Is the Bible uncomfortable for Christians?

It depends entirely upon what one does with it.

 

Metaphorically speaking:

If one throws it upon the fire it will be warming and comforting for a while.

But if one hits oneself about the head with it, it soon becomes very uncomfortable.

Maybe so, but I think it has less to do with Biblical laws (whether they are embarrassed by them or not) and more to do with the inherent nature of the God described in the bible, especially the Old Testament.

In Hosea 13:4, 9, 16, God destroys the pregnant woman and foetuses of those that do not worship him. In Isaiah 13:9–16, Babies are slaughtered and wives raped. In Judges 18:1–28 god approves the massacre of a peaceful people so one of his tribes could have a place to live. In Judges 11:30–39, a daughter is burned as an acceptable sacrifice to God. In Psalm 137:8–9, God wants you to be happy to dash babies against rocks, and the list goes on and on.......

The depiction of God’s character in the Old Testament is sufficient enough to accuse him of tyrannical behaviour, without having to consider his laws and orders.

On a first hand, and for reasons beyond my knowledge, you fail to identify the dynamics at play in your own topic, and then simply brush off my points by using off handed remarks verging on the ad hominem. 

My post isn’t worth responding to if you really have nothing to respond to it with. 

Now you’ve muddled up the concept of law with the notion of a historical account or story. You’ re essentially taking a back foot by suggesting that, ultimately, all these things can be reduced to ‘God’s laws anyway‘. But unfortunately, you don’t get to systematically reduce every story or historical account, derive a series of laws from them, and then make the claim that the story is pretty much the law and the law is the story.

A story can inform you of many more things like social and cultural norms, the character types, the narrative point of view, etc...information difficultly obtained by just laws and orders.

My entire argument was, whether correct or incorrect, this supposed ‘embarrassment’ you identified in Christians was more to do with the information gleaned from these stories and historical events and less to do with the nature of the laws themselves. That said, I never discounted a possibility of both actions taking place simultaneously.

Which is why I referenced the chapters and verses so they can speak for themselves, without the need for you to resort to red herring tactics. The reputation of ‘Mad Magazine’ and its equivalent has nothing to do with the argument, and does nothing to weaken my position. 

Ok. Now you’re making things much harder for Christians. What exactly is the method of choice Christians use to assess whether a verse is attributable to God or not? Is it the method..... ‘whenever a verse says something like ....’and God said’...., or is it the systematic cherry picking process, whereby a verse, if it matches well with their current view of morality and social norms, is directly attributable to God, and

the verses that don’t fit this narrative are conveniently forgotten or omitted?

Of course I agree with you that in these particular instances, man set out to commit a terrible deed and merely used God as a scapegoat for their actions.

But without a reliable method to discriminate between the God parts vs the Man parts, it would be easy to make the claim that all parts are the mere product of Man, including laws and commandments. However, Christians largely defend these laws by postulating that these are directly handed by God to man, regardless of how archaic they might be. 

So I’m sorry, until you clearly outline that method, but you can’t just cherrypick your flavour of the week without compromising the other parts of the book.

I’ve equally responded to your posts before only to, shortly thereafter, see ad hominem galore. Not the hallmark of good debate and sportsmanship. 

Maybe your ad hominem is due to the fact that I only signed up on this excellent forum a couple days ago, and only have a few posts to my name (Namely, Marko, because Marco is my real name but all too common),

while you have, let’s see, a whopping 572 (0 debates). Touche

if you take the bible at face value, i dont know how a sane person wouldn't be uncomfortable by the bible.

it looks like God tortures people in fire for eternity if they aren't good enough or christian. isnt this disturbing?

God relentlessly killing children and relatively innocent people in the old testament. ie noah's flood, the spirit that killed the first born if you didn't smear blood etc.only brainwashed people can find these things not troublesome.