the angry, bloody God of the Bible? part 3

I didn't have time to research and write today, but I did have time to read. My eyes and ears are "open" to this topic, and I'm seeing how others are struggling like myself with God's violence.

Here are a couple I came across today.

Morgan Guyton is an associate pastor in a United Methodist church. I follow him on Twitter and after clicking through a couple links I ended up on his post about God's anger, God’s wrath as a cosmic spiritual immune system. He's a blogger after my own heart. His blogs are too long and bleed all over the place. They are an absolute mess, and I love it. I also really dig over-extended metaphors. I don't know if I buy all of his ideas in this post, but I identify with his struggle.

Richard Beck is a professor of  psychology at Abilene Christian University. He, too, is a believer who wrestles with God. Yesterday he wrote a post Devoted to Destruction: Reading Cherem Non-Violently. He writes about his jailhouse Bible class reading Joshua.

Cherem (also spelled herem) refers to the wholesale destruction of all living things--men, women, children and animals--that God commands when the Israelites captured a city. The word occurs 21 times in the Old Testament and most of those, eight references, occur in the book of Joshua.

Joshua is a thorn in my side too. Not unlike the conclusion of Douglas Earl's The Josua Delusion, Beck writes "Having recently read the book of Joshua I was struck by the following: Cherem doesn't work. That seems to be one of the take home points of the book."

I appreciate their wrestling. The commenters wrestle over more details as well.