The Sadness of the Old Testament

It took me 90 minutes to do my Bible study today. That's not too bad. I figure they'll all take between an hour and a half to two hours to do each one. I didn't have quite as many Bible references to look up and read beforehand with today's study. Mostly I looked at King David and King Solomon. One thing about the Bible; it doesn't try to hide the unseemly. It shows it's characters at face value, "warts and all." It just goes to show you that God can use anyone to accomplish His will. What a great God we have. [On edit I can't help but notice the shallowness of my comments.]

We had our Executive Board meeting last night and I had to be the bearer of bad news with the 41 household absentee rate for April. Joann and I went over the membership roll a little bit before the meeting and I decided to bring it home with me and make a couple copies of it and then try to figure out an Active and Inactive roll. I need to wait until Ken gets back from Portugal and then really go over the list and see what we can do to create two rolls out of the one we are currently using. It's ridiculous to have one long roll when a significant number of members are no longer attending our church. I hope to send the non-attenders a letter from the church telling them that they will be put on the Inactive list if they don't start attending (or something like that, said with a lot more love and tact). It's a big and difficult challenge to get the Rolls straightened out but this should have been done a long time ago when they went over the Roll in the past. They were supposed to have done the Roll two years ago when we started the Lay Pastor ministry. I'm pushing this because I just can't stand disorganization. I want good workable Rolls and the next thing on my list of things to do is to create a policy and procedure binder that lists how and when to do everything we Deacons do around the church. I got Joann to write out a list of what she usually purchases for a memorial and I will type that up and put it in the binder so if anyone else has to purchase the supplies for some reason, they'll have a guide of what to buy. We've always just let Joann do it, but she might be on vacation or otherwise unavailable, and someone else might have to buy all the supplies. I need to write up the pages on communion since that's in my ball park. I'll have to get Kim to write out the one for baptisms.

It's a little windy today and in fact I went in and donned a sweater a little while ago. It's actually warm but the wind on my arms made me feel cold. It's a bright, clear day; a beautiful spring day as a matter of fact. I love this kind of weather. We prepped our cooler last weekend and it is ready to go but I love the days that I don't have to either heat or cool the air around me. Not only does it save on my PG&E bill but it's also a lot quieter. Seems like both the heater and the cooler are powered by a motor and both motors run in the low frequencies and those are the frequencies I pick up without any trouble so they seem extra loud to me. It's like a low rumble that tries to drown out all the other sounds, especially the human voice.

Michael took the console out of the bus and cut new cup holes in it so his cups won't sit so close to his arm when he's driving. My side was fine but he went ahead and cut an extra hole for me so that the console would look balanced. K just brought him over a pair of white sport shoes that he had bought for himself and found them to be uncomfortable for him. They seem to fit Michael perfectly. So now M has a new pair of shoes. Ken said he only wore them one day cutting the lawn so they're brand new shoes.

My back is still bothering me but nothing like it was a few days ago. I'm still a little slow going from a seated position to a full-upright position but it's nothing like it was. Thank goodness. Well this has just been a blog about nothing, hasn't it? Sorry about that. Maybe I'll try to go on to different (better?) things.

As you know, in the past few days I've been studying the history of the Israelites in the Old Testament (OT). The OT always leave me so sad. My spirit is wounded. There was so much blood spilled and so many barbaric acts that I just get depressed when I read the OT. There was even an apparently acceptable human sacrifice with the slaying of a character's own daughter. This character promised to sacrifice the first thing that came out of his house when he returned from war. He was expecting a goat or a sheep. Something along those lines but instead it was his only daughter. The New Testament (NT) has it's single case of human sacrifice with the death of Jesus on the cross but it is somehow a little different for me. I'm not saying that it's any better or worse I'm just saying that Jesus' death on the cross doesn't affect me in the same way. How could a father sacrifice his own daughter? But there I go: how can a Father sacrifice His own Son??? In a sense these two episodes are very similar. Even the daughter was apparently a willing sacrifice, asking only for a little time to be with her friends and mourn the fact that she would never conceive a child. Jesus went to the cross willingly also. It's strange to me how these two episodes are so similar and I wonder if they were meant to be. The two incidents evoke entirely different emotions out of me. I am appalled at the one and appreciative of the other. Interesting. I'll have to think about this a little more. [The Bible is left unfinished with this subject, the sacrifice of the young girl, other than to say the father kept his oath. Maybe she was sacrificed in the sense that she was given to the temple to live a consecrated life? That sounds more likely knowing how God feels about murder. But wait. There's a problem. There wasn't a temple at that time. Humm? I had thought maybe I'd found another way around the obvious that she was literally sacrificed. I need more thought. An acceptable human sacrifice doesn't fit well with my theology. I need much more thought.]

But the OT is filled with butchery and barbarianism and it always makes me sad. I know that these were really bad people that were being slaughtered (we have none with whom to even compare them today) but I'm ashamed to admit that I don't find the "heroes" any better people. Sometimes I'm ashamed to be a member of the human race. It seems that once evil came into the world it distorted and discolored everything in sight. It seems that when the world fell, it fell hard and just became this pulsating, throbbing mass of humanity that knew no bounds. People sacrificed their babies to the pagan god Moleck. Sons killed fathers. Fathers killed sons. Women were brutalized beyond words. The entire story of the human race disgusts me and makes me sad enough to cry. Are we any better today? Yes, praise God, we are, but we also have our own share of brutality and death. Wars. Injustice. Homicides. Gangland killings. Broken homes. Racial strife. I just get sad over the human race in it's entirety. We aren't worthy of a second chance, but that's what God gives us. We aren't good enough to possess the love of God. But we do. In spite of ourselves, He loves us and has promised to right all wrongs. But I'm still saddened that we aren't better people. We still have so many totally selfish traits. So much "me-first-ism." There's child abuse and neglect. Pornography. Murder and suicide. Broken homes. Alcoholism and drug addiction. Infidelity. We seem to be bent toward the direction of evil. It's this evil that the Christian must constantly war against. While we egotistically claim we're more "civilized," we nevertheless have suffered the loss of the righteousness which God intended for us from the very beginning. God prepared a paradise and we turned it into a pig pen. God created us for love and we killed our brother. God gave us hearts with which to be relational and we put up walls in it's place. God gave us bodies to share with each other and we exploit and abuse them before His very eyes. We can take no credit in our standing. We are bad all the way through. Our only redeeming quality is that we are loved by God. That's the only thing that gives our lives value. As a believer and follower of Jesus Christ I seek goodness and strive to gain righteousness only to fail time and time again. There is no righteousness within me. This isn't superficial; I am spoiled through and through. The Spirit can't just trim off the ugliness, the way a butcher does meat. I can't just be changed. I must be ex-changed. I must let the Old Man die and Christ live His life through me in his place. Every bit of "self" must be replaced with the goodness and righteousness of Jesus. And praise God this is possible. I don't know how God does this exactly, I just know that He does. He takes all my brokenness, all my scars and bruises and substitutes that of His dear Son in its place. What an amazing God I have! At a closer look, I am not much better than the people of the OT and all that I am I owe to my heavenly Father. I do not murder but sometimes I think about it. I do not steal but sometimes I wish I could. I do not commit adultery but sometimes I want to. It's in the "want tos" that Jesus comes and does His atoning work. When the Father looks at me, He sees the righteousness of Christ instead of my festering "self." When I pull close to the Father it is the power of the Son's spilled blood in which I come. I am not worthy. And I will never be worthy to stand in the presence of my heavenly Father. But Christ is and He lives in me so, as Scripture says, I can come "boldly" before the throne of the Almighty Father.

Though I have much to be happy about because of all that God has done for me, I am saddened when I read the OT. All that slaughter that went on (with the good as well as the bad) I am saddened that we can't seem to love as much as we hate. But I think it was the loss of innocence that saddens me most of all. Adam and Eve were created perfect with the purest of innocence, and they selfishly traded it away for a mere bite of fruit. After that, we fell. We broke apart. And now we rest in the goodness and righteousness of our Savior. It just seems like the OT shows us how bad we are while the NT shows us how good we can become. I look forward to studying the NT in the weeks ahead, when I will feel optimistic and hopeful and I'll brim with joy over the truth of my Father and the lengths with which He has gone to reconcile me to himself. After the depression of the OT I will revel in the joy of the NT.