If Moses was born today, would Genesis be written differently? Would there be a different ten commandments? Would we be presented with a different God?
I came across this quote:
By Zora Neale Hurston.
Isn't Jesus a new version of God created for the times?
Or looked at more internally.. do we create a version of God in our own minds in order to address our own inner conflicts today?
Having the highest goal of being in the image of God is what it means to believe in Him, or in other words, the way that we choose to live testifies about what we believe to be true about the character of God. For example, by doing good works in obedience to God we are testifying about God's goodness, which is why our good works bring glory to Him (Matthew 5:16), and by testifying about God's goodness we are also expressing the belief that God is good. The way to believe that God is holy, righteous, just, merciful, and so forth is by doing what what is holy, righteous, just, merciful, and so forth.
Our desire clouds our judgement so that by ourselves we can't be sure if something is truly good or if we just think that it is good because we desire it, so when a person is acting in accordance with whatever they desire and is leaning on their own understanding of right and wrong by doing what is right in their own eyes, then indeed they are creating a version of God in their own minds. I've also heard it said that if the God that someone worships would never do anything that they disagree with, then they just might be worshiping an idealized form of themselves. For instance, some people consider intolerance is the greatest sin, so they have created a version of God in their own minds who is tolerant.
In Proverbs 3:5-7, we have a choice between leaning on our own understanding of right and wrong or trusting in God with all of our heart to correctly divide between right and wrong through obeying what He has instructed in all of our ways and He will make our way straight. So when we rely on what God has instructed instead of our on our own understanding, then we are not creating our own version of God, but rather we being conformed to the image of the one true God.
The character traits of God is eternal, so any instructions that He has ever given for how to testify about His character traits are eternally valid, though they can be expressed differently depending on the context. For example, the 2nd Commandment against idolatry is to our relationship with God what the 7th Commandment against adultery is to our relationships with our neighbors, so they are both based on the same principle or character trait. God could give 100 examples of how to testify about His righteousness in various situations or He could give a different set of 100 examples of how to do that, but they would all have the same principle in common, so it is possible that if God's law were given today that it might use a different set of examples of how to testify about His righteousness that is more relevant to the modern context, but they would still be based on the same principle, and all of the examples that God has given would remain valid. On the other hand, if a different set of laws were given that wre based on a different set of principles or character traits, then it wold involve presenting a different God with a different character than that of the God of Israel.
