Didn’t God tell someone to lie in I Kings 22?

Question:

I appreciate your response. For me, I Kings 22:22 is abundantly clear. I found it among a few other examples, most of which were less conclusive. For example, where God sent strong delusion, which isn't specifically a lie. A tangential issue is where God repented for installing a certain king. Some would say that it indicates that God had performed imperfectly, perhaps others would say that, no he just felt bad about it. That one is at least curious to me. A God who is all-knowing, everywhere present, all-powerful, existing across all of time and space concurrently and therefore from our limited view can be said to know all actions ahead of time and fully wise, etc. might perhaps know ahead of time the results of his actions, decide that since He is perfect He doesn't want to either fall below such a high standard, or at least not seeming purposely behave in a way as to make Himself feel bad thus leaving no need to repent, regardless of the original Hebrew nuances of meaning, context, and so on.

You may be amused to know that I only recently understood that God is not responsible to answer to me regarding anything. Until not long ago, I might have said, "I am not a clay vessel. God needs to explain to me why the Bible has so many clear flaws such as contradictions, inconsistencies, and historical inaccuracies, and other ways in which it is confusing or areas where it is unable to stand to reason." My view on that now, surely somewhat different than your own I would guess, is this. God created everything, as such, in layman's terms, it is His game as it were. He calls the shots with no need to explain anything to me every. He makes the rules both for us and for Himself. He can lie, be jealous, provide infinite punishment for finite offenses (call that true fair justice or He could call it Jello Pudding if He chose) be malevolent, He can hate Esau while adjuring us to love our neighbor and pray for those that despitefully use us. He could include a measure of love, joy, peace, gentleness, meekness, kindness, longsuffering, faith, hope, and charity as well, and so on. I question the inherent confusion in most of that. Yet with God all things are possible. It looks like E all of the above. I question Him, He has no need to respond. Not only is he at an infinitely higher level of conceptualization than I am where lies become OK, But He also created all and defines all. Being all-powerful and all-knowing still finds the need to demonstrate the folly of the "wise" or at least use the foolish things to confound the wise. To me, that is akin to Casperof beating a white lab rat at chess. Seemingly God takes time to glory in the fact that a particle physicist can't even measure the velocity and position of an electron simultaneously. Petty perhaps, but it makes no difference really, I, of course, am not the one calling the shots. Even so, my brain has no off switch.

Hopefully, it will all come out good in the end.

Answer:

It appears to me that the problem isn't with God or His nature but in your assumptions about God. You seem to be willing to take God as he is, but you still determine His nature by your own thoughts about God. For example, where, in the Bible, does God say He exists across all time? Is your concept of God based on an assumption or an actual statement?

The difficulty is that we are finite beings living in a physical world, yet trying to grasp the being who created the world and us as well. In order to aid our understanding, we apply things we understand and place it on God and say "this must be what God is like." But it is backward. "For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God" (I Corinthians 2:11). The only way to understand God is to accept the things He chose to tell us -- that is, by reading and accepting His word.

I wrote a series of lessons about God for some teenagers. Have you looked through it? Not that I'm pushing my work, but I addressed many of your points in it, including I Kings 22. Do I know everything about God -- not hardly -- the very nature of the problem is an impossibility, but you and I can accept what God told us. Take a look at The Lord Your God is an Awesome God!, and especially the lessons "God Cannot Lie." This way I won't have to repeat what was already said and we can focus on what you are trying to understand.