Those of you who know me, know that I tend to be a bit sarcastic (understatement). You may also know that I am very transparent and open about my life and my faith… or at least I try to be. This blog exists simply as a means to that end, and while I know most of you understand where I’m coming from, many of you may not. I know some of what I write may not translate well to those of you that don’t think the same way as I do (i.e. my fundamentalist friends). And you know what? That’s really ok.

I say all of this because of what I wrote in Part 1. In it, I was completely honest about my raw first reactions of reading some difficult chapters in Numbers & Deuteronomy. Do I seriously think God is bipolar? No. Do I believe it was an accident that certain ‘hard-to-understand’ chapters were included in the Bible? No. Can anyone ever understand the reason for some of these passages? No. Not in this lifetime.

While some would say it’s wrong to question God like this, I would have to disagree. There are countless illustrations in the Bible of people questioning God or His motives. You don’t have to look any farther than David in Psalm 13:

¹ How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?

² How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and every day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?

If God didn’t want us to question him, he would’ve created us as robots — but he didn’t. He wants us to trust him, but trust him with our hearts, not our heads. I’ve seen so many people who never questioned what they believed, just blindly following what a school, church or upbringing taught them. Is what they believe their faith or someone else’s? All they’ve got is head knowledge, not heart knowledge. Yes, I know this strays a bit from the original topic, but I just wanted to mention my motives here. It’s not to disprove the sanity of God. He knows what He’s doing infinitely more than I do. But instead of just robotically reading some very tough passages, I wanted to stop and have an honest chat.

So back to the topic… is God Bipolar? No, of course not. So why does the God of the OT and the God of the NT seem so different? When you step back and look at the big picture, God doesn’t look any different at all. He’s the same God today and throughout the NT that he was in the OT, the only difference is that Jesus is the substitute for our sin — thank God! All of those rules and guidelines and sacrifices were required so that people in that day could have a relationship with God. It’s what the holiness and perfection of God demanded for there to be a true relationship with him.

Another aspect of God that seems to get lost in translation, when you’re bogged down in some of the heavier parts of the OT, is His mercy and grace. Study the children of Israel long enough and put yourself in God’s shoes — what would you have done with them? Be honest… yeah, I thought so. So you don’t have to look too hard to see that he was the same loving God then, full of mercy and grace, as he is today and throughout the NT. Then there’s Deuteronomy 30, the passage God showed me the other night to help put everything in perspective once again. These words were spoken to the children of Israel after several long, hard messages from Moses. These are some of my favorite verses. Can you spot the love, mercy and grace of God?

^{6 -7} Come back to God, your God, and obey him with your whole heart and soul [and] God, your God, will restore everything you lost; he’ll have compassion on you; he’ll come back and pick up the pieces from all the places where you were scattered. No matter how far away you end up, God, your God, will get you out of there and bring you back to the land your ancestors once possessed. It will be yours again. He will give you a good life and make you more numerous than your ancestors.

⁹ God, your God, will outdo himself in making things go well for you: you’ll have babies, get calves, grow crops, and enjoy an all-around good life. Yes, God will start enjoying you again, making things go well for you just as he enjoyed doing it for your ancestors.

^11-14 This commandment that I’m commanding you today isn’t too much for you, it’s not out of your reach. It’s not on a high mountain—you don’t have to get mountaineers to climb the peak and bring it down to your level and explain it before you can live it. And it’s not across the ocean—you don’t have to send sailors out to get it, bring it back, and then explain it before you can live it. No. The word is right here and now—as near as the tongue in your mouth, as near as the heart in your chest. Just do it!

^15-16 Look at what I’ve done for you today: I’ve placed in front of you Life and Good, Death and Evil. And I command you today: Love God, your God. Walk in his ways. Keep his commandments, regulations, and rules so that you will live, really live, live exuberantly, blessed by God, your God, in the land you are about to enter and possess.

So while the Old Testament can be a tough read at times, there are so many treasures buried just beneath the surface. It’s tough to remember the big picture in the middle of all the specifics that seem irrelevant to us today, but it shows us that God’s a God of order and what is actually required for us to have any kind of relationship with him, if Jesus had not  come to pay the ultimate sacrifice. This is what God’s reaffirmed to me over the last few days and he’s helped me see that he is Hebrews 13:8. I love how The Message puts it:

For Jesus doesn’t change—yesterday, today, tomorrow, he’s always totally himself!

While we’ll never fully know or understand parts of the Bible or the true nature of God, it’s comforting to know that we serve a God who’s never changed and will never change. God’s not bipolar, he’s just the polar opposite of us.

Several years ago The Onion (known for their no holds barred satire) released a news statement entitled: “God Diagnosed With Bipolar Disorder”. I don’t endorse The Onion or anything written in that article for that matter, but for the past few months I’ve been reading through the Old Testament, and at times, I’ve been wondering the same thing. There are certain books in the Old Testament I absolutely love, like Genesis & Exodus for example, where we read the stories of Noah, Abraham, Joseph & Moses and how they lived all out for God, displaying unfathomable faith. But then I get to Leviticus and Numbers and it gets more and more difficult to read with each passing chapter. All I see is a list of rules and guidelines and laws that make absolutely no sense at times, like Deuteronomy 23:1

No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the Lord.

To be honest, I’ve always avoided certain books like this because I simply don’t understand them, nor do I understand God’s nature revealed through them. It’s as if I’m reading about a completely different God in the Old Testament compared to the God in the New Testament. I mean no disrespect or irreverence at all, but reading certain books in the Old Testament, makes God seem bipolar to me.

I’ve been struggling with these books for the last few weeks — and I’m not going to lie — I’ve been speed-reading through the last few chapters just trying to get back to something that I can understand again. I know I’m being ridiculous here, but I seriously wonder why He chose to leave certain things in there. What was the point? He knew we’d be reading them thousands of years later with hearts and minds full of questions. Was it an accident? Were parts of Leviticus and Numbers supposed to be part of the Apocrypha and St. Bartholomew didn’t get the memo? These are the things I think about as I’m reading these books. And with as much Bible training as I have, I know if I’m struggling through some of these chapters, others probably are too.

God answered some of my nagging questions tonight, so I’m making this a two part post and I’ll share them later because I’d really like to hear from you!

What books do you have a hard time reading and why?

If God’s not bipolar, how do you explain the God of the New Testament vs. the God of the Old Testament?