Aw, screw it... Most of you will want to skip this post, but for what it's worth, here's Andy's reply...
Biblical contradiction and nastiness! Basically, I'll just try and explain if I can any contradictions you want to talk about. It's the generalisation that I challenge - the idea that it is riddled with contradictions when actually if you really study it it makes a lot of sense, the problem is usually that people are quick to try and tear holes in it without doing the ground work.
The Old Testament is quite hard to get to grips with, I don't deny it. But it should never be forgotten that the Bible is about Jesus, and has that vein running right the way through it, even in the OT. I can't remember how many prophecies he fulfills from the OT - something in the region of 300 or 400. And yes, the OT may not be trusted as a historical document - it is describing things that happened quite a long time ago! But the New Testament has precious few inaccuracies in it, and is historically complemented by other, non-biblical and even anti-Christian documents. And really, knowing about Jesus is the fundamental tenet of Christianity - once you're happy with that, you can plough into understanding the OT at your own rate! I do need to read up more, I'll be honest, but at the moment I'm happy to trust the guys who are a lot cleverer than me and have done their homework... like the 18th century lawyers who set about to destroy Christianity by disproving the resurrection and when they came back together after a few years they'd both become Christians.
Nastiness. This is always a biggy, because the OT does have some fairly extreme sounding stuff in it. Firstly, I'd say that a lot of the weird sounding laws, eg. in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, make a lot of sense it retrospect regarding hygiene etc. which is God looking after his people. Before you read it, you have to keep in mind the back story - mankind has turned away from God, and is therefore set for death. Many of the laws are not as bad as all that (don't sleep with your mum for instance, I'm ok with that one), as for the harsher ones:
This is the interim period between man's rebellion and God's plan to redeem them; it's the stage where mankind is working uphill to try and get into God's good books. So the laws are God saying "this is how hard it is to be perfect". The detail that goes building the temples reflects how important your relationship with God is, the animal sacrifices symbolise that there is a cost to wrong doing that that something or someone has to pay for the mistakes of men - this is all a blueprint, this is all God saying "this rebellion is a serious business and it's going to take something big" - cue Jesus! A guy called C.J. Mahany (this is a currently living person, not a historical figure!), had exactly the same issues as you and really dug into the Old Testament. When he'd finished, he basically said "I started out wondering why all these people died... I finished wondering why I was still alive."
To dip into the OT casually, you identify with the people in it and think "ah, poor them, that's harsh". But this is coming from a proud human viewpoint, a viewpoint that tries to claim we are innocent. Hard as it may be to swallow, that's not the Christian stance... and what's more I don't see any evidence to back that up today. As he says in High Fidelity, "think of the top 5 worst things you ever did... now who's the asshole?". There are plenty of people in the Bible who see bad things happening around them, but have the insight to say "yeah, actually we deserve this... we probably deserve worse. God is good."
You mention God being jealous - he still is - it still troubles him to see his people ignoring him. But knowing jealousy from a flawed, human idea, it's quite hard to understand righteous jealousy. I think that's generally the hardest thing to get a grip on in the OT - to us it sounds harsh because if we were to dole out that kind of judgement, it would be, and it would be unjust. But because of the gap between mankind's behaviour and God, it isn't harsh, in fact it's fitting. The more you see of God's goodness and perfection, the more cr*p we look as humans, and the more it begins to make sense. If I told you I was going to lock a man up for 2 years, you might feel sorry for him and think I was being harsh. If I told you he was a serial killer, you'd probably be wondering why I wasn't throwing away the key... does that make sense?
To modern eyes, all the war in the OT may seem bloodthirsty, but this is just the way God allows a nation to be disciplined in a culturally relevant way.The times when God speaks to the people (through a prophet) read like a heartbreaking love story... imagine a husband saving a wife from slavery, giving her everything she needs, and yet time and time again he finds her having an affair with someone else... that's what it's like. "I saved you, I've been so good to you, I've been on your side! Stop it, please! Don't do that! Come home!" Or a Dad with tears in his eyes, smacking a child for wandering off into the road *again*... "I don't want to do this, but you won't understand unless I do..."
...and finally, a very clear pattern is established through OT history. Man rebels against God, man suffers, a leader emerges and restores the people back to God. Which sets things out nicely for God to do this once and for all with J.C.! There are so many things like this, that appear "nasty" but are far from it. Like Abraham being asked to sacrifice Isaac and then being stopped at the last minute... you could read that and think "how totally cruel of God", but the message couldn't really be clearer... God's saying "no, you're not going to have to sacrifice your son... I am."
As a Christian, I love all this stuff, I find it fascinating, but the fact is that it's somewhat academic... it's purpose now is to remind us of how far we can get on our own, and what it means to be offered the forgiveness that we are... I guess that's why they call it "the good news".
