Why Trust the Bible? Book Review – Part III

Why Trust the Bible? Book Review – Part III

In chapter eight Amy Orr-Ewing addresses the accusation that the Bible condones genocide. One of the means by which God brings about judgment on nations, and in the world, is through war. One reason that God sometimes commanded war was to not allow evil nations to go unpunished. God will give nations time to repent; He gave the Amorites 430 years to repent. They didn’t; consequently, He brought about His judgment through His people. Remember, there was no United Nations, NATO, or any such organizations as in the Western world. Consequently, international judgment had to come by some means. 

It is important to note that Israel during their history received God’s judgment, as well, when they rebelled against their covenant God. God does not show favoritism; He will judge sin if there is no repentance. It doesn’t matter if it is the Jewish nation or a Gentile nation. 

It is also imperative to understand that combatants and leaders within military installations were the ones who were primarily destroyed; non-combatants were not the primary targets. 

Many individuals have a problem with God’s wrath; the great Yale theologian Miroslav Volf is an individual who held this view, but no longer thinks this way: 

“I used to think that wrath was unworthy of God. Isn’t God love? Shouldn’t divine love be beyond wrath? God is love, and God loves every person and every creature. That’s exactly why God is wrathful against some of them. My last resistance to the idea of God’s wrath was a casualty of the war in the former Yugoslavia, the region from which I come. According to some estimates, 200,000 people were killed and over 3,000,000 were displaced. My villages and cities were destroyed, my people shelled day in and day out, some of them brutalized beyond imagination, and I could not imagine God not being angry. Or think of Rwanda in the last decade of the past century, where 800,000 people were hacked to death in one hundred days! How did God react to the carnage? By doting on the perpetrators in a grandfatherly fashion? By refusing to condemn the bloodbath but instead affirming the perpetrators’ basic goodness? Wasn’t God fiercely angry with them? Though I used to complain about the indecency of the idea of God’s wrath, I came to think that I would have to rebel against a God who wasn’t wrathful at the sight of the world’s evil. God isn’t wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful because God is love.” ⁶ 

And yet, Jesus could forgive these perpetrators if they repented. He defeated the powers and authorities of the dark and evil world not by killing people, but by dying and rising on the third day for them. 

In chapter nine Amy Orr-Ewing addresses the accusation placed on the Bible that it is out-of-date regarding issues related to sexuality. I’m not going to say a whole lot right now about this because I will address this one in a more in-depth manner, at a later time. But I did want to address the idea of identity, as related to sexuality. 

Many of the sexual perversions of our society really deal with people who find their identity in these lifestyles. For example, a person may not describe his sexual behavior but will simply state, “I’m gay.” The first claim I’d like to make is that the opposite of heterosexuality is not homosexuality; the opposite of heterosexuality is holiness. In other words, all sexual sin outside of God’s design and purpose is a violation of His intended purposes for an individual(s) and society. For many decades many people abhorred homosexuality but were non-critical of fornicators because society, at large, didn’t criticize fornication. This was, and is, hypocrisy. God calls everyone to understand and enjoy His design for sexuality – one man and one woman, in marriage, till dead due them part. 

The other claim is made by Oliver O’Donovan, former Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford: 

“‘If Christianity has a saving message to speak to human beings, it must surely be, “You may be free from the constraints of your identities.”’” ⁷ 

This is an important claim because our society has an identity problem. When a person rejects his identity bestowed upon him by his Creator, he has a galaxy of identities he can choose from. Traditionally, many people have replaced their God-given identity with: career, socio-economic status, ethnicity, regional identity (Yankee vs. Southerner), being married, having kids, nationality, political parties, political labels (Conservative vs. Liberal), where one went to college, etc. Modern choices of identity have been a person’s sexual identity and pronouns that are incongruent with a person’s biological sex. Here my point: When a person rejects his God-given identity idolatry, confusion, and destruction are the end-goals of that unwise decision. This holds true for those who profess to be Christians. I would argue that, unfortunately, much of the professing Christian church has found their identity in everything except for their identity in the Lord Jesus Christ. Why, then, should it surprise us of the identity crises in our society if much of the Christian church has been idolatrous and sinful in their rejection of finding their identity in Christ? 

The last idea is that some claim that the Bible writers were conditioned to write in a way that was Victorian, regarding sexuality. In other words, they claim that any deviation from traditional sexuality was frowned upon since there was a culture of decorum in the Greco-Roman world. This is simply a false claim. As a matter of fact, the Greek-Roman sexual ethic was almost non-existent. Having a wife, mistress, and other sexual partners were the norm – not the exception. When Christianity hit the Greco-Roman world, it called people to a higher sexual ethic; it called people to holiness; it called people to a new nature. Places like the city-state Corinth would make Las Vegas blush due to their immorality. 

Amy Orr-Ewing does a very good job for making claims and propositions that compel a skeptic or seeker to consider reading and trusting the Bible as God’s word. The Scriptures reveal the character and nature of the only true God; every other god and worldview will betray. Don’t be betrayed by your worldview; seek the truth and you will find it.