The Good Book, part two

In the first Good Book post we looked at the subject of slavery, and saw that the Bible does not affirm or encourage the slave trade – it is decidedly against it. Another subject that causes people to think the Bible is an immoral book is the slaughter of the Canaanites in the time of Joshua. It is portrayed as an act of genocide – a tribal deity commanding ethnic cleansing. The image is disturbing, but it is distorted.

A letter to an atheist

I got into a conversation with a convinced atheist a couple of weeks ago. He brought up a few "atrocities" in the Bible, and God allowing evil in the world. When I tried to challenge him about what basis he, as an atheist, had for condemning any behaviour he ignored me and changed the subject. Thinking he might interact more coherently in print, I wrote him a letter which I have copied below. I will put my further correspondence to him in another post.

Defending the indefensible?

It is an issue that Christians grapple with and quite frankly often find very uncomfortable - the slaughter of the Canaanites.  While the distance in terms of time, space and culture means we are not really well-placed to enter into all the circumstances I want to attempt to address the issue in a concise way here, showing that Scripture gives us enough to go on.