I grew up a preacher's kid, my mom read aloud the one-year bible every year while I grew up, and none of the violence or the troubling depictions of God bothered me in the least; some time or other in my mid-20s, however, for reasons I know not of, something changed. Suddenly I was extremely sensitive, I couldn't read the OT without being deeply troubled; I tried books like Copen's "Is God a Moral Monster" and even Wright's "The God i Don't Understand" and others like it, and though they helped somewhat, still the OT became poison to my faith and the safest route for years was to avoid it like the plague. Eventually, I did a bible school and reading through the entire bible again in my sensitive state resulted in a lot of emotional turmoil. The evangelical stock answers that try to justify what then appeared so overwhelming and plainly evil now sounded as morally disturbing as a true-believer communist utterly convinced Stalin's actions were all moral, upright and necessary, giving an answer for every objection. For example, in 1 Samuel 15, the text has Samuel telling Saul that God wanted him to commit genocide against the Amalekites. What was the warrant given that justified the slaughter men, women, children, and infants? God was said to have taken note of how the Amalekites opposed Israel when they came out of Egypt. So, according to the text, a justification for genocide is getting revenge for an offense 400 years old! The children were to be put to death for their great, great, great, great great-grandfather’s sin. My whole evangelical life, due to a commitment to inerrancy, I had to defend what was absolutely and unequivocal evil. I had to call black white, injustice justice, hatred love, holding grudge forgiveness. Somehow, the meaning of love and justice had to be so elastic and vacuous to include murdering innocent women and children for something their ancestors did 400 years ago. The problem is compounded, for the psychological damage to the Israelite men should also be considered. It isn’t possible to slaughter babies, pregnant mothers, and toddlers without fundamentally darkening and twisting the character of these men and spreading additional evil within families. I can no longer whitewash this pure evil.
Part of what made this book so incredibly distasteful is Wright really wants the Old Testament to be normative as possible, and chillingly, his absolute devotion to the doctrine of inerrancy means his moral compass is utterly shattered; he is completely unable to acknowledge evil when it is staring him in the face. He seems to embrace the divine command ethic; there literally is NOTHING God could do or command that would be immoral. If in the bible God told Abraham to repeatedly rape his son, then skin him alive and roast him on a spit, Wright would simply call it "justice" and magically, everything is fixed, I mean Isaac was born in sin, utterly depraved, he doesn't deserve life... and of course, we all know "God's ways are not our ways..." and "we have no right to question God." Wright's idolatry of the bible has totally destroyed his ethical outlook. For Wright, butchering innocent toddlers and smashing baby's brains out on a rock for something their distant ancestors did 400 years ago is simply just and loving because God supposedly commanded it.
In response to the problem of ethical issues in the Old Testament, Wright wrote:
“We receive the Old Testament as the Bible of Jesus Christ and his church. Since it renders to us the God whom we acknowledge and worship as the Holy One of Israel, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, it is ultimately the Old Testament that claims and judges us, not we who judge, convict or exonerate it.”
Wright appears unwilling as a matter of principle to subject any part of the OT to ethical critique. Therefore, slaughter of innocent women, children and infants for some offense committed by their ancestors 400 years must stand as morally right. So according to Wright, I cannot critique this ethically, I cannot judge it, convict it; It must judge me. So I suppose this means my ethical sense is completely wrong. If God tells the modern native Americans to commit genocide, killing every American, because of the evils committed against their ancestors, I’d need to praise God for his justice. I clearly must also readjust my warped understanding of forgiveness, enemy love and justice; forgiveness actually means holding a grudge, enemy love means killing them and everyone they love, and justice means punishing the innocent for what others did.
What I found most objectionable in his section on economics is how Wright eschews private property and human rights. He points out the land of Israel was God's land and He distributed HIS OWN land among the tribes of Israel to steward, and then in the Psalm, it states God owns everything. The grounding for economics is God alone truly owns anything, that only God has true property rights, There is no universal natural law grounding property rights of life, liberty, and property. Of course, Wright focus' on the more rosy application of this--all the regulations and commands that were to benefit the poor Hebrews. But like John Rawls' philosophy which states nothing actually belongs to anyone has a dark side in my opinion, so what Wright is arguing for, has a dark underbelly (actual alluded to in his appendix on the Canaan Conquest).
Say some foreign people (the Canaanites) are the steward of God's land of Canaan and the Hebrews want to invade this foreign land and take it for themselves. Fortunately, with this theological doctrine, none of it actually belongs to the Canaanites--the houses they built, the fields they planted and livestock they fed are not theirs, they have no rights, but instead, it is God's property to dispose of as He wishes. And Oh, what do you know, 'God' just so happened to decided he doesn’t want the Canaanites to be stewards of the property anymore, and God has decided he wanted the Hebrews to have it. Therefore, it was morally right to go in kill the foreigner--men, women, children, and infants and take the land; laying hold of the wealth generated with a perfectly clean conscience. It's not murder, nor is it stealing since God simply decided to install a new steward and he can do with his property whatever he wishes. And also since all humanity is God's property too, God then told them to they could purchase foreign slaves to their heart's content, with whom they could treat with rigor and pass on as property to their children as an inheritance. This isn't a problem because these people were simply God's property anyways, and God decided to allow the Hebrews to be their slave masters.
I think it is a problematic notion today as well, for to say no one has any fundamental property rights (except for God), means religious leaders (sadly this has happened), either using the bible may inspire people to go slaughter others (as God's tool of judgment) and take their land (God wanted them to possess it), or believe God has spoken to them directly to confiscate the property of the rich and redistribute it to the poor. It means in the name of God we can do just about any evil imaginable since there are no underlying rights to life, liberty, and property for people. If God wants us to take what others have, or take their lives, or their liberty, as long as God commands it, it is therefore perfectly just and permissible--God can do with his property what he wishes. This kind of Divine Command ethics is extremely troubling to me.
Reading Wright's chapter on politics which touches on the evils of Egypt was only unsettling because of his double standard, he condemns Egypt for committing genocide and limiting religious freedom but then defends Israel for doing the same. For example with religious freedom, he goes on about how horrible Egypt was for not allowing Israel to worship, but then has no issue with Deut 13 commanding honor killings, demanding you to kill your son or daughter, or wife or close friend decides to worship differently, you must be first to cast the stone, you can't show mercy. And if you hear someone in an Israelite city is saying "let's worship other gods" you are to go in a kill everyone in the city-- every man, woman, children, and infant--they are all guilty by association--everyone is to be ruthlessly slaughtered because of that worthless idolater. This makes ISIS and the Taliban look tame in comparison, I suppose for Wright the only reason why Islam honor killings are morally wrong is they are done in zealous devotion to the wrong god. That Wright can be okay with these "stark" commands for honor killings which he makes a brief reference to in his chapter on family, gives him no ground to condemn Egypt for their intolerance. I guess in all of this, it just suggests Wright has a tribal-like and a divine Command ethic: evil is only evil when the wrong side does it; nothing is wrong in principle; anything that Wright would consider evil if commanded by another god is automatically considered good if he believes it is commanded by his God. I just cannot stomach this reasoning that would make John Calvin proud. Continuing on in the politic chapter, we get this bombshell, right after God brought his people out of Egypt and then into Canaan, Wright writes "At this point it could be said that the people of God have become not merely a liberated people, but also a liberating people, though it might well be though insidious, in view of recent history, to describe invaders as liberators" NO freaking kidding! My goodness, insidious indeed! He goes on to defend that invading someone else land to slaughter women and children and infants, is an act of liberation! My gosh, ethics? This is ethics?