Yes, it is difficult.

Someone could devote their entire life to the Bible and understanding and applying it and living it and still not have it all together, still not have all the answers.  I tend to believe that God did that on purpose.  Yes, we have to interpret the Bible, and that requires a lot of work and a lot of effort and a lot of failures.

Interpretation has been going on for a long time now.  Sometimes the interpretations are better than others.  The Crusades were a form of interpretation.  We can say that they were off-base, but we also have to admit that at a certain level, key people really thought that this was God's will.  I imagine that someday someone will find our attempts at interpretation to be just as faulty - probably just as dangerous in some respects.  I tend to view prosperity theology as infinitely more dangerous than the Crusades, for example.

We also need to make some distinctions in what Bell is saying here as well.  What the book of Joshua describes sounds a lot like what we know and have seen and heard of as *ethnic cleansing*.  However, we have to accept that if God orders something to be done, then it can't be wrong, no matter how awful it may look and sound to us.  God's purpose was not ethnic cleansing, but the subjugation of a rather ill-defined geographical area.  We have to maintain a distinction between our sinful actions of hatred and murder, and God's directives for God's purposes - no matter how similar the two may appear to us.

We also need to draw distinctions between things that we have decided are proper or right, and what may or may not be actually proper and right.  Yes, the Bible was used to defend slavery.  Popular opinion holds slavery to be an inherently evil and bad thing.  I would personally argue that there are people today who are 'free' but infinitely worse off and more deeply enslaved than some actual 'slaves' in the past.  Slavery is an economic system of sorts.  We can decide that it is an unjust and evil one.  But that's based primarily on the abuses and exploitations that tend to accompany it.  Theoretically though, slavery could be done properly, I suppose, without abuses and exploitation.  The Bible does not advocate a particular economic system over another.  I believe that in God's eyes, a slave-based system where people are treated properly and fairly is far superior to a free-market system where people are exploited and taken-advantage. 

Otherwise, Bell makes some very valid points in this introductory section.  I like it.