I've had an ongoing dialogue with a friend of mine that is somewhere between atheist and agnostic, he can't seem to make up his mind if there is or is not a god. He certainly doesn't accept any organized religion or religious text. One of the frequent topics of discussion is the Bible. He "just can't accept it or understand anyone that does, because it is just filled with things that show [our] God to be evil."
Talking to him, it's obvious that his problem is simultaneously a matter of 1) he has never actually read the Bible, 2) he has simply accepted the claims and interpretation of others that claim to have read it and understand it, and 3) that supposed understanding completely misses what the Bible is and is not.
Shelves of books have been written covering just one of those problems, but I want to briefly touch on that final part of the equation. What is the Bible?
Particularly, I wish to focus on what the Old Testament is. For that seems to be the source of the most criticism. What Christian has not been told that their God commands the slaughter of innocents, declares rules that we arbitrarily disregard, and is constantly changing despite being eternal, omniscient and omnipotent. Certainly our God is eternal, omniscient and omnipotent. And being so, He does not change, He is constant. The problem is not that the Bible shows Him as changing, if you think that, you have misread the Old Testament.
Here's what the Old Testament is: It is the history of God's relationship with Man. It is the story of a Father and His children that He loves and is raising to be mature beings prepared to live in His presence.
Mankind, as a whole is God's child. Like a good parent He recognizes that in different phases of a child's life, different methods of teaching are needed, the child develops the ability to do more and understand more, so can be given greater freedom and responsibility and held to new expectations. A good parent knows that a new born is greatly dependent on the parent and, if properly raised and challenged to grow, becomes increasingly self-confident, but that a child's increasing sense of independence is always contradicted by the reality that everyone remains forever dependent on others. A good parent recognizes that the only way one learns to make good decisions is by making bad ones. So, while you have to let children make mistakes, you also have to use discipline, preemptive intervention, and proactive teaching methods appropriate to their developmental level to form them into responsible, caring adults capable of living the life they desire or are destined to live.
If you approach the Bible from that perspective, then recognize that the inspired writers were only capable of communicating the Truth in ways that fit within their world view, and that like authors of any age they utilized metaphors, figures of speech, contemporary symbolism, and cultural concepts, ideals, or understandings in writing the inspired Word of God, you will be better equipped to understand what is being communicated.
Read the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, and you will find a Father that when confronted with an obstinate child insisting on doing something He knew to be dangerous for the child would relent and essentially say, "Fine, go conquer that city, kill them all if you think it will make you happy." God knew He could take eternal care of those victims, and He knew that the invaders, believing they were doing God's will, would suffer the consequences of their evil, the guilt, the shame, the inability to find peace in their lives.
That God saw His children that had been chosen to lead the world to Him surrounded by pagans that were worshiping their gods through human sacrifice and believing the pagan taunts that their God was weak because He didn't demand human sacrifice. Unable to get His chosen children to trust a God they perceived as weak, He relented, effectively saying, "Fine, you miraculously had a child with a barren wife, well past child bearing age and you think I'm weak because I don't demand human sacrifice? Sacrifice that only son of yours." That gets their attention, they start to act like this is a God worthy of respect. And at the last second, when He is sure they have finally started to hear Him and want to have a relationship with Him, He shows them His true nature and stops the killing of an innocent child.
Then, when He frees this adolescent people from slavery, slavery to the Egyptians, slavery to their paganism, slavery to the associated sin, performs great miracles to gain their freedom, destroy their pursuers, provide them food and drink in a desert, and they willingly vow to always serve Him and worship Him, voluntarily performing a ritual He did not request that says "we will keep this promise or we will curse ourselves to death." He does what any good father would do, he holds them to their word. And when they then immediately turn back to worshiping idols, having orgies to celebrate pagan gods, and committing all sorts of other sin, the self-appointed mediator between these children and their God, forces them to pay the price for breaking their oath. But, God is merciful. He does not require them to all be killed to fulfill the terms of their oath. No, he allows them to pay some of the price, but He then institutes a plan to reform their ways. He shows them all the wrongs they have been unknowingly committing and leads them to institute a book of law that will help them overcome their "addiction" to sin, idolatry, and debauchery.
The story continues on, Man stumbling and falling. God picking him back up and encouraging man to try again. Letting Man sometimes learn that the burner is hot by allowing Him to touch the evil that would have best been avoided. Other times, giving object lessons to Man.
If you understand that the Bible is the story of salvation history, how God took infant man from infants to maturity, providing opportunities for learning and growth appropriate to where they were developmentally and behaviorally, it makes a great deal more sense. In this context you can see that God did not change, God remained the all-knowing eternal God, Man changed and God approached Man in ways appropriate to His level of development and needs. Certainly it is more complex than that. If you don't understand the history of the region, the history of the people, the cultural contexts, the idioms, expressions of speech, geographic references or how they saw the world around them, it can still be confusing.
But, even more modern books suffer the same problems. And if you haven't taken the time to read the entirety of it and to call on resources to help understand the meaning and intent, you can't possibly understand what it is communicating. Pulling verses out of context is dangerous business. Blindly accepting an interpretation without testing it against other possibilities, the context of the book it is found in, and the context of the whole is going to lead you to terribly inaccurate conclusions.
