How do Christians deal with the violence in the Bible?

Rahvin writes: Specifically, how do Christians feel about violence supposedly committed directly by or at the command of God?

sidelines writes:So what freewill did the firstborns have in this passage?

sidelined writes:Then you admit freewill in the context of the bible is not universal?

sidelined writes:This is the point.A freewill that is subject to others is not freewill is it?

schrafinator writes:So, is secular Sweden living by God's law, as they have one of the best standards of living in the world?

General Nazort writes:Why wouldn't God have the right to do whatever he wants with what he and he alone created?

rahvin writes:I would say that God would hold Himself to a far higher moral standard even than He holds us to.

Faith writes:It's a cry to God to avenge them against their enemies, the Babylonians, for justice against those who had dealt with them unmercifully. A case of a call for "what goes around comes around" to put it most simplistically.

Faith writes:However, I can't help but remark on this self-righteousness being expressed by all of you here. Matthew Henry's commentary says that the idea of the infants being dashed on the stones is a way of asking for the total annihilation of Babylon, leaving no one alive. In other words it has a meaning beyond the literal image. But just sticking to the literal image, if you had suffered great violence and loss at the hand of an enemy, wouldn't you desire the same to be done to the enemy that did this to you? Where's all this "holier-than-thou" coming from? All we protected people who haven't suffered such violence against us have the luxury of thinking we are above revenge it seems. Wait until it happens to you and then tell me you have perfect self-control and no desire whatever to go slaughter those who did it to you. Tell me that you would even be above hoping that God would punish them. In Christ we do have that strength, but it is nevertheless against our fallen nature and we have to work hard to cultivate it with God's help. Don't brag that you have that strength until you've been tested.

faith writes:So GDR, what does C.S. Lewis say about all this in "God in the Dock?"

Faith writes:Instead of arguing this let me just say that if you are attracted to Jesus Christ, the beautiful, the merciful, the good Jesus Christ, and you believe that He is God, then just give up all the questions and give yourself to Him. He is the Teacher. I try to answer complaints about God if I can but the bottom line is that people need His supernatural work in their lives. When you have that, everything begins to become clear. It isn't an intellectual thing, though, it's a giving of yourself on the premise of asking Him to forgive all your sins because of His sacrifice on the cross, and truly following Him. He'll show you whatver you need to know about the rest.

Faith writes:They got tested and passed the test.

Faith writes:So then you don't believe that God tested Abraham's faith by commanding him to sacrifice his son?

Faith writes:It's for us, not Himself. He does it to establish the point in Abraham's mind and especially ours reading about it, starting with teaching us that true faith is absolute surrender of everything we have and are to God. Absolute life and death surrender. It makes undeniably real the "acknowledging" that our children are His and not ours. If it's only a metaphor where's the life-and-death cutting edge of faith Christian martyrs have always been called to meet? I think it helps to cure us of a too-soft idea of faith to read about the martyrs. Missionary stories and biographies of other Christian greats are often good for the same reason.

Faith writes:There are many things in the OT that must be taken literally if one is to fully appreciate the reality of other things, especially the redemption, the resurrection, the second coming.

Faith writes:I radically disagree with you, but we can cordially agree to disagree I'm sure.