Is the Christian God's love unconditional?

[Woolmark]

Ok, some questions which have been playing on my mind, I am genuinely interested.

Surely his love is on the condition that you are a) a Christian and b) follow his rules?

Also, if God loves everyone as much as he does, why can't he save everyone by simply appearing to them? If I could save my children by doing this then I would in an instant, rather than turning up at the end and destroying the ones who weren't Christian.

I don't attempt to judge.

So god found it difficult to have his spirit kill the first born? Why did he find it difficult? Was he going against his own nature? Doesn't that worry you that he can do that? Was it the only way he could deal with it? Why not just remove the Israelites supernaturally? Why harden the Pharaohs heart?

If my neighbour nicked my car and was refusing to give it back, and I had the means to just get it back, would it makes sense for me to start killing his kids instead of just taking the car? And then turning to my DH and saying 'look how nasty I am, best you don't ever upset me eh?'

But god expected you to judge him when you decided that Christianity was right didn't he? He thought your ability to make moral judgements on your own was okay then? But now you're a Christian you have to switch that moral compass off. That's a bit scary!

Why are you asking me head?

I have told you I don't know enough to answer your questions, in anyway that would be satisfactory to you.

Maybe somebody else might know?

If you heard that your DH had a string of violent convictions you wouldn't think it worth finding out more? You wouldn't just think 'well he bought me some lovely flowers last week so he can't be all that bad'. Neither would you think 'I'm sure he had a very good reason to kill those babies, maybe they deserved it somehow'.

He chose to kill all except Noah and his family because they would not repent of their sins.

There is no escaping from repentance. No matter if people think they have got away with it or not. They have not.

People may not like it. They may not accept it. They may run away from it they may try and justify themselves all their lives. But they cannot ever escaoe it.

Golddigger many of those killed by god were babies. Do you believe that sometimes it is ok to kill babies?

It is not ok for me to kill babies.
I am not going to say that it is not ok for God to kill babies.

Why isn't it okay for you to kill babies Gold?

Golddigger Would it be ok for you to kill a child if god ordered you to?

It is called murder if I do it.

I do know where you are going with this. And you know the answers too, so a bit pointless me replying again.

I dont think that you are going to find or get your magic bullet from me.

Numerous times god ordered the Israelites to kill people, sometimes including babies. Was it murder when they did it? Why not? If it was, is it morally right for god to tell someone to do something that he thinks it morally wrong for a human to do (assuming, for the sake of the argument, that god is not bound by his own values somehow)

(I wouldn't worry about me too much Gold, I'm sure there are lurkers who would like to hear your answer too)

msmiggins, I'm sorry for the past. Do you really lump all current Christians in with the middle ages Christians?

Sorry not middle aged Christians, Christians in the middle ages.

I see the same fixed brittle thinking in religious adherants. The fixation on the truth and the unbending knowlege that they are right.
That I find unpalatable. This faith that also allows people to abdicate moral responsibility rather than take personal ownership from steering their own moral ship.
Human altruism is well and alive- always has been, and very arrogant for the church to assume a greater degree of moral attenuation and think that without its guidance we would all be savages eating eating other.
I have a very religious family and I see the spilts and divisions it has caused.
My niece went to a Baptist school who hit her knuckles with a ruler when she suggested that the coastline of Western Africa fitted like a jigsaw piece to the Eastern coastline of South America and wanted to know if they had ever been joined as one.
We do a huge disservice to children when we bring them up with a faith.
Gods behaviour in the bible is full of malice and fury, yet christians always seem to find some way of explaining and whitewashing the written words.
The church continues to promolgate homophobic thought, mysogynistic thinking and protects greed and power. Clergy are overwhelmingly white, male and middle class. the vatican is rotten to the core and is simply the establishment wing of the mafia.
I have no respect for the church and at best feel sorry for those brainwashed into its doctrine.

So once more and with feeling.

Christianity is a broad religion. It has its conservative wing where the Bible is the literal word of God and this sometimes leads to seven day creationism such as the Baptist School where mrsmiggins' niece went to school. This conservative wing is the minority in the UK but there are more of the in the USA. At the other end of the spectrum you have Christians who are very liberal in theology and see all the bible as metaphor. Again this is a minority view.

In the middle are lots of Christians who are working out how to live life in the 21st century focused on the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ who is the centre of our faith. Not the Bible but the person of Jesus. It isn't easy to work this stuff out because the Bible isn't a set of rules. There is a fantasy Bible out there which is very short (one ex conservative described it as two letters from Paul, the covers and the maps) but that does a disservice to those of us who wrestle with the whole of the canon (all the books of the Bible.)

It appears we are dammed if we read the Bible literally and dammed if we don't.

All my children have been brought up in a Christian household where we talk about faith. Over the years this has included how hard it is to forgive but how important it is to work towards it. We talk about how God is love but how Christians can be rubbish at living as if this were the truth. We talk about the nature of truth and knowledge, postmodernism and the enlightenment, quantum physics and the matrix. We get out and get involved in social action and all my children as children of the vicarage know what it is like to be homeless and cold and desperate for food as we always keep bread in for sandwiches for those that knock on the door.

The liberal site www.thinkinganglicans.org might give some insight into how Christians are working towards gay marriage and full inclusion of women in the episcopate but if you want to believe we are all conservative then I'm not going to change your mind.

I'm so sorry your experience of faith has been so overwhelmingly negative, msmiggins. I can see why you think what you do. But it's not representative of all faith everywhere. People who rap children's knuckles for being intelligent and curious are not people who truly represent the Christian faith. The rotten parts of Catholicism are not representative of the Christian faith, and sicken me to the core.

I move in circles with a lot of clergy, and I'd say around half are women, and not a small proportion are not 'white middle class'. Things are changing for the better. You say we do our children a disservice bringing them up in a faith, and you may well be right if you are talking about an oppressive and dogmatic upbringing. I bring my children up in faith because I long for them to know the freedom and joy it brings, but I also bring them up to be free thinking and curious about the world, and never shut anything off from them. They know that they are free to choose what they believe and that we will love and support them whatever they choose because they are our beloved children. I'd like to know how this is doing them any kind of harm. As it is, they are both believers at present, have seen the reality of God in their own lives. But they ask questions and we encourage them to do so.

Yes, the OT is hard, hideous in parts. I never try to explain away the passages like the passover and the flood because they are too big and it would be arrogant and disingenuous for me to do so. I always look at it as a whole, and continue to see it as a journey of a people slowly coming to see how God interacts with them and them with God. There are far more passages about God being merciful and loving, but you're right, we cannot simply ignore the difficult passages. There are contextual and textual considerations of course, but what is important to me in my faith is following Jesus. Jesus showed who God really is, and I look at Jesus and wonder about all these OT passages. We dpon't all take the bible completely literally.

cross posted with green :)

If you fancy interacting with a bunch of Christians from many denominations debating/wrestling/being silly then then head over www.ship-of-fools.com. There is one board called Dead Horses where all the things that Christians debate endlessly are corralled. This board in itself is pretty good evidence that dealing with Christians is pretty much like herding cats rather than ordering the brainwashed hoards about!

cross posted with MHD waves

thegreenheartofmanyroundabouts and madhairday If the bible is telling the truth in the 100s of places it tells of god committing atrocities then would you be prepared to say "I hate god".

Because either the bible is fiction or it isn't. If you both have decided it's fiction and made up your own sweetness and light religions with the same name that's one thing, but if like millions of Christians - including posters on this thread - you believe it is the word of god then there's a side you must choose.

Are you on the side of a creature who would kill babies out of spite?

Be clear about this. The bible says that this all happened and that god ordered it. There's far too much of it to be a misunderstanding. It even says in the commandments that god will punish four generations for the 'crimes' of one.

All you need do is so that this is all lies, or that it was true and you are fine with the murder.

All you need do is say that this is all lies, or that it is true and you are fine with the murder.