"CONTEXT!" The Last Refuge of a Theist in Denial

Whether it's trying to defend the hideous malevolent acts of cruelty, genocide, and murder by their "loving God"; fumbling to counter biblical contradictions; or trying to justify why their omni benevolent being failed to condemn slavery or why Jesus kills perfectly good fig trees, Christians invariably will deny all and cry "Context!!".

“Context!!” has become the trademark of Xtians who are at a loss to explain away the indefensible cruelties performed by their “loving” God ... or used to make the embarrassing statements of their saintly Church figures go away. Context has become so over used that it typically triggers laughter among Thinking People [TP] who have seen it employed so often that it is now a cliché. Here’s how it works:

TP: According to OT law, God demands that a woman’s hand be cut off if she intervenes with her husband’s attacker and grabs his genitals. (Deut. 25:11-12)Christian: "OH ... you're taking it out of context."

TP: Forty-two children misbehave, show disrespect, are cursed by a prophet and God sends bears to tear them apart. (2 Kings 2:23-24) Christian: "OH ... you're taking it out of context."

TP: God commands every human of a tribe be destroyed, and every animal, and just the virgin women to be kidnapped and kept by the Hebrews as breeding stock. (numerous examples of God suborning genocide and rape) Christian: "OH ... you're talking it out of context."

Yeah. Ok. So what I need to hear and yet never do, is the answer to this question:
In what "context” is killing children for their words; is lopping off a woman’s defending hand; is extermination of a civilization but suborning the enslavement and rape of the virgins justifiable by any supremely merciful being at anytime? Just tell me in what “context” I should be taking that scripture to make it all good?

But, they can’t. Call their bluff and they fold. Oh, some will offer an unsupportable attempt at perversion of verse to make it seem like a good and wholly wonderful thing. Failing that they will just out right reinvent meaning for scripture: “Well, yes… but… never mind what it actually says…here’s what I say it really means.” But they are deceiving themselves, as usual. We know how that works. Heck, the Muslims do it with the indefensible horrors of the Quran all the time.

Four hundred years ago, questioning biblical inconsistencies and contradictions would result in excommunication, torture, and/or execution (Christians like to refer to those as 'The Good Old Days."). But here in the West, those things are pretty much gone. The door is open for Xtians to take a deep breath, screw up their courage, and exhibit some modicum of intellectual honesty and reason and say: "Jeepers! You're right!! That IS a messed up thing that the Biblical writers attributed to God. I wonder why they did that, what motivated them."

But it rarely gets to that. They usually can't handle that bit of unabashed honesty, because once that happens, once that door is cracked open, once doubt as to the veracity of “God’s Word” comes into play their entire foundation of "faith" is subject to reexamination / rethinking. No! Better to hold the line, ignore the obvious, and like the emperor with no clothes, cling to some transparent ploy to cover the nakedness of their inane book of fable and blind belief and just dumbly mouth .... "CONTEXT!!"