; but when they are converted and find them; then they are said to begin to be loved by Him, that what is said may be said in that way in which it can be comprehended by human affections.So also, when He is said to be angry with the unrighteous, and gentle with the good, they are changed, not He: just as the light is troublesome to weak eyes, pleasant to those that are strong; namely, by their change, not its own.

(On the Trinity, 5, 16, 17; in NPNF 1, Vol. 3)


St. Cyril of Alexandria (c. 376 - 444)


When the divine Scripture presents sayings about God and remarks on corporeal parts, do not let the mind of those hearing it harbor thoughts of tangible things, but from those tangible things as if from things said figuratively let it ascend to the beauty of things intellectual, and rather than figures and quantity and circumscription and shapes and everything else that pertains to bodies, let it think on God, although He is above all understanding. We were speaking of Him in a human way; for there was no other way in which we could think about the things that are above us.

(Commentary on the Psalms, On Ps. 11[12]:3; in JUR-3, 217-218)


Pope St. Gregory the Great (c. 540 - 604)


God is called jealous, angered, repentant, merciful, and foreknowing. These simply mean that, because He guards the chastity of every soul, He can, in human fashion, be called jealous, although He is not subject to any mental torment. Because He moves against faults, He is said to be angered, although He is moved by no disturbance of equanimity. And because He that is immutable changes what He willed, He is said to repent, although what changes is a thing and not His counsel.

(Moral Teachings From Job, 20, 32, 63; in JUR-3, 317)​

 

[Windwalker]

I'm hoping someone can clear it up for me in a way that I can then accept, as I'm open to learning about Christianity and getting to know God, if I can see that he's worth getting to know.

In reading this sentence, and the fact of the topic itself I'm curious about what you say that you are open to getting to know God. Can you explain more on this? I seem to hear in this a certain "attraction" to "God" itself which would lead to questions like this of how people reconcile the clearly anthropomorphic descriptions of God with a reasonable mind. I'm pointing that out for this reason. The answer to your question lies in this question itself.

This "feeling" which attracts one to be open to know about and try to understand God, or Ultimate Reality in the first place, for all intents and purposes is God. What that means is that such a question is not an intellectual or rational curiosity about the world, but an existential question of one's own being itself. It is in that question itself that one finds God already there. Then in finding this God which exists before, through, and beyond all the questions themselves, the rest is a matter of us trying to talk about it in the languages available to us, with images and symbols, word signs, etc., being careful not to confuse the symbol with the actuality itself.

This talking about God makes God not God anymore. Those that hear the words used to describe the experience of the Ultimate, the Ineffable, the Infinite, the Divine, choose what word suits you, who themselves lack a true experiential knowledge of this will fall into literalizing the descriptions as the actuality itself. Furthermore, not all "sacred writings" really are "inspired", but rather reflect the cultural appropriation of descriptions which originate in mystical experience and apprehensions. Those that "don't know" God mystically, project God egoically and culturally. Their knowledge of God is by far primarily conceptual and entwined with cultural referents, making God a reflection of these. God becomes "The God of Israel", for instance at one stage of cultural evolution, and the universal and cross-cultural "God of Love" at another stage. But these are views of individuals from the culture up. And then there are those of individuals from the Divine down.

It's not that these things are wholly separate from each other either, necessarily. The mystic and the poet in speaking of the ineffable or the transcendent will in fact utilize the developed religious languages of their own culture. They will often "see God", with the faces of those symbols that are part of their own language set. God will manifest to the mystic in a Christian culture in ways that the mystic can relate to during transcendent states. This is true in Hindu cultures, as well as Buddhist cultures, etc. And going the other direction, the mystic being part of his own culture can help evolve the culture itself "from above", so to speak. Realizations, or "revelation", as it is called by some, helps inform the mainstream culture with its higher "God's eye" perspective opened to through transcendent experience.

The problem is of course when all of this becomes literalized. Revelation or inspiration is literalized to mean FACTS. Whereas if anything, they are simply perspectives that are more inclusive, more encompassing, more whole, but not absolute. Metaphors become concretized into footings that people can stand upon as if they were Reality itself. Fingers pointing at the moon become the moon itself for most. This can be an enormously complex topic to talk about the relationships between these things, and how people relate to, interpret, literalize, or evolve these things. Each person is also at a personal stage of development, which itself is tied to their culture and family and society, etc. There are influences pulling in and pushing out from all directions in a mesh of interactions. Add to this the very essence of Life itself influencing and pulling itself upward towards itself.

It is this point that I was getting at about looking into the question itself of God itself as seeing into the Source of all of it. By looking into the impulse to know itself, to know the Divine itself in us, we find that which manifests itself in all our imaginations and symbols and religious expressions. And knowing this, we can see this God evolving before us in our understanding which are evolving symbolic expressions. We evolve our cultures and our languages, our frameworks of interpreting the world, of interpreting God, in order to understand ourselves in God. The languages and cultures is created by us like scaffolding to climb higher in our understanding of God, ourselves, and the world. Those that literalize these structures I believe largely do so out of what they are able to grasp at the time to give themselves a sense of stability and security, and the impulse to launch out into the Unknown in mystical states if far, far too terrifying existentially. It is the special soul who feels so compelled to leave behind the security of their own understandings of truth and reality in order to explore God. To truly apprehend God, you have to "push off" away from the scaffolding into the upper reaches beyond them. You have to be willing to be an explorer of the Void.

 

[yiostheoy]

Hello

I know this questions has been asked a million times before. If you have links to previous good threads on the topic, please share them. This is a genuine question.

When you read the OT, and you read about God instructing the Israelites to massacre men, married women and children, and distribute the virgins amongst themselves; when God hardens a people's hearts so they will not accept peace just so His people can massacre them; when God's hand is the driving force behind such brutality; how do you worship him? Like, how do you rationalise that this being is full of love and is worthy of your worship?

It almost seems like Jesus was not only a sacrifice to atone for humanity's sins, but as a peace offering of God himself, to soften the relationship between himself and the humans.

Feel free to PM me if you'd rather not post here.

Many thanks

So you are apparently atheist and you are criticizing Judaism then?

Note that Allah is also referred to as "God" but I am guessing you have not studied the Quran and cannot quote it chapter and verse like the English translations of the Hebrew Tenakh?

Also note that Christianity begins with The Sermon On The Mount in Matthew Chapter 5 and not with the "Old Testament".

 

[Treks]

So you are apparently atheist and you are criticizing Judaism then?

Note that Allah is also referred to as "God" but I am guessing you have not studied the Quran and cannot quote it chapter and verse like the English translations of the Hebrew Tenakh?

Also note that Christianity begins with The Sermon On The Mount in Matthew Chapter 5 and not with the "Old Testament".

If you can't speak to me in a civilized manner, then please don't bother responding in my thread.

 

[whirlingmerc]

You need to love God and be motivated out of love for God and man
but its a fruit not a root... faith working in love is the fruit of salvation not the root cause