God, the Lord, The Most High, Yahweh, Elohim, Adonai, HaShem, Divine power, Energy, the Universe… God has many names but also God has been misunderstood for centuries. People have been trying to fully understand God for millennials, forgetting that God, as an infinite power and creator of this world, cannot be understood in human aspects. However, as human brain has a tendency to label something unknown or box ideologies, concepts or beliefs, people would always try to box God into their own conscious understanding. And this would give different ideas about God – an evil creator Demiurge from the Gnostic believes, an angry God from the Old Testament, a loving God in the form of Jesus from the New Testament, a Source or Energy from the New Age movement and similar. However, God is not someone we can define by our consciousness or box into our understanding. God is beyond our understanding, it’s beyond what we can comprehend, and people find it difficult to accept. Our nature is that our brain will always want to label, box and define ideas and beliefs. Any gaps will always be filled with either assumptions, understanding according to someone’s perception or their level of consciousness. However in reality we are not able to fully understand God, but only the parts that God reveals to us.
Our perception or confirmation bias is a big blocker. If we have an understanding about God from parents, school or church, this will naturally shape how we view and experience God. If we come from a home of atheists, then naturally this will shape our view that God is not real or perhaps very distant God who doesn’t care about people. Similarly, if you grew up in very religious home or community with a lot of restrictions, then you will either view God in a negative light wanting to free yourself from this control, or you will continue in the footsteps of religious control and restriction.
You have to remember that everyone has a different experience of God and different perception and our role is to discover God to our abilities. This is the same with ourselves. I am sure your parents know you from one side, your partner from different side, your siblings from different part, your friends from even different part and your work colleagues also from different. Each side is you and yet each side is different. It is not that you are acting differently or putting on a mask, but you reveal yourself in different way depending on the circumstances. Also, people’s perception about you depends from many factors like at which point of your life they knew you, which chapter of your life they walked into, because every stage of your development was different. People also know you and recognize you to the level of their consciousness and perception about themselves. We are all mirroring something back to each other. You could say that you are like a kaleidoscope, that changes the colour and shape depending who is looking through the lens. However people feel safe with labels and generalization. That is why people were always looking to define God to their own understanding. Every time you read antient stories about who God is, remember that this is according to that person’s understanding and their perception and the times they lived in.
Were ancient texts true representation of God?
The unfortunate truth is that a lot of ancient texts exploring different ideas about God have been destroyed by the Roman Empire, who wanted to control the narrative of the church. Some texts were found in 20th century, some pieces of ancient texts even later, and this can be our guide of how people viewed God back then, however it is also important to remember that the knowledge of God is to be experienced and lived through rather than examined in books. God is a living God, waiting for people to look for Him, to try to understand Him and experience Him.
Nevertheless, it is natural to ask questions about God and wanting to understand God to some extent. And with this, many different ideas and opinions have been developed. Some people believe that the picture of God presented in the Old Testament differs from God portrayed in New Testament and therefore they think it’s two separate Gods. This has also been amplified in the gnostic texts of Pistis Sophia, where God is presented as Demiurge, an evil deity that created this evil material world and trapped souls in bodies, which gave people those ideas that the God of the Old Testament was evil and Jesus came to save us. However, we have to remember that throughout the Old Testament God was constantly calling people to Himself, to follow His Law, his statues, and all prophets from the Old Testament were killed by people because they didn’t like the message. Therefore we can say that God was misunderstood by people in the Old Testament, because people will always understand different concepts and ideas to their level of consciousness. We can also say that the collective consciousness has shifted and advanced since those times, therefore our view of God differs from their view of God. We can read those texts as a guide of not to do and as a source of believes from those times, however, that doesn’t mean that representation is true, but more how some people wanted to explain the existence of good and evil in the world.
Early Christianity was a time of rich spirituality and mystical times, full of different thinkers, philosophers and mystical teachers. One of those thinkers was Origen of Alexandria, who in the second century, viewed God as the ultimate, incomprehensible unity, and Christ (Logos) as the eternal, mediating agent of creation. Origen viewed God the Father as a “purely spiritual mind,” existing completely outside of space and time. God was considered ineffable, incomprehensible, and the only one who is “God” in the highest, absolute sense. Origen was one of the first theologians to argue that God alone is truly bodiless. Similarly to Origen, another Christian thinker was Clement of Alexandria, who viewed God as the ineffable, transcendent, and formless First Cause, who is beyond time and space. He blended Platonic philosophy with Christian theology, defining God as someone we can know only through the divine Logos (the Son) and accessible through faith, intellectual contemplation, and moral purification. Both believed that God has no form and can only be truly represented by His Son, Jesus.
Could this mean that God wasn’t accurately presented before Jesus? Or perhaps God revealed Himself differently according to different times?
We know that God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. What does it tells us? That God is a fully complete and doesn’t need to change and adapt, however because people are changing and adapting, we will view God under our own lens according to the circumstances and our level of consciousness. For example, when you experience some personal tragedy, you might view God as ignorant to your suffering, but when you experience personal miracle, you see God as good and merciful. Both sides of God are true, God hasn’t changed but your view has changed under different circumstance. That is why the true colour is given under different circumstances and different pair of eyes. If God was existing on His own, who could say who God is? If there are no witnesses, God could say He is amazing but who would listen or believe? It reminds me of this saying: “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” It’s this approach to perception vs. reality and exploring if an event occurs without a conscious observer. That is why for the event to have a meaning, we need witnesses, we need people to define the event. However the event will be defined to the level of consciousness and those circumstances. A child witnessing the event will describe it differently to the adult witnessing the same event. We also have two different adults who will see things slightly different. Those are the levels of consciousness and perception.
The unfortunate truth is that God was largely misunderstood. Each time, God was raising the prophet, he would be rejected by people, because people didn’t like the message. They didn’t understand because they can only grasp what was in front of their eyes. People have a problem believing or trusting without any evidence. As we are led by our bodies that are led by five senses, generally we prefer to either see, hear, smell, touch, taste and even hearing can be problematic. Our logical part of the brain will need information to make sense of things. However, faith is believe without things seen. God says: believe and then I will show you. But people say: show me and then I will believe you. There is this contrast and therefore those that require physical evidence will miss on the spiritual revelation.
Was Jesus understood fully by people? The truth is Jesus and His message was also misunderstood. Even his disciples didn’t fully understand Jesus’ teachings and that is why Jesus selected Mary Magdalene to continue in his footsteps, which we see in the Gospel of the Beloved Companion:
“You do not understand what she has done. I tell you this: when all have abandoned me, only she shall stand beside me like a tower. A tower built on a high hill and fortified cannot fall, nor can it be hidden. From this day forth, she shall be known as Migdalah, for she shall be as a tower to my flock, and the time will soon come when her tower shall stand alone by mine.” (GBC 32:4)
That is why, some ideas and understanding of concepts come to people with time. Nowadays we have access to a lot of information and we can say our level of consciousness have shifted compared to those times, our level of education and literacy and we can’t compare our way of thinking with times 2 thousand years ago. Plus, the circumstances around it were also much different to how it is now. Therefore it is not that God was revealing Himself differently but the perception of people was different. I am sure if Jesus came back unnoticed today, a lot of people still wouldn’t believe in His message, even those people in Christianity. Just like Jews didn’t accept Jesus because He didn’t fit into their expectations of the Messiah, Jesus would still be rejected due to those expectations.
Where the idea of a harsh God from the Old Testament originated from?
The idea that the Old Testament God is different from the New Testament God primarily originated with the 2nd-century heretic Marcion of Sinope, who argued the Old Testament creator god was a harsh, lesser deity, distinct from the loving Father revealed by Jesus. He believed that Old Testament God was Demiurge: just wrathful, creator of the material world. He taught that the God of the Hebrew Bible was a legalistic, angry creator, while the God of the New Testament was supreme, loving, and merciful, leading to the rejection of the Old Testament by his followers. Marcion argued that the OT was irreconcilable with Jesus’ message. He rejected the OT entirely and only accepted a heavily edited version of Luke’s Gospel and Pauline letters, emphasizing Jesus’ love and salvation. This perception was also amplified due to the teachings of the Apostle Paul, who taught that the Law of God was faulty, that is why Jesus came to complete and finish the Law to free us from this covenant.
“For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second.” Hebrews 8:7
Early Christianity generally saw continuity between Old Testament and New Testament, interpreting Jesus as fulfilling the Law and Prophets. Marcion reversed the approach, portraying Jesus’ God as entirely new and separate and introduced radical dualism.
This perception about different God in the Old Testament and New Testament started to grow and Gnostics and later dualist thinkers adopted or adapted Marcionite ideas of a wrathful creator. Due to the Old Testament often highlighting God’s justice in dealing with a nation, while the New Testament God was more merciful emphasizing mercy through grace and salvation to all, this perception stayed with many. Some people even had a difficulty with accepting Old Testament because of that and some rejected God.
This only proves that questions about God and the nature of God has been since the beginning. It only needs one person to come up with different ideas to then that idea spreading out to other people like a fire and developing in different directions. Essentially, if you didn’t have deep personal experience with God, you would be susceptible to different ideas.
How can we reconcile those aspects of God that could be uncomfortable to us?
There are many aspects to this and this is of course very broad topic, however, if you are only looking through a lens of dogmatic church religion, it can be difficult to reconcile. If you are looking at this topic from different angles and believes like reincarnation, this gives us a different perception. The concept of reincarnation, that I explained in my other post, is a concept that a soul is going through a journey of different lives here on earth forming a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, in order to become a perfected soul through different trials and tribulations. The physical matter is used as a tool of transformation and as an attempt to achieve soul’s perfection and souls divine mission. This gives us a greater understanding of God’s work on a soul that we can’t see or know exactly based on just one life, but God sees soul’s work and areas needed to be worked on throughout multiple lives. Therefore we can’t judge God’s decision to take someone too soon or to take someone through difficult lessons, if we see this person as being righteous in this life. We don’t know the actions of that soul in previous lives but also, we don’t know the divine mission of that soul in current life, therefore we have to leave this judgement aside and trust God, as God is not here to give us one chance, judge us and punish us, but God gives multiple chances for the soul’s purification and achieving salvation.
One of the often brought examples of God’s unfair judgement was found in Deuteronomy 7 when God commanded the Israelites to destroy the Canaanite nations (Hittites, Amorites) upon entering the Promised Land. The primary reason for this was divine judgment against their detestable practices, such as child sacrifice and idolatry, to prevent Israel from adopting these practices and being led astray. The Canaanites were not destroyed because of their ethnicity, but because of their extreme wickedness and to prevent corruption of Israelite faith. God had a specific purpose and Divine assignment for Israel, who were set apart and who were supposed to show God’s power, mercy and love through their actions, their morals, laws and inner light. Therefore God needed to protect them to not be corrupted in any way.
We all know how important environment and culture is and how quickly people can adapt to the culture of that society. We are creatures of habit and the environment we are in has a great influence on us. Israelites quickly adapted to the idolatry while living in Egypt, they spent 40 years in the wilderness to get rid of those bad habits, of idolatry and different practices. It was a long journey for them to get to the Promised Land, however if they lived along with the Canaanites and their detestable practices, then soon some would adapt and become corrupted to those practices. And that would spread across to other people as we are very influential to our environments. Canaanites were a nation of pagan traditions, who practiced rituals of sacrificing their sons and daughters to gods and practiced many detestable rituals. However, God gave them many chances and waited 400 years before judging that nation.
“But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” Genesis 15:16
Therefore God promised the land to Abraham, but Canaanites had to complete all their wickedness for many generations before being destroyed. However, we don’t know if their souls were completely destroyed or perhaps just their bodies and their souls went to live in different bodies and different nations. That is why seeing only with human eyes can be very limiting. We don’t know what was God’s plan on that nation and perhaps some people were saved and lived in different lives.
Another example of harsh decision making was when one of Israelites stole Babylonian garment and hid it under his tent. This resulted in Israelites loosing during their fight with Ai. They couldn’t understand what happened, because God promised them to be with them and suddendly they were loosing. Then God explained:
“So the Lord said to Joshua: “Get up! Why do you lie thus on your face? Israel has sinned, and they have also transgressed My covenant which I commanded them. For they have even taken some of the accursed things, and have both stolen and deceived; and they have also put it among their own stuff.” Joshua 7: 10-11
“Get up, sanctify the people, and say, ‘Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow, because thus says the Lord God of Israel: “There is an accursed thing in your midst, O Israel; you cannot stand before your enemies until you take away the accursed thing from among you.” Joshua 7:13
“Then it shall be that he who is taken with the accursed thing shall be burned with fire, he and all that he has, because he has transgressed the covenant of the Lord, and because he has done a disgraceful thing in Israel.’ ” Joshua 7:15
Achan admitted to the action and this resulted in stoning him and his family. Why this decision? First of all, God wanted for Israelites to fear Him and this would prevent them from acting out. Second of all, God wanted to make a harsh example of acting against His will. With a human eye this was an innocent act, someone stole a nice garment and hid it under the tent. However this action resulted in Israel loosing the battle, many deaths to other people and bringing different gods and demons from Babylonian religion to the land. Spirits and demons are territorial and are often attached to the objects like garments, statutes and similar, therefore this would affect them spiritually without them realizing. Therefore the damage was much greater, this act resulted in sins like: having other gods before God, idolatry, covertness, stealing, lying and resulting in many unnecessary deaths. The difference was perception: with human eyes, this was an innocent act. With God’s eyes: this resulted in many transgressions and affecting other people with demons. God was only acting from the place of protection. He saw the death of that family as necessary sacrifice rather than potentially loosing His nation. Moreover, I am sure that family and their soul went on to reincarnate into different bodies and their souls were not fully destroyed, just bodies.
Why fear of the Lord was important to God?
Many people don’t understand why we need to have the fear of God. Should we just view God as a merciful and loving Father? Why the need of the fear? Simple answer is, imagine being a parent, or perhaps you are a parent. I am sure you have examples where you wanted to inflict some fear in your children so that they wouldn’t behave the same way again. The concept of the fear of the Lord was to help people to obey His law, to serve Him with all their hearts and to be aware of the consequences if obedience wasn’t present. Just like any parent that can discipline or reward their children for good behavior, God was disciplining His children for disobedience and not following his commandments.
“The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. Moreover by them Your servant is warned, And in keeping them there is great reward.” Psalm 19:8 -10; 11
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; a good understanding have all those who do His commandments. His praise endures forever.” Psalm 111:10
Some may say, but why do we need to be obedient and follow God’s commandments as adults? If we take this into current times, politically we are dealing with many issues of immigration and different opinions on that. As a foreigner myself living in a different country, I always bring this example. Imagine wanting to take the law from your country to your new country and insisting to live according to your old law in a new country. It wouldn’t work. In a same way we have a system in spiritual world, which we cannot see by the way. If you would like protection and blessings from God, then God requires obedience to His Law. If however you prefer to live morally free with no boundaries, then you are under the law of the Prince of this world. Either way, you have to follow some rules and you will be under one or another. However, God’s law is simply common sense: do not kill, do not steal, do not commit adultery.. It is not impossible to follow that law. Those actions have consequences in state law as much as in moral law. Maybe you will not go to prison for cheating on your wife, but you will loose your family and home. Therefore I don’t understand why people object so much about God’s law and find it so diffuclt to obey. Bottom line is, God’s law is here to help us cohabit with each other and different nations, to have one universal moral language. It’s all out of love and protection rather that restriction.
Another question that comes to mind, why then God was revealing Himself so much back then and judging people a lot and not so much now?
First we have to take into consideration few aspects like the times people lived then, the level of collective consciousness, the level of faith and spiritual awareness. When we look at times before Christ, we can say it was a time of early becoming and developing. The level of collective consciousness was much lower compared to current times. At times it was quite primitive when we read about the times of Sodom and Gomorah. However, people’s faith and spiritual awareness was much greater, therefore it was easier for people to recognize any signs from God. Notice that God went into a covenant with Abraham through a vision in a sleep state of Abraham, also God revealed himself to Joseph in a dream. Dreams were taken seriously back then and often viewed as guide from God. Nowadays, through our lifestyles, unhealthy diets, medications, drugs, alcohol and any other mind alterations, people don’t take dreams seriously or simply don’t remember upon waking up. We are so distracted, surrounded by many sounds, by busy lifestyles and no time for reflection, for listening to silence, that people simply don’t recognize any signs from God. That doesn’t mean there are no signs from God, but those signs seem unsignificant to the modern eye or ear. People have been conditioned through Hollywood movies like Harry Potter, Wizard of Oz, Wicked and expecting big magic, sparkles, potions and similar. But God could simply show up giving someone better mood the next day, or a peaceful sleep, or sending nice person who will say exactly what we need to hear or giving motivation to action. This is what we often associate with ourselves, not realising that God works through us and through others and this is how God communicates with us.
Different levels of understanding
The Old Testament is filled with stories where God was angry with Israelites due to their disobedience of not following the Law, defiling the Sabbath and people constantly being drawn to idolatry, worshiping other gods that would invite demons into the nation. However, it is also important to notice that the pages of the Old Testament are spread across 4 thousand years. That’s 4 thousand years of different levels of understanding, early stages of soul’s development and different circumstances. For God, it was also different emphasis depending on the time. God didn’t give His Law to Adam and Eve as it was not the time, He didn’t also give it to Noah or even Abraham. The times needed to evolve, people consciousness and understanding needed to evolve and then, when people were ready, God gave the Law to Moses. That is very short summary of over 4 thousand years. When we look at the times in sections:
From Adam to Abraham – 2 ,000 years
From Abraham to Moses – 500 years
From Moses to David – 500 years
From David to Jesus – 1,000 years
Each time God was presenting Himself to the level of consciousness that people could grasp and understand. The same with the Laws and ordinances, they weren’t given straight away in the way Moses received them. The first commandment Adam and Eve received was to be fruitful and multiply. Due to people not having specific laws, this led to Noah’s times of disobedience, idolatry and evil. God had to cleanse the earth and start again with Noah. That story was meant to show us that laws and rules are necessary for healthy cohabitation. Then Abraham received a promise from God due to his way of life based on faith and obedience long before the Law was given to Moses. However as we know, Israel was held under captivity in Egypt and spent around 430 years under captivity. That was a time when they’ve developed “bad habits” and learnt idolatry from Egypt. Once being saved from Egypt, Israel spent 40 years in the wilderness to get rid of those bad habits and idolatrous tendencies. It wasn’t a quick process and God didn’t magically take away from them all those habits, they had to go through that transformation themselves. After this they received the Law of Moses and for 500 years they were on the right track, especially when David was a King and people had a good ruler and guide, which then reflected on other people and their lives. However after David, all this went downhill and for the next 1 thousand years Israel went back to those “bad habits” and developed rigid and wrong understanding of the Law. When Jesus came, he wanted to bring people back to the true essence of the Law and right understanding. He didn’t come to destroy the Law, but to shift people’s understanding about the Law and how to observe it. To help people unlearn and learn again. Jesus didn’t replace Torah, he made sense of it.
Why rituals and sacrifices were necessary at that time?
As you can see, each phrase was necessary for people and also each phrase represented different level of collective consciousness. One thing was evident, Israel would constantly fall into idolatry and that seemed to be more natural path for people. That is why God required specific rituals and sacrifices to bring Israel into the right path and help people to adapt it as a second nature.
As humans, we are a creatures of habit, we need habits to help us go by and we develop some daily rituals unconsciously. Research suggests that the human brain operates on autopilot in approximately 65% to 90% of our daily activities, that are driven by habits, routines, and implicit processes rather than conscious new decision-making. Only about 10% to 35% of daily behavior involves deliberate, conscious thinking or new thought. This is how much our brain likes to preserve energy and very quickly develop a habit that will not require much work. And God, as being our Creator, He knew that people had to develop daily rituals to help them on a right track. Rituals were a physical representation of changing nature. Through rituals we would awaken the habit of worshiping the Lord but those specific rituals like sacrifices were never meant to stay forever.
Moses brought commandments due to the fact that at that time, collective consciousness was not developed to the level where people could just drop bad habits they’ve learnt in Egypt and worship God correctly on their own. The purpose of the ceremonial laws was to accommodate their weakness, people absorbed bad habits in Egypt but also they had an attraction to worship the physical, therefore idolatry seemed to be a natural path. Ceremonial laws were to take people out of that and bring their awareness elsewhere.
For example God commanded to attach tasels to their outer garments, not for decoration but for rememberence. There is this saying : “out of sight, out of mind”. This is what God was trying to bring – by sight into the mind. Once they had developed those habits to the point they would come naturally to them, it would be like a second nature, an instinct and no need to keep looking at the tassels or the commandements.
People had this attraction to fall into what was familiar, however that would keep them stuck and keep them in psychological slavery. People have a tendency to keep unto something they can see, measure, obtain and define. If it’s something outside of their definition and there is a gap in their understanding, then that becomes a threat rather than a saviour. This fear of unknown or fear of something they can’t see or measure would cause them to fall back into a safer option – an object they can see, touch and label.
The purpose of sacrifice was to turn Israel away from idolatry. God never wanted for sacrifices to be a permanent ordinance, however through the sacrifice and pulling on people’s hearts, this was supposed to draw them away from the idolatry. Why? Because idolatry was taking them into an unknown territory of the enemy that they didn’t see, understand or know. That enemy would trick them constantly, confuse them and take them to a longer road of remembrance. The enemy would cloud their vision, judgement and understanding. They would present bad as good and good as bad. But people would constantly fall into the idolatry through the temptation of worshiping something they can see, touch and measure. That constant fall into known and familiar. With that they were prolonging their road, in their eyes they were getting smarter, in God’s eyes they were rejecting God’s blessings and God’s protection. It was this dance of a stubborn child with a parent.
What about blood sacrifices? How can we reconcile this in modern times?
Many people have difficulty to accept that God needed blood sacrifices and this idea developed that God was this evil Demiurge that wanted power and blood sacrifices. How come God wanted for people to kill animals for a sacrifice. First of all we need to take it to the perspective. When we look at modern times, we kill more animals in the food industry for the purpose of meat produce, that Israelites did across centuries during their rituals.
If we look at what was important to God – to teach Israel a lesson about severity of sin. Each sacrifice was supposed to teach them how precious life is. Blood symbolizes life and sacrificing blood emphasizes the seriousness of sin. Sin has real consequences and costs life in a symbolic sense. Sacrifices were a teaching tool, that sin has consequences and redemption requires some sort of sacrifice or cost of something. Sacrifices trained people morally and spiritually, reinforcing that God values life, holiness, and justice. Animal sacrifices were never meant to stay forever, but were just a tool. With each sacrifice, people were supposed to feel compassion for the animals and with that, not want to sin. Because every time they sinned, the sacrifice was needed. Blood was this visual representation of their sin. Looking at the blood would result in pulling on their hearts and with that improve their behaviours. However, God didn’t require blood in the same way as demons or Satan would require. God gives and takes, whereas Satan only takes. God would restore and bless Israel, therefore this wasn’t an evil act but a teaching lesson.
To conclude, it is good to ask questions about God, however it is important to go there with an open mind, not with pre-conditioned mind and expectations. Our confirmation bias will only confirm what we want to see, rather than the truth. Another important point is to always remember that every antient text presenting God is from the author perspective, experience, level of consciousness and times they lived in. There is a lot to consider before coming to various conclusions. We can also see how humanity likes to follow certain trends and ideas, which also shapes their understanding. One person is enough to bring a distorted view about God, like it was with Marcion of Sinope and his idea of evil God that many people then followed and expanded. Moreover, people like to jump into conclusions to fill in any gaps of understanding they might have in their mind. This is our natural tendency, if we don’t have the full picture, let me fill those gaps with assumptions and therefore this will be enough. However, it is important to check facts, roots and different angles, before accepting one belief.
When people reject God of the Old Testament it is usually due to following someone else’s belief and not willing to study Old Testament on their own, which requires time and patience. It is also due to having specific expectations of how God should be in their eyes. Just like Israelites rejected God’s messages through prophets because it didn’t sound as they wanted. This continues in modern times, where people prefer easy to hear messages. However this is not always the truth, but people would rather sacrifice the truth for the lie because it sounds better. God is the same but we are changing and times are changing, therefore we will see God in different light. However God from the Old Testament is the same God from the New Testament. God just had different representatives here on earth that could give different view about Him, however God is the same yesterday, today and forever.
By Dagmara Z.