I recently preached a sermon on Old Testament teaching on "murder". First, it was very difficult to reconcile passages which seem to depict God as commanding numerous acts of atrocities against foreign nations, with God's self-revelation in the person of Jesus of Nazareth in the New Testament who preached good news to also the enemy and subverted the powers with peace and self-sacrificial love. Jesus forgave those who were torturing and killing him at the cross, whereas many in the Old Testament were calling down God's wrath upon the enemy. I tend to not necessarily see God as having changed in the way in which he deals with humanity, but rather that humanity's way of interpreting God's ways of acting in human history changes and evolves/develops in various ways. Most Christians seem ok with this thought, unless it comes to an issue they feel very strongly about. A very good friend of mine and trusted brother in Christ helped clarify my reading of scripture by asserting a "progressive revelation" approach. The bible portrays a people who are in many ways progressing, or evolving in their knowledge and understanding of their God and how God acts. I think that this is very significant for how we read scripture in our present day culture, and our future readings will be affected as well. The words of the bible were speaking to the ancient culture in ways we can scarcely understand, and the biblical writings were very much informed by their cultural world view.
What makes us adhere to certain "laws" in the bible, and do away with others? Leviticus has many laws which the Christian world no longer holds to, but the one most keep is the condemnation of homosexual people. The New Testament has commands to silence women in church, and to force them to wear head coverings, yet many churches invite women to preach and teach, and most churches do not implement the head covering law. These are just a few examples. Should we seek to develop a more consistent way of treating scripture?
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