Life giving myths

Life giving myths. The early OT stories can act as the Jewish people gaining Faith in the guidance and protection of an ultimately ineffable Reality. But when Jews take their story literally it can have disastrous consequences. To recognise it as myth, the appalling examples that it includes can be set aside. But taking the narrative literally, Jews must believe that God inflicted plague after plague upon innocent Egyptian families, slaughtering all their first-born children, with the added horror that God had deliberately caused Pharaoh to refuse to let the Hebrews go in order to punish both him and his subjects: ‘I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may show these signs of mine among them, and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and of your son’s son how I have made sport of the Egyptians and what signs I have done among them; that you may know that I am the Lord' As John Hick says, such a god is a role model for ruthless tyrants but not, as is also claimed and promised in the OT, a "light to lighten the gentiles"

This is true of all literalism. A literalism, barren of genuine spirituality, that will only ever divide human beings rather than unite them. A division "justified" by some by quoting Jesus saying that he comes not to bring peace, but a sword. Yet:- "Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God." Take your pick - which myth or saying will be your guide?