Christians are taught that the creator is perfect. He is all-powerful and all-knowing. He created everything and is the first purpose of the world we live in. He has supernatural powers by which he can make bushes instantaneously combust or seas part down the middle.
To my way of thinking, an entity that is perfect needs nothing from anyone. If it had needs it could not fulfill, then it wouldn't be perfect. At the very least, it couldn't be all-powerful.
Yet, when one reads the Book of Exodus, Chapters 25 - 30, God gives all these strange and very specific instructions about how his followers should create and build things to honor him. If these objects were deemed so important, why didn't he simply make them himself?
Beyond that fundamental question, why would a god care what color a garment is or the precise dimensions of an alter?
Doesn't that strike you as an excessively prideful being? Doesn't it sound far more like a human personality than that of a supposedly perfect entity?
To see what other questions I've asked about the Christian Bible, go here.
To my way of thinking, an entity that is perfect needs nothing from anyone. If it had needs it could not fulfill, then it wouldn't be perfect. At the very least, it couldn't be all-powerful.
Yet, when one reads the Book of Exodus, Chapters 25 - 30, God gives all these strange and very specific instructions about how his followers should create and build things to honor him. If these objects were deemed so important, why didn't he simply make them himself?
Beyond that fundamental question, why would a god care what color a garment is or the precise dimensions of an alter?
And blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair, And rams' skins dyed red, and badgers' skins, and shittim wood (Exodus 25:4-5)I mean, would he reject an object crafted for him if it was a millimeter or two off?
And they shall make an ark of shittim wood: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof. (Exodus 25:10)It seems to me that an all-powerful and all-knowing being wouldn't get bogged down in such minutiae! What great theological point is made by such picky and finicky specifications?
Doesn't that strike you as an excessively prideful being? Doesn't it sound far more like a human personality than that of a supposedly perfect entity?
To see what other questions I've asked about the Christian Bible, go here.
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