One of the issues skeptics raise about Christianity involves the perceived savagery and violence of the First Testament. How can this be from a god of love and kindness?
Part of this confusion rests on a lack of understanding of the political and cultural environment of that time. It is only human for us to think in terms of our own history and experience. When we gain insight into the actual history and conditions, those events take on a different understanding.
From the exodus onward, God’s people were engaged in a violent and very real battle for survival. There are historical incidents where God’s enemies captured and killed the inhabitants of entire Israel cities, including women and children. This was a time of full-scale war with survival in the balance. God led his people into an alien and hostile land. His instructions were necessary for the survival of His people. Do we not do the same thing when our survival is threatened? His instructions were also required in His covenant agreement to use the Hebrew people to bless all nations of the world.
Also, recognize the culture at this time. The entire world was pagan and involved in the most horrid religious practices imaginable. Polytheism was worldwide, monotheism largely unknown. Nearly all cultures practiced human sacrifice. Cannibalism, infanticide, trance-inducing techniques, intoxicants, sacred sexual rituals, prostitution, pederasty, phallic worship, orgies, cannibalism and even animal copulation were common. These were the religious practices of the day and were present in Canaan. Into this world stepped God; armed only with a rag-tag bunch of similarly evil-minded people; people who had to be taught an entirely different morality than what they then knew. They began as evil and as pagan as were their enemies but would eventually come to be a blessing to all nations. God did that!
Maybe those objections should be tempered just a bit.
Part of this confusion rests on a lack of understanding of the political and cultural environment of that time. It is only human for us to think in terms of our own history and experience. When we gain insight into the actual history and conditions, those events take on a different understanding.
From the exodus onward, God’s people were engaged in a violent and very real battle for survival. There are historical incidents where God’s enemies captured and killed the inhabitants of entire Israel cities, including women and children. This was a time of full-scale war with survival in the balance. God led his people into an alien and hostile land. His instructions were necessary for the survival of His people. Do we not do the same thing when our survival is threatened? His instructions were also required in His covenant agreement to use the Hebrew people to bless all nations of the world.
Also, recognize the culture at this time. The entire world was pagan and involved in the most horrid religious practices imaginable. Polytheism was worldwide, monotheism largely unknown. Nearly all cultures practiced human sacrifice. Cannibalism, infanticide, trance-inducing techniques, intoxicants, sacred sexual rituals, prostitution, pederasty, phallic worship, orgies, cannibalism and even animal copulation were common. These were the religious practices of the day and were present in Canaan. Into this world stepped God; armed only with a rag-tag bunch of similarly evil-minded people; people who had to be taught an entirely different morality than what they then knew. They began as evil and as pagan as were their enemies but would eventually come to be a blessing to all nations. God did that!
Maybe those objections should be tempered just a bit.
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