Ron’s Reviews > God Behaving Badly: Is the God of the Old Testament Angry, Sexist and Racist? > Status Update

Chapter 7: Stubbornness. This is one accusation I don't really get; there are dozens of stories where He relents from punishing His people (or their enemies, like Nineveh in the book of Jonah) or eases up when He sees they've learned their lesson (like that Family Guy episode).

Chapter 6, Legalism: I've talked about this one before. God is accused of making all sorts of arbitrary and useless laws, but many of them make sense for the context in which they were enacted, primarily "Don't be like the Canaanites; I drove them out for a reason."

Chapter 5 cont'd: There are times here where I think the author stretches or assumes too much. For example, we assume that the young men who tease Elisha and are then mauled by bears (2 Kings 2) must have been dangerous because the alternative is unpalatable.

Chapter 5: Violence. God is often seen as loving violence, but he rarely gets credit for the time that he resolves conflicts with minimal force, like Elisha, the Kings, and the horses (2 Kings 6).

"Our image of God will also affect what we think God's followers should be like. If God were angry, sexist, and racist, it would follow that Christians would be as well."

(tongue biting intensifies)

Initial thoughts: I like this guy. He doesn't outright reject the objections of people like Richard Dawkins, in fact he appreciates that they're reading the books and raising questions. However, he feels that like my modern Christians, they read to support their ideas rather than to learn anything new.