Speaking of a Tribal Chief....

Could my helter skelter, here and there cyber path be considered research?  Perhaps. It has been a "God blessed the broken road" kind of journey right from the very beginning when I "happened upon" Tentmaker and came to believe in UR shortly after...just a few short months after becoming a Christian.  I am very grateful to God for that.  But, I digress. 

I came across the following TIMELY...yes, I said TIMELY post in my "research."  Please note, date of post is December 29, 2008 which for me is pretty darn timely.  When I came across the post, I realized it kind of goes along with the quote by Deepak Chopra...about how we've created a tribal chief instead of the Infinite Being that is God. 

I think our creation of this warrior God extends all the way back to the atrocities and genocide and jihad written about in the Old Testament.  With a shrug of their shoulders, in a matter of fact, so what, who cares kind of way, they describe these God ordered slaughters. 

I've discussed this theme in a bunch of other posts on this blog.  I don't have all the answers but I am content in the belief that God, our heavenly father, is not a tribal chief and that his perfect representation and likeness can be found in the face of Jesus.  And Jesus would not command jihad.  Of course, not everyone believes that way and they continue to shrug their shoulders with that so what attitude.  After all surely the Lord was fighting for Israel. 

The post I came upon on Open Source Theology was actually a response to a post by Andrew Perriman called The Canaanite 'genocide' and the renewal of creation.  See the quotes around the word genocide?  If the OT accounts are accurate, would not the killing off of all the "hites" be genocide? 

Perriman sees the atrocities as a cleansing of the land related somehow to the cleansing of the earth in the flood.  After the flood, a new creation began. After all (or almost all) of the "ites" were gone, the land of milk and honey...the promised land was a new creation too. 

As far as the flood described in the OT and whether or not it was directly caused by God as judgment, well that is the subject of another post.

So back to the Canaanite genocide....

C.S. Cowles takes exception to Perriman's article in a post called Canaanite Genocide and its Monstrous Concept of God in which he gives his own views on why we cannot believe God orchestrated the whole thing...that God "permissioned" it rather than commissioned it.   Following are a few of the points he expands on in his post. 

• God Has Disclosed Himself Fully and Finally in Jesus of Nazareth.
• The God Revealed in Jesus is Nonviolent
• Our God is nonviolent and is liberating us all, beginning with the poor and oppressed, from our addiction to violence and death."
• God’s Love is Revealed Most Compellingly On The Cross.
• Our final authority in exegeting "texts of terror," then, is Jesus to whom the Scriptures give a faithful and true witness, attested by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.

Very interesting views about the atrocities (very similar to mine) The comments section has thorough well written comments...some in agreement with Cowles...some not.  Also, C.S. Cowles is a contributor in a book called Show Them No Mercy.  Andrew Perriman is the author of Otherways: In search of an emerging theology.  It is a collection of writings from the his web site Open Source Theology.