Monday, May 22, 2006

Contradictions?

I think I'll stir up the bee's nest here with this post :)
Needless to say I'm still WAY behind - though I am making progress. (I'm still in Deuteronomy!)
I'm so tempted to skip Deueronomy since it seems to be yet another rehash of Exodus... but I won't. Over the weekend I saw the Da Vinci Code movie. While looking up some info about the movie on IMDB.com there was a discussion thread about bible questions. I was curious. Needless to say it quickly turned into people getting upset, a bit of name calling etc... But one of the things that struck me was the contradiction of the 10 commandments "Thou shalt not kill (murder)". Yet, time and again Moses is leading his people on a genocide to conquer land and other tribes. In addition to the brutality of the war, God instructs Moses, who then instructs his armies to destroy the Women and Children. Isn't this in contradiction to "thou shalt not kill"?
I was trying to put Moses' story in today's context, and I think he would be considered a war criminal!? I'm very confused (and a bit disgusted) at the way the Israelites are running through the countryside taking land and life of both animals and humans (women and children too). Very barbaric.
I had heard somewhere (probably online) a minister saying that people are constantly saying that the bible is full of contradictions, yet he challenged the reader to point to one... Did I just find one?
One of the arguments posted in the messageboard was that God was instructing Moses to kill these other tribes as "punishment". But I don't see it that way? am I missing something?
ok, I'll stop hitting the bee's nest with the stick now :)
By the way... how does it feel for the rest of you to be more than a third of the way through the Bible!?

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