“Has God “changed his mind” about certain practices?”
This is a question that I have spent a lot of time contemplating, given that He appears to do that very thing at certain points in the Bible. It seems to me that when conteplating God’s relationship towards us, it helps to understand it by looking at our relationship with OUR children.
We set certain rules that we expect our children to obey. God sets certain rules He expects us to obey.
We have greater wisdom than our children, thus are more capable of determining the occassions in which exceptions are made, when we will allow them to disregard the normal rules. Once again, it is the same with God in making such determinations with us.
Unless we specifically tell our children that an exception can be made, we expect them to obey the normal rules. God does the same with us.
As our Children mature, our expectations from them change. Same with God and us.
As our children mature, we grant greater privledges, allowing them to do things we did not allow when they were younger. As our children mature, we also expect stricter adherence to certain standards of behavior. But once again, such decisions are not given to our children to make... we make the decisions as to the changes as they mature. God does the same with us.
To summarize, it seems likely to me that the explanation for why God allows exceptions at certain times, or seems to change the rules on occassion, is based upon His wisdom, and we are in no position to make the determinations ourselves, nor are we in a position to second guess his decisions in this regard.
The analogy with raising children is great. I might borrow it sometime.
I agree that "our ways are not His ways." I still have a lot to learn about His ways, and I find the process to be quite interesting sometimes.