In a Monday May 17th article in USA Today, Dr. James McGrath, the Clarence L. Goodwin Chair of New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University in Indianapolis, IN. expounded on the cultural perception of the character and nature of God. Exploring the differences between Eastern and Western religion, Dr. McGrath suggests that evolving cultural perceptions of God may be the reason that Americans are split as to the character and nature of God or what God is like.
Within Society, Who Gets The Credit For Good & Evil?
Using the the hit series Lost, Dr. McGrath expounds on the conflict between good and evil in Taoism and its concept of yin and yang, as as contrasted to Judeo Christian monotheism's concept of separate, purely good and purely evil sources. Dr. McGrath claims that the latter type of understanding may be the culprit for many of our changing attitudes about the source of good and evil. He says this:
"In Judaism and Christianity, monotheism raises issues on how to account for evil in the world. As evil comes increasingly to be blamed on subordinate malevolent figures such as the devil, we find actions that were once attributed to God later being attributed to Satan. In the Bible, for instance, compare 2 Samuel 24, where the Lord incites David to carry out a census, with the later 1 Chronicles 21, which says that Satan was responsible."
Truly speaking, the Judeo Christian concept of God, good and evil are decidedly different from Buddhism and it's sibling Taoism as we've discussed in The New Enlightenment Pt. 6. There we examined Tiger Woods and his reversion to Buddhism as his source of attempting to overcome evil. More in depth discussion on Yin and Yang and the problems of Buddhist understanding of good and evil is available in that post.
Is Scripture In Conflict?
According to Dr. McGrath our understanding of the nature of God is evolving and has evolved over the years even leaving some scriptural evidence as proof. The issue I would like to undertake in this post centers around the biblical difficulty that Dr. McGrath presented. There are 3 conflicts I would like to address:
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