Reflections on teaching an Old Testament Survey Course

What is God like? Do we Christians really have the right picture of him and, therefore, the right expectations? Sometimes we want to cosy up to God and that's not appropriate. But didn't God himself give us that expectation by sending Jesus to be his rep, his likeness and show us the human, compassionate, caring, nice side of God's person and nature? So how do we integrate into that picture the realisation of the Old Testament persona of Jehovah?

How do we integrate the picture of the God of Job who allowed him to suffer loss? And what about poor Abraham suffering the trauma of having to sacrifice his son? And who was responsible for the trauma that Isaac suffered and maybe bore all his life? The trauma of seeing his father's hand about to plunge a dagger into his bosom.

How do we cope with a God who allows the 'loss' of the mission guest house, Karibuni? Or the blatant theft of Gudutsi's cattle out in the Geti region.

Why didn't God protect the herd when Gudutsi was depending on his cows to finance his school fees?

Perhaps that's one reason that we should start teaching the Christian faith from the OT to establish Christianity in the context of the full revelation of God. The human face of God is the ultimate revelation and softens the blow of the austere (if indeed the OT picture of God is totally austere) of God. It's easier that way than introducing people to nice, sweet, Jesus and then backtracking to the OT and having them struggle with incorporating, integrating the OT picture into their world view.

It's like the experience of scientists. They have their propositions, theories, ideas, theses as to how the world turns. Then they find new information and have to integrate and incorporate that into their current knowledge and understanding. If they remain rigid in their categories they will never know the truth because they will be basing their experiments on incomplete or wrong precepts. Scientists have to remain humble and admit that they don't know the complete picture and probably never will.

What about theologians? Maybe all that is knowable of God is known in the corpus of human thought and knowledge but not in the experience of the individual worshipper. He has to keep shifting his understanding of the truth as new things are added. It's like adding new files to the cabinet drawer and refiling the information as new categories appear. That's unsettling.

Maybe Bonhoeffer sheds some light on the matter in his statement: "The poem about Christians and Unbelievers embodied an idea you will recognise ...

Christians range themselves with God in his suffering; that is what distinguishes them from the heathen. ... That is the exact opposite of what the religious man expects from God. Man is challenged to participate in the sufferings of God at the hands of a godless world." ["Letters and Papers from Prison"]

CHRISTIANS AND UNBELIEVERS

Men go to God when they are sore bestead, Pray to him for succour, for his peace, for bread, For mercy for them sick, sinning or dead:

All men do so, Christian and unbelieving.

Men go to God when he is sore bestead,

Find him poor and scorned, without shelter or bread, Whelmed under weight of the wicked, the weak, the dead:

Christians stand by God in his hour of grieving.

God goeth to every man when sore bestead, Feedeth body and spirit with his bread, For Christians, heathens alike he hangeth dead:

And both alike forgiving.