Joshua: The Post Mortem
Joshua: What was it all about?
So far we have seen quite a bit of ‘God said this’ and ‘God said that’, but not once have we seen why he wanted any of the things we’ve read about. There has been no explanation whatsoever as to why he created anything. No explanation as to why he chose the Israelites to be ‘his people’. Even once he had chosen them there was no explanation as to what he really wanted to do with them. All that has happened is that he has bullied and cajoled them into endless wanderings in the desert along with turning them all into murderers and thieves. When you remember the ‘do unto others’ rule, you have to wonder how that equals God helping one group over another. How does it line up with what he taught the Israelites to do to others? Stealing? In what universe is that moral? Rape? Animal Cruelty? Where do these things fit in with a ‘moral code’?
Innocent people, millions of them by the sounds of things, have died horrible deaths at the hands of the Israelites, and at the urging of God.
This book may have had small sections talking about taking care of each other, but that is only to do with the Israelites themselves. Nobody else is treated with kindness except a few of their slaves and foreigners living amongst them. Everybody else is nothing more than fodder for their military machine. Goodness should not be selective, so the bible fails miserably here.
A compassionate god does not teach people to go about massacring men, women and children, cities at a time. The greed with which the bible has God wanting all precious items, e.g., gold and silver, is beyond belief. Then to kill an offender who was even willing to admit to his so called offense is typically unjust. Giving all this land that they stole to the Israelites as an ‘inheritance’ and making out that this is a good thing God is doing boggles the imagination. Honestly, logic seems to be a word completely lost on the followers of this book. How can anyone read this and seriously interpret it as a book to model their lives on?
I realise I have only managed 6 of 66 books thus far, but even so, you would think that would be enough to have found at least one really good story to tell children about how to be a good person and why they should be so. I’ve seen nothing that comes close. I have though, seen plenty that should have humanity screaming for this book to be relegated to the pits of a fiery hell all of it’s own.