Sheelah, Thanks for your comments. I particularly liked your analogy for morality:
“Christianity is an anthropology, not a morality. Morality is like technique on a musical instrument, it is the grounding that permits you to play music beautifully, it is a means, not an end.”
I think Karen Armstrong’s ‘Fields of Blood’ is consistent with her prior works. If anything, my use of ‘ancient’ as opposed to ‘archaic’ muddied the waters of the point I was trying to make. Armstrong reviews many ancient/archaic societies in some detail, showing how they all used the anthropology of human-created violence to control their populations.
The rest of what I wrote reflected a personal coming to terms in the ‘now’ of my life with the fact that God ‘is’ unconditional love. I find it is one thing to accept the concept of God’s unconditional love, and quite another to live into that understanding through a discipline seeking God’s aliveness in a ministry of daily life.