Hello. Thank you for sharing your views on this. Starting with the teachings/sayings of Jesus, I find it impossible (through his eyes) to make any sense out of the violence and (often times) anger of God the Father in the OT.
Conversely, starting with the OT, there seems to be a very sharp break in the attributes given to God when moving into the NT. The old was used to prove the new by trying to show it foretold of the coming of Christ, of course, but that does not (in my view) eliminate the dichotomy.
It certainly is a difficult and daunting task, for sure. Any life that is lost is always impacting and difficult. To wade through this will always be a work.
But let me give you an example:
Jesus, as well as other NT scriptures, attributed much of the suffering to Satan rather than to God. Certainly we never see Jesus saying to the worst of people, "You walking dead man, here, take CANCER as your recompense"... but rather he went about "doing good and healing all who were oppressed of the Devil" for
"It is the thief who comes to kill, steal and destroy, but I have come to give live and that more abundantly".
Many times we attributed the death of the firstborn of Egypt to God killing babies. But what if we have misinterpreted that? What if God had been protecting Egypt all along from the gods that they served (which included human sacrifices)? What if He finally said "I can protect you no longer, if you are going to serve those gods, then I will let them have the authority over your lives as you have desired?"
So when I go back to those scriptures I find this in Ex 12:23 "For the
LORD will
pass through to
smite the
Egyptians; and when He
sees the
blood on the
lintel and on the
two doorposts, the
LORD will
pass over the
door and will not allow the destroyer to
come in to your
houses to
smite you." which is a reference that Jesus mentioned that it is the thief that comes to destroy.
I see a few points here:
- It wasn't God who did the act.
- God still had to protect people (which in my view supports the possibility that He was protecting people all along
- Other scriptures mentioned that YHWY was judging the gods of Egypt
No matter what, it is still difficult to be sure. We also have many other factors of which some we know about and some we don't. We do know that the Egyptians had killed male Jewish babies and what we don't know is what would be the future of the Israelites had He not intervened.
The short of the long of it is "What if God had been long-suffering all along protecting the Egyptians from the consequences of their lifestyle but finally said, 'You have made your decision and I release you to the gods you serve'?"
I suppose, ultimately, we each have to come to our own conclusions.