It's kind of my favorite thing to hear people say, "My God would never hate something or someone, he/she stands for (insert heretical, anti-Biblical statement here)." I like to imagine what their God looks like. I wonder what his/her commandments are and what authority he/she has. I wonder if there are moral absolutes with their God. Is killing still wrong? What about adultery? If so, why? Is he related to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Are the Bible, Torah, and Koran morally equivalent books? What about Hinduism or Jainism?
Most of the time, people who start a sentence that way identify the God of their imagination with the God of the Bible. When confronted with the unfortunate truth that the Bible paints a very different picture of God than the one that they imagine in their mind, they usually say something like, "That book is 2000 years old and doesn't apply to modern society. That's not who my God is."
The fact of the matter is, I don't like all of the things in the Bible. A lot of the Bible offends the part of me that was raised to believe in girl power, and live and let live. Sometimes I think that God was too lenient on horrible people, other times I think He was excessively harsh on people who did exactly what I would do if I was in the same situation. Whether I like it or not, the Bible says what it says. It makes me uncomfortable sometimes but if God just says everything that I believe, then God turns into nothing more than a figment of my imagination.
The good news is that the God of the Bible is a God of forgiveness to those who are humble enough to repent.
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