Can we trust God and the Bible?

GodPod is a theological podcast in which Graham, Jane and Mike along with guest speakers, discuss a variety of theological questions and topics. In GodPod 23 Graham Tomlin and Mike Lloyd were joined by Guest Speaker Amy Orr-Ewing who, as well as being Training Director for the Zacharias Trust, has recently written her second book ‘Why Trust the Bible?’

Several questions that the GodPod team have received recently have been about whether we can trust the Bible, and more particularly whether we can trust the God of the Bible who seems to condone violent action – particularly in the Old Testament.

Below is an extract from Amy’s response to this question on the GodPod:

Can we trust the Bible and more particularly can we trust the God of the Bible who seems to condone violent action – particularly in the Old Testament?

‘My understanding of acts of violence in the Old Testament is that sometimes the Old Testament just records these acts and is neither approving or disapproving of what it records. Other acts of violence are very clearly God ordained – for example sending people to war – and these are the ones which are much more difficult to deal with. I believe the Old Testament portrays these acts within the context of God’s judgement which is the flip side of his mercy.

Take, for example, Joshua 6. Israel was to walk round Jericho for six days and when the walls fell on the seventh day they were to enter the city and destroy it. Yet the context is that the people of Jericho have had the chance to repent. Unspeakable acts of violence have been going on for a long amount of time – up to 400 years, the text seems to suggest – and then at a certain point in history, judgement falls. And Israel are used by God to meet out that judgement. Now we also see, and I think that this is a really important corrective, that God also judges his own people (probably more than they are used in acts of judgement) by them being taken into captivity and them being of the receiving end of that violence as well, so it isn’t that here are these special people who are totally untouched by the suffering in the world.

My husband Frog is a vicar of a church in Peckham which is quite a rough area of London. I think living in Peckham makes it easier to think about how God’s judgement can be understood as an integral part of his love. Recently one of my friends, who’s become a Christian and is in our church, came to see me. She has five children from lots of different partners and was living with another guy who basically beat her up so badly that she nearly died and the doctors thought that she was going to loose one of her eyes. She’s experienced horrific sexual violence, as have her children, and this is not a unique story – this happens every day in London. And as we were talking I thought, ‘This is my friend and she’s experienced horrific sexual violence and abuse, and what is the response of love towards her?’ And the response of love to her is that your heart cries out for justice. What you want for that person is that she would receive healing, but also that this would not happen again and that the person who had done this would be dealt with in an appropriate way. Not in a vitriolic way, or a vigilante way, but that somehow the law would be on her side. Now about three weeks after that we were driving through France coming back from a skiing holiday. And about three hours into the journey a police car appeared behind our car and we were pulled over on the motorway. I’d never been pulled over before, and the policemen demanded 90 Euros in cash there and then. As we didn’t think we had been speeding, we tried to argue with them asking for the proof. And basically we’d been going 3 kilometres over the speed limit. And I was furious. Anyway, we ended up paying the money. And as we drove away my husband just said, “Isn’t that interesting. We did break the law – okay, it was only by 3 kilometres an hour – but nevertheless we didn’t want justice.” How you feel about justice and judgement depends on where you stand in regard to it. So I believe that when you see God judging evil in the Bible, it’s picture of his care for the victim, the abused, the fatherless. In the Bible we see that evil is judged. And this is, at the end of the day, an integral part of love. If you love, justice is part of it.

So that’s how I understand some of those violent scenarios in the Bible. I’m not saying it isn’t difficult to understand, but I think that when we do see them they are God’s judgement being poured out. And then what we see in the New Testament is really that God’s judgement is reserved for a final day. And that Christ delivers us from that, but that final day really is coming and the Old Testament is a picture of that.’

To hear further thoughts from Amy, Graham and Mike on this and other questions, visit our website and click on the GodPod logo. Alternatively GodPod can be downloaded from the itunes store under the ‘Religion and Spirituality’ section.

If you have a theological question that you would like the GodPod team to discuss please email godpod@htb.org.uk