God and His Tests

Our assignment for this post was to read and write about parts 1 and 2 of the Book of Job. We were then asked to analyze the similarities and differences in The Book of Job and other Old Testament stories. What a perfectly fitting question. From the other stories that we've read in the Old Testament, we've learned that God is a very merciless, self centered character. He doesn't care what's it's like for the person, he will do anything he needs to test this certain person. Is what he does really necessary? I would say no, purely because of the brutality of his tests. For example, let's take Noah's Ark. God has all the power ever. In the story, the people were sinning and disobeying God. Instead of just using his power to solve the problem, he creates a flood to kill everyone and everything on earth (excluding Noah, his family and the animals). This is just like two other stories we read, The Book of Job and the story of Abraham and Isaac. God has all this power, but doesn't know how to use it for the good. He could have just used his power to see if Job and Abraham were faithful, but instead he makes Abraham kill his only son Isaac. Isaac took a very long time to be conceived and God wants him to be killed just for a test? Instead of using his power to test Job's faith, God kills his family, friends, animals and then goes on to make his life absolute hell. I think we can all see a pattern here. God will go to a dramatic point just to test this person. The only differences we see are the little details like the killing methods, the reason for testing and stuff like that. Other than that, the take away here is that in most Old Testament stories, God doesn't care what he does as long as he gets what he wants.