The Meaning Of Life

https://biblehub.com/nkjv/1_chronicles/21.htm

Just for refresher, I’m studying the books of the Bible in chronological order, the timeline of the events as most feel they transpired. The problem with the Book of Psalms, which we just finished, is that the author and the time period in which they were written is unknown, so we had to cover the majority of the book at one time, and at 150 chapters, it is the longest book in the Bible. Now that it is done (it’s never done, we should always go back and re-read it to refresh and revive ourselves), we can get back to the other books, and we are now in the Book of First Chronicles, Chapter 21.

But Chronicle is not without it’s own problems. First, it used to be one book, but the authors of the King James Version and other subsequent versions, divided it into two books because of it’s length. And in the original Hebrew Bible, Chronicles was the last book of the Old Testament, kind of a review and recap of the events. Because of that, Chronicles very frequently mirrors other scriptures and passages, sometimes even with the exact same language. So if you read a chapter of the book of Chronicles and you think, “this sounds familiar”, it probably is. Now, onto Chapter 21, and honestly, we’ve spent so much time in the Book of Psalms, I don’t know if it is a repeat of another chapter of the Bible, or if the original will follow later. We shall see.

I have no idea why David’s census was a sin, but obviously it was. Theologians say that David was starting to get like Saul and doing things on his own with consulting God, others say David was prideful in counting his number of servants, others say David was starting to doubt that God was on his side and was wanting to take a census of how many were in his army as to whether he would be victorious or not. But then again that is the interpretation of man which I am trying not to rely on, and the language that starts with “Satan stood up against Israel” always results in sin.

The problem I have with this chapter is that it makes God out to be a bad guy. And yes, we are told that every word in the Bible was inspired by Him, then again, we are told that by man. With all due respect, and God forgive me if I’m wrong, the Bible was written by man, and man has emotions, man has perceptions, and there are a ton of other factors which may have influenced their perception of God, which in turn, influenced how they documented. Please don’t get me wrong, I do not doubt the intentions of the authors of the Bible, I simply suggest they were influenced by external factors. For example, Moses was truly i a hard spot. He was charged with leading over a million children of Israel out of Egypt and into the promised land. Equate that with today’s Mayor who is the head of a city of over a million people; there has to be some stress invovled. And we know there was because when the children of Israel griped, once again, about not having water, Moses sinned and became angry, striking the rock in anger. He documented that himself. But how many other times did Moses sin that he failed to document, that he might have blamed God for instead, putting God in a bad light.

I know I sound like a broken record, I confess that. But if you truly believe in a God that wants to kill you for your sins, a God that in this chapter of Chronicles would kill 70,000 men just to spite David, then why would you want to spend eternity with Him? That is not God, not my God. My God is loving, He is forgiving and merciful, He loves us all and only wants what is best for us.

Now like an earthly father, He may become frustrated and allow us the free will to choose the wrong path, He may have to have some “tough love” and remove His hedge of protection from us so we can see the real result of the actions of our sin, but I do not believe, for one second, that God killed anyone! If anyone, like Uzziah who touched the Covenant of the Ark, died because they failed to obey God’s law, it is because they chose to separate themselves so far from God, that they were unable to withstand His Glory. And in the case of Uzziah, I still say God didn’t kill him for touching the ark, it was because the ark contained the Glory of God and Uzziah was unable to withstand it.

And I may perish on judgment day for not following the “letter of the law”, but if that is the case, I welcome it. But I refuse to support the theory of a punishing God. The “God of the Old Testament” as He is often wrongly referred to, has the exact same character as Jesus Christ…He is Jesus Christ through the Holy Trinity.

Amen!