Ok. I'm very glad to hear you say that. I was asking because I needed to know what I had to work with.
If you love the Lord Jesus Christ, then please consider what I tell you. I can deal with every passage you quoted one by one, and will at least deal try to deal with one or two here. But to start with, every single passage you quoted was Old Testament, and when you are reading Old Testament commandments you have to understand what God was dealing with: A people in the flesh.
Every passage I quoted was Old Testament because that's whee most of the violence is. But hell is New Testament stuff. And even if those people were in the flesh, he didn't have to kill them or command them to kill. He could have easily changed their minds. Saying they're "what God was dealing with" implies that God had no power over how they were acting and couldn't stop them, while elsewhere in the Bible it says God controls absolutely everything.
Let me explain. Suppose God chose as His holy people one nationality today, be it all Americans, all Mexicans, all Brits, etc. Or more accurately, say He chose one specific race, like the blacks or hispanics. As with any race or nationality, He would have some who loved and obeyed Him willingly out of love, but the rest would go into it kicking and screaming, and be very prone to rebelling against Him whenever things started rubbing them the least bit the wrong way. This was the situation our God was in when He chose the Jewish race. He knew full well most of the Jews would rebel against Him, and it's a miracle He didn't destroy them all more than once (Deuteronomy 9:13-14). There has ever always been only a remnant who truly loved God, and that is still true of you and I today. It is part of why the Lord turned to the Gentiles.
He could have easily made it so their brains could have a personality that wouldn't rebel against him though.
But He needed a people, A. through whom He could give the law, much of which allowed Him to prophetically foreshadow what would take place in New Testament times (through sabbaths, Jewish feast days and holy days, circumcision, clean and unclean foods, a whole list of things) and B. more importantly, He needed a people through whose genealogy the Son of God could be born. The Messiah would have to be born of a woman to fulfill God'd word (Genesis 3:15), and that meant God would need a race of people through whom He could make this happen.
Why though did he "need a people" specifically? That by default puts the Jews as "God's chosen people" and leaves the rest of the world as not chosen. If God created everyone, why divide them according to "race"? There's one interesting passage where the Most High divides his inheritance in separate people, and the Lord has Jacob as his chosen. Thing is, that passage seems almost as if Yahweh is a god in a heavenly council who had the inheritance of the Jewish people bestowed on by theMost High—probably a verse from when the Israelites were henotheistic (believing many gods exist but worshipping only one). Since the Bible was penned down by Israelites, can't the Israelites have just claimed they were chosen by God so they could be the most powerful and claim they had the power of God on their side?
Why I it important? This meant that He, of necessity, would have to work to keep a rebellious people in line until the Messiah could be born, and that meant bending His ultimate will and desires to theirs somewhat, to keep them from rejecting Him altogether. Several times Jesus explained that He allowed the Jews to have things that were never His perfect will for them, but that they nevertheless insisted upon. For instance, they insisted on having a king. The Lord told Samuel that was not His will, but the people insisted "We want a king," so they got their king (1 Samuel 8:1-9). Jesus explained to His disciples that God never intended to allow divorce, but the Jews would have went bananas if He had not, because they were carnal and given to strife and couldn't live in peace with their wives (Matthew 5:31-32). There are actually numerous things in this sermon where Jesus told them that things the Jews had been allowed by God to do were not His will, nor were they ever, including killing one's enemies, and retaliating against those who cheated you out of money or cruelly mistreated you (Matthew 5:38-48). But He could only tell these things to those who would become the true sons of Israel, the spiritual Israel; those who would willingly obey these commandments and His true will because they truly loved Him and trusted in Him.
Saying God had to bend his will and desire to theirs makes it seem as if God isn't all powerful—that may have fit into the henotheistic view of the early Israelites, but it doesn't fit into the "all powerful solo creator God" view that has been held at least since the time of the New Testament. And if those things were not God's will, it would make no sense for him to command them so brutally. Maybe say "Kill them if you wish, but you will face the consequences", showing that it's not God's will but he will let them face th consequences of their actions (though he could just change their minds). But instead God outright commands at points for those horrible things to happens, less an "I suppose you can since you're so blindingly insistent about it" and more "I order you to do those terrible things and you will listen because I am the Lord your God."
There seemed to be quite a few changes between the Old and New Testaments-for instance, in the OT, God was in control of both good and bad, and Satan was just like a prosecuting attorney toward God in Job (they had no concept of a devil in those days, the serpent was just a serpent, and "Lucifer" was a translation of "Morning Star" used for the arrogant king of Babylon who saw himself as better than anyone. In the New Testament, it was changed so God only does good things and anything bad or strange (in the case of, say, diseases) was caused by Satan.
You could include among those things God never wanted, slavery, and the subjugation of women, both of which have since been outlawed in Christian nations around the world, specifically as a result of Christian leaders leading the fight in decrying how immoral these practices were.
They've been outlawed in Christian nations now, but Christians also had the crusades, and keep in mind slavery in the US was in part perpetuated because the Bible makes it seem like God approved of it. God didn't exactly come down i a bolt of light from the sky and say they were interpreting things wrong.
Some of your passages would take more explanation, like Deuteronomy 20:10-14, but let me deal with a few of them more specifically:
For the LORD had said to Moses, ‘Exempt the tribe of Levi from the census; do not include them when you count the rest of the Israelites. You must put the Levites in charge of the Tabernacle of the Covenant, along with its furnishings and equipment. They must carry the Tabernacle and its equipment as you travel, and they must care for it and camp around it. Whenever the Tabernacle is moved, the Levites will take it down and set it up again. Anyone else who goes too near the Tabernacle will be executed.’ (
Numbers 1:48-51 NLT)
When they came to the threshing floor of Nodan, Uzzah reached out his hand to the ark of God to steady it, for the oxen were making it tip. But the Lord was angry with Uzzah; God struck him on that spot, and he died there before God. (
2 Samuel 6:3-7NAB)
Both of these passages deal with coming too close to the Presence of a thrice Holy God. Both Jews and Gentiles needed to understand that when they were considering approaching the God of the Jews, they were approaching the Creator of the Heaven and earth. This was not like approaching some stone idol erected to replace some demon that manifested long ago in the form of some god. This was coming into close proximity with a Being who could blow the entire universe away with the slightest move of His finger, and although He was a merciful God,
NO ONE was coming near Him without Holiness. He is and will forevermore be a God to be feared. Anyone who sees Him as He truly is in Heaven yet does not fear Him will be stone-cold crazy. Scratch that. Even crazy people will know to fear the Living God if they see Him as He truly is. But through Christ's sacrifice we can now come
boldly to the throne of grace. That means that spite of how immensely powerful He is, we can still do so because of the price His Son paid for us, through His
death.
If they came to close to the prescence of God, then why were Moses (
Exodus 3:16,
Exodus 4:5,
Exodus 33:11,
Numbers 12:7-1,
Deuteronomy 34:10, [URL='http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/ex/33.html#23']Exodus 33:23)[/URL], Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel (
Exodus 24:9-11), Abraham (
Genesis 12:7,
Genesis 17:1,
Genesis 18:1,
Exodus 6:3), Issac (
Genesis 26:2,
Genesis 26:24,
Exodus 6:3), Jacob (
Genesis 32:22-30 where he even wrestled with God,
Genesis 35:9,
Genesis 48:3,
Exodus 6:3),
all the people of Israel, (
Numbers 14:14,
Deuteronomy 5:4,
Ezekiel 20:35)
Samson's parents (
Judges 13:22-24), Micaiah (
1 Kings 22:19), Job (
Job 42:5), David, (
Psalm 63:2), Isaiah (
Isaiah 6:1-2), Ezekiel (
Ezekiel 1:27-28), Amos (
Amos 7:7, [URL='http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/am/9.html#1']Amos 9:1)[/URL], and Habakkuk (
Habakkuk 3:3-5) all able to see God?
And the image of "everyone will fear God" sounds like a far cry from "God is love". Then again, "God is love" was only said once and in the New Testament, while God directly said in the Old Testament he was jealous and such.
And why did a price have to be paid through Jesus's death, anyway?
It is said that the beginning of wisdom is to fear God, but that the greatest wisdom is to love Him. This is what John meant by the words "Perfect love casts out all fear." But this perfected love that finally eliminates all fear of Him, such that we can walk into the very Presence and Power of the Creator of the universe Himself, and abide in the blinding Power of Almighty God, will only come to us when we have finally perfected obedience, for without holiness no one will see God.
I could say more, but I'll leave it there for now. When I have time I'll come back and deal with the rest of your passages.
Hope I didn't offend you,
HiH
You didn't offend me.
Regarding the "perfect love casts out all fear" thin, then what about hell? Many people (even on here) obey God mainly because of a fear of hell. They make themselves sick over it. That's just about the farthest thing from love. As for "perfected obedience", what qualifies as perfect obedience? Does that mean that if God asks us to do something like he did in the Old Testament (as since he doesn't change he's certainly capable of that I'd assume) should we do it? If God asks us to do something that defies our moral compass, should we perfectly obey him because he's God?
