George Murphy wrote:
> Let me also note that my point in initiating this thread seems to have
> been pretty well missed by everybody, perhaps because of my lack of
> clarity. I
> did not want to argue for polygamy, holy wars &c. My argument was really
> directed toward conservatives who feel that they have to accept the
> scientific
> picture of the world used in the Bible but who realize (openly or tacitly)
> that
> the moral standards accepted in parts of the Bible are not acceptable today.
>
>
Frankly, I think it was good that you brought up this
topic because it has brought up all those troubling passages
of the OT. I can vividly remember how shocked I was at
reading some of them. My first serious reading of
the Pentateuch and Joshua was around the same time as
the ethnic cleansing was happening in the Balkans.
I couldn't help but wonder about that, even though this
is supposed to be God's word.
It's unlikely that any answer will be satisfying. It
seems just too barbaric for modern day sensibilities.
However, they did have a reasonable excuse (that we
surely do not) in that they did not have any good
_historical_ examples to follow and they did face
the terrifying reality that if they did not kill (at
minimum the soldiers), they would quite likely have
been annihilated.
Perhaps it was not so much that God condoned these
atrocities, but that if the pendulum swung the other way,
the world would have become even uglier than it already is.
We can never know, and why some of these things became
part of the Levitical writings is hard to reconcile,
but like a marriage between a husband and wife, they agree
to accept (in principle) both the bad and the good as a
package.
I read the OT as an unfolding of God. A gradual realization
of who God is, and what it meant to be godly. From that angle,
the people of the Pentateuch era could not comprehend the
Christian way. Perhaps by the time of Amos, they were starting
to gain a grasp on it. This can only be revealed through a
long period of development (in any culture). I guess the same
would apply to science as well.
by Grace alone we proceed,
Wayne
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