Book Response Essay example

Submitted By dvantyler87
Words: 862
Pages: 4

Book response: God Behaving Badly by David Lamb

Biblical Theology
March 15, 12

In this book Dr. Lamb stands for the similarity of God’s deeds in both the Old Testament. He support his point that the God of the New Testament is exactly the same in the Old Testament by looking at both the problematic passages and supporting passages that people use to paint a bad God of the Old Testament verses the good God of the New testament.
Lamb stood firm and defended God by looking thoroughly at scriptures that covered the “negative characteristics,” as people may see it, of God portrayed. He defended God by explaining theses passages using life’s analogies, pointing to positivity of the same situations in other part of the Bible, redirecting the negative accusations to a positive understanding to God’s bad acting out in a humanly manner possible, he also defended his positions by intently examining content of passages and the surrounding context.
In defends for God’s anger, Lamb holds that God’s anger in the Old Testament were justifiable in many ways; in the case of Uzzah Lamb explains that this individual deserved his punishment due to Israel disobedience to God’s command, insult to His position, and failure to obligate to their end of being committed to the covenant. I agree with Lamb on this position because Israel did deserve a scolding from Yahweh for their carelessness.
In defense against the argument that God is sexist, he focuses on the positivity of woman and their inherent values in the scripture and how exalted they are by God in comparison to men.
Lamb made analysis of the position of women in relations to men. I like our author’s positions with this argument but to extend it seemed like he tipped the argument slightly on the opposite spectrum. Lamb’s response to why God is not sexist to women dethroned the position of men by pointing to the overly women’s values and importance exceeding men. I believe Lamb have a good intention but I also believe there is a balance with men and women in the scripture one is not overly important than the other but are a team and besides the Bible doesn’t really paints a picture where women are an upgraded version of men.
In a deeper discussion Lamb’s argument about sexism doesn’t fully satisfy my understanding. This is because he focuses mainly on the worth of women, painting an awesome representation of women in the Old Testament then it is actually stated. Some of his explanations make perfect sense, as in the case of the equality of men and women in Genesis. But culturally, women weren’t held at a high standard by the Israelites. Whether this is God’s doing or the Israelite’s to be responsible, I have yet to understand. In saying that Lamb argument for having God as not sexist is not too understandable, I mean I am not set on his defense. He looked at Genesis one and two and expound a bit on the word study of the term ezer which is translated helper then claims that the rest of the Bible Old Testament does not contain anything sexist after these two chapters in Genesis, this is not true. There are other passages in the Old where women may be