Their god vs. Our God

In Greek Mythology, Prince Paris of Troy carries off the Greek Princess Helen back to Troy. The Greek king sends an expeditionary force to sail to Troy to bring her back. But the navy was held up because the wind wouldn’t cooperate. The Greek general Agamemnon sent home for his daughter Iphigenia and sacrificed her to gain the favor of the gods. The move paid off – the winds blew and the fleet reached Troy to begin the war.

While that story is a myth, it is, like many myths, it’s rooted in the reality of the era: that there are numerous gods, none having absolute authority, but each having a power to make life easier or harder for you. They are completely unpredictable, being annoyed at the smallest things, often getting

jealous because they feel you’re paying too much attention to other gods or people and not enough to themselves. So, they take their anger out on you but never being specific about what it is that irritated them.

At that point you’re only hope is to win back their favor by an offering, a sacrifice, never being specific about what would appease them but the rule being the bigger the better, with human sacrifice being the most effective. For the ancient pagan, this act is a regular part of life and continues to this day, most notably in the religion of Hinduism that we’re familiar with but absolutely the way of life during Bible times – even to the time of Jesus and beyond. But especially for the Canaanite religions the people of Israel found when they got to the Promised Land, including human (child) sacrifice.

People of faith, including some who call themselves Christian, have never really outgrown that. Sometimes there is an ambiguous but other times quite tangible perception that God/Yahweh is like the pagan gods demanding his pound of flesh before his anger is appeased and he’ll bless me again. Maybe.

Our culture doesn’t tolerate human sacrifices, but we find other means by which we hope to placate God – religious ritual, scrupulosity – an almost obsessive, debilitating, fear of missing some minute moral failure or detail, repeatedly asking forgiveness for the same thing, reading the Bible, praying, giving money, church attendance not out of gratitude but as an effort to earn favor and avoid God’s ever-present wrath. Is that the kind of god the God of the Bible is? A Judeo/Christian version of the pagan deities? How do we know he isn’t? How do we know that’s not what he wants or expects?

We can know God isn't like a pagan deity, and we can know it by looking at the work of Jesus.

It's true that we've offended God - but he's not vague about how. Most of the first parts of the Old Testament, plus Psalms and Proverbs, are clear about what He expects from his image-bearers. Unfortunately, right from the start mankind hasn't been obedient to the simplest of commands. Every one of us has sinned.

Now, in pagan religion, the onus of making up our transgressions would be on us in the form of a sacrifice. But we've piled sins so high that the only thing that can pay for it would be a blood payment - specifically ours. But, that would make us, well, dead. So, not really and answer. But God's justice still demands payment.

So instead of expecting us to pay our own debt, GOD provides the payment. He sends Jesus, who had no sins to pay for, to serve as the payment, the sacrifice (technically, called "propitiation"). We deserved the cross - we get life; we deserved condemnation - we get acquittal; we deserve hell - we get heaven. That's the difference between a pagan god and the God of the universe. We're loved, forgiven, cherished, valued, accepted, pursued, equipped, blessed, gifted, protected. In other words, God is not some far off deity enjoying himself until we offend him, but is paying attention and lovingly involved in our lives.

Therefore, we who believe and have been adopted into the Family, never have to serve him out of fear. We serve from a place of gratitude which energizes us.