I also wonder about God's choice of leaders in the Old Testament.Pointedstick wrote:If God is all-powerful, I don't understand why he had to bother with all this indirection. It seems like God had the contradictory aims of steering man in a certain direction He preferred while simultaneously preserving man's free will (since I assume God could simply cause us all to do what He wanted due to his omnipotence). Why bother sending his son down to offer to save man? Why not offer to save man himself, or even just save us without the offer? Why not create a new kind of man that doesn't need to be saved? What is the point of free will if He knows what he wants from us and has the power to make us all do it if He really wanted to? I'm finding myself agreeing with Kshartle that it seems like He sort of enjoys seeing certain men suffer.Mountaineer wrote: Think about the first testament (OT) this way. God created everything and it was good. Man chose to go with his own knowledge instead of trusting God (the fall). Death entered the world. The point of the rest of the OT is to show how man, over, and over, and over, and over, cannot achieve righteousness on his own and thus show the need for a savior. Events spiral downward. God gave his story (man did not listen - Noah, rebirth via water (flood)), God chose Abraham and then Israel as the people to bring him to the world. God gave his law (10 Commandments). Man still did not get it. God gave kings, judges, prophets. Man still did not get it. The downward spiral continued. God decided to come to earth himself and brought Jesus to save man from himself. The NT is all about Jesus (as is the OT when you learn to read it through his lens). Many men still do not get it.
If the best you can do is a homophobic rapist like Moses or a cad like David and his spoiled womanizing son Solomon, it sort of makes it look like you don't have good judgment in the people you select as leaders.
It's sort of tempting to think that some of the stories in the Old Testament were created to help smooth over grumbling about what was basically incompetent leadership, especially when it came to David.
Also, and this is a minor point, but what's up with some of the guys in the Old Testament living hundreds of years? That just doesn't make any sense at all to me.