Saturday, October 2, 2010

Does God change His mind?

In the class, we have seen how God responded to human’s behavior. As we have learned, He gave human judgment and grace: such as curse, and on the other hand, protection of Cain as God’s response when he sinned. We can know His righteousness and mercifulness from those responses to humans’ attitude.

At the same time, thinking about God’s response reminds me of some verses I have wondered about. In those verses, it is possible to think that God changed His response in conversation with a person. These verses are Exodus 32:7-14. Here, Moses negotiated with God and asked Him not to destroy people of Israel who sinned against Him appealing to God’s promise. As a result, God “relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened” (Exodus 32:14).

The conversation between God and Moses sounds like human parents’ conversation about punishment for what their child has done. One day, my father got so angry with my messy room that he tried to through everything away, but he reconsidered about that when my mother talked with him. Does it also happen to the heavenly father, God?

It will be possible for Him to change part of His response except the big plans written in the Bible will never change. The important thing here, however, is His anger is quite right; it is because of His righteousness and love to people. He never compromises at this point. He hit the Israel people eventually because of their sin of praising an idol. However, it was after Moses also considered how sinful the people were. He decided what to do to the people in the conversation with Moses. This means that He treasured Moses’ opinion. He respected communication with His friend Moses as written in Exodus 33:11. It is going to be the same for today that God treasures communication with his followers in His leading the world.

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