Is God Good? (Part Four: Why didn’t Jesus abolish slavery?)

The slavery question is complex, but I want to share a few thoughts regarding why Jesus didn’t outright abolish slavery and why slavery is not advocated against in the New Testament.

Throughout scripture, God typically works from the inside out. He’s a God that cares that the cup is clean first on the inside and then on the outside. Outside appearance (if one seems good) is much less important than the heart of a person (if ones thoughts and desires are good). When it comes to slavery, it is the same idea.

How can we transform a corrupt and wicked system? Can we do it by forcing people to follow set rules and patterns? This almost never works. I don’t think many people would advocate slavery as an ethical system irregardless of their views on slavery for productivity or economical reasons. Yet, various forms of slavery have and do exist. It seems such tendencies of selfishness and ownership go hand in hand with human nature. And if this is the case–if slavery is a manifestation of unethical thoughts and desires within certain people–then the solution is to change those thoughts and desires. Would it be possible to transform the hearts of the masters to such an extent that they willingly set their slaves free? If so, this would be more efficient than forcing abolition.

So, instead of coming to the masters (the rich, the intelligent, the beautiful, the healthy, the prosperous), Jesus comes to the slaves (the poor, the weary, the beaten, the imprisoned, the prostitutes, those in physical slavery). Instead of dictating a system of rules to the ones who lead the world, He comes to the ones who are owned and weak and weary within the system. And what would you say to those ones? Slavery is wrong, it should be abolished? This is obvious. No need to tell the slave that he shouldn’t be owned–he knows that already. Instead, Jesus gave to the slaves and the lowly–to everyone who would listen–a better gift: an inner freedom.

Jesus did free the slaves, but He freed them from feeling oppressed. He promises that in Him is fullness of joy, perfect love, unprecedented peace, and hope that one day the corrupt system will be overturned in a physical way when He comes again to rule as King of the earth. This is an inside out process. The slaves receive freedom beyond what their masters are capable of experiencing. Oh the irony that those who think they are free are not while those who are physically oppressed can be free! But then the slaves can pass this freedom on to the masters, and as the masters are renewed internally they can begin to change the system. In this way, the weak minister to the strong. It is one of the great biblical paradoxes.

The fullness of this process has not yet come. God is still working to grant freedom to new hearts. But a time is coming when everyone picks a side–for God or against Him–and when that time comes, the Lord Himself will return to earth to free us in a physical way from the corruption of the world systems.

??Be sure to also read Part One, Part Two and Part Three of this series.

Emphasis on the First Commandment

There are two commandments that stand out within the entire Bible and are particularly emphasized by Jesus in the New Testament. The first commandment is to love God and the second is to love other people. The first is first and the second is second–they aren’t equal. If we forget to love God, it really doesn’t matter how much we love people (1 Cor 13). The first commandment is a requirement for the second, and it is greater (Mat 22:37-38).

I’ve mentioned these commandments before, but it’s very important to recognize the difference between them. They wouldn’t be highlighted separately if they were the same; thus, we do not love God BY loving other people, we love God THEN we love other people. This is not a subtle difference.

So how do we love God? Scripture says we love God by keeping His commandments–we completely submit ourselves to God in obedience of whatever He has for us (John 15:1-11).

This is why loving God has to happen before the loving of people: God has a specific design for how we should individually love those in our spheres of influence. We aren’t called to random acts of kindness; we’re called to specific works which He prepared beforehand for us to do (Eph 2:10)!

If we neglect to focus on a relationship with the Lord foremost (on truly and wholeheartedly loving Him), then instead of being led by His voice to pour out His love, we become recklessly attempting to earn or prove our salvation to God, ourselves and the world. We may help people to feel good in the now, but aren’t able to offer them insight toward a stable relationship with the Lord because we don’t have it for ourselves; what is Christianity unless Christians can offer both? This ‘being good’ wears us out, makes us feel constantly inadequate or in competition with others, and most importantly, it doesn’t work–God knows our heart.

The ‘goodness’ has to come from the inside out. As we spend time with Him, we know Him and love Him. He gives us a heart to love Him–more and more as we seek Him–because He knows how small we are. And as we completely submit to Him in love, we can’t help but be stirred in our spirits to help His other loves. It really does happen naturally. And it brings with it a confidence of being a true heir and son or daughter to the Most High God.

Is God Good? (Part Three: Why Did God Make Pharaoh’s Heart Hard?)

Be sure to also read Part One and Part Two of this series.

God hardened Pharaoh’s heart to demonstrate His Glory among Egypt and Israel and the earth so that the people would know He is God. But Pharaoh wasn’t chosen as a tragic casualty so that his people would see God’s power; there is more to the story.

The Biblical account in Exodus 3-15 shows us that Pharaoh wasn’t pursuing to know the Hebrew God, and in fact was consumed with his own gods and his own ways. In other words, he was already hardening his own heart to God, God just allowed for this to happen more quickly. We also see that God has full knowledge of Pharaoh’s thoughts and intentions, and is making a good and righteous judgment by hardening Pharaoh’s heart.

This is a pretty long account, so I’m going to highlight just a few areas; I’d encourage those who are interested in this story to read and dialog with God about it more thoroughly.

Ex 3: 19: God is giving Moses instructions on how to present his case to Pharaoh and says He knows that king of Egypt will not permit the Hebrews to leave except under compulsion (or ‘unless a mighty hand compels him’).
Ex 7:3: God will harden Pharaoh’s heart that He may put on a bigger show–that He may multiply the signs and wonders in the land.
Ex 7:22: Pharaoh’s heart is hardened because he sees that his own magicians can do the same ‘magic’ as the Lord–he doesn’t care to know God, but to have power, and he isn’t impressed by God’s power so long as his magicians can imitate it. If he were to seek the Lord, it would be for the wrong intentions: to have more power and control.
Ex 8:15: here Pharaoh hardens his own heart and it is clear his desire was for relief from the plague rather than an awe at the power of God.
Ex 8:18-19: even when his magicians cannot imitate God’s power and admit to Pharaoh that “This is the finger of God” he does not listen. He really doesn’t want to know God.
Ex 9:16: God could have just killed Egypt to free the Jews. He went about freeing them in this creative way so that His power and name would be proclaimed in ALL the earth. He may have picked the Jews, but He’s always wanted everyone to know of Him and be His people.
Ex 9:34: at some moments Pharaoh hardens his own heart…
Ex 11:9-10: other times, God hardens Pharaoh’s heart, giving Him the chance to do even more miracles.

God is very much about free will (letting us make our own choices). As a result, He will help us get wherever we want to go faster. If we earnestly desire Him, we will find Him. If we want to engage our own desires and run our own lives, He will let us do that too–in some cases speeding up the process of hardening our hearts so that the ‘smashing of the clay’ can be done sooner than later, or so that we can be a demonstration of His might.

So, when God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, it wasn’t a violation of Pharaoh’s will, but a hastening of the choice Pharaoh had already made. It also provided for Pharaoh to have a final season of mercy as God did extravagant signs and wonders right before his eyes–signs and wonders that also gave the Israelites confidence and awe in their God, and allowed for the name of the Lord to be known throughout the nations (Ex 15:1-3, Ex 15:14-16).

The Turning Point: Jeremiah, the potter, and the clay

The word of the Lord spoke to Jeremiah and led him to a potter’s house where the potter was working clay into a vessel. The Lord uses this physical demonstration to show Jeremiah how, like the potter, He wants to mold us into beautiful vessels, but sometimes we (the clay) aren’t malleable in His hands. (Jer 18)

With each piece of clay there’s a turning point where the clay just can’t be reworked any longer. The clay is so stubborn that it becomes hard and the potter can’t physically mold it. This clay becomes a ‘vessel of wrath’ and is thrown into the valley where it shatters into pieces. (Jer 19)

It is always God’s intention to make beautiful vessels. When we don’t listen to His purposes or incline our hearts to know His ways, we become spoiled in His hands–He can remold us again and again, but there is always a point where we, like the clay, can’t be reworked. It isn’t God’s fault when we don’t cooperate, it’s ours; just as the potter wanted to make lovely vessels but couldn’t if the clay wouldn’t cooperate.

God’s exhortation to Jeremiah through the physical demonstration of the clay is to warn the people to turn away from evil, and to reform their ways and their deeds (Jer 18:11). He wants them to turn back to Him so adamantly that He is willing to use severe measures to get their attention that perhaps they will be shaken by the extremity of what their stubbornness is doing to them.

There is a physical choice, in other words, to soften our hearts to the Lord (the circumcision of the heart) and be malleable in His hands. This requires complete surrender (submissiveness) on our part, but allows that we would be created into a beautiful vessel of the Lord–and once we understand that He is good as He says He is, we can trust that whatever He wants to make us into really is the most fulfilling thing.

Is God Good? (Part Two: The Flood)

Be sure to also read: Is God Good? (Part One).

In the Old Testament there were times when God killed nations of people at once–even all but eight people in the day of Noah and the flood–but He was still good.

The Lord gave me a metaphor to describe the steadfastness of His love and goodness within the destruction of the flood. He asked me:

If you had a farm and all the animals caught a really painful, harmful disease that was definitely incurable what would you do? Surely, you wouldn’t want them to have to go on living like that and to have babies who would also live tragically painful lives. So, wouldn’t it be more merciful for you to kill (as quickly and painlessly as possible) the infected animals before they got worse, multiplied, and infected others on the farm?

God’s goodness means He is concerned not just with the here-and-now of our lives, but with the eternal–with the whole big picture.

Something had happened in the days of Noah which caused God to take action by destroying life on the earth: there was ungodly sexuality, violence, and evil reigned continually in the hearts and thoughts of men (Gen 6). In fact, it’s so bad that God not only kills the large majority of the earth, but lowers the lifespan to 120 years so that future generations would have less time to cultivate evil (Gen 6:3).

The people were so corrupt that God in His infinite knowledge knew there was no hope for them turning to Him without His violating free will, which He chooses not to do; their hatred was too deep. They were infected with the disease of wickedness, because they choose to cultivate the wickedness of their hearts. In order that they would not multiply and produce more kids (who would be raised in wickedness and endure eternal punishment), and so they would not create for themselves even more sin (which would ensue even more judgment), God, being full of mercy and justice, chose to kill them.

This wasn’t God’s ‘plan’–He never delights in killing anyone. Scripture says that He was “sorry” and “grieved in His heart” by man’s actions (Gen 6:6-7). These aren’t the emotions of an uncaring God, but of one who is so intimately involved with His creations that their apostasy deeply saddens Him.

It made God sad that the people would choose wickedness over Him, but He could not let them dictate and infect the decisions of future generation, nor could He let them continue to destroy themselves in their wickedness. So it was in His goodness and perfect love that God destroyed and cleansed the earth with water, saving only Noah, his family, and the animals that were left with them in the ark.

Is God Good? (Part One)

I’ve met so many people–both Christians and not–who struggle to believe in, connect with, or admire God because it’s hard for them to see Him as ‘good’; so this is post one in a series on God’s goodness.

I want to begin by showing that the Bible testifies that He is good. In later posts I will focus specifically on how we can see God’s goodness within the Bible stories that seem mostly negative (and perhaps this can move into discussion of how God is working in our day-to-day lives). If a specific Bible account has particularly bothered you or a friend in terms of God’s goodness, please comment about it below and perhaps I will address it specifically.

Here is one of my favorite psalms in which David testifies of the Lord’s goodness:

Men shall speak of the power of Your awesome acts / And I will tell of Your greatness. / They shall eagerly utter the memory of Your abundant goodness / And will shout joyfully of Your righteousness.

The Lord is gracious and merciful; / Slow to anger and great in lovingkindness. / The Lord is good to all, / And His mercies are over all His works. / All Your works shall give thanks to You, O Lord, / And Your godly ones shall bless You. / They shall speak of the glory of Your kingdom / And talk of Your power; / To make known to the sons of men Your mighty acts / And the glory of the majesty of Your kingdom. / Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, / And Your dominion endures throughout all generations.

The Lord sustains all who fall / And raises up all who are bowed down. / The eyes of all look to You, / And You give them their food in due time. / You open Your hand / And satisfy the desire of every living thing.

The Lord is righteous in all His ways / And kind in all His deeds. / The Lord is near to all who call upon Him. / To all who call upon Him in truth. / He will fulfill the desire of those who fear Him; / He will also hear their cry and will save them. / The Lord keeps all who love Him. / But all the wicked He will destroy. / My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord, / And all flesh will bless His holy name forever and ever. (Psalm 145:6-21)

I love David’s account here of God’s character. If God is who David says He is, than He’s not just good but abundantly good in a way we can physically remember! He’s not just righteous, but righteous in a way that will cause us to shout for joy if we truly experience it! He is enough to satisfy every living thing, near to all who call on Him in truth, and protecting all who love Him. Perhaps what catches me the most is that He is “good to all”, which means that even as He is destroying the wicked He is good! This can be a bit mind-boggling, so is worth breaking down. We will spend many more posts on this (though perhaps not consecutively–especially as I am currently out-of-state visiting family). 🙂

Awaiting the King

The Personal Blog of Theresa C. Shell

Goodness