Kill Everyone in 7 Nations
When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are about to enter and occupy, he will clear away many nations ahead of you: the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. These seven nations are all more powerful than you. When the LORD your God hands these nations over to you and you conquer them, you must completely destroy them. Make no treaties with them and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them, and don't let your daughters and sons marry their sons and daughters. They will lead your young people away from me to worship other gods. Then the anger of the LORD will burn against you, and he will destroy you. (Deuteronomy 7:1-4 NLT)
Then, he tells us to turn around and "love" one another.
When I say religion, I'm refering to catholic, baptist etc (Man made institutions). These people in the passage were following the direct orders of God.
I have had many people question me on passages like that in the Bible.
There are tons of scenarios in the old testament like that.
One that has been brought up the most to me from people is the woman who was chopped up and mailed to various locations. (Judges 19)
I honestly do not wish to embark on a journey of huge discussions on verses like that here on the forums, I have done so numerous times in my life with co-workers, friends and strangers, as well as extensive research and even writing my own personal papers for future discussions. (you can say this is me throwing out a lame excuse and "losing" - i'm ok with that if that's how you wish to percieve this statement... But I am at work when I use these forums and discussing such matters takes an extensive amount of time.)
One important thing to note is the actual cultures and timeline in which many of these "grousome" events took place.
If you look at the 100% human made laws of the time in numerous areas as well as the human behavior and human verse human actions, you would realize that they lived in a very different world (for the most part) than we do today.
You are taking your personal moral values of today and applying it to a very extreme and very different culture. These people lived in a world where present day "unthinkable" acts were as common as tissues and some were even considered forms of public entertainment. (example being public torture\death of people, the removal of limbs for crimes or just 'people of power' abusing that power and doing what they want)
Even during the timeframe when Jesus walked the Earth as a human... Look how Christ died. He was forced to carry his own "death bed" down the streets while beaten and bloody. Forced to endure massive public humiliation while countless people screamed for his death, mocked Him, His power, His Father... This was all done by humans.
Furthermore, the death of Christ is NOT even close to the "worst" death accounted for in the Bible.
And truth be told, you can still find many nations across the world in which humans committ horrible acts against fellow humans on a grand scale, Hitler being a famous example (not just one psycho, but a nation of leaders.) Human trafficing is higher than it has ever been in human history [and yes it's based on % as the population of today far exceeds the days of old). Children sold into *** rings for adults to keep and do as they please, and so much more.
So many things happen in today's world that is comparable to some of the events accounted for in the Bible. Humans have been cruel since the beginning.
The World is much different now than it was then, in certain areas that is.
I will choose to leave the God explanation out at this point as it has become my "debate tactic" after a few years of experience in talking with people.
