I am reading in Acts and this is how my thoughts were going.
Acts 11: The disciples are first called Christians at Antioch... they then send aid to their friends facing a famine.
Acts 12: Herod has James executed and Peter thrown in prison with 16 guards to watch over him.
He was next to be executed. (They were thrown in prison for preaching about Jesus).
continue Acts 12: Peter gets set free from jail by an angel and led to safety outside the city. Herod gets pissed, searches for him, can't find him, but has to continue business as usual.
Acts 13: Herod goes to settle a dispute and the crowds call him "god". He doesn't stop them, God (the one I believe in) strikes him dead, he gets eaten by worms.
This is where I need to pause...
My first thought, "what if a child were reading this?"
My second thought, "he deserved it."
Third, "did the writers have to put this part in here?"
Forth, "is this consistent with God's character?" (the character that I believe to be true)
I am settling on this take away for now... God, why is it so important for us to know and acknowledge you?
5 comments:
Hey Traci --
This is a really tough question to deal with. As far as "..kids could be reading this.." I think if you take a look at the bible as a whole it is decidedly R rated or worse, and is riddled with sex, violence,lying, cheating, backstabbing and other examples of people with what we would generally consider poor moral fiber. Paradoxically, God seems to like to work with people like that. If you look at the lives of the patriarchs, they are a far cry from what we might call "Good Christians." Personally, I find this comforting; I often "miss the mark."
Now, to the harder question of the character of God. I had similar trouble in reading the Exodus story in which God, over and over again, hardens pharaohs heart and brings more awful plagues down upon the encryptions. My friend Bird had similar issues with this passage and blogged about it here:
http://scriptureasstory.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/hardness-bird/
and then my other friend Brittain wrote what I thought was a brilliant response. I urge you to check it out here:
http://scriptureasstory.wordpress.com/2008/01/20/who-gave-you-your-mouth/#comment-9
I don't know if that helps at all.
Also, as per our conversation last night my blog url is:
practicallychristian.wordpress.com
woo!
Micah
blah! blogger sucks. it clipped the urls, but here I come to the rescue:
Birds post:
http://tinyurl.com/6qchp2
Brittains response:
http://tinyurl.com/645ede
you can also use html tags to do this...
the "a" one is especially useful. Google "href syntax"...
here it is w/o the brackets:
(a href="link") short description (/a)
replace the parens w/ the less than/greater than brackets and you're good.
Micah,
I agree, those who struggle with this idea would benefit from reading Brittian's response>
I need to make a correction... its actually the end of Acts 12 and not Acts 13 where this occurs.
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