Richard Dawkins casts the Old Testament God as: "arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction - a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." (The God Delusion) Dawkins’ description is extreme and one sided, but even Christians struggle...We know that he is the God of life not death, creation not violence, mercy not destruction... Christians take several approaches to the violence of the Old Testament. 1. We can reject the depictions of God here as inconsistent with God as revealed in Jesus...However, this approach is to be rejected because...