The God Question: A Look at the Personality of God as Revealed by the Old Testament

The debate has been raging on for a while now, here on GhanaCelebrities.Com and other vibrant online platforms, about the existence of a supreme being who is up there monitoring everything we do.

I believe even staunch Christians must admit that it is a fair question to ask; that who is this God who requires only absolute devotion from us his subjects, and why it is that when it comes to religion everything must be taken on blind faith. Because whenever a shred of logic is applied to this ‘House of Cards’ that is religion, everything comes crumbling down as if one ventured down Alice’s rabbit hole themselves.

Today though, this piece would look at the Holy Book itself, the Bible, and give some pretty damning examples of the personality of God as shown in the Old Testament. After that maybe it can be explained to me how such a deity deserves any shred of devotion from us as people, aside from perhaps fear of not becoming the next victims of God’s wrath.

Most of these examples are familiar to Christians already, and often their faith requires it be buried deep somewhere in the subconscious without being given much rational thought.

This article challenges you to give it that rational thought, and come out with a satisfactory explanation of why a loving God would commit murder, infanticide, genocide, and various other atrocities as laid out in the Bible itself.

1. Do Not Make Fun of the Prophet

I am sure most of us are familiar with this story. Elisha was one of God’s better prophets back in the day, having taken up the mantle from Elijah and proven himself a worthy successor.

So one day some kids made fun of Elisha for having a bald head, his feelings got a little hurt and he cursed these kids. Forgetting the overkill of how a little teasing earned these children curses, God took it a step further and sent two she-bears to devour these kids.

There were forty-two of them, 42 kids who had to leave this earth because they made fun of a man of God. Admittedly not a nice thing to do, but talk about making a mountain out of a molehill!! (2 Kings 2:23-24)

2. Senseless Murder

There lived a certain Er, son of Judah, direct ancestor of David and Jesus. ‘Er was wicked, so the Lord slew him’; that’s a direct quote from the Bible, by the way.

So Er’s brother Onan, was then coerced into marrying and having sex with his brother’s wife. Onan refused to spill his seed in his brother’s wife, out of common decency perhaps? Anyway that also displeased God, who slew Onan as well. (Geneses 38:1-10)

Samson is one of the most famous people from biblical times, and often had God’s favour on him in all endeavours. He once gave a riddle to some Phillistines who were pals with his wife Delilah, and they made a bet as to whether they could answer or not. The bet was that the loser would supply the other 30 pieces of cloth.

Delilah wheedled the answer out of Samson and gave it to her pals. So the spirit of the Lord came unto Samson, literally; who then went out and killed thirty men, took their clothes, and used it to settle his debt. (Judges 14:1-19)

After being rescued from Egypt, the Israelites admittedly caused God a lot of problems with their constant whining and unfaithfulness, and God as usual responded by killing as many of his ‘chosen people’ as he could.

Somewhere in Numbers two elders challenged Moses, saying as to how he was lording himself over the rest of the Israelites despite the fact they haven’t seen this land flowing with milk and honey he promised.

Moses, of course, was displeased, and made a complaint to God. God responded, opening the ground to swallow these men who dared challenge Moses, taking their entire tribes along with them for good measure.

Some other Israelites saw it fit to complain about why God would kill so many people, but God failed to see their point, striking down 14,700 people, all the while failing to see the irony of killing people for complaining about his earlier killing. (Numbers 16:1-49)

3. Infanticide

The story of Uriah the soldier whom David had killed to steal his wife is quite well known. After taking the wife and getting her pregnant, God became pissed off and thus to teach David a lesson, he killed the newborn infant child, for being born in the wrong place at the wrong time. (2 Samuel 12:14-18)

Of course, the last of the ten plagues to strike Egypt was the death of every single first born Egyptian, man or animal. It just stands to reason that there were several children mixed up in that category, once again having to die just for being born at the wrong time. (Exodus 12:29)

All these, and I haven’t even mentioned the flood that wiped away almost all of humanity, Lot’s wife who got a raw deal just for looking back on an ongoing genocide, Ammonites and countless other tribes whom at one point or another in history have found themselves at odds with the Israelites.

I think my long overdue point here is that; is this the God we are supposed to give unconditional love and obedience to? Wielding power in such an arbitrary manner as shown in the Old Testament is more reminiscent of good old human dictators like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini than it is of a loving deity.

Now would be the time you explain away all this and hit us with why God is such a loving and caring being—if this is what we know of him.

We are just looking for intelligent dialogues and explanations…No offensive language.

PS: This post expounds on ideas gleaned from this article, which tackles this serious issue with appreciable humour. For a detailed list of God’s atrocities from the Old Testament, see here.

Note: Since we have added Religion to our various GC columns (running 2 articles a week on religion), we are looking to hire any person who can write on RELIGION—-particularly, for religion as we have several of our writers against religion.

We want to have a balance discussion on the issue of religion. Therefore anyone interested in writing on religious issues and defending religion should email Chris-Vincent via vincent@ghanacelebrities.com . This is a paid position.