Moses on Pisgah

The OT reading for this Sunday (Deut 34:1-12) is, on the face of it, exactly the sort of passage that would make a Marcion want to eliminate all of the Hebrew Scriptures and just stick with the New Testament. Moses goes up to Mt. Pisgah and God shows him all of the Promised Land – it must have been a very clear day – and then tells him, “I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.” Then Moses dies “at the Lord’s command.” This is hardly the kind of God one would be encouraged to follow.

It’s not really clear why Moses could not cross over into the Promised Land. Something happened on the wilderness journey at the waters of Meribah (“Quarrel”) and Massah (“Test”), where Moses struck the rock to bring water to a grumbling, thirsty people. Whatever it was, it sure made God angry (Psalm 95 speaks of God loathing the people!) and in Num 20:12 God tells Moses and Aaron that they won’t be crossing the Jordan, either. It’s just the sort of vengefulness that makes some people question whether this is the same God of love whom Jesus revealed to us.

The nature of God is something that’s rumbling through my head at the moment. I’m almost halfway through Kenneth R. Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist’s Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution. So far the subtitle is a misnomer; Miller is more focused on refuting the arguments of anti-evolutionists. He does it well, if polemically and rather redundantly. He says that he will be presenting a more positive view of God later in the book, a view that readily coexists with evolution. I hope so. I’m having trouble wading through the polemics to reach that point.