Fraternite
Fraternite
It should be fairly obvious that God commanding genocide is only a problem if our master values and identity are those of modern Western liberalism. For example, nobody (and especially not the authors) really had a problem with these texts for several thousand years. For a fairly clear example of this, remember that the Crusaders recited the mantra "Christus Dominus est" when they were running Muslims through with their swords in the Holy Land.
At least as far as I am concerned, the first challenge for modern Christians is to recognize just how completely shaped we are by modern Western liberalism and secondly to then summon up the fortitude to identify and label those (typically invisible) cultural assumptions for what they are.
Daniel Wilcox
What? Heck, I was a fundamentalist kid of 11 when I started encountering these horrific texts.:-( My dad was the minister of our small village church.
It doesn't take liberalism for a kid to know that slaughtering children is evil, and that God would NEVER command such horrific actions.
Aside from maybe David and Goliath, these gory war texts in the late Hexatuch and Judges are exactly what my 3 year old and 6 year old boys seem to be inexorably attracted to. They also like the carnage in Revelation, for what it's worth -- and trust me, this is not where I am steering them. And even in David and Goliath, their favourite part is where David cuts off Goliath's head. They play act it all the time and insist on parading around the house with the invisible head. It's quite fascinating.
I have a hard time believing that you only ran across these things at 11 if you grew up fundamentalist, honestly.
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