Why have I chosen Amos as the first project at Living by the Logos? To be fair, I started my in-depth study of Amos before posting to Living by the Logos. The reason I decided to dedicate this work to the book of Amos is fairly straightforward: the book tells us what the church glosses over. About God. About his chosen people and their enemies. About the source of suffering! God’s revelation in Amos differs radically from what Christianity commonly presupposes about God.
We all know the Good Shepherd. The Creator of the world and humanity. The loving father who sent his son to die to atone for our sins. The God who “knows” the plans he has made for each individual, plans of hope and prosperity (Jer. 29:11, possibly the most misunderstood verse of the Bible!). Christians gather in sanctuaries and sing feel-good songs about how wonderful, loving and merciful God is. While this may not be problematic to most people, it is to me. My reason for this is that it picks-and-chooses which pieces of the Bible to dwell on. It doesn’t account for the entire message of the Greek and Hebrew Testaments.
Amos’ Yahweh is profoundly different from the God of contemporary Christianity. As I touched on in my last post, maybe he is a God of infinite love. I personally do not hold this as truth. But my mission is not to convince you he is a monster. My mission is to encourage you to look at the whole of the Bible. Do these creeds and hymns you recite reflect the Scripture? When you think of God, do you think of the character of Jeremiah 29:11?
If so, great. You do you. But I encourage you not to remain ignorant about the God you believe in and his character, as it is displayed in his word. There is a wealth of information about him that is not confined to the letters of Paul, the messages of the Gospels, the select feel-good Psalms and Proverbs. Do not cut the Bible down to fit your narrative, as the church has done and continues to do. If you hold that this is the divine, inspired word of God, then examine it. Study it critically. Ask hard questions. Dedicate research. The goal of Living by the Logos is to provide you with tools and resources to accomplish this efficiently.
Amos’ God is a god of violence and anger. Does this contradict what you believe about God? Not necessarily. A loving, well-meaning person can get angry and hurt others. And if you are looking at the whole picture of the Bible, so can God. I urge you to not accept the easy answers given by the church of Christianity. The answers you seek can be found in this collection of writings, but you have to look deeply.
While doing some further research on the oracles of Amos, I came across an article that makes a great point in the introduction. An evangelical scholar, Randall Price from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, stresses what I have thus argued concerning Amos and the way we view the Bible. He states, “…the way we approach the Bible is shaped by presuppositions and biases that influence our reading of the text before we open the book itself.”1 I can attest to this on a personal level.
When I began my bachelors, I was a devout evangelical Christian. I was an active church member, I prayed regularly, I listened to ONLY Christian music, and strived to live a Christian lifestyle. A tragic event happened about this time, and this is what led me to studying the Bible. It led me to question the God of my (or the church’s?) understanding. Before becoming familiar with it, I was asking the question of the problem of suffering. I wanted answers, but those offered by the church simply did not resonate.
That being said, I pursued answers while clinging to my presuppositional beliefs about God and his Word. I wanted the simple answers given by the church to be correct. I wanted to validate my evangelical theology. But this did not happen. It led me to become frustrated with the church. Eventually, it led me away from the evangelical faith I once held so dearly. And I remain convinced that this evangelical faith is at odds with the Bible.
I saw a post on social media several years ago that used trail mix as an example of how we view the Bible. I love trail mix. I love getting a handful that contains more M&Ms than raisins. I think because of Christianity, this is how we view the Bible. We want the sweet pieces, the promises of a loving God who is on our side. But then there are the raisins, such as Amos. The dried, shriveled up pieces showing us a God we do not want to believe in. A God who threshes nations. A God who sets entire cities and nations ablaze. A God who kills young men with a sword. We don’t want these parts, but we have to take them in as well. You can pick out the M&Ms, but then what is the point of the trail mix? We are not looking at, or digesting, the full picture.
We cannot remove our presuppositions. When I eat a handful of trail mix, I want the majority of the mixture to be chocolate. But if this is so important, why don’t I just buy a bag of M&Ms? What we can do, instead, is minimize such presuppositions. Yes, I may prefer the M&Ms but they are not the nutritious component of the mix. In order to get the energy from trail mix, I have to take in some raisins and peanuts. It may not be what I want, but it is what I need. You may want the good parts of the Bible, but you must be willing to consume the parts that go against the grain of your wants and desires.
Amos is a great example; it is not the only one, but it certainly is a noteworthy piece of the puzzle. Amos is the Prophet of Doom! Who wants to read of death, destruction, and judgment from God? We may not want to, but in order to understand this God of the Bible, we have to consider what Amos reveals about him. It doesn’t fit the Judeo-Christian worldview, and thus it is pushed aside. I want you to be aware of these things. I want you to see everything the Bible says, not just the parts forced down your throat. And not just the parts you want.
So I have chosen to write about Amos. I have chosen to pour into research on this book and what it has to say. Because as a Christian, I never heard what Amos revealed about God. Whether you are Christian or not, I want you to understand what Amos reveals. I want to point you to expert resources, people who truly examine the text for what it is. Not to give you a cheery Sunday morning message. Not to validate what your church leaders tell you. This is not why the Bible was written. It was written to live by, not with.
1. Price, Randall. “Amos: Theological and Ethical Dimensions.” Expository Times 134, no. 3 (2022): 115-122. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epdf/10.1177/00145246221132265, 115.