Sometimes the Old Testament is just plain horrific

I like the "You Version" Bible app and it's reading plans which help me stay in touch with the scriptures on a regular basis.  The reading a few days ago was from Exodus 32.  

This is the infamous story of Aaron providing a golden calf for the people to worship while Moses has seemingly disappeared on Mount Sinai.  When Moses comes down with the stone tablets inscribed by the hand of God, he sees the people involved in wild idol worship practices and tosses the stone tablets to the ground, unceremoniously shattering them.  After consulting with Aaron, and getting a really lame answer from him about what has happened, we read this...

25 Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies. 26 So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.” And all the Levites rallied to him.

27 Then he said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’” 28 The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. 29 Then Moses said, “You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.”

OK.  So Yahweh is so upset with the unfaithfulness of his people that he orders some of them to go through the camp and plunge a knife into the gut of as many people as possible.  This would prove their devotion to Yahweh above all other gods.   In fact, it is their zealous obedience to this bloody command that sets them apart in a special way for service to Yahweh.  

I've read stuff like this in the Old Testament for a few decades.  When I was younger I just pushed through, ignoring the moral problems with the story.  I used to just focus on the fact that the people sinned, and God is perfectly just in killing people if they sin.  In fact such a story could be used to justify God killing His own Son many years later - as a cosmic whipping boy for people like you and me.  It used to work to look at these type of stories that way.

But increasingly, such stories trouble me deeply.  The image of a God who instructs people to take up knives to hack people down sounds like ISIS.  It sounds like Islamic extremism at its worst.  It sounds absolutely nothing like Jesus.  

I choose to read the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus.  I choose to reject views of God that are incompatible with Jesus.  And that means I reject the notion that Yahweh actually ordered these murders, even though "the Bible says it".  The author may have thought Yahweh commanded it.  Moses may have thought Yahweh commanded it.  But sending men to kill their own brothers and kinsmen in the name of justice is impossibly unjust.  

Reading the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus means taking the approach that Jesus shows us who God really is and how God really acts in this world.  We should truly say "Yahweh is like Jesus", not "Jesus is like Yahweh."  And that's an important distinction.