I've slowed down with reading the Bible.
The other day I said I had read Genesis. I've now finished the books of Exodus and Leviticus, as well as Numbers up to chapter 19.
Unfortunately I've now caught up with Hemant Mehta's reading and commentary, so from now on I can only read a chapter a week.
According to Wikipedia there are 1189 chapters in the Bible. I've read 136 chapters, which means there are another 1053 chapters to go. At a chapter a week that'll be another 20 1/4 years; I'll be retired before I get to the end!
As a churched child I was pretty familiar with the stories in these books, repeatedly reading various sections dotted throughout. But up until now I'd never read all these books completely and continuously, and that gives a very different feel.
Reading continuously gives a better sense of the percentage of words spent on various topics, and hence the priorities. And genuinely equally reading each chapter -- not merely skimming over the boring bits and focusing on the well-known bits -- has been really important for this.
I feel that this has allowed me to get a much better sense of the character of God in these books. Not only can we often read directly what God says and does, but we can also infer values by looking at what is included, the amount it is included, and what is excluded.
What stands out for me is the amount of words spent detailing both the rituals for worshipping God and the various penalties and punishments for failing to correctly adhere to those rituals. By far, the focus for human right action is on how to interact correctly with God. Comparatively speaking, there is very little on how humans should interact with each other or their environment, except inasmuch as it affects God.
The impression given is that the God of these books doesn't care much about people, as people. He is not so interested in their feelings, their loves, their lives, their interests, their relationships, their families, their wellbeing, and whatever is personally important to them. He cares even less about non-human animals.
The character of God, as portrayed in these books so far, is self-absorbed, insecure, quick to anger at perceived insults against himself, and with a tendency to lash out with violence when angry. This violence is often lethal, with both spontaneous and pre-meditated killing and torture of individuals and groups of people. Often his victims had absolutely nothing to do with the supposed wrong and were merely innocent bystanders. A significant aspect of what appeases him is the torture and killing of animals, the burning of their flesh (and its smell) and the splashing of their blood.
In other words, the God of these books comes across to me as morally repugnant. Of all the characters portrayed in the Bible so far, God easily stands out as morally the worst, to the point that if we were to call anyone evil it would be him. If such a being existed in reality I'd be opposed to him.
What I would like for Christians to do is, when reading the Bible, look at what it says God does, and imagine how you would feel if a human did those exact same things. Can you honestly say that what God does in the Bible is good and just and right? Is the God of the Bible really worthy of worship?
(Of course, the Bible makes much more sense if it's seen as a collection of different texts written over many hundreds of years by many different people and compiled and edited by many others. Matt Baker at UsefulCharts has some excellent videos on when the various parts of the Bible were written and compiled, including this summary chart.)
UPDATE 7/11/2022: Matt Baker has just uploaded a combined YouTube video of the earlier multi-part series on when the various parts of the Bible were written. Well worth watching.)
