I am an angry Christian. I am angry at God’s misrepresentatives, and their misrepresentations of the Christian religion. From these misrepresentatives, the majority of listeners and readers gain a misleading understanding of who God is and what God is like.
If you are offended by this opening paragraph, let me make a beginning of explaining where I am coming from.

I’ve often gotten trouble because I can be so stubborn, but I have a reputation as someone who doesn’t seem to get angry; anger is not how I live, not who I am. But I have a right to what anger I express in this blog (you may relax; anger is not going to be the dominant word or tone of the blog).

From the pulpit I once heard a preacher say, "Nothing can be done in anger that couldn’t be done better without anger." Maybe Jesus could have cleansed the temple more efficiently if he had not acted in anger? Read or reread Galatians; Paul, while dictating this little book, was angry almost to the point of rage. Look at how often the scriptures inform us of God’s anger. Could God have accomplished more, would the world operate more harmoniously if God never acted in anger? I don’t think so.
True, it is dangerous when anger rules action, but when anger motivates and drives needed action, it is an important energizer.I am angry at Christians for systematically misrepresenting God, just as you and I both would be angry with some who radically misrepresented the one we love dearest. God is not a tyrant exercising power in cruel, oppressive and arbitrary ways. Yet this is the vision of God vast numbers have picked up in their childhood church experiences.

Read the biographies of the most noted entertainers and writers of the 20th Century and observe how regularly this view of God and his representatives on earth is the picture of God that has haunted them across the years since they escaped the regular reminders of his wrath. I am angry because of all those who have been run off without ever seeing God as he is revealed in the biblical story. A re-vision of the biblical God is needed. We are going to take another look at the Bible. This blog furnishes a sketch that is more faithful, that emerges from a re-view of the story

The portrayal of God’s character that I will sketch is not dependent on certain specific biblical texts, although there are many that paint the same picture explicitly. The fabric of most Christian sermons, Sunday School lessons, doctrinal statements, and defenses of the faith have been woven with the threads of many single, specific Bible verses, often disconnected from any context or setting. That method will not be used here. Rather, we will view the Bible as a whole and see what God looks like in the big picture. We are going to back off and look again, re-view at the central character in the story, then trace some of the defining features that emerge from the resultant revision of the way we view the divine character.

Small wonder that people criticize, mock, or just plain ignore Christianity. God himself repeatedly warned that if his people didn’t do right, they would make God’s name to become a joke and a mockery to the outsiders. When the times came that their actions made others turn God’s name into a byword, God told his spokesmen such as Jeremiah, Amos, and Ezekiel of his anger with them. In his fury, he allowed God’s own main team, his covenant community, to be mocked and treated like dirt.

There are things up with which God will not put; his anger is most commonly directed at the people who claim that they are God’s people. When they misrepresent him, he rejects them as his representatives. Just remember who it was that often received the fierce anger of Jesus. I am irritated with preachers, particularly evangelicals–I am one--Sunday School teachers, professional theologians–I am one--in other words, with the majority of those who across the centuries, have taught and spoken for Christianity.

Keeping my temper fairly well in check, I have been an active member of the church for most of my life. I remain so. I love God. The church is an essential part of my habitat. Some of my favorite people are professional theologians. I know some first-rate, for real, churches and individual Christians, but on the other hand I know more of the other kind.
In childhood it was mere confusion; through adolescence and early adulthood it became more of a recurrent uneasiness with what I heard at church.

Then in the process of acquiring three advanced degrees from a theological seminary, the anger emerged and came into focus. I still preach often, am active in my local church, and have recently retired after more than thirty years as a happy and respected teacher of Christian Studies in a small Baptist university.

Now that you are aware of what drives the writing of this blog, keep your critical mind alert. You may well wonder where someone got the audacity to write such a blog. I have tried carefully to be fair to Christians; I readily acknowledge that much of what this blog says does not accurately describe many Christians and churches. I am quite aware that I could be wrong in my basic criticisms and in the new perspective I propose. But I don’t think so.

Judge for yourself, using your own experience, good reasoning, the Bible, and common sense as criteria for making your judgment.

To help you decide whether to continue following this blog, I offer a clue. When in months to come, the blog has covered all I intend, it can be summed up in two sentences:
God is love, and
all his commandments are contained in the law of love, and
love is a relationship.
All else is support, clarification, detail, form.