The Christian Dilemma

Christians have a dilemma trying to reconcile a loving New Testament savior with a cruel Old Testament God.  We have accepted  the  Old Testament descriptions of  God’s character without question.  We are told in 1 John 4:1 to test every spirit.    The test we use is ‘WWJD,’ what would Jesus do or say.  Jesus also tells us we will know God and Satan by their fruits.  If  we use the Jesus algorithm, we can then  identify whether it is God or the deceiver who is present. 

For two thousand years, Christians have accepted the Hebrew, Israelite, Jewish experience with God as fact. The God of the Old Testament killed people and encouraged violence, things which Jesus never did and would never do. What are we to make of this discrepancy?

The rule of intelligence is to ‘trust, but verify.’ We must verify if the spirit in the Old Testament is actually God. To do this, we must list the fruits of Jesus and Satan. Based on Satan’s appearances in the story of Adam and Eve, the Book of Job and the temptation of Christ, we know that Satan is a murderer, he uses natural disasters to kill and destroy, and he wants to be worshipped.

Jesus is a healer, life-giver, omniscient, and kind. He controls the forces of nature and delivers his servants from peril.