I don’t talk about this often but I took seminary classes. Where they tried to explain away the incongruities. It mostly stuck until it didn’t and then the whole mess of it tore itself apart with tremendous violence. If I hadn’t had a friend who was into social justice at the time to hold onto like flotsam after a ship sinks I don’t know if I would be here today.
It is amazing how rapidly the whole thing shimmies apart once the first domino starts to fall. For me it was Theodicy, and the backbending required to explain whose "free will" is to blame for hurricanes, tsunamis, and other natural disasters that kill hordes of innocent people (including children) every year.
It gets worse. Spend any time reading about psychology and it becomes obvious that the OT god ticks all the boxes for grandiose narcissistic personality disorder.
The OT god is an abuser who demands unconditional and unquestioning love and admiration and threatens disobedience with eternal torture. It's textbook.
The NT is more complex, but huge swathes of Christianity are still hypnotised by the OT. They like the idea of Jesus as an authority, but not so much the reality of the teachings.
