I've been thinking about the Incarnation a lot lately. Jesus does a lot of things. One of those things is making God expressable in a way we can understand.
Frequently people look at God in the Old Testament and tell me they find Him very confusing. He does things that don't seem to mesh with the morality Jesus taught. He does things that don't mesh with what we think of as moral today.
There are two important ideas that we run into as we work through this issue.
Point One: The Question of Perception
There is a thought experiment I came up with many years ago thinking about the way people see the world.
Man A stands up in a crowd and shoots another Man B.
Man A is a murderer.
Then we learn that the Man A shot Man B because he saw the Man B preparing to blow up a bomb.
Man A is a hero.
Then we learn that the Man A was actually delusional and what he thought was a bomb was a colostomy bag.
Man A is a murderer.
As information about a situation changes our perception of whether or not actions were moral changes. Perception of morality is controlled by point of view.
Point Two: The Question of Ability
A question a lot of people have bandied about with me in leisure time - If you could go back in time and kill Hitler would you?
No matter what answer you come to it is a great question to consider. I think the problem most people have with the question is they don't consider how a change in ability changes morality.
One thing that is debatable is whether or not taking a human life to save one or many is ok. I'm not going to address that as the situation could be changed to not include death, but I like the impact the situation has.
Let's consider this hypothetical and see where it takes us. I can travel through time. I don't know what the effects of changing time will be.
I know that Hitler will cause the death of many. If I kill him though, do I save those lives? What if that makes things worse? What is more people die? Without knowing this I can't claim to be saving lives by killing Hitler.
I guess my morality hasn't changed. Let's add another dimension though. Let's say now I know exactly what will happen if I kill Hitler. 1 million fewer people will die.
So, does killing Hiter change in morality? What if you knew a bomb was going off tomorrow that would kill millions and you refused to stop the person who was going to arm it?
Is that immoral? Are you killing people through neglect? We have a hard time with this question because we never know exactly what the consequences of our actions will be. There will be lots of repercussions and we can guess, but never know.
So, does adding this ability to change the past and perfectly know the future change fundamental aspects of morality?
We don't understand His decisions because our morality is based on having imperfect information. Our entire way of thinking is deeply rooted in the concept making decisions based on partial information and possibly being wrong. We have to account for not knowing what will happen based on our choices.
God doesn't haven't to deal with that and therefore He will act differently.
Conclusion: Incarnation is God Expressed
I think it does and I think here we have one of the biggest problems with knowing God. His knowledge and power are qualitatively different from ours so His morality will be fundamentally different. That just compounds our misunderstandings.
This is why the Incarnation is important. Jesus is God expressed in a language we can understand. His abilities match ours so he will act in the same moral framework.
This is in no way an exhaustive analysis of the situation. I'm just sharing the approach I've been taking when considering questions of the morality of God's actions in the Old Testament and how they mesh the message Jesus shares of "Who God Is" in the New Testament.
I welcome discussion and criticism and will hopefully learn from it.
I like your thought experiment. It clearly shows the difference knowing "the full story" makes in our perception of what is just. And that's the point: we know infinitely less than God, yet judge his justness on our knowledge. But if we start with the belief that God is just, then we can more easily trust in that and know that we don't see the whole picture.
ReplyDeleteI have not thought about the incarnation as almost an interpretation of God's character into a timeframe and experience we can understand. To connect that concept to the greater Biblical revelation of his character helps make that faithful first belief: God is just, he is loving. If things appear otherwise, it's because we don't know the whole story.