Thinking About God in the Old Testament

So I have been flip flopping back and forth between whether or not God was accurately described in the Old Testament. There is a theory that the scribes of the Old Testament "got God wrong". They misinterpreted his commands, or twisted his words to fit their own goals. I've been thinking about this a lot recently, and I think if I'm going to trust in the Bible as a document of how I should live my life, I have to accept that these things actually happened and that God was involved in the way it says he was.

As I've mentioned before, I think that Christ's sacrifice not only redeemed mankind with their God but redeemed God to humanity as well. The whole point of the overarching story of the Bible is the redemption that takes place between God and his people, so to dilute the anger and sometimes shocking actions of God in the Old Testament is to dilute the meaning of Christ's sacrifice. Let me see if I can put it another way...

Let's say that every thing that we find shocking and awful about God in the Old Testament actually didn't take place. There was no anger against humanity and sin really didn't tarnish the relationship between God and man the way the Bible makes it look. What then, does Christ's sacrifice mean? It would mean nothing because there would be no need for it.

Ah, OK here it is! This is good:

God, being powerful enough to create the entire world and precise enough to bless a single person, saw that the world he created was broken. He realized that he was doling out punishment after punishment and no one was changing or reacting to the punishment the way God hoped they would. The first time he realized that his world had become non-repairable, he killed the entire world in the flood. The second time, he sacrificed his son. Even though it was our fault for being terrible, he said "There's no other way to do this - I have to sacrifice my only son."

At the very least, the narrative wouldn't make sense if we disregard the nasty things God did in the Old Testament. In the highest spiritual sense, the sacrifice of Christ would mean nothing to us. While I think it meant most to those Jews who lived during Christ's life and saw the change in their own lifetime, we can be thankful that we no longer have to relate to God in such a severe way.