Understanding God's Character

My Journal - Agatha Nolen

As I embark on my quest to be a better disciple, I’ve been studying core courses at Duke University in Old Testament. I hear lots of Scripture read and preached each Sunday as we follow the Revised Common Lectionary, but I am coming to understand that the parts that we don’t read in the three-year cycle may be as important as those we do, particularly in understanding the character of God.

My preconceived notion was that the God of the Old Testament was a vengeful God, whereas the Jesus of the New Testament was the conciliatory, loving version, but the scene in all four Gospels of Jesus overthrowing the tables of the money changers in the temple and casting them out seemed out of character for this shepherd of lost sheep!

Our lively student discussion helped me to see that my impression of God in the Old Testament is distorted, just like my impression of Jesus in the New Testament.

In studying Isaiah, the prophet points out the grandeur of God’s anger, “Who among us can dwell with the devouring fire?”, “Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?” (Isa 33:14), but Abraham Heschel (The Prophets) brings clarity to the relationship between God and God’s people:

However, the destructiveness of God’s power is not due to God’s hostility to man, but God’s concern for righteousness, to God’s intolerance of injustice. The human mind seems to have no sense for the true dimension of man’s cruelty to man. God’s anger is fierce because man’s cruelty is infernal (p. 101).

Heschel continues, “Significantly, the speech that opens the book of Isaiah (1:2-3) deals not with anger, but with the sorrow of God. The prophet pleads with us to understand the plight of a father whom his children have abandoned” (p. 101).

If God is not always looking for opportunities to punish me just out of cruelness, but instead is looking for reconciliation, how does that change my perspective of God (and correspondingly of Jesus)?

I won’t ever have complete answers to my questions, but I am traveling down a new path of understanding.

Blessings, my friend,
Agatha

*Image: The Prophet Isaiah- Michelangelo, 1508-1512, Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel