Scary God or Scary People?

Many have struggled to reconcile a violent Bible with a gentle Jesus. To some the separation between Jesus and "God" as portrayed in the Bible is so wide that the Bible is tossed out altogether. For example, here are the words of Mark Twain:

“Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light…by contrast.”

“To trust the God of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive, fierce and ever fickle and changeful master…”

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Richard Dawkins drives the point home with greater force: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal…pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

Whew! How is it possible to hold to the picture of a loving God when we read about the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the stoning of Achan, and on and on?

How can we advocate non-violence in the world when we read the stories of God commanding his children to fight in the Old Testament?