God Behaving Badly: Is the God of the Old Testament Angry, Sexist and Racist?

God has a bad reputation. Many think of God as wrathful and angry, smiting people right and left for no apparent reason. The Old Testament in particular seems at times to portray God as capricious and malevolent, wiping out armies and nations, punishing enemies with extreme prejudice. But wait. The story is more complicated than that. Alongside troubling passages of God's punishment and judgment are pictures of God's love, forgiveness, goodness and slowness to anger. How do we make sense of the seeming contradiction? Can God be trusted or not? David Lamb unpacks the complexity of the Old Testament to explore the character of God. He provides historical and cultural background to shed light on problematic passages and to bring underlying themes to the fore. Without minimizing the sometimes harsh realities of the biblical record, Lamb assembles an overall portrait that gives coherence to our understanding of God in both the Old and New Testaments.

• What Christians Ought to Believe: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine Through the Apostles’ Creed
• Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God
• Raw Revelation: The Bible They Never Tell You About
• The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It
• Encountering the Old Testament: A Christian Survey (Encountering Biblical Studies)
• The Skeletons in God's Closet: The Mercy of Hell, the Surprise of Judgment, the Hope of Holy War
• The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism
• Did God Really Command Genocide?: Coming to Terms with the Justice of God
• The Epic of Eden: A Christian Entry into the Old Testament
• A Brief Introduction to the Old Testament: The Hebrew Bible in Its Context