See, I don't get why it would matter to God to be so specific with his prophecies about the PLACES that the Messiah would come out of. Why was it so important that he be born in Bethlehem? That he come out of Egypt? That he grow up in Nazareth?
There's a number of things I don't like about the specificity here.
Scenario A. God knew ahead of time exactly what would happen--that there would be a census and all people would have to return to the place of their birth; that Herod would be king, get jealous, and try to kill all the children so that he could kill his rival, the king of the Jews that the Magi claimed had been born. If God knew in advance what would happen, then why didn't he stop the slaughter of all the innocents in Bethlehem? One might argue that people have free will and God doesn't interfere with that. But if he knew in advance what would happen, does anybody have free will?
Scenario B. God didn't know ahead of time how it would happen, but there something about these places that held particular symbolic meaning for the people at the time, or these places held spiritual power in some way, and so it was necessary for Jesus to be born in the one place and reside in two other places as he grew up. So God finagled his way to make sure Jesus was born in Bethlehem (by causing the census), allowed or encouraged Herod's killing of the infants to make sure Jesus and his parents fled to Egypt, and ultimately encouraged Joseph to move to Nazareth, where Jesus could grow up in relative peace.
Scenario B seems less threatening to me than Scenario A (which makes God seem, well, kind of evil, no matter which way you cut it, either actively evil or passively so) but even Scenario B doesn't seem so great.
For the believers, I get it. The specificity offers assurance that this was truly the Messiah because he fits all the prophecies. But the specificity--and how it was achieved--should surely give us room for pause.
The God of the Old Testament is a God of vengence. He has no problem telling the people of Israel to commit mass genocide, to slaughter an entire people and leave no one standing. So why would the God of Matthew chapter 2 suddenly be so different, that he'd have a problem with the slaughter of a bunch of innocent babies, just so his prophecy could be fulfilled?
Scenario C. It was all a coincidence. After the facts of Jesus's birth, life, and death, his biographers were able to find things from the Old Testament that helped prop up their argument that Jesus was the Messiah.
Scenario D. Is there a Scenario D? I'm willing to entertain propositions.
Yesterday's chapter put me in a spiritually seeking and peaceful kind of mood but today's has me all hepped up and frustrated.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment