Re: The Imaginary God

I think she is pretty on point here, but she still seems to think that God being of Love on one hand and wrathful on the other hand are two separate aspects of God. To me, they are two sides of the same coin. I actually think that most Christians embrace the concept of God being wrathful and jealous without even understanding the reality of the what this actually means, which is a bad thing. I have spoken to many Christians who actually do think (like the example with Opera) that God has the human attributes of jealousy, anger, and wrath. For some people, this might cause them to question Christianity, but most Christians are actually happy to think of God as being angry, jealous, and what-not. I think they like to make God into the image of man this way, instead of trying to understand what it all actually means. I am not accusing Connie of thinking this way. I actually think she does understand it the correct way. But I would just emphasize a few more points.

In my understanding of God, He doesn't have human emotions because He is not a human. God cannot have the human emotion of jealousy. My understanding of the description of God being jealous is that He doesn't want us to be anywhere else but with Him. If we are worshiping some false god or more commonly worshiping at the alter of our own sensory pleasures or our own greed, we are not worshiping Him in joy and bliss. The difference between the human emotion of jealousy, which is selfishness, we don't want a person to be with anyone but us because we feel the need for that person to be with us. Of course we know (as Connie correctly describes in the video) God doesn't have a need of us, but His desire is for us to only be with Him because He knows that is the only place that we are filled with joy, outside of Him, we can only experience suffering. This is how God is jealous, and it does come out of the pure Love of God because that is all God is but Love. So, you see, there is no contradiction.

It is the same with other human emotions that are seemingly put onto God. God hates sin. Yes, this is true, but again God is incapable of feeling the human emotion of hate. God is repellent of sin, God is the opposite of sin, God cannot tolerate sin because it is the opposite of the pure Righteousness of God. That is what is meant by God hates sin.

As for anger, making war and other such things. It all fits perfectly in with God being pure Love. But the actual reason for the anger and war come from man not from God. Think about it, would there be any need of war, conflict, and what-not if not for Satan and the fall of man? No, because God is pure love and all would be with God and there would be no need for conflict of any kind. But due to Satan and the fall of man, we departed from the perfect Love of God. This caused a conflict because now we have on one side the perfect righteousness of God and on the other side the pure wickedness of man. Is a loving, righteous God going to leave us in peace in our wickedness? No, that would be a God that doesn't care about us and we know that God does care about us and loves us, so He must wage war on our wickedness. What is the sacrifice of Jesus but the ultimate war being waged against sin? Jesus brings the sword and wages war inside each individual destroying the bonds of sin and death. To me, that is the real way that God wages war, and many other ways.

God's wrath is our separation from Him. When does God's wrath always come upon the people? When they are relying on themselves instead of Him. When we rely on ourselves, then God shows us what it is like to be without Him, that is God's wrath and it is pure suffering. The only way to remove God's wrath is to come back to Him and bask in His Love, that is the only cure to our suffering.

God is pure love. None of these concepts are a contradiction to this fact.