The people of the Book, the Judeo-Christian nations, are all too ready to be guided by the bad example of the OT Israelites in using warfare to get their way.
The NT life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, is not so appealing with its emphasis on forgiveness 7x70 instead of our Bibi believing 70 x7 refers to revenge piled onto his war of aggression and disdain for what he's doing to his neighbours, even his immediate neighbours in Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Lebanon.
Friend Bibi is now in even closer partnership with Trump in starting an illegal, immoral war, that no side can possibly win but is causing thousands of deaths and billions in pounds of pointless destruction to accelerate the Climate Emergency catastrophe for humanity.
Are Christian believers really on the side of God who wants what is good, right and just? I heard on Radio 4 that 80% of evangelical believers voted for Trump in November 2024, a most unsuitable and unstable man to be a President of any country, let alone the USA. Do you accept this verdict of mine?
Andrew, your chapter on warfare and violence in 'God's Book' is an excellent apologia for God's commands to "utterly destroy" many enemies of His in the Promised Land of Canaan. What you have written is all very well but the real, frightening problem is that certain evangelicals, army generals and politicians use those very bad examples in Exodus and Joshua to get on with doing the same to the people of today's most unHoly Land. Not only the over 70,000 mainly women and children in Gaza slaughtered but the many thousands on both sides but, overwhelmingly, Palestinians exterminated in 80 years of today's people of Israel fighting to keep the Promised Land promised to only them - and definitely NOT the Arabs/Palestinians.
God's Book as a handbook of how we are to live in international peace and harmony simply does not work, does not give an unequivocal, consistent example and instruction for living today. Unless, you insist that the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth in the four Gospels must have pre-eminence over the rest of the 62 books as regards practical day to day living.
Andrew, do you accept that a major section of the story of God's people in the Bible was used to justify the extermination of the Amalekites and Jericho? That precedent/example was used by Bibi Netanyahu's government to disproportionately and indiscriminately slaughter today's inhabitants in Gaza, to the tune of over 70,000. Only a minority of that figure were fighters killed while protecting their land from invasion, as international law allows. Is that true?
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