Dear Theophilus

[theres a "too long; didn't read" at the end] Your picture/image of God is wildly important to how you live your life, the world, and the people around you. We're talking about this at The Table right now. But one thing we aren't going to cover on Sunday that I think is VITAL to our faith journey is this: how do we reconcile the Old Testament and the New Testament? The Old Testament (OT) is the first 2/3rds of the bible before Jesus. It has wonderful stories like Adam & Eve, Moses, Abraham, King David (and Goliath), the Psalms, the prophets, and many more. But it also has these stories about God that make God appear to be mean, distant, violent, excessively wrathful, and many more things. The New Testament, on the other hand, is the story of Jesus and the birth of the Church in the wake of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. The thing that makes Christians unique in the traditional faiths is that we believe Jesus is God. SO, how do we reconcile Jesus...

"Just as our human word which proceeds naturally from the mind is messenger of the secret movements of the mind, so does the Word of God, who knows the Father by the essence as Word knows the Mind which has begotten it (since no created being can approach the Father without him), reveal the Father whom he knows. As the Word of God by nature he is spoken of as the 'messenger of the great council.'" Maximus the Confessor, Chapters on Knowledge , paragraph 22.