A LONG TIME MISREPRESENTED GOD (Part 4)

Read part 3 here.

(Exodus 6:3, Acts 17:21-31).

We now turn to a few events some of which are atrocities believed to have been committed by God or in the name (by the will and directive of God) and others are miracles (supernatural, scientific and unscientific) that are believed to have been performed by God in the interest of his believers in the Bible and sometimes at the expense of other people assumed not to be equally the people of God.

I am not presenting these events in light of scepticism and disbelief, I am a Christian theologian and a Bible teacher. I believe in the infallibility of the word as it is presented in the fallible language and perception of man. Proper understanding of the Bible means that you have the ability to tell what the word of God (scripture/canon of the Canonical writings) is from the literature of this library of books known as the Bible. Let us now look at a few of these events

Ananias and Sapphira

It is highly debated whether God really killed Mr and Mrs Ananias in the book of Acts, for if this was true, then this act of killing unwilling givers and liars would mean that the god who killed these very sinners is not the same God we worship today with the same experience of us being unwilling and liars about our giving in the church. Nowhere in Acts 5:1-11 is it stated (at least in the Biblical Greek) that God killed this couple. What we have is that they dropped dead and the language is that “each gave up the ghost”.

According to Ray Foucher “The term “gave up the ghost” is interesting. It is used 10 times in scripture (KJV) and 18 times when variations such as “yielded up the ghost” or “giveth up the ghost” are included. With a few notable exceptions, the deaths were not violent deaths at the hands of others inflicting death. Those exceptions are Herod, Jesus and Ananias and Sapphira.” What it means to give up your ghost is to let life go, for the Biblical belief is that life is soul and spirit once those evacuate, someone dies. But how did this happen? “Gave up” in the Greek is in the active voice which represents the subject as the doer or performer of the action.

Jesus had said:

“Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have the power to lay it down, and I have the power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.” (John 10:17-18).

Both Jesus and Ananias and Sapphira yielded/gave up the ghost. They did it; it was not done to them. We again ask, what might have caused them to do so? A modern person cannot understand the pressure that was in the Jerusalem cult (sell everything Jesus is coming to take us home) Acts chapters 2-6, only if you have ever been a member of a cult you will understand the psychological and physiological cost of breaking a cult law.

Foucher says “The feelings of guilt and shame in the presence of the leadership of the church and his situation could have essentially caused him and his wife to give up on life. Perhaps something like a heart attack was involved and there is a condition known popularly as broken-heart syndrome and medically as stress-induced cardiomyopathy” What really killed this couple was what today is known as Stress Cardiomyopathy induced by their community. The death of this couple was caused by the aggressive condemning tongue of Peter, the apostles present and the congregation. If you study the character of peter through the gospels and acts of Apostles (Mathew 16:22-23, John 18:10-11, Galatians 2:11) you will understand his ability to induce death by pressure.

God is misrepresented as a killer who kills or causes losses to those who have refused to give to him and this ideology still exists today. He is ably represented in doing the digging we have just done and in the meaning of the names of the couple Ananias which means God is Grace and Sapphira a stone on the priestly garment that stood for law and Judgment, which, therefore, means coupling Grace and Law/Judgment drops you dead eternally.

The Flood

The reporters of the flood told us two important aspects that we need to investigate:

• That the floods were caused by God to deal with Sin/sinners.
• That the floods covered the whole Earth.

First of all, if God was dealing with sin and sinning by the means of flooding and washing it away with waters then either this god never understood the problem he was solving or the reporters of this event misrepresented God. Today, we know that killing SINNERS without dealing with the SIN that qualifies them as sinners is an embarrassment to a god who thinks so. So the floods were not dealing with sin but according to the cult (Judaism) that reports the event, whoever died in the floods was a sinner and therefore the gods were angry with the casualties.

It is also important to point out the Christian teaching of the second coming and the end of the world. We all have been taught that God is going to burn sinners eternally in Hell. The idea that God will send fires to burn the people who did not choose him compromises the identity of God. Why would a God who ordained free-will burn people because they exercised who they are? In the end, it is human choices that will determine what one suffers or enjoys. God will destroy Sin not sinners, sinners (outside Jesus Christ= 2Corinthians 5:17) will suffer the destruction of sin. God will track sin and ensure it is eliminated together with its environment (Revelation 21:1-4, Isaiah 65:17).

It is as early as Genesis chapters 4-7 that we learn of the concept of RETRIBUTION (people suffer because they are sinners and people are blessed because they are obedient) what we see largely discussed in the narrative of the story of Job. We now know from Jesus and Apostle Paul that we cannot fix our SINNER – STATUS from outside but from within (Mark 7, Mathew 15, and Romans 7). Sin, therefore, is an immaterial power that materializes in what is done. It cannot, therefore, be washed away with waters, and that is where the baptism of John (baptism by immersion) misses the whole point.

I know most of us were baptized by immersion and we have always been proud of this, but the Baptism of John was a ritual birth for repentance and the nation of Israel participated in it with the anticipation of the coming Messiah who would be a political and religious liberator. Jesus participated in the same to communicate that he was the messiah they anticipated. However, he had not come to be a political and religious liberator but a redeemer of both the oppressed (the Jews/Israelites) and the oppressors (Romans and all the Gentiles). That is why this ritual by immersion is called the Baptism of John and it is differentiated from the Baptism of the Holy Spirit (Acts 19:1-8).

Secondly, the reporter from the Jewish cult where our scripture is placed tells us that the floods in Genesis covered the entire Earth. While there are events stated in the Bible that Archeology and Geology can attest to, the floods are one of those other events that cannot be proven by any Geologist. There are no flood fossils to prove the floods were at least international.

However, I have to mention as a Theologian that this does not stand to mean the floods never happened but rather we maintain they happened just that they weren’t universal. These were local floods and to those who experienced them, that was their whole world. There are people today in some countries who don’t know about the existence of other people and their country as well. If these wrote about the whole world, their’s would be the whole world. It, therefore, misrepresents God to say that he was dealing with sin using waters. God has always known what sin is and how to deal with it. His knowledge of sin and how to deal with it has not evolved, it has always been the same. What represents God is that there is only one way of salvation as there was a single boat made by Noah.

The crossing of the Red Sea

The same applies to the crossing of the Red Sea. There is no way close to 1 Million people or more (with vulnerable, children and women) could have crossed the Red Sea we know Today (according to Britannica.com Its maximum width is 190 miles, its greatest depth 9,974 feet (3,040 metres), and its area is approximately 174,000 square miles (450,000 square km)) in that short time.

Walking on the dry land between miraculously divided waters necessitated another fast and furious wonder for them to cross and cover that distance that fast. This again is not to say that the Israelites historically, never crossed anything, but to them whatever they crossed given their capacity was as big as crossing the Red Sea. Whether they crossed the sea of reeds (yam soof) or the red sea of then, the miracle is about surviving the Egyptian enemy not crossing seas. It would be unfair to focus the event on sea crossing and shift the agenda of the reporting of the event.

The event is about the miraculous salvation of the helpless out of the hand of the mighty army of Egypt. How they were saved is not as important as them being saved. This is what I normally call the relative Power of God in individual lives. It is on the same pulpit and in the name of the same God that one gives a testimony of a $1 Million and the other testifies of a seven thousand shillings that week. So the Israelites might have crossed the Sea of Reeds or the red sea of then and not the mighty Red Sea as we know it today but even then with their numbers, capacity and the enemy in pursuit for them to have successfully crossed it was a miracle worth to mention hyperbolically. In excitement and worship.

It misrepresents God to say that a million people crossed the Red Sea given its size in such a short time, what represents God in the event is that they survived the Egyptian Army and they survived because of their God.  

So as you can see the Christian God was misrepresented in these events and it the role of the modern reader to represent this God right, with and in the same Text.

God bless you, I invoke Truth, Wisdom and Faith

Priest M.I.T White

iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24)

Questioning to Believe, Believing to Live