A substantial number of the things I have written in my life have got me in trouble in one way or another. I don't see myself as someone who courts trouble--through it is true that we are the ones who know the least about ourselves, sometimes--but as a good person who is "misunderstood." It took me a long time to understand why I was being misunderstood because I said at the beginning what I was going to do and then I did it and the people who encouraged me at the beginning, assailed me at the end. Eventually, I came to an understanding of sorts. It isn't a solution. It doesn't seem to cut down much on the negative response, but it cuts down on my surprise about the negative response and at this stage of my life, even little victories are victories. 
The biblical project I am working on (playing with) at the moment is an attempt to put myself imaginatively in the place of the hearers of some well-known stories. The idea is that if you can hear the story the way the intended hearers heard it, you will learn something about the story. My first attempt was an attempt to hear the story of Lot and the angry mob that surrounded his house as he was giving hospitality to the messengers who came to warn him to leave. By my entirely speculative reconstruction, Lot did the honorable thing, as the story is told, by offering his daughters to the mob, rather than his guests. A reconstruction like that requires a certain effort to detach yourself from your own way of looking at things, particularly your own way of judging things, so as to be free to hear the story the way someone else might have heard it. I thought I might try just one more. I thought I would try the story of the Israelite people and their "taking possession of" the Promised Land. I chose that story because to my nose, it stinks of "ethnic cleansing." Obviously, that is not the way the story sounded to the Jews who heard it and who have celebrated it for all these centuries. 
In my re-reading the story, three things stood out. The first is holiness. The God of the Israelites was not a "mixing together" God. It's not just cheeseburgers. This is the God who didn't want garments to be worn that were made of more than one kind of cloth. From that standpoint, a robe made of wool and cotton would have been just as reprehensible as mixing meat and dairy. The life of the people of God in the Land of Promise was to be a life of separation, a life of "not mixing things together." That is why the land needed to be "cleansed" so that the Israelites could live there without mixing. 
The second is obedience. God made a covenant with Abraham, true; and he engineered the escape from Egypt, true; and he preserved even the faint-hearted in the wilderness. But all the promises are contingent on obedience. The idea is that the place they had left, Egypt, was a sinful place and the place they were going, Canaan, was a sinful place and if, when they got there, they fell away from God's way, "the land will vomit you up" (Lev. 18:28 in the New Jerusalem Bible) as it did the Canaanites.
The third is trust, particularly in situations of conflict. The people of Israel were not asked to conquer Canaan. They were asked to present themselves at each new border and watch while Yahweh conquered Canaan and gave it to them free of enemies, as a gift. God does the work of "genocide" and gives the resultantly open land to His people. Those are the three elements I find when I try to read the story as I imagine it was heard. God is active; Israel is passive. God achieves; Israel receives. God commands; Israel obeys. Notice that from this perspective, this is a story of heroism. Not heroism in battle; heroism in trust. How would you like to be carrying the Ark of the Covenant into the Jordan River running full and fast and not have the river stop for you until you had already put your feet in it? How would you like to go up against a huge alliance of your enemies on the grounds that God would deliver you from them. It is also a story of God's actions against evil. This is the God who ended the world by a flood and who burned Sodom to a crisp. God will not tolerate evil and that is what we learn from God's actions against the evil people of Canaan. 
I think that if you start from those premises and really invest yourself emotionally in them, you can read the account of God's conquest of Canaan and his gift of "the Promised Land" to his people in a receptive and even in a celebratory way. I confess that I have never read it like that until this week. I have taken the position of an onlooker, watching these guys kill those guys--men, women, children, and animals. Mostly it seemed brutal and unnecessary to me and when I come out of the story and go back to my daily reading of The New York Times, it still seems brutal and unnecessary. But The New York Times does not start, as this story does, with God's demand for holiness in the sense of "not mixed together;" nor does it start with God's demand for the obedience of his people; nor does it start with the heroic trust of a passive people receiving the gifts from an active God. The Times begins, as it should, with the view that the Palestinians have a right to their land as do the Israelis and isn't it a shame that they don't seem to be able to compose themselves and resolve their differences? That is what The Times does and what it should do and if we read only The Times, that is what we will do as well.
That is not the story the Bible tells, however, and even the best of Times are the worst of Times.
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