How do you deal with the moral difficulties in the Bible?
This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘Inspiration, Authority and Interpretation’ (1973).
This is a very serious question, deserving a whole session at least in itself. In the Old Testament in particular, there are deeds of vengeance and apparent cruelty that seem to be so utterly out of accord with the character of God that we cannot begin to think that those parts are inspired. I cannot possibly answer this very big problem fairly in a short time. It is much more complicated than sometimes even those who ask it realize, so I am aware that what I say will sound arbitrary by reason of the time.
We must at the first level distinguish between acts of cruelty that God himself and the Bible would disown (recorded because they were performed by people who claimed to be believers in God); and those acts of judgment that God himself authorized. For instance, there is an appalling story in Genesis 34. It tells how Simeon and Levi tricked the inhabitants of Shechem because their sister had been maltreated. Their father, Jacob, wasn't above doing crafty tricks, but even he had to say, 'You have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land' (Genesis 34:30). It is recorded for our warning, to remind us that there isn't any cruelty to which people who profess to believe in God will not go under the name of moral indignation and religious fervour. The Bible of course strongly condemns it.
On the other hand there are judgments that the Bible stands over as being instigated by God; notably those exceedingly severe judgments carried out by the Israelites when they invaded Canaan. However, before we could come to the conclusion that they couldn't possibly be from God, we must refute the notion that judgment contradicts the Spirit of Christ. It is a popular notion that the Old Testament is a severe book and the New Testament is by and large a book full of love.
Let me quote from the Old Testament, 'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might' (Deuteronomy 6:5). 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself' (Leviticus 19:18).
Now let me quote, from the New Testament, the words of Christ himself.
And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, 'where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched'. (Mark 9:43–48)
The popular figure of Jesus has got a little bit distorted. He preached the love of God and the forgiveness of God; but divine forgiveness is not below justice, it is above justice.
What do I mean by that? There is a thing that goes by the name of forgiveness that isn't forgiveness at all, because it is below justice and therefore falls into the category of merely condoning sin. Suppose the police come along to a good woman to inform her that her daughter is in a mental hospital; her mind has been absolutely smashed by drugs. They have caught the drug-pusher and they would like the woman to come along to the police station and identify him. He happens to be a fellow that used to come to tea at one time. Suppose the woman turned round and said, 'It's all right, I forgive him!' But that isn't forgiveness. It's simply being an accomplice to the crime. It is below justice. Justice would say, 'This drug-pusher must be dealt with.'
But there is a forgiveness that is above justice. Christ has found a way by which even that drug-pusher, if he repents, may be forgiven. The very central message of Christianity is that if he ever gets forgiven it won't be by God's weakness, it will be because Christ has borne the sanction of God's law on his behalf. The love of God is just in forgiving the repentant, believing sinner. So it is above justice. It upholds the law—it demands that the sanction be fulfilled. Christ, in his love and mercy, bears the sanction for the sinner.
That being so, there is no conflict between the Old and New Testaments in the matter of God's judgments. Indeed, the Old Testament will tell us that, before the Israelites entered Canaan, God already had his eye on the fearful sins of the Canaanites, but he gave them four hundred years to repent. God judged that nation through the Jews, not by a sudden outburst of rage but after long centuries of mercy and tolerance. When the Jews exceeded their role and, for sheer spite and land grabbing, executed Gentiles around them (as Saul and his sons did to the people of Gideon), the divine disfavour and wrath came upon them just as impartially as it had originally come on the Amalekites. 'And the LORD . . . said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites, and fight against them until they be consumed' (1 Samuel 15:18 KJV).
So what you have in the Old Testament is not an ancient tribe going berserk in its bloodthirstiness and justifying it by calling on its own tribal God. The message of holy Scripture is that God is a just God; if men will not repent, his judgments will, and must, fall. Christ also said this and to that extent there is no conflict.
