Thank God for people like Greg Boyd and other ways of understanding the scriptures.

Piper's response is well-thought out and faithful to the Scriptures. The Open Theism "solution" of emasculating God and making Him a victim along with us should not even be considered by those who fear God and believe His Word. "Let God be true and every man a liar."

When I hear preaching or commentary like Pipers, I scratch my head. For being such a biblicist Piper's hermeneutics seem fragmented and contextually ignorant. He doesn't seem to use the revelation of God in Jesus as his primary lens for reading the rest of the Bible. By the way he reads scripture its almost like Jesus is just another revelation of God not THE revelation of God.

Well put, Dr. P. While you can't ever satisfy all the emotional objections that these passages raise, Piper's response is logical. I appreciate the spirit of his response, too. God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, the Bible says, and Piper doesn't either. He just acknowledges God's right to give and take any life.

And when God uses human beings as instruments to accomplish those deaths, it is fearsome and awful and terrible to contemplate. And just because you're doing God's will, it may not mean you escape the consequences, as Judas demonstrates--he was God's instrument to accomplish the death of Jesus, which was God's will, but woe be unto him for betraying Jesus.

Such are the mysteries of life.

This is a very controversial subject and it is good to see someone taking it head on in the church, even if I don't quite agree with everything he stated.

"Such are the mysteries of life."

I hate that quote.

That quote says this to me, " I have no need for an answer because I'm quite comfortable not knowing."

btw, I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I still can't find where it says in Joshua 6 where Joshua is told by G-d to kill everybody in the city.

Perhaps it's because I'm not intellectually slaved to the whole "inerrancy" thing so I'm not seeing it.

Perhaps Mr. Piper could be so kind as to point it out to me?

As an antidote to Piper's perspective, I recommend Randell Rauser's articles “I want to Give the Baby to God: Three Theses on Devotional Child Killing” and “‘Let Nothing that Breathes Remain Alive.’ On the Problem of Divinely Commanded Genocide”, both of which can be found here http://randalrauser.com/articles/academic-articles/
Peter Enns also has a good discussion of this topic going on over at his blog.
Do some people really see no problem with Piper's perspective? If God told the Israelites to do it, could he not tell someone to do it today? Certain individuals have claimed God commanded them to kill their children. Who are we to say they are wrong? God could have commanded them to do this couldn't he? If this raises moral outrage in you, good. If not, I worry.
If it was right for the Israelites to slaughter the Canaanites, then it was also right to rape the women and enslave them. This is not just permitted, but commanded in the Pentateuch. Does Piper really want to advocate that? If so then, in my view, he has lost all credibility to offer moral judgements.

This is entirely apart from the issues of whether or not the conquest narrative should be taken as straight history. The findings of archeology would seem to call this perspective into question.

Joshua T. here is where the killing is advocated by Joshua who was commanded by God to act in this manner NASB - Joshua 6:17 The city shall be under the ban, it and all that is in it belongs to the Lord; only Rahab the harlot [e]and all who are with her in the house shall live, because she hid the messengers whom we sent. .....here is where it is confirmed that the Lord was with Joshua when the destruction of Jericho was completed - Joshua 6:27 So the Lord was with Joshua, and his fame was in all the land.

sheerahkahn the problem with your premise is that God does not directly talk to anyone at this time (Piper pointed this out in the small video when he referenced God as the King over the church and functioning in a different manner than God as the King over Israel). Since God does not directly talk to anyone those who try to say he is talking to them are lying or delusional and are responsible for their actions.

God is God - if you feel you should be able to understand everything about God I think you have far overreached what the human mind is capable of understanding. God has shown us what we need to know, the rest we may have the opportunity to learn if we believe in Jesus Christ thereby receiving salvation.

Gregory G -- In Joshua 6.17, it's Joshua who is speaking, not the Lord. So sheerahkahn's question still remains unanswered: What's the biblical evidence that God told Joshua to kill them all?

Amen. God will one day Judge finally, but at times he judges immediately, and his judgments are always right.

josh Mann

Bibliocentric.com

So, if God is sovereign and does always right, does that mean the Colorado movie massacre was God's will? Does that mean the shooter was merely doing what God willed him to do? Therefore, should he not be punished, but appreciated as an instrument of the will of God?

No. Some things are clearly not the will of God, and mass murder is not one of them.

"Joshua 6:17 The city shall be under the ban, it and all that is in it belongs to the Lord;"

Perhaps a run down of this is in order..

Joshua 6

6:1 Now the gates of Jericho were securely barred because of the Israelites. No one went out and no one came in.

In military terms, this is called a siege. Access to the city is denied to the Hebrews, and escape is denied to the Inhabitants.

2 Then the Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. 3 March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. 4 Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. 5 When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have the whole army give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the army will go up, everyone straight in.”

Thus, ends the command to Joshua from G-d, and heretofore it is all Joshua speaking. Joshua is the devoting everything in the city to the Lord, Joshua telling people not to take anything.
It's all Joshua speaking, not G-d.

And in verse 6:17 it is Joshua speaking, not G-d. I see no commands from G-d to Joshua to butcher wholesale the people of Jericho. Sorry, dude, this is all Joshua, i.e. man, not G-d.

@sheerahkhan and others, Joshua 6 is hardly the only place where "herem" warfare (the proper term, I think) is discussed.

See also the example of the Lord commanding Saul to slaughter the Amalekites:

(1 Sam 15:3, ESV) “Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.'"

This was the continuation of the previous command that the Lord had given the Israelites to wipe out the Amalekites (Exod 17:14; Num 24:20; Deut 25:17-19).

Piper has it right. The problem is that we, having grown up in a secular society, assume the essential goodness of mankind, so any untimely and violent deaths seem unjust. God, however, sees us all as fallen in Adam, so our deaths, by whatever means, are just, because He is just, and he has willed it to be so. We do not deserve life (physical or spiritual; temporal or eternal). It is all a gift of God, one that he can end at any time.

Even though I believe this, that last paragraph was hard to type! I rebel against it inwardly, yet that is what the Bible says.

Blessings to you all as you wrestle with this weighty topic.

The problem of divine genocide is not one of God's morality, as though God "ought" not to have killed them. This is the dead end that people who don't want to have this conversation try to force us down so they can say "It's a mystery". (Of course, it is a mystery, but let's at least see what the real problem is first.) The real problem with arbitrary killing by God is that it shreds his consistency and muddles our view of God's character.

For example, God's heart in the prophets is consistently and overwhelming on the side of the Fatherless and the Widow- um, guess what- this is women and children after their husbands have been killed in battle. And yet this is who is slaughtered by the Israelites after the battles here.

So what does God's care for the widow and orphan, entail, then? Does it mean you won't be killed? Nope. Can't guarantee that. The image of killing babies should be fixed firmly in your mind; and then you have to admit, that God's care for the widow and the orphan does not even protect babies in these cases.

The problem with these sorts of passages is that they eviscerate whatever systematic theology of God's character we have. God is love; but he will righteously kill babies, well, what's to stop God from...well, I was going to think of something more horrible than killing babies and I couldn't. What's to stop God from killing more babies and calling it loving? And at that point, what is the difference between a God who kills babies and calls it loving and a demon who kills babies and calls it loving?

From a human point of view, unless we have at least some real moral discernment, I am unsure how we would be able to tell the difference between these two deities.

Try this dilemma: You are an Israelite king, who must discern amongst a cacophany of false prophets about who is really hearing from God (this was a real problem and you can read about it all over the OT; so no fair saying this couldn't happen at all!). One prophet has a word from God that you should kill the children of Israel's enemies, because God has commanded it. They point out that God has commanded this before. Another prophet tells you that this is abbhorent to YHWH, and that if you do this, your reign will surely come to ruin. God's heart is for the fatherless and the widow, as many scriptures attest to.

What do you do as king? This dilemma shows what Piper's sort of answer does to our ethics/discernment, as there is really no way to decide between these claims once humans are held to have no reliable moral discernment. Because God just does whatever he pleases, we can't predictably discern when something is from God or not. This would be fine if God just did everything, but we have to act, and we will be judged for our actions, so discernment is crucial. As the king, you will either let the children live or not, and you will either have obeyed or disobeyed God. And so you will be stuck, possibly risking God's anger either way (and possibly becoming a demonic monster if you kill the children and the first prophet turned out to be from Satan).

What say you, UR folks? Anyone dare to say they know what they would do? Try to avoid looking for easy routes out; you know in your heart of hearts they will be less satisfying in the end.

This is the real dilemma of these passages. How can we possibly have a consistent view of God's character because of them, and what does that mean for human action?

"The problem is that we, having grown up in a secular society, assume the essential goodness of mankind, so any untimely and violent deaths seem unjust."

And it is here where we now delve into our assumptions.

Look, as much as I can understand where Mr. Dickel comes from, the point of hte matter is that we have built much of our understanding of G-d, the bible, and mankind on our assumptions.
BTW, FYI, Mr. Dickel, Y'shua did die for our sins.
But, contrary to Mr. Dickel's assertion, Y'shua wasn't gunning for that position of sacrifice, i.e. "yeah baby, tack me to that piece of wood, and allow me to bleed out for you in a miserable six, seven hours of excruciating pain!" That's just sadistically sad to think that.
He didn't resist it, he accepted it as the final outcome for the redemption of man. Sure it looks barbaric, but on the flip side the "thinking man's bible" is just that..."man," and just looking up from my screen I have five thousand years of man made history, all of it military, and all of it a testament to our ability to find a new and interesting ways to screw each other over with a good wagonload of justifications and rationalizations to ensure we have a solid excuse for us being complete and total jerks to each other.

So, yeah, I have the "bible of man" all five thousand recorded years of military history of it, and it's thoughtless, brutal, and insufferable.

But I digress, a lot of assumptions have been built about G-d, the bible, and mankind's interaction with the deity. I think Tom highlights the conundrum we're faced with when reading hte bible. And so, the literalist take is, "ALL the bible is breathed by G-d, and thus all words written in the bible are G-d's words to us, today."
This mentality is an intellectual trap.
This does not allow for people to be people, does not allow us, the readers today to ascertain the biases and prejudices that define the writers of the bible perspective, and it also white-washes an entire history of the good, the bad, and the ugly of how our faith came to be.
I think we're being a bit too literal here.

btw, Samuel is much later on in the histories, and the span of time we're covering here is much earlier than Samuel's arrival in the bible.

And, another note, "Believe the evidence" is a good starting place. I think that it would behoove people to actually look at the physical evidence of the period of time to get a grasp on how this group of people behaved.

I for one, do not think that Joshua killed all the women and children, as it was not the custom of the populations of that time period. Considering that the prejudicial mindset towards the value of women in this period of time, and the focus of the statement that the king and the men of valor were handed over means that slaves were taken.
That would be my assumption based on textual, cultural, and physical evidences from this period of time..

Piper isn't making the dilemma hard enough, because he is missing a key feature of the problem of God being genocidal.

I am going to assume that Piper's description of God is correct. God gets to do things because he is in charge. Power and authority are the sufficient explanations and justifications for God's behaviour. No other justification is necessary, and any objection on moral grounds is void.

God gets to do what he wants. He makes the rules. No one can stop him if they disagree. He can even say, "Do as I say, not as I do."

Here is the dilemma that I see. Why would I worship a God that can't behave better than me? Heck, He can't behave better than tyrants and mass killers.

We hold in esteem all those who resist evil rulers. It seems that the right response to a god that can and does commit genocide is nothing but total resistance. It would be futile in the end, but at least I would have behaved morally in the face of the crimes that such a god committed.

Power or Sovereignty does not trump proper, moral behaviour, and if it does, then resistance to Power is the only proper response.

I wonder why there is no record of Jesus being asked any of these questions. Jesus was known to have had an extensive knowledge of the Old Testament and to have confounded the Jewish leaders with that knowledge, yet nobody seemed to be concerned with any of this during Jesus' lifetime. Didn't anyone think about these issues back then? And if not, why not?

What kind of God would create a world over which he has no control and allows the people he created to kill and brutalize each other (while those of us who are good and loving in and of ourselves look on dumbfounded) and then calls himself a God of Love? Who could believe in such a God? This is truly a case for atheism.

That God could order this horrible genocide is a stumbling block, maybe the biggest, and it is smack dab right in my way.
I can understand that God cries with us when men do evil, after all He has given us a free will, for good or bad.
But God directly ordering the deaths of babies?

Tom F. says: "God is love; but he will righteously kill babies, well, what's to stop God from...well, I was going to think of something more horrible than killing babies and I couldn't. What's to stop God from killing more babies and calling it loving?"

Piper's response was that he in fact hasn't stopped. That God kills 50,000 people a day, including babies. He's saying that the only difference in this case was, during that singular period of direct rule over a political entity, He specifically ordered men to bring about that killing. That they would all die eventually anyway, as we all do. Their number just happened to be up that day rather than later.

I'm not saying I agree with all of that. I'm just saying that's what Piper's response would be.

God can take any life because He laid down His life for everyone else.

Piper speaks as if there are no other alternatives to his particular view.

There are...

David T. Lamb's book "God Behaving Badly" offers what I consider to be a much more robust and reasonable explanation of this tricky issue.

@elegance, there are two places (that I can think of) in the NT where similar questions are discussed. They don’t talk about “genocide in the OT” per se, but they do discuss the freedom of God to do as he wishes, specifically in ordering people’s lives, whether in life or in death, as he sees fit.

First, in Luke 13:1-5, Jesus responds to those who said that the victims of two tragedies must have done something to deserve their cruel deaths. In both examples, Jesus says that it was not that they had done anything wrong! They were no better or worse than anyone else. The flip side of that, however, is that given that they had done nothing to deserve their terrible fate, the presence of some people (and not others) in that situation was ultimately a matter of God’s free, sovereign choice. What else could it be, if those who died had done nothing to deserve it?

Jesus also does not engage the audience as to whether God was just or unjust. Rather, he directs his audience away from speculation about God’s choices toward the choice they—indeed, we all—must make: will we repent of their sins, and submit to God’s authority? “But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3, 5, ESV).

Second, in Rom 9, Paul talks about the absolute sovereignty and freedom of God to choose or not to choose—to love or to hate—whom he chooses. He gives three examples: Isaac (vs. Ishmael), Jacob (vs. Esau), and Israel (vs. Pharaoh). Paul directly addresses God’s sovereignty and absolute freedom:

Rom 9:14 ESV - What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means!
Rom 9:15 ESV - For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."
Rom 9:16 ESV - So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy….
Rom 9:18 ESV - So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.
Rom 9:19 ESV - You will say to me then, "Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?"
Rom 9:20 ESV - But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, "Why have you made me like this?"
Rom 9:21 ESV - Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?

Now back to the OT. I leave you with the words of Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, whom the Lord humbled, then restored:

Dan 4:34 ESV - At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation;
Dan 4:35 ESV - all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, "What have you done?"
Dan 4:37 ESV - Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just; and those who walk in pride he is able to humble.

Like Jesus and Paul, Nebuchadnezzar understood that the Lord’s freedom is total, and totally just.

"then calls himself a God of Love? Who could believe in such a God? This is truly a case for atheism."

I actually sympathize with your position Elegance, and of course, GregG2 puts up a compelling argument through scripture...though, it leaves a bit to be desired for answers.

Here is the thing about G-d...he's not out to get us....humans, the entire species, the whole total of our existence, but there is a problem with our world...It's a messed up place, and we, humans in toto, messed it up.

So the thing is I think a more valid question would be, "If G-d is a Holy G-d of Perfection and Love why doesn't he clean this world up?"

I think it has something to do with the entirety of our outlook as a species in regards to what G-d has in store for us...as humans in his Universe...which is hinted at in the bible, but not fully revealed.

And I think this has to do with our ability to understand the entirety of what it is we will become in the New Heaven and New Earth...we can't conceive of it right now because...well, let's be honest, our entire outlook on ourselves and on life is corrupted by our very nature.
Everything we do, touch, or attempt is tainted with our corruption...ever notice how you meant to be good or meant a good outcome, but the whole thing blows up in your face despite your best intentions?
That's the corruption of our nature...and it is that....corruption, our rebellion revealed that is innate in our nature, even despite being reborn it is still there...twisting and maligning our attempts at being good, frustrating us in our desire to do good...to do as Y'shua commanded us to do. Love one another...and we fail at that so often...

G-d is allowing this...our state of being...for whatever his reason...to run it's course.

And I think, I suspect with some historical evidence, and sketchy biblical support that G-d is allowing all of mankind to do as we want, to do murder, to do evil, to attempt good, to organize, to philosophize ourselves to a better life, to be like...well, to explore all our options of self-actualization/self-righteousness/self-attempts-at-holiness till we run ourselves into the ground trying to be something we can never, ever be...we can never be like G-d.

I think G-d is allowing us, mankind in all entirety, in all our sin with our very corrupted nature to be like him to run it's course right up to the point where we try to annihilate ourselves.

And I think that at the "White Throne Judgement" G-d will ask the question to mankind in toto because we will all be there, and we will all be witnesses against ourselves and our history...and that question is, "Is there any thing, any of you haven't attempted that can show that you can be like me?"

and the answer will be...no. Everything possible that could be tried over our extended history was tried, and it all ended in failure despite our desire to be successful...it is at that point at the final Judgement...that we will finally, as an entire species...submit to the sovereignty of G-d's Holiness and will.

We can't imagine what a person like that will be like, all we can do is look at Y'shua and get an idea that he is what we will be like...and as we know looking back at what happened to him that we can never be like that as long as we still live with the corruption our species rebellion has brought down on us.

Anyway, that is what I came to think a few years ago. Hope that helps, or even better, helps you ask more questions.

Johnny: Sure, Piper can say that. What it goes to is this: why does the 6th commandment prohibit murder? Is it because murder is wrong, or would murder be fine if we were simply God?

Piper is surely not suggesting that God MURDERS 50,000 people a day, no? However we understand the presence of evil and death in the world, this sort of death is different from cold-blooded murder, no? What we are talking about in this passage is murder, and the only reason its okay is because God said so.

Greg G2: God's "freedom to do as he wishes" means that we can not expect anything consistently of God. God could send every last human being to Hell, and if some were to complain that God had promised to save those who had trusted in Christ, God could simply respond that it was more just to break that promise than to keep it. Who are we to question God's will? If God decided to break that promise than on what grounds would you object?

Complete "freedom" in the sense you are talking about means God's character is meaningless.

You can't have it both ways: either God has complete freedom and no discernible and reliable character from our perspective; or, God is limited by his own character from doing things that violate that character, and we can meaningfully say things like "God is just" and "God is love".

Heck, maybe you'll double down and say that we can't really know God's character in a way that would limit his actions. That would get a lot of consistency points with me, and I could respect that as simply a very different theological path than my own.

But seriously, please tell me you don't think you can have it both ways, because if you do, I might rip my hair out!

Piper just gives it to you straight and right between the eyes. I don't doubt he can put in a context that is less hackle-raising. I'd like to take a run at the context which makes sense to me.

God redeems death. Whatever we think of a number of situations in OT and NT (e.g. Annanias' and Sapphira's death apparently by God's hand), it seems clear the the bible claims that all of this is purposeful and redemptive in some sense. If humans go to war, we accept that to make good and necessary changes to political and social structures, we will cause harm to innocents. God has the same issue. But death is not final, nor even consequential in the light of eternity.

Secondly, I think we need to separate the question of God's character from His will for us. If He makes the latter clear, it is disobedient as well as presumptuous for us to argue from God's character contra his revealed will. We have the law and the prophets, and the community of God, to help us understand that will.
To Tom F's posed dilemma of the Israelite king trying to decide between two prophets and their divergent courses of action, this is a theoretical dilemma which rings false in the biblical context. Those early bloody days of fulfilling God's will to form a people for himself were directed by clearly divinely selected leadership. In less momentous times, prophets could be recognized by miracles and fulfilled prophecy. God tailors guidance to the weight of the decision.

If the whole arc of history is for God to gain a bride for Jesus, then the massacres in the OT, the death of Annanias and Sapphira's, and death in general are coherent with God's overall will for the cosmos because they are redemptive toward that end. God can and will square up accounts, and redemption is what He is about.

David: I am largely in agreement with your second paragraph, and it is likely to be the best possible response, though there is still mystery and I still don't know if it gets us all the way there.

On the character and will: Ah, but this problem can not be so easily dealt with by simply prioritizing God's revealed will. As the dilemma shows, if God's revealed will appears to be demonic, how could we know that it is really God's revealed will?

Trying to wiggle out of the dilemma I posed by saying is unbiblical isn't going to work either. Here are a litany of cases where kings had to decide between prophets.

1 Kings 22- Here, God (seemingly?) sends a falsehood (God is allowed to lie to evil kings?) to one group of prophets, and sends the truth only in one lone prophet. Here the question was to go to war. Is it really so much of a stretch to think that another question might have been what to do with the defeated enemies?

Jeremiah 23:10 -11- Here, false prophets were apparently to be found even as far up as God's temple, "the prophets use their power unjustly, they follow an evil course". Well, if the prophets claim to speak for God, and God's revealed will can't be questioned, how was a king supposed to know they were evil? How is the king to know whether to trust Jeremiah or these prophets? In fact, Jeremiah ends up explicitly recommending that these prophets be judged by their deeds (23:14)! This implies that kings should not blindly accept prophecy as the "revealed will of God", but should test it to see whether the prophets behavior accords with God's character (i.e., not adulterous, not lying). So Jeremiah actually recommends God's CHARACTER as having priority over his supposedly revealed will.

In fact, Jeremiah's passage alone raises this issue as a serious and definitively "biblical" dilemma: God's revealed will is not always crystal clear, and in a situation with false prophets, kings will be held accountable for listening to them. Apparently, God is against these sort of false prophets, but he permits them nonetheless.

See also Micah 3:11, where false prophets apparently gave God's sanction to economic injustice. But again, if God's revealed will can't be questioned, how would anyone have known they were being unjust?

Ezekiel 22:25 is another one. Apparently, these prophets "violated God's law". But certainly killing children seems to be a violation of the 6th commandment? God grants an exception there, how were the people Ezekiel was addressing to know whether these prophets were violating God's law or simply that God had given them an exception like God had given with Joshua?

Ah, I could go on, but it seems unnecessary. This was a serious problem in the OT. And many biblical passages, mostly from the later prophets, would seem indeed to demand a discernment based on God's character, not simply his blindly revealed will. Not that there aren't other passages which seem to indicate blind obedience (the sacrifice of Issac being perhaps the paradigmatic case).

The truth is, there is no easy answer to these sorts of questions about OT genocide, and that's why I despise Piper's answer. It sounds harsh and hard and spiritual, but in truth, it's way too easy. That's right, I'm going to be the first to call out Piper on this, he's being far too easy on people. Reading these sorts of difficult passages without a "safety valve" like Piper's is part of discipleship. Following after God is hard, sometimes even confusing, and it requires all the discernment and critical thinking that we can muster. Piper's answer lets people off the hook from all that hard work by simply denying there's any problem at all in these sorts of passages. This is the same work that our spiritual ancestors clearly (if these verses I mentioned are any indication) had to work very hard at, and who may have lessons to teach us if we don't assume that God's revealed will is always perfectly clear.

"Following after God is hard, sometimes even confusing, and it requires all the discernment and critical thinking that we can muster. Piper's answer lets people off the hook from all that hard work by simply denying there's any problem at all in these sorts of passages."

Tom F.

Thank you Tom, and I too, agree, Piper's answer is too...I don't know how to describe it other than a major white-washing of the bible.
I had to dig a bit but Mr. Piper made G-d sound like a remorseless serial killer...

"'I have walked the same path as God, by taking lives and making others afraid, I became God's equal. Through killing others, I became my own master. Through my own power I come to my own redemption..'"

Donald "Pee Wee" Gaskins,

From the quasi autobiography of Final Truth, The Autobiography of a Mass Murderer/Serial killer, Donald "Pee Wee" Gaskin's.

When I hear people like Mr. Piper speak that G-d kills whom he kills and who are we to question it...it's like I want to say, "What? What kind of god do you follow...because dude, you're view of my G-d is kind of sick and twisted."

I think if we apply the filter of Y'shua nature and character to the past present and future as a physical representative template to the very nature and character of G-d...G-d looks a lot more sane in the OT than what Mr. Piper, and a lot of other Literalists make him out to be.
And this, Mr. Piper's response is why I have a problem with applying the "inerrancy" of scriptures because the onus of discovery is no longer an option, in fact it is discouraged, and therefore G-d seems distant, brutish, cold, and heartless...oh yeah, and don't question any of that because that's faithlessness and you'll be damned.
It's a wonder Mr. Piper has survived this long as a follower of G-d with such a sad view of G-d.

Sheerahkahn,

Thanks for the kind words, it sounds like you come to texts like these with much of the same internal struggle as I do.

Tom F. and Sheer, you owe it to yourselves, if you have never read it, to pick up and read a copy of David Bentley Hart's small book, The Doors of the Sea. It doesn't directly address the problem of OT genocide, but rather the more general question of the what is a *genuinely* Christian response (consistent with the revelation given to us in the NT) to any evil and tragedy. It was written to answer reactions both on the part of atheists and different stripes of Christians in the wake of the 2004 Tsunami in the Indian Ocean. In it, Hart presents one of the most completely devastating critiques I have ever read of the many sub-Christian, or even anti-Christian responses given by even well-meaning Christians in the wake of the tragedies that befall human beings in this world. It is the only book since college other than the Bible in which I made notations in the margins and highlighted parts. I wish every Christian would pick up the book and read it, if necessary several times, in order to fully comprehend it. (Hart's not necessarily an easy read, but he is an eloquent one.)

Rationalizations like Piper's of the meaning of certain Scriptures and of the nature and meaning of the sovereignty of God come under particularly strong scrutiny in Hart's work here in the light of the fullness of the revelation of God we are given in Christ.

"... if you have never read it, to pick up and read a copy of David Bentley Hart's small book, The Doors of the Sea."

Normally, I don't make a habit of ordering a book when it's suggested, but just to show that I take you seriously, Karen...I've ordered the book from Amazon.com.
I'll let you know what I think later after I read it.

Should be to my house in two days...so, I figure...two, three day read...hmm, I should have some initial thoughts come Friday, and digested thoughts by next week.

Sheer, well now, that humbles me! I look forward to your thoughts.

(For the record, having a limited budget, I almost always borrow--even if I have to though inter-library loan--rather than buy a book. However, I *own* two copies of Hart's book!)