Renowned Atheist, Richard Dawkins, describes the God of the Old Testament as ‘the most unpleasant character in all of fiction’. This is an interesting quote because it captures perfectly what most skeptics think about God and the bible. Firstly, they believe God is ruthless and secondly, that the bible is a work of fiction. The term ‘the God of the Old Testament’ in itself is erroneous: it suggests there is a different God in the New Testament. Dr. Ravi Zacharias refers to this as ‘a false dichotomy’.

Indeed there is a lot of bloodshed in the Old Testament. If you flip through the pages long enough, I won’t be shocked if you end up with bloody fingers. Most of the killings were done either directly by God or they were done at his command either by angels or humans. The most popular ones include the killing of all of humanity (save 8 people) in Noah’s time. The death toll of the flood should be in the millions. There are several other massacres scattered all over the pages of the Old Testament. Below, I have visualized a few of them in this interactive Bar Graph, do check it out.

How do we reconcile God’s almost instant judgment on people who sin against him and the fact that he told Jeremiah ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love’? How does God call himself ‘LOVE’ yet kill people mercilessly? Let’s look at Uzzah for example. He had the best of intentions to save the Ark of the Covenant from falling, so why did God kill him at that very moment?

Uzzah was killed because he disobeyed the law concerning the ark. The problem is sin, not God.

According to the definition of love in 1st Corinthians 13, ‘Love doesn’t rejoice at wrongdoing’. Imagine God in all his holiness, who has created man in his image, only to see man wandering off and chasing after ephemeral pleasures of this world that are in actual fact dung. It is sickening for God to see man wallow in sin and chase after other gods that are non-existent in the first place. God asked Jeremiah, ‘Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit’ Jer 2:11. He was talking about Israel here but indeed this applies to all humanity. For we were all created by God. Can you imagine the hurt he felt when his own people turned away from him to whore after foreign gods? In Noah’s time, sin so greatly abounded that God regretted creating man. Love cannot rejoice in wrongdoing – and God is love. That is why he punishes people who sin.

But isn’t God merciful? Well, of course, he is. Nevertheless, we must understand that as much as mercy is a function of love, so is intolerance for wrongdoing. Love without a deliberate attempt to wipe out evil is just empty talk. There is correction in love. There is purging in love. There is nurturing in love. Ultimately, there is punishment in love.  Therefore we shouldn’t be shocked at the fact that both mercy and intolerance for wrongdoing dwell in God. But, so are the other characteristics of love. Love is patient. Love suffers long. There is no personality in human history who has suffered long for the sake of love more than Jehovah. Usually, we lose sight of how long it took God to punish some people for the wrong they did. Throughout the Old Testament we see God delay punishments even for the most heinous of sins. He didn’t delay punishment for the sake of it, but while at it, he offered a hand of grace to the culprits so they would be pardoned. Let’s take for example the exodus of the Israelites. These people offended God every step of the way for 40 years. Some got their punishments immediately they sinned, but God was generally patient with the entire congregation for such a long time. Also, it took Noah 120 years to complete the ark. The bible refers to him as a preacher of righteousness: while constructing the ark he kept preaching to the people to repent. For 120 years God watched on as humans rolled in the mud of sin, yet he held back till the ark was completed before he punished them.

There are so many things that people do not consider when they say that God was wicked in the Old Testament. Let’s look at a few of such factors:

• The Law: It isn’t God who put sin in us thereby making us candidates of his punishment, it was the law. Where there is no law, there is no sin (Romans 4:15). Do you know Adam and Eve wouldn’t have been thrown out of Eden had they killed every single animal in the garden? Why? Because there was no law against that very act. The only law that existed in Eden was the one that prohibited them from eating the fruit, therefore, any other act wasn’t a sin. One act of sin changed the nature of man. So under the law even our righteous acts are like a filthy rag before him because sin is our nature. Literally, God was disgusted by man. Therefore the problem isn’t God being wicked, it is man going against the will of the almighty God when we are fully aware of the consequences. The punishment for sin is death. Also, people often call Jehovah evil because they are ignorant of how the other ‘gods’ dealt with their worshippers in times past. Some of the gods the Israelites chased after demanded human sacrifice – preferably the sacrifice of their children. God never asked anybody to do this … well apart from Abraham and even he was stopped from killing Isaac.
• God punishes the children for the wrongs of their fathers just us he blesses the children for the good deeds of their fathers: It seems rather unfair that sometimes innocent children have to die for the wrong deeds of generations that lived way before they were born.

In those days they shall no longer say:
“‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’
But everyone shall die for his own iniquity. Each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge. (Jeremiah 31:29-30)

Countless times in the Old Testament we see God making reference to the good deeds of people like Abraham and David being the reason why generations after them were to be blessed. There are so many examples of this fact that I can’t begin to quote them all here. Another thing worth knowing about God is that he can change his mind about the evil he is about to visit on a person who has sinned against him but never does he change his mind about the good he intends to do (correct me if I’m wrong).

“It may be they will listen, and everyone turn from his evil way, that I may relent of the disaster that I intend to do to them because of their evil deeds” Jeremiah 26:3

• God is sovereign: I often hear atheists calling God a serial killer, a murderer … excuse me, by whose standards are you judging God? The whole world sat and watched Saddam Hussein executed. Notice how humans call it ‘an execution’? Ha! Semantics. He was executed for the wrongs he had done against humanity. Human beings set up courts of law that determine the fate of other human beings, whether they deserve a prison sentence or death. And we have a problem when the Supreme Being and Creator of the heavens and earth has a death sentence too? The truth is, God answers to nobody. One has to be under a law to break it. He isn’t under any of the laws that govern human affairs hence we can’t say he has broken them. That is sovereignty. So when he who is sovereign decides to overlook your sinful deeds and grant you your life because he is gracious and merciful, you better accept it. A friend of mine said “only God knows how to keep a balance between love and justice’. When I think about this statement, this expression comes to mind “to tamper justice with mercy”. Which means in a legal situation, mercy, which is a function of love has no place. Only God knows how to be Love and Just at the same time. The cross is where we see both Justice and Love fully represented in one ruling. The penalty of sin was fully paid at the cross and because of that humanity received undeserved grace and mercy.

God hasn’t changed at all, he is still merciful and intolerant of sin. It is just his Grace and Mercy that have been revealed unto us in such a tremendous way because of the death of his Son. It isn’t God who has changed, it is the Testaments that have changed. When your landlord changes the terms and conditions in your tenancy agreement for it to favor you more, it isn’t your landlord that has changed, it is the conditions under which you occupy his property that have. God is still intolerant of sin. However, there is mercy when we sin and there is Grace to keep us from sinning. Please note, Grace and Mercy will end pretty soon. One of these days, God will come not as a lamb but as a ravenous lion.

One other question people often ask is, why should the man who stole 1 cedi receive the same punishment (hell) as the serial killer? This is the same reason why the thief on the cross (who got saved a few hours before he died) ended up in heaven just as the global evangelist who won millions of souls. It isn’t by deeds that we go to either heaven or hell, it is by faith or unbelief. The thief on the cross is a typical example of what I’m saying. He didn’t have to observe the Sabbath or anything else, he just had to believe in Christ and jump to his defense when the other thief accused Jesus. So there it is faith: Belief + Actions. There are degrees of punishment in hell anyway, just as there are degrees of rewards (crowns) in heaven. In Luke 10:13-14, Jesus warns the people of Bethsaida and Chorazin to repent. He said that it would be MORE BEARABLE for the people of Tyre and Sidon on judgment day than it will be for them.

We really can’t judge a person’s character by scrutinizing aspects of their behavior or relations with other people. We need to assess them based on their general behavior. So if you think God is evil based on the killings in the Old Testament, how about the blessings and victories he lavished on his people and all who feared him? You certainly cannot ignore those. This article isn’t extensive enough to capture everything on this topic. If you noticed, I used verses in Jeremiah a lot because I studied that book not too long ago. Therefore if you have questions on this topic from other parts of the bible, do ask them in the comment session and let’s get talking.

Often when this topic comes up for discussion, people make reference to the first couple in human history: Adam and Eve. Adam didn’t have the option of choosing a life partner for himself but God ‘recognized’ a lack in Adam’s life and decided to provide a solution for it. Let me veer off a bit to address a pertinent issue here: Eve was not an afterthought! Even the devil wasn’t an afterthought.  I can’t ever come to terms with the fact that God didn’t intend to create Eve initially. Especially when he created the male and female species of every animal and instructed them to be fruitful and multiply. He said that even to birds and fishes. Now, he gave the same instruction to Adam and Eve, which implies that that was his intention all along. How was man supposed to do that if Eve wasn’t created? The question is, why didn’t God create Eve right away? The lion and the lioness were created at the same time, so the lion was never alone. Why did God allow Adam to feel the absence of Eve before creating her? God is sovereign but never have I read in scripture that he abused his sovereignty. So anytime I see him exercise his sovereignty in any part of the bible, I know there is a lesson to learn.

Adam saw creation in its purest state before the fall. If you are impressed by the beauty of nature in our day and age or blown away by the awe-inspiring colorful display of flowers in any garden, I wonder how you would react at the sight of the garden planted by the Gardener himself. Eden had to be the most amazing place on earth at the time. To top it all, Adam had fellowship with God. It isn’t stated in scripture but I don’t doubt he might have had face-to-face encounters with God. So if after all these – the splendor of Eden and fellowship with God – Adam was still considered ‘alone’, by delaying in the creation of Eve, God was just showing off the value of womanhood. It is more like God kept man’s greatest asset away from him so man could feel how empty life would be without her. Then BAM! One day, here she is. Brother man didn’t know what to say upon seeing her. Knowing God and how he communicates to us sometimes, I believe the delay in the creation of Eve was all a set-up to reveal how man is incomplete without his suitable helper (Eve).

Here is the thing, God never told Adam directly that Eve was his life partner. In other words, God didn’t impose Eve on Adam, he just presented her to him. It is Adam who was so blown away by the beauty of Eve that he said passionately ‘… this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh…’. Nevertheless, it is clear Adam didn’t have options. He didn’t have Evelyn and Eva snooping around his relationship and ready to comfort him anytime he had issues with Eve. Adam didn’t have options, therefore it is logical to conclude God expected him to marry Eve.

Anyway, here are two key lessons from Adam’s story:

1. God will never force you to marry a particular person.

“Errm but God commanded the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute?” Well, of course he did. But at the end of the day the specific prostitute Hosea married was up to him. God just told him the kind of woman to marry and not which one in particular. In Adam’s case God presented Eve to him. God intended her to be a suitable help to him. However, God never imposed Eve on Adam. But because Adam didn’t have options, the union between Adam and Eve appeared to be an imposition. I believe God hasn’t changed since the incidence in Eden. Often people say ‘oh because Adam blamed God for giving him a woman that led him into sin God won’t force anybody into marrying a specific person’. While it is true that God won’t force you into marrying somebody, the reason stated above is rather a weak one. The main reason why God won’t force you into marrying a particular person is, He will never violate the human will. God will never ever violate the human will in any instance. That is what makes us human beings in the first place: the ability to choose to be what we want to be. If there was ever a reason for God to violate the human will, it wouldn’t be for an ephemeral and a trivial matter as who you marry. Now, a person’s spouse can make or break him/her but that cannot be compared to the salvation of the human soul. If God cannot force every human being to become a Christian, then he surely cannot go against his very nature and force his choices on you. This isn’t a sign of weakness at all, on the contrary, it proves to us that even in his sovereignty God allows us to willingly choose the right path.

2. There is such a thing as the perfect will of God which he has intended for all of us to willingly walk in.

From the story, we hear the thoughts of God concerning the singleness of Adam. God said ‘it is not good for man to be alone, I will make for him a help-meet’. Which means he had a plan for Adam concerning the creation of a suitable helper for him. This is God’s intention. We all know how that story ended but let’s assume Adam rejected Eve and didn’t want to have anything to do with her. Would God have force Eve on Adam? Would God have twisted Adams arms into accepting Eve? God will respect your choice though he has a better option for you. By respecting your choice I don’t mean he will honor it. He just steps back and watches as you make a mess out of yourself. In Jeremiah 8:3 God said ‘And death shall be chosen rather than life…’. Basically, life and death are the options, it is up to you to choose one. Though God would rather you chose life, he won’t impose it on you. If even in the matters of life and death God wouldn’t force you to choose life but rather leave it up to your discretion, why would he force a life partner on you? Nobody stumbles and falls into the will of God. It takes a lot of dying to walk in God’s will. It takes a lot of humility to do that. Until you intentionally ask God to assist you in taking a decision – especially concerning your life partner – do not expect his will to be done automatically in that area of your life.

So the point is made, God won’t force you to marry a particular person even though he has a specific person in mind for you. How then can one get to meet this person? By asking God to direct you to the person or let your paths cross. He can choose to give you directions via whatever medium. It could be prophecy. It could be in a dream. It could appear as a coincidence. Sometimes he will burden your heart with the specifications of a ‘perfect spouse’, so that you set out in search of such a person. Whatever it is, when you ask him about it, he will definitely show up and direct you. I believe God can speak through his servants the prophets concerning your future spouse. As has been discussed already, it doesn’t mean he has imposed the person on you. Just like all other prophecies, you will never get a detailed description of the person. At best you can be told the person’s name, physical features, career etc. just a ‘little something’ to help you identify the person. As you may know already, this is because prophets know in parts and prophesy in parts. There is always an element of mystery about every prophecy. So yes, prophecy can come in to guide you in the process of selecting your spouse. It doesn’t come to bind you and make you stiff-necked. Though a prophetic word has the power to create miracles, most of the times it comes in just to inform you about a future matter. It is up to you to subject your will to it for it to come to pass. When God says you will marry person A or B, it is still up to you to accept it as his perfect will for you or to choose your own path. If you go ahead and marry person G it is all on you.

This is a stern warning to the people – especially the brothers – who can’t woo a woman to save their lives and therefore resort to blackmailing them with so-called revelations and prophecies. Desist from that! If God revealed it to you that she is the one, be honorable enough and don’t go and tell her God said this and that therefore she should give you a chance. That is infantile. Prophecy is not a tool for blackmail. Will you walk into a bank and demand a million dollars because there’s a prophecy concerning an impending wealth hanging over your head? When God says you will be rich, it usually means you will work hard to get there. God promised the Israelites a land flowing with milk and honey. He didn’t tell them about the giants they had to kill to get the milk and honey. Even if there were no giants, they would have had to milk cows to get the milk and rear bees to harvest the honey. There is no such thing as a land flowing with milk and honey in reality. But there is such a thing as a land filled with bees and cattle. When a prophecy comes, often there is a certain amount of work to be done by the person the prophecy is about. God said Sister Belinda is your wife … blessed and highly favored are you among all men bro. Now get up like the confident brother that God expects you to be, step up to Belinda, strike a conversation, start a friendship and develop it into a relationship. Faithful is he who has said it, he is more than able to help you work it out too. Believe in him.

The conclusion of the matter is, God has a perfect will for all of us even concerning the most trivial things in our lives. I once got a prophecy concerning the fact that I have been desiring to grow my beard for so long. I want to be ‘Beard Gang’ so bad! Though I deem it embarrassingly trivial to speak about it openly, guess who cares about it too: Elohim. The one who created over a billion stars in space and knows each one of them by name. God indeed has a perfect will for all of us concerning every area of our lives. Will we humble ourselves and pray about it? He won’t impose it on you but he will guide you to it so you make the choice yourself. Whatever your choice, there is either a blessing or a curse waiting for you. Pray about it and he will definitely intervene and lead you to the right person.

References: Hosea 1, Genesis 1 and 2, 1 Corinthians 13:9.

Apparently, he had taken her along with him to America and found her a very lucrative work to do. Soon she grew wings, and soared way above his command and authority and therefore didn’t give him the respect due him. This old man, well over 60 years, clearly hadn’t gotten over the pain. He didn’t seem to care how inappropriate his personal experience was, as a contribution to our casual conversation. He went on and on. I looked at him and said to myself, ‘mehhnn I wouldn’t want to experience that, and even if I do I don’t want to be bitter about it for many years after’. When I look at my life and around me, I see the reenactment of this same story. For some funny reason, most of my friends, especially those in my inner circle have had bad experiences with women in their relationships. At least 7 of my friends have experienced this (I am not exaggerating). 7 of my closest friends have been treated badly in their relationships. 7!!!. And some of them have had this experience multiple times. And for others, though it has been many years since they were ditched, they are yet to understand why it had come to such an end. I do not understand it at all. These are guys I have known for many years and wouldn’t mind the idea of them dating my sister (if I had one). So for such fine gentlemen to be treated badly and disposed off, with the most unreasonable excuses, I find that rather strange. I haven’t had the best of experiences in that area of my life either. I am  too embarrassed to talk about them. It just doesn’t make sense. I know guys are notorious for taking their relationships for granted or toying with ladies’ emotions, but honestly tables are turning now. It appears  guys are on the receiving end now. So yes, I am doing this for the brothers. I am doing this for the brothers who have been hurt and are suffering deep inside because our societal norms stifle the expression of emotions in guys. I am doing this for all of you. I find it very annoying, the number of blog posts and articles one can find on the subject of ‘how to treat a woman’. Some of them have the most outrageous captions too. For example ‘crossing the 7 seas leading to a woman’s heart’ , ‘you are not good enough for her’, ’12 steps to take to make your woman happy’ and my personal favorite ‘how to swing successfully across 17 monkey bars into your woman’s arms’. Apparently it is impossible to walk into her arms, because you might just slip on a banana peel, so it’s better to swing on monkey bars.

Nobody seems to care about the fact that men need attention and understanding too. Of course we all agree that women can be a bit complex, but what is the sense in making every effort for a man to understand a complex woman and none at all in making the woman understand her man? We need a balance. We need to be understood too. It is obvious some ladies think they have us all figured out. So you will often hear them make such statements as ‘guys are just babies’. This shouldn’t come as a surprise at all to our dear ladies. We all have elements of childishness in us, when you do discover it in your man, good for you! Don’t  go about rubbing it in his face every day. The act of discovering the weakness of a person and rubbing it in his/her face isn’t particularly a mature act anyway.

I have discovered that most guys react in a very negative way after such ordeals. They tend to be very resentful and vengeful. Some go to the extreme extent of becoming very distrustful and emotionless in subsequent relationships. Listen, that isn’t good enough bruh! Yes, it is painful. Yes, it makes you doubt your worth. Every breath you take in after that day, makes you feel you are unworthy of the next because of your folly. The folly of believing that you were supposed to love her with every bit of you. Chill bruh! That is wrong! Just as there are good women, there are very mean ones out there. So if you encountered the mean ones, do your best to pick up the necessary lessons, dust yourself and move on to become a better person. No lady deserves the punishment for the sins of your previous partner. Work on yourself. Forgive and let go of the past. There is no need to be bitter. When you toss dried grains of maize from a bowl, the chaff floats away and the grains fall back into the bowl. When people leave your life, they are chaff: white powdery chaff. Let them go!

I believe when you feel hated or rejected it is best you focus on the love around you. The love of God is rather more than enough and it is best to feed on that greatly during such instances. Also, for us as guys it is best we feast on the love our first female lovers(our mothers) have for us. Some of us are treated as kings by our mothers. We literally see them devise means and ways to get us to eat even when we don’t want to. We feel like we are the center of their world. So when that lady isn’t giving you all her attention, turn your back and give your attention to the woman who does. More often than not, you will end up enjoying it.