In a letter last month, "Columnist's views on limbo repeal incorrect," (SN 5/18), a reader offered an intriguing claim about the Christian deity, asserting "in modern times we Christians have come to understand God as all-loving."
This fashionable article of faith, embraced by many Bible-centric Christians, is one of the more astonishing beliefs in modern religion. The Bible, overflowing with heinous examples of intolerance, savagery and vengefulness, doesn't portray God as especially loving - he's often a monster.
Thomas Paine wrote, "Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the word of God."
The God of the Old Testament was extraordinarily spiteful, insecure and pathetically needy of worship. He even called himself a "jealous God," and threatened to punish generations of children whose fathers dared worship another deity (Exodus 20:5). God also, less than lovingly, commanded those who worship other gods be stoned until they die (Deuteronomy 17:2-5).
When not creating inane rules and demanding sacrificially charred animals, this deity seemed to delight in smiting, brutalizing and plaguing mankind.
At one point, demonstrating all the kindness and compassion of a drunken and abusive father, God drowned nearly every living thing on the planet - even children and puppies. Then, magnanimously, after enjoying a "sweet" and fragrant burnt offering of a "clean beast," God promised he'd never again "smite … every living thing," (Genesis 8:21).
The doctrine of original sin is another interesting item. We're told since Adam and Eve gave into temptation, which God generously provided, all of humanity is still tainted with ancestral disobedience. God, rather than blaming himself for a pair of untrustworthy beings not up to his lofty standards, holds all humanity responsible for their "sinful" noncompliance.
Actually, God deserves his props for that one. It's a disturbingly impressive example of imaginative morality. If someone wronged me in some way, it wouldn't occur to me to hold their grandkids accountable, as though guilt were somehow inheritable - that's thinking outside the box.
Many believers probably reflect on Jesus when they contemplate the perfectly good nature of God. Certainly, on the surface, Jesus seemed nicer than his father. However, once in a while a bit of his dad peeked out.
In Matthew 10:34-35, Jesus clarifies his intentions: "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, daughter against her mother."
His dad's legendary jealousy was on display when Jesus demanded to be loved most, "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me," (Matthew 10:37).
The supremely vindictive nature of the father bursts forth from Jesus in many passages, such as, "The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth," (Matthew 13:41-42).
According to Jesus, this fiery punishment is "everlasting" (Matthew 18:8), and destruction awaits most of humanity (Matthew 7:13-14).
Finite sin punished with infinite pain and anguish? You can really feel the love.
What kind of an "all-loving" father would permit, much less advocate, the absurdly disproportional punishment of eternal torture for limited earthly transgressions?
The threat of endless torment is far beyond immoral. It's ethically grotesque and utterly devastating to the concept of an all-loving deity.
Perhaps it was the morally obscene fires of perdition, and overall depravity of the "good book," that compelled Mark Twain to conclude, "It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."
Modern Christians are free to believe any absurdity they like. Their own sacred scriptures, however, containing bountiful instances of manifest cruelty and malevolence, refute any contention that their deity represents a flawlessly benevolent and all-loving being.
John Bice is an MSU staff member and State News columnist. Reach him at bice@msu.edu.
