Why I Think God is Angry, Part 2

[andyfox]

In part 1, I tried to show why I think the environment of the ancient Near East encouraged a view of nature, and of its gods, as violent.

The Sumerians were the founders of the high civilization of the ancient Near East. They had once been wanderers. Once they stopped wandering, and built cities, they had plenty of reason, both psychological and military, to fear the appearance of any group of wanderers. Their successors felt the same way and took the same defensive posture against all wanderers who approached their walls. The city was a barricaded, fortified place. What was outside of it was unimproved and it was probably unimprovable. What was within the walls was nature subdued and controlled and put to proper use. What was beyond the walls, whether it was land, or people, or spirits, was savage and unpredictable and evil.

So the typical evolution of a people in the ancient Near East was from a wandering existence in the deserts or in the mountains, to a semi-settled existence on the outskirts of the territories of agriculturists, to invasion or infiltration of those territories, and finally to a settled lifestyle in a city. And when a new group appeared on their horizons they met it with suspicion and hostility, just as they had been met.

So in Numbers 20-2 we find the terror of the Edomites and Moabites, themselves ex-wanderers, when Moses asks for a right-of way for his people to pass through their cultivated lands, promising not to go through the fields or through the vineyards, and not to drink the water from their wells, not to turn to the right or to the left until he and his people have passed their borders.

Moses’s people, of course, were the Israelites, who wandered in the wilderness for forty years:

”And Moab was sore afraid of the people, because they were many : and Moab was distressed because of the children of Israel

“And Moab said unto the elders of Midian, Now shall this company lick up all that are round about us, as the ox licketh up the grass of the field.”

Abraham came from this type of environment, and the history of the ancient Near East comes down to us through the history that his people lived and recorded. His God reflects the situation in the ancient Near East:

“Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

This vision of life is so different from the way, for example, aboriginal peoples in America viewed their place in the world. And it creates a view of a God who will speak to humans in the terrible syllables of natural disasters. He is in may ways a war god whose weapons are those of natural disasters. His words are volcanic eruptions and thunderstorms and earthquakes. The effect of this is that it emphasizes the destructive aspects of nature and the adversary attitude towards the natural world, and especially those people who live in it, that was first announced in the story of Eden.

Eden became the place of God’s first punishment when Adam and Eve ate fruit from the forbidden tree:

“I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

"And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

"Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field

"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread"


The next great punishment in Genesis happen in the time of Noah:

"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

"And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

"And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

"And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.

"And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

"I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.

"And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man

"All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.

"And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth"

These are the words, then, of the God that emerged from that environment: "sorrow," "cursed," "sweat," "wickedness," "evil," "destroy," "corrupt," "end of all flesh," "violence," "flood." I don't think we should be surprised.

[NotReady]

You focus on one part of one chapter of one book of the Bible. And yes, God is a God of wrath. I'm not going to look it all up for you, but the descriptions of God's mercy and lovingkindness, His willingness to forgive and His provisions for believer and unbeliever alike, the great detail of the Law He gave Israel which was so vastly superior to any other law of any other nation of the time, and many more examples that go so far beyond God as simply angry are multiplied throughout the entire Bible. If you just want to believe that the Bible presents the God of your imagination and ignore all the rest of Who God is, who man is, and why He is angry, then Bible quotations from me will have no effect.

To quote a few verses and then dismiss your caricature of God as if you've actually said something is to ignore the incredible richness and depth of the Bible, the complexity of the way doctrines are interwoven and how the truth of reality is presented in a way that makes far more sense that the babblings of all the philosophers of history.

The immature child wails at the top of its lungs and screams about how it just can't understand while making no effort to do so and then complaining about the difficulty of the truth when someone actually tries to explain it.

[evil_twin]

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The immature child wails at the top of its lungs and screams about how it just can't understand while making no effort to do so and then complaining about the difficulty of the truth when someone actually tries to explain it.

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This seems like an entirely unnecessary characterisation which has little or nothing to do with Andys essay(s). It comes accross as a cheap retort at someone who has put some good degree of effort into arguing against something you obviously fervently believe in.

[BluffTHIS!]

Copy of my reply in other thread:

Andy, I think that you have made no logical connection in your post between the Judeo-Christian God being an "angry" God and city based communities somehow moving from nature based worship to other types of gods. Arguments like yours conveniently focus in on only the times when God was angry with His children, and overlook the many and much more important times when He, the loving Father, forgives them their transgressions and welcomes them back with loving arms. It is true that the forgiving aspect of God isn't as emphasized in the old testament as much as the new, and if you only want to make your arguement with Jews then that's OK, as long as you realize your arguement doesn't address Christians.

As to the struggle for survival against an often hostile natural environment somehow being the reason for angry city-slicker gods that replaced more nature-oriented worship, I would only say that just because you and others may be intent on showing an anthropological development that supports your atheistic/agnostic views by denigrating the history of Judeo-Christianity, and even though you might explain the worship practices of other city-states, this has nothing to do with Judaism or Christianity which depends upon divine revelation.

[BluffTHIS!]

A couple questions for you Andy.

Do you only remember the times during your childhood that your parents disciplined you and thus have an overall view of your parents as "angry"?

Not that I am saying that you need to, but have you in fact actually read the entire old testament or only the pentateuch?

[Phat Mack]

These are an interesting couple of posts, and they offer a theory about attitudes toward nature, but I think the real reason that God is angry is because that is the only way he "works." If these ancients prayed for rain and didn't get it, the best explanation is that God is pissed off about something.

[vulturesrow]

Andy,

I very much enjoy reading your posts and have a lot of respect for your day to day demeanor on the 2+2 forums. I think "Your God is Angry" posts are not your best work. To put it simply, you have cherrypicked a primary source (the OT) and tried to expand it into an argument about the anthropological roots of Judaism/Christianity (or perhaps more accurately, monotheism in general). Im not seeing the logical connections here.

[andyfox]

I responded over there.

[andyfox]

Probably only the five books.

[RxForMoreCowbell]

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Do you only remember the times during your childhood that your parents disciplined you and thus have an overall view of your parents as "angry"?


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I'm glad someone brought this up because it touches on an opinion held by many Christians, that God's actions are like that of a good parent. When I read the Bible (and it seems Andy agrees with this) I see God as a very bad parent.

I'm glad my parents were more rational with their anger than God was in the Bible. After all, the first time I made a mistake when I was a child, they did not kick me out of the house for good. Also, my parents never threatened harm to me in the present or the future if I failed to love them. Their asking for my love was instead a trusted matter.