How do you, as a believer in the God of Abraham, justify God's behavior?

I don't believe God does any of these terrible things. He isn't there to keep us from experiencing pain, he's there to help us through it. God doesn't cause people to sin.

Not to mention, a lot of the Bible is *narrative,* not literal history. Are we to blame God for something He said or did in a story? It is believed by scholars, for example, that the genocide of Canaan represents instead the people who eventually became the Jews breaking off of a dominant culture and forming their own counter-narrative, their own counter-culture and counter-identity. Just as the Exodus did not really happen, or the flood, so to is it believed by most scholars that this genocide is merely literary, not literal. We can't read the Bible as actual history, we have to understand the point of sacred writing, of the narrative, etc.

*too, bleh, forgive the typo, lol

sahmamaxx2- Again, it's a matter of perspective.
If you do not believe in God to be Holy your view of the Bible is skewed. God's Holiness is the essence of His being.

If you do not believe in God to be Holy your view of the Bible is skewed
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yea, I don't think so. I think my view is crystal clear.

Let's see . . . God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent.  He created humans, with full knowledge that he, the perfect being, has created something extremely flawed, plants a tree that he forbids them to touch, knowing that Eve will be tempted by the snake that God created, and knowing that he will have to punish Adam and Eve for crimes that he knew they would commit.  He had to know.  He's omniscient.  Then, after a few generations of incest, murder (often commanded by God, even though he has made commandments against it), and other bad behavior, he decides to flood the earth to cleanse it of his disobedient creations (even killing pregnant women (and their fetuses), children, and all the animals that weren't lucky enough to have been chosen by Noah to board the little boat. 

God did not do this out of the blue,His people had warnings to act right or else. As a Christian I believe the Bible and at the same time know I don't have all the answers to questions I have. i do have faith.

^See, but not all Christians see faith that way. Not all of us believe in the literalism of the narratives, in the idea of "original sin," etc.

God's Holiness is the essence of His being.
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hardly.

(that was in response to jsbenkert, lol)