Proverbs 3:5 says to trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. With that, we can be tempted to stop right there as far as any understanding of God goes, and just accept whatever He does, as Adam and Eve would have done if they didn’t eat from the Tree of Good and evil. And the Bible tells us, by means of Proverbs 3:5, that it is fruitless to understand God. Isaiah 55:8 tells us why, in saying “…my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.”
But as 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work,” a certain degree of understanding is necessary, even if it doesn’t include understanding God’s motives. In a world where there is a constant clash between good and evil, we must be sure of our footing, lest we find ourselves surrounded and hamstrung by the evil around us.
And Jeremiah 9: 23-24 opens the window somewhat to our understanding of God, as it says “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, THAT HE UNDERSTANDS AND KNOWS ME, THAT I AM THE LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’”
So with that, a reading of the Bible seems to indicate that there are inconsistencies in God’s ways, although even in the natural world there are no inconsistencies. The author Ayn Rand, of “Atlas Shrugged” fame, once wrote that contradictions in and of themselves do not exist, and if we think we see contradictions we should check our premises for at least one of them is wrong.
What brought to mind the thought that God may be inconsistent? Well, in Genesis 9:3, God says to Noah, after the Flood, “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you.” Since there is no qualifier, “every moving thing” would include pigs and other animals considered to be pork if they existed then. It would also include lobsters and anything else that crawls along the ocean floor if they existed then also. Yet in Leviticus 11, God made a Law to not eat pigs and similar animals in Verse 7, and in Verse 10 to not eat lobsters and similar animals who live in the ocean but don’t have fins and scales. Why, after hundreds of years, has God now picked on animals like pigs and lobsters? He does seem to be inconsistent.
As Jesus said he came to fulfill God’s Law, it is up for consideration. And for that matter, the hundreds of Laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy did not exist at the time of Noah, so why do they appear at the time of Moses? This is not to question whether God’s Laws should be accepted, it is just questioning the inconsistency.
And yet again, when Jesus comes along, he implies that we need not abide by all those hundreds of Laws; all we have to do is abide by two Laws, that we love God and we love eachother. And since Jesus is acting on behalf of God, God decided, for whatever reason, for our thoughts are not His thoughts and our ways are not His ways, to instruct Jesus to tell the people that if they abide by just those two Laws they will be saved.
But where is the consistency between God in the time of Noah, and of Moses and of Jesus? Perhaps for our own purposes we can just resolve that God desired all along for us to just love Him and love eachother, and therein may lie the consistency of premise, so there really is no contradiction or inconsistency.
But as 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work,” a certain degree of understanding is necessary, even if it doesn’t include understanding God’s motives. In a world where there is a constant clash between good and evil, we must be sure of our footing, lest we find ourselves surrounded and hamstrung by the evil around us.
And Jeremiah 9: 23-24 opens the window somewhat to our understanding of God, as it says “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, THAT HE UNDERSTANDS AND KNOWS ME, THAT I AM THE LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’”
So with that, a reading of the Bible seems to indicate that there are inconsistencies in God’s ways, although even in the natural world there are no inconsistencies. The author Ayn Rand, of “Atlas Shrugged” fame, once wrote that contradictions in and of themselves do not exist, and if we think we see contradictions we should check our premises for at least one of them is wrong.
What brought to mind the thought that God may be inconsistent? Well, in Genesis 9:3, God says to Noah, after the Flood, “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you.” Since there is no qualifier, “every moving thing” would include pigs and other animals considered to be pork if they existed then. It would also include lobsters and anything else that crawls along the ocean floor if they existed then also. Yet in Leviticus 11, God made a Law to not eat pigs and similar animals in Verse 7, and in Verse 10 to not eat lobsters and similar animals who live in the ocean but don’t have fins and scales. Why, after hundreds of years, has God now picked on animals like pigs and lobsters? He does seem to be inconsistent.
As Jesus said he came to fulfill God’s Law, it is up for consideration. And for that matter, the hundreds of Laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy did not exist at the time of Noah, so why do they appear at the time of Moses? This is not to question whether God’s Laws should be accepted, it is just questioning the inconsistency.
And yet again, when Jesus comes along, he implies that we need not abide by all those hundreds of Laws; all we have to do is abide by two Laws, that we love God and we love eachother. And since Jesus is acting on behalf of God, God decided, for whatever reason, for our thoughts are not His thoughts and our ways are not His ways, to instruct Jesus to tell the people that if they abide by just those two Laws they will be saved.
But where is the consistency between God in the time of Noah, and of Moses and of Jesus? Perhaps for our own purposes we can just resolve that God desired all along for us to just love Him and love eachother, and therein may lie the consistency of premise, so there really is no contradiction or inconsistency.
