Is God deceitful?
In a previous class we read through the Book of Judith. It is the story of a young Jewish widow who decides to take action against forces that are oppressing her people, when the leaders of her people decide to refrain from action. The passage above is an excerpt from the prayer recited just before putting her plan into action. In class we stopped to discuss the concept of a God who would help someone be deceitful.
What it essentially boiled down to was that God will aid His people so long as they do not sin against Him. Even if achieving justice is through somewhat shady means, He will provide for His people so long as that one clause is kept.
This class discussion has stuck with me more than any others have and I think it is because a passage like this would be a hot button issue in the American Church today.
As technology and sciences become further advanced, it is evident that people have outgrown their need for God. I am not an atheist or a member of the Tea Party Rallies, I am merely being objective. With the advances of science, we can explain accurately mysteries that were unexplainable 400 years ago. What we once attributed to acts of God due to our ignorance, now we call tornados or lightning. Because God is less necessary for most everyday explanations in the lives of many, the gray areas of monotheistic faith has subsequently been under a microscope in the last few decades because many question whether the rules governing this faith ought to govern society as well.
Ethical questions often expose gray areas, and this passage poses an ethical question for me: Should God gift his followers with deceitfulness? The question becomes even stickier when further reading into the story reveals that through Judith's deceit she was able to execute the leader of the oppressive forces by beheading him. Now we have deceit AND murder.
For me, this is hard to justify with words. Yet the rationale that I have behind it is this: when we attempt to define an omnipotent and all-powerful God, the Alpha & the Omega, and creator of the universe, words will always fall short. If you believe in a God that stands outside of time and space, you cannot define that God with words that can only describe and articulate everything that exists within the box that God created. God stands outside the box, and is thus indescribable.
Therefore, stapling rules and clauses on how this same God OUGHT to act by our standards is completely superfluous in my mind. Yes I am a Christian, and my faith is extremely strong. I despise ignorance and I welcome challenges to my faith, because if I cannot articulate to you my I profess Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, then why am I a Christian? Yet this ethical question became relatively simple to me when I put it up to the two truths that my faith is ground upon: God is Love, and God is Just. While for some of you that may not be enough of an answer to help solve the issues we have in the world today, it is the one that allows me to sleep at night. Why? Because I know that God cares about the sick, the weak, the oppressed, and loves them. Jesus spent most of His time on Earth healing the sick, loving on people (especially children), and caring for the poor.
So what does all this have to do with my passage? If I were in the shoes of Judith, my prayer would have been, "Lord, please aid your servant in my quest to make things right for Your people. But may Your will, not mine be done." Therefore, while some may get hung up imagining a God that promotes deceit, I believe that I serve a God that has the answers to all the gray areas, and if God achieves true justice by means I don't fully understand, that's perfectly fine.
~Z
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