Light on the Dark Passages of Scripture. Mark Giszczak

      Chapter 1

      Gut Reactions to the Old Testament God

      I remember his face. My friend was outraged. He asked, “Can you envision grabbing a little boy by his curly hair and slitting his throat with a sword—all in the name of God?” His gestures displayed the grotesque act, and his expression revealed his anger at my obstinacy. I found myself in the awkward position of trying to defend the seemingly indefensible, the command that God gave to his people in the Old Testament to conquer the Canaanites and kill every man, woman, and child. The horror of this command and its practical consequences prompted my friend’s outburst. I wanted to explain but was at a loss for words. I wanted to show him how this terrifying instruction fit into the plan of a loving, merciful God who sent his Son to die for our sins, but I couldn’t formulate a convincing explanation.

      You don’t have to look very far in the Old Testament to find some “problems” to deal with: Why does God strike down the Egyptian firstborn? Why does God order Abraham to sacrifice his son? Why does Elijah slaughter the four hundred fifty prophets of Baal? Why does God send plagues on his people that wipe out thousands? Why does God approve the seemingly vigilante justice of “heroes” such as Phinehas, who skewered an adulterous couple with a spear? If you’ve spent considerable time reading the Bible, you’ll have a whole laundry list of “problems.” By problems, I mean those events or teachings in biblical history that don’t easily line up with what we know about God from the New Testament and the teachings of the Church.

      At times, the problems can prompt you to shift in your chair or feel a bit squeamish. But other times, the problems can result in a crisis of faith. In fact, many atheist writers cite the challenging passages of the Old Testament when they rail against Christian belief and practice. Not everyone demands a solution to these thorny issues, but many use them as a reason, or perhaps an excuse, to dismiss the God of the Bible as an angry, harsh, cruel power-monger. Oftentimes we are left without answers, without an adequate response to offer to those who challenge our faith because of these so-called dark passages. Yet it is crucial that we can respond well—for our own faith, for our Christian friends whose faith may be tested by the dark passages, and in a special way for non-Christians who resist the Gospel because of the Old Testament. If we can show how the dark passages comport with an ethical Christian worldview, how they reveal God, how they prepare for Christ, then perhaps we can be better witnesses for him.

       Solutions Good and Bad

      Unfortunately, Scriptures that make us squirm are tough to deal with. Their very darkness can lead us into overly simplistic or simply incorrect interpretations. In order to read Scripture correctly, we should be looking for what the human author and divine Author intended, how the whole fits together, and how it can be understood in the context of the Christian tradition.¹ But before we get down to the details of applying such an approach, we need to look at a few bad solutions to our problem. The bad solutions are tempting because they are easy. They avoid the hard questions, and they let us off the hook. The trouble is that they don’t say what needs to be said. They don’t address the atheist’s deep question. They dodge the problems rather than taking them head-on.

      The first bad solution is what I call the “shrug.” The shrug happens when a Bible reader is happily reading along, perhaps even praying the Psalms, and comes across a line like, “Blessed is the one who seizes and smashes your children against the rock” (Ps 137:9). Rather than being startled, getting angry, or standing in awe of God’s mystery, this Bible reader says to himself: “That’s weird! Well, it is the Old Testament.” He shrugs, moves on, and doesn’t give it another thought. This easy solution is practical, but it is simply a dodge of the problem, not an explanation. It cannot survive the onslaught of hard questions from doubters. The shrug avoids the issues, but can’t answer them.

      Unfortunately,

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