God is a lot like Gumby. He can be twisted and shaped into virtually any form a person wishes.
Take the God is Love crowd.
They stop by, read my writing, and are horrified to find that I think God is a God of judgment, wrath, hatred, and violence. Where did I e-v-e-r get such an idea? Perish the thought, Bruce. God is a God of love. God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. God would n-e-v-e-r do anything to hurt you, Bruce. He has your best interest in mind. Look at how much God loves you…he sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for your sins. Isn’t that awesome?
No, it is not awesome. Blood atonement is quite violent and revolting, and I see no love in the act. What I see is a righteous, holy God who hates sin and those who do it. I see a God quite willing to destroy the human race because they don’t keep his commands. I see a God who, for some perverse reason, sent himself to die on a cross, so his hatred of sin and those who do it could be assuaged.
You see, I have read the Bible. ALL OF IT. I take what the Bible says at face value. Yes, the Bible presents God as a God of love. However, the Bible also presents God as a righteous, holy, vengeful, hateful God who doesn’t think twice about using violence to get his point across. God is the meanest son-of-a-bitch on the block. Cross him and you are dead, right Uzzah? (2 Samuel 6)
As I look at the world today, I see no evidence of this God of love. Look at his supposed followers. Do they evidence love to the world? Hardly. They fuss and fight amongst themselves. They split and divide over the silliest of things. Where is the love, Christians? If you can’t get it right, how can you expect worldlings like myself to embrace the God is love notion?
I much prefer a world where God is Dead. I don’t have to look for surreal, existential answers to the issues facing the human race. I don’t have to manipulate a religious text to get a satisfactory explanation for what I see and read with my eyes. Humans are the problem, and humans are the solution; no God needed.
I don’t need God to experience and know love. I have a wife, six children, three daughters-in-law, one son-in-law, thirteen grandchildren, one cat, and one dog. Through them I experience and know love. As a Christian would say of their peculiar version of God, they are ALL I need.
It is enough to live and die, knowing that I have been loved by others.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Well, love is the real deal.
The Jehovah of the Bible IS mean. I could never really “get” why Jesus had to die. I mean, if God loved us, and he’s in charge, why couldn’t he just forgive us? I think most people who read the Bible interpret it to suit their fancies.
i recently got a new t-shirt. on the front it says:
GOD LOVES YOU SO MUCH…
and on the back, it says:
THAT HE CREATED HELL JUST IN CASE YOU DON’T LOVE HIM BACK
}8-)
lol, good one
I’ve read the bible too Bruce. Way more than most – and that’s why i cannot believe for one minute that the Bible is any word of any “good god”.
“Humans are the problem and humans are the solution; no God needed.”
I love this quote!
What a brilliant, clever fellow you are…. you seem to be able to see the simple, unadulterated biped truth about things! God is a construct that is an important one throughout history. The letters, G, O and D have become most handy to replace the human, H U H? Do you know why the sun comes up? God or Huh? God is the easy way out, rather than dealing with all that spinning earth and space stuff. Praise his holy simplistic word….
Good post Bruce. I often wonder how much of the Bible the “God is love” crowd, as you put it, has read or perhaps how much they have read but choose to ignore. I’m with the _Love is god_ crowd so maybe we’re not 100% on the same page but I’ve never understood how someone who has read the OT of the Bible can reconcile the cruel and terrible acts of Yahweh and his “chosen” with the idea of a just and loving God. Maybe I’m way off in left field here but I think that the quandary arises from the fact that one of the main actors in the big story book called the Bible, namely Jesus, talks a big talk about love and forgiveness but you have to go through several chapters of bloody rape, murder and genocide before you get to that part. There is no question in my mind that the core teachings of Jesus represent a massive shift in consciousness from the predominant cultural paradigms of his time. But somehow this paradigm shift was never really able to come full circle historically due to social and cultural pressures so that today we are left with two very different, and often conflicting, conceptions of divinity existing within the same religion. The Bible was compiled over centuries by _men_ of vastly different cultural backgrounds each with their own ideas and agendas that are often at odds with the central message of love as taught by Jesus. I suppose that is one of the reasons why I’m not a Christian and I see Jesus _the man_ as a moral philosopher and radical social reformer rather than the only begotten son of God.
Yep, love is the real deal. I do know some kind and loving Christians, but their acceptance tends to revolve around the Bible. Aside from the affirming pastors I know, the rest of my pastor friends can’t accept homosexuality or transgenderism. Because the words in the books of the Bible, written by men in completely different times with little knowledge of reality or science, is more important than the real, human people who need acceptance.
I don’t know how anyone can read the entire Bible and come to the conclusion that Gid is a God of LOVE and stop there – it is also a God of genocide, wrath, hatred, pettiness, jealousy, narcissism, faulty reasoning, and blood-lust.
The Psalms used to make me sick with all their sycophantic swooning over a manipulative, abusive deity whose “widdle feewings” have to be assuaged so it doesn’t fly into a rage and slaughter every living thing (again).
I read an article last week about a pro football player who had been promoted from the taxi squad for the next game. He was quoted as saying “God is good”. This was the same day that over 3000 Americans had died of COVID. How self centered is a religion that screws up your priorities in such a twisted way?
I always find the “God has a plan for your life!” people particularly entertaining. Does he have giant filing cabinets, full of Plans For People’s Lives? Are they alphabetized, or is there some other kind of celestial labeling system he uses to keep track of all those individualized plans? The idea of God as an anthropomorphic micromanager, who’s plotted the trajectory of every human in the past/present/future and is constantly watching us, Santa-style, is about the most unappealing concept of divinity I can imagine.
“God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” Those were slogan words of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes where I went to high school. I always questioned that statement. It just didn’t seem to be applicable to “everyone.” Well, it wasn’t applicable to everyone; never has been and never will be. The implication is that because God loves you, He has a wonderful plan for your life and you will experience that wonderful plan if you love Him and obey His commands. If God loves everyone and if He has a wonderful plan for everyone’s life then why isn’t everyone given a chance to find out about this incredible plan? After learning that you had pastored several churches and finally left Christianity altogether I recalled some of my own misgivings when I first proclaimed to believe the gospel. It was many years ago that I became aware of the fact that Christianity is a smorgasbord type of belief-system. People pick and choose, interpret, extrapolate, and modify at will. The end is always the same, believers come out with a set of doctrines taken out of context simply because none of it will stand up under global contextual scrutiny. Just wanted to offer agreement with your position. Thanks for allowing me the opportunity.