• The Truth about the "angry G-d" of the Old Testament
    By The Contemplative Bard
    May 23, 2024

    Many people are turned off by the perceived "angry" and "vengeful" G-d of the Old Testament. They cite the stories of the Great Flood during Noah's time, the 10 Plagues of Egypt, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, among many other stories of G-d's expression of wrath in ancient times. Compared with the story of Christ Jesus that is overflowing with unconditional love and forgiveness, the persona of the G-d in the Old Testament becomes "ungodly" when compared. This prolly prompted many Christians to skip the Old Testament and focus on the New Testament, and thus many Churches advertise themselves to be solely, "Full Gospel", apart from the non-denominational marketing brand that goes with it. While Liturgical Churches, due to the difficulty in explaining the disparity of the characters of the two Deities, might be the reason why they chose to focus solely on the 2nd Great Commandment of Christ as if the 1st Great commandment never existed or that a G-d who has "anger issues" is not worthy of loving with our whole hearts, mind, and soul.

    Materialist-empiricists people, who don't believe in G-d or the supernatural, could easily explain it from a sociological-anthropological perspective that the ancient people simply anthropomorphized into an angry deity all the misfortunes or bad things that happened to them. If good things happen to them, they will attribute it to a benevolent deity rewarding them for doing what pleases that deity.

    Other theologians will say that the Old law had an "eye for eye" rule of justice which is outdated, while the new covenant is about love and forgiveness as taught by the Master Jesus (Matthew 5:38-39). Because of this, many consider the Ten Commandments as a burdensome absolutes; short of saying it is obsolete.


    • The implication of this is the erosion of spiritual accountability for transgressing Divine Laws because the Master Jesus is there to justify for my sins, like a doormat.

    • It is ok to violate Divine laws, anyway, Jesus is there to forgive me!

    • Or worse, Divine laws what??? Carpe Diem.

    But in reality the Master Jesus taught about the Golden rule or the law of consequence (Matthew 7:12), and St. Paul affirmed it in Galatians 6:7. In John 14:15, the Master J was even more straightforward that he values that his disciples follow his commandments and Divine laws.

    Going back to the original problem, the Old law that is being replace by the New law appears to me like a mere rationalization. Yes, Master Jesus may have introduced a new ethics for a new era but that does not explain why the "Father" is "behaving badly" in ancient times. Does it mean that an all perfect G-d made a mistake and is not loving enough to his creatures? Then his only begotten Son will educate Him on the right way to relate with people, his creation?

    For me, this paradox is a clear gap in knowledge that needs to be filled. And this is why referring to comparative spiritual traditions make a lot of sense so that we get insight on concepts that missed explanation from our Scriptures.





    Hinduism predates Christianity by around 5,000 years and they have an interesting Theology similar to our Holy Trinity.

    The Christian Divine Trinity is G-d the Father, G-d the Son, and G-d the Holy Spirit. Three persons in one G-d.

    The Hindu Trinity, which they refer to as Trimurti, has very specific attributes apart from the Deity names: Brahma (G-d the Creator), Vishnu (G-d the Preserver), and Shiva (G-d the Destroyer). Three persons in one G-d.

    Not only in Hinduism, but other Eastern spiritual traditions also have their own versions of a Trinitarian Deity, such as Buddhism, Taoism, Hebrew Kabbalah, etc..

    If we will superimpose the Christian and Hindu Trinities, G-d the Son will undisputably correspond to Vishnu, the preserver. Jesus is Love and love preserves things.

    G-d the Father will correspond to Brahma, the creator of the universe. But the Holy Spirit can also be a creator because it co-created the Church, the body of Christ. And it is also Giver of Life because the Master Jesus was conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit.

    Shiva, the destroyer can no way be the counterpart of the Holy Spirit, who is a Giver of Life. I could attribute Shiva as an aspect of the Father. Destruction and Creation are 2 sides of the same coin. Destruction precedes creation. The corrupt world was destroyed by a great flood, and a new humanity was created through Noah. This perfectly explains the "angry god" archetype.

    The trinity of Creation - Preservation - Destruction perfectly describes a never ending cycle in our universe. By importing this concept of Divine Trinity from Hinduism, we redeem the dignity of Our G-d the Father. He is no longer a "misbehaving" Deity, but is expressing an aspect or nature of Trinitarian Divinity (or it can also be spiritual allegory to point to the destructive nature of Divinity).

    This also gives us a warning that while the Christ Jesus is an attribute of unconditional love and forgiveness, we are not off the hook completely when we transgress Divine laws. Nothing personal, but tribulation is just a natural working of a universal law, that of the Divinity of Destruction.

    Why are there gaps of knowledge in the Scriptures?

    The study of comparative religion or spiritual traditions helps us fill in the gaps or understand or explain certain things that are not clearly delineated in the scriptures because:

    1. Not all Divine Truths were written in the Scriptures. The "Mysteries of the Kingdom" are given out to a few (possibly through word of mouth); the rest are given in the form of parables (Mark 4:11; Matthew 13:11)

    2. Not everything that Jesus did or taught was written down in the Scriptures (John 21:25). It will be too voluminous if all were written down.

    3. This is the sad reality of human history. Temporal powers sometimes rules. When Christianity was made into a state religion of the Roman empire, it is unthinkable that the Roman political rulers did not make any effort to influence Christianity to preserve their power and attempt to control the people to preserve the empire. It happens even in the modern era when a state sponsors a religion. A religion of peace becomes very political in the Mid-east. A pacifist faith such as Buddhism suddenly became aggressive when it became a state religion of Sri Lanka. And recently a big nation in Asia is revising the Bible for use in its communist state. Christianity was already the official religion of the Roman Empire in 382 AD (under Emp. Gratian) when Pope Damasus I commissioned St. Jerome to compile and translate the books in the scriptures. Scrolls that were not part of those compiled in 382 AD suddenly showed up in the Nag Hammadi and Dead Sea in 1945. The early Church may have missed them or Roman politicians could have hid them intentionally from St Jerome so it won't become part of canon. Who knows what happened. Politicians are the same wherever or whenever they are.

    ------------------ Credits for art work:

    Ancient Indian Hindu gods by macrovector, From https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/isolated-ancient-indian-hindu-gods-big-icon-set-with-shiva-brahma-ganesha-budha-several-others-gods-vector-illustration_32741711.htm

    Native Christian religion stickers by freepik, From hhttps://www.freepik.com/free-vector/naive-christian-religion-stickers_33418350.htm