An Angry Christian

I am an angry Christian. I am angry at Christians for systematically misrepresenting God, just as you and I both would be angry with some who radically misrepresented our dearest loved one. God is not a tyrant exercising power in cruel, oppressive and arbitrary ways, threatening eternal damnation to hell, and demanding that we follow all his rules, rules that take all the fun and excitement out of life. Yet this is the vision of God that vast numbers have somehow picked up in their sermons and Sunday School lessons heard in their childhood as well as individual encounters with “witnesses.”

If you were to read the biographies of the most noted entertainers and writers of the 20th Century you would see that, 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, so we are going to take another look at the Bible. This book will furnish a sketch that emerges from a re-view of the story.

This portrayal of God’s character is not dependent on any selection of specific biblical texts, although many can be found that paint the same picture we are going to unveil. On the other hand, 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 and scattered 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. (I am aware that there are specific scattered verses that challenge this book’s thesis.) We are going to back off and look again, re-view 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.