2 Samuel

When David came into power, the kingdom was not united. He ruled in Hebron first, then power was consolidated.

It wasn’t consolidated through negotiation alone. It was war. It was civil war.

Part of the distaste for the “Old Testament God” is our own distaste for war.

I’m not a true pacifist, but I sympathize with those who articulate their position very well. But pacifism isn’t a hard reality even in our world. We can look with starry eyes at our own world and think we’re diminishing wars, so we look with a bit of disdain at the Old Testament and say, “Well, the God of the Old Testament is just too violent.”

And yet… the 20th Century gave us two world wars played out by major players of “developed” countries. The beginning of the 21st Century hasn’t fared much better. We are still a world torn up by war.

We can have a distaste for war and work like crazy for peace… and we should. Yet, we have the reality of war. It was part of the Old Testament world. It is part of our world. And God has not changed. Those are the realities we need to deal with in our theology.