Good God – Bad God

Robert Wright begins his article “One World, Under God” (see here and here) with an idea that many find compelling. He says:

“For many Christians, the life of Jesus signifies the birth of a new kind of God, a God of universal love. The Hebrew Bible—the “Old Testament”—chronicled a God who was sometimes belligerent (espousing the slaughter of infidels), unabashedly nationalist (pro-Israel, you might say), and often harsh toward even his most favored nation. Then Jesus came along and set a different tone.”

No doubt, when the scriptures are read, some come away with the idea that the god of the Old Testament is different god than the one found in the New Testament.

The shame is that few reflect deeply about what it would mean if that were so. If this god waffled once from harsh to gentle, what is to keep him from flopping back to his former harshness under certain unforeseen future circumstances? Nothing.

Of course, if that is what the text reveals, then it is our authority. We must learn to live under the shadow of that monstrous uncertainty. However, there is a different and more satisfying way of reading the data which is worthy of consideration.

When I google ‘god’ I get about ‘about 510,000,000’ results. Rightfully, googling ‘man’ generates an appropriately lesser 200,000,000. (Although, curiously, ‘woman’ returns ‘about 525,000,000’ results. Conclusions, anyone?) And then, of course, googling ‘Randall or Randy Greenwald’ would lead you to about 155,000 destinations, only a couple of which would actually be me.

All of which is to say that God is big; I am not. Which is only part of my point.

Martha Budd Greenwald was a school teacher in Loveland, Ohio. For many years she taught girls health and physical education, and occasionally English, at Loveland Junior High.

She was good at what she did. And she was tough. She made students work. She would put up with no back talk or disrespect. She would coach younger teachers (like me, her son) to begin each school year with a firm hand, letting up only when respect and control were established.

Occasionally, she would be thinking deeply about something, and students would look at her and assume she was angry, whether she was or not. Her serious face was a mean face. This only added to the mental perception students had of her. And that is the only way some students remember her. Mean, tough, demanding.

So, I googled her. The top hits for her were at ‘meanteacher.com’ and other results favor the words strict’ and ‘harsh’ and ‘mean’ next to her name.

Just kidding. I made that up.

In reality, I expected no hits since she has been dead for over ten years. Surprisingly, there she was, generating a half dozen links on the first page of results, every one of which having to do with some kid who was heading off to college with a $500 scholarship provided by an endowment my mom set up before she died. Dozens of kids have benefited from this small gift which was the result of her caring foresight.

Other than being touched by this (I’d forgotten about the fund she had set up), what do we learn from this?

Let me ask it this way: is it appropriate to draw the conclusion that since she revealed herself as strict early (in her career or school year) and as caring later that she changed? Should we speak of a ‘Martha’ who was fundamentally and essentially different in one era than in a former era? Would we say that her latter years “signified the birth of a new kind of Martha”?

We could. But such a conclusion would only be warranted if all the evidence pointed to it.

A better way of interpreting the data would be to understand that at a particular stage in this woman’s relationship with those under her authority, she felt it most wise to emphasize certain aspects of her personality. Then, later she found it wise to emphasize other dimensions. All the while, she is the same essential person who has not changed. When strict, she was also capable of and revealed great tenderness, and when tender, one knew there was a firmness underneath that was to be respected.

This latter interpretation, of course, is actually the true picture of my mother.

It is also the true picture of the God of the Bible.

God did not change when he graduated from the Old and entered the New Testament. In a variety of situations and settings, the emphasis in revelation falls upon different aspects of his essential being. But he is the same God whose character never changes.

For mankind to come to grips with its rebellion and sin, it must see God as a holy and terrifying God of judgment. God reveals his holiness in the Old Testament (though even these books are slathered with God pictured as a shepherd caryring injured lambs close to his bosom or as a mother hen spreading her protective wings over her brood). God in the Old Testament clearly chooses to emphasize his holiness.

The burden of the New Testament is to show how this holy God invaded time in the person of Jesus Christ with the intention of drawing rebellious sinners out from his wrath and into his favor through great acts of sacrificial love. It is no surprise that the emphasis here falls upon his love and grace. All the while, this loving, redemptive God of love does not cease to be a consuming fire.

If we come to the Bible with the preconception that it is a collection of human stories about a god idea, then either interpretation will do. It’s all an academic game, anyway. But if we come to the Bible and find it to be a book in which God is revealed, it is hard to read it in any other way than as a full orbed God revealing himself in time according to the wisdom of his purpose.

And one aspect of the beauty of that picture is that this God never changes.

(And, yes, that picture above is a shot of one of the streets in the small town in which I grew up.)

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Tim Keller is a pastor and author in Manhattan. After the publication of his book The Reason for God he was invited to address the employees at Google on that subject.

Some of you might find some value in listening to this presentation.