Quote:
Originally Posted by awareness
It's not a matter of God. God is God. "I am that I am" ... and it's not our business to God what he is.
It's rather a matter of depictions of God, and that is the human part of the Bible. Men come up with depictions of God, in the Bible, that defame God, and make him a heartless monster, meaner than the meanest human ; a serial killer ; genocidal, with indifference to suffering, even to innocents. Like telling the Israelite's "kill everything that takes breath," even the livestock and critters ... even after inscribing on stone "Thou shalt not kill."
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This is precisely why I disagree with UntoHim, it is posts like this that are getting somewhere. Awareness your view of the book of Job is very common, it is quite similar to what OBW shared, it is even quite similar to what WL shared. Others have shown that you can find many Bible teachers that teach the same thing. However, your interpretation results in the God portrayed in the Book of Job being very different from the God who gave his only begotten son that whosoever would believe on Him would not perish but would be saved. As a result you are forced to reject the God portrayed in Job as being man's depiction.
Now I appreciate you for doing this, because at least you have gone one step further than most Christians who decide they don't understand the book, so lets just move on to something we do understand.
However, in Science we know that regardless of how bizarre our observations are, we need to understand them, not ignore them. That is how penicillin was discovered, and that is why gravity has confounded us to this day.
You decided that the solution to the issue was that the God depicted in Job is not the God that was incarnated as a man. I rejected that conclusion because if that was so, how do you explain Jesus quoting Job, and Paul quoting Job when he preaches the gospel in Acts, or Paul quoting Job in Romans, or the writer of Hebrews quoting Job, or the Apostle Peter quoting it, or James, or the Apostle John's numerous quotes of Job? I see absolutely no basis from any of the Apostles to say that the God of the book of Job is different from the God of the NT. In fact, I think there is plenty of NT evidence that the Apostles saw that the book of Job revealed God's purpose and plan in having his son die on the cross.
This is my issue with your interpretation, which to be fair is also WL's interpretation, and is very common in Christianity. How do you reconcile that portrayal of God with Jesus? I appreciate that you have pointed this out, but just because the question is seemingly very difficult to answer, I believe that I did find the answer. I believe that even you have said that my interpretation of Job is very consistent with God's purpose, His redemption, the Cross of Christ, etc.