Some contadictions. Christian comments please?

Question

PSA 145:9 The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.

JER 13:14 And I will dash them one against another, even the fathers and the sons together, saith the LORD: I will not pity, nor How many stalls and horsemen?
KI1 4:26 And Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen.

CH2 9:25 And Solomon had four thousand stalls for horses and chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen; whom he bestowed in the chariot cities, and with the king at Jerusalem. spare, nor have mercy, but destroy them.
EXO 15:3 The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name.

ROM 15:33 Now the God of peace be with you all. Amen.
How satisfied with creation was he?
#1: God says "it was good" after each of his labors, and rests on the seventh day, evidently very satisfied.
#2: God has to fix up his creation as he goes, and he would certainly not be very satisfied with the disobedience of that primordial couple. (funny thing that an omniscient god would forget things)

Answer 1

Purple.



wanna banana?

Answer 2

Yes, there are contradictions in the Bible as you astutely observe. I will adress some that you point out here, maybe not all of them.

There has long been a problem in translating numbers from Hebrew. Many scholars are in disagreement over this issue which has not been completely resolved. Also Hebrew numbers are sometimes idiomatic, ie. 40 is a good example. You see this number cropping up all the time --ie "It rained 40 days and 40 nights." Most of the time 40 doesn't really mean 40 as we understand it, but rather something more like "a lot" "a huge amount" etc. --that is, it is an inspecific large quantity.

Also note context. you quote from Psalms, which were worship pieces --prayers, songs, spoken words of poetry versus a historical account of military battle. Yes, different genres express things different ways, as do different writers. We see some variations in thougthworlds as we examine different writers in different periods in the bible.

Also, the ancients were more comfortable with paradox than we are. We tend to think in either/or, black and white. Discrepancy, paradox, pluralities of understandings were not quite so problematic as they are for us.

Relating to your understanding of "perfect" in Genesis, it does not have this meaning in the original, rather there it means "it works"--so I think that what you describe in #2 as God fixing up the world would be what some theologians would call co-creation; that is, many things were indeed left to be decided, repaired and designed by us....which actually puts quite a bit of responsibility on us as we look at the problems of the world and see that some of it is certainly in our hands to work with for the betterment of all life.

Great questions. Keep searching!

Answer 3

Once again, the Bible, written by men, not God, shows just how mixed up a Hodge Podge of metaphors that it is. The Bible is a mixture of writings by various groups and most if it is taken from Mythologies of the past, absorbed into it, then advertised as the word according to God. Also, different sects of Christianity can't agree, and the most troublesome things I find is that most people who say that they adhere to such teachings, are the least "Christ-like" of them all, and that is what I take being a Christian means. I believe that Jesus was really here, and his message was a good one, in that he wanted us to be good to ourselves, not judge others, not cast the first stone, not be so materialistic, and that we should realize that God's kingdom is here right in front of us to enjoy in all it's splendor, not rape and ruin like we have been doing. He was also against the concept of organized religion, but some of his so-called sayings were eliminated due to the fact that he apparently said exactly that in the Gospel according to Thomas the Gnostic in his book he called "The Sayings of Christ" was something along the lines of "pick up a stone and you will find me, split a piece of wood and I will be there". I take that to mean that he was saying that God is everywhere, and you don't need to be in a specific place to worship him. That is a very inflammatory statement to those who would want to organize and control a religion, because it tells people that you don't need priests and churches etc to worship God, something the Priests of the time didn't want anyone to here, because that would mean the flow of money would stop and people would hold there own meetings without all the trappings needed to worship God, and that the Priesthood might have to go out and get a real job, instead of sitting back and accepting all the tithes from the poor masses who supported their rather wealthy existences.

Answer 4

1- God is good to all but if they rebel they are punished. We can consider our judges to be good people even when they punish criminals. No problem here
2- The reference in 1 kings is before Solomon even had built the temple and in 2 Chronicles was later after He had built it when the Queen of Sheba came to see him and he had acquired more wealth.
Just need to read it.
3-God was pleased with His creation and is also pleased to show mercy. Jesus was the lamb slain from BEFORE the foundation of the world so He was not caught off guard. God has had a plan in eternity and is working it out without fail to His glory.

Answer 5

You've taken and isolated scripture out of it's context.
It's like in one sentence they say water is cooling, and in another they say its boiling. In context, in one they were hot and thirsty and in another it was in a pot being heated. The reality is they can be both.

God can be both a "man of war" and a "God of peace".
Being God, He also reigns supreme; having mercy on some and wrath for others. He IS Lord.

As for the creation statement, when He made it, it was "good".
He made us with free will, and the choices we make He allows to happen. It could be something a simple as not eating an apple, to something as life changing and important as believing in Him. The consequences that follow are not His doing, but ours. Being omniscient, He knows everything we will decide in our lives, good or bad. He is in control and makes allowances for both.

Answer 6

When Moses was on Mount Sinai recieving the Law, God spoke to Him and revealed who He was more than He had ever revealed before. (Exodus 34:5-7)
"Now the LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. 6 And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, 7 keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.”

In this passage, God Himself declares Who He Is. He is ALWAYS mericful, gracious, longsuffering and abounding in goodness...

He is also Righteousness, Justice, Blamelessness, Holiness, however His justice always comes from mercy. In His mercy, He is just. All of His actions stem from the list of attributes He spoke to Moses- Merciful, Gracious, Longsuffering, Abounding in Goodness. This is Who He Is. Even when we cannot see or understand, we know that Everything He does is Merciful...

His loving kindness never ends. He is slow to anger and abounding in love. He longs for a relationship with all of His creation. Jeremiah 29:13 says, "And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart."

Take Him at His word. Seek Him with all your heart and soul and He promises you will find Him. When you do, your life will be changed. My life has been changed. His existence. His love, and His presence in my life has become irrefutable to me.

Many blessings on your journey.

Answer 7

Magneto's a tad OVER-KILL, ain't he?
Contradictions in the Bible outnumber the Atheists!

It's been translated, re-written & modified to suit Mans interests.
Right or wrong for you.
I believe in the Bible, I have a copy My grandfather copied straight from Hebrew, Greek & Aramaic.
It's not flowered up with Mankinds angle & so far I've found parts of your text but some has been added! Anyway, U don't believe in God & U're entitled to your opinion but stop wasting your time tearing apart what U're not interested in.
Give it up & move on.

Answer 8

What you are doing is what a lot of people do when they try to analyze an infinite God with a finite mind. They concentrate on one aspect of His divine nature and seem to think that it somehow contradicts another aspect of his nature.

For instance, God is love, but God hates sin. How can love hate? The answer to that is that perfect love hates what is harmful to the object of it's love. In the same way God IS good to all. If He wasn't then He would never give people a chance to repent from their sins before bringing his wrath upon them for their stubbornness and refusal to acknowledge his grace.

"Do you suppose, O man--you who judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself--that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. Romans 2:3-8

Answer 9

He does not forget things: IT IS called the plan of God : Men became to evil so he destroyed so it will all work out for the time of the end. too weed out those who do not believe or keep His commandments. to make the family of God beginning at Christ return.
God of peace is with all that obey Him: the Lord of War is for those who are against God or do not obey Him.
Same with you if someone loves you, you will love them back. but if come to hurt you or your family then you will fight.

Answer 10

Printing errors! When men stepped in to change God's word, they also made errors the copyists didn't.
Note also that God's name Jehovah is also missing. It was present over 7 thousand times in earlier versions.

Answer 11

free will reaps either good or bad ..or both and every creature has been given free will except for god..because he is the the creator not a creation..