Yes I am Christian and try to be a respectful one. But I do have doubts. And whilst I accept that God made me and all human beings, I think we all create our own concept of God. As the old question goes, "did God create us or did we create God?"
I mean we all have variable notions of God:
fearful
vengeful
kind
loving
compassionate
sacrificial
just
knowing
mighty
powerful
unconditionally loving
My notion of God is more compassionate than judgemental. I know some of you who quote scripture see God as strong, powerful and not afraid to send us to eternal damnation. So your God is not the same as mine.
More compassionate than judgmental is still working within the false dichotomy. God's judgment is based in his love and his love allows him to act in perfect judgment. For one we know that God's essence is only defined in one place as one thing: love (1 John 4:8). We also have this hidden gem of a Psalm: "to you, O Lord, belongs steadfast love. For you will render to a man according to his work" (Psalm 62:12, ESV).
To "render to a man according to his work" is precisely the longhand form of justice. That is, to God belongs love
because he judges. So there is no dichotomy scripturally between love and justice; the latter is subsumed within love.
Which is a crazy idea to our society which speaks of "mercy" as "not getting what you deserve," which would be madness if we didn't have too-harsh understandings of justice most times. If justice really meant perfectly "rendering a man according to his work," then to give him "mercy" in the above sense would be to ruin justice! If we understand the Psalm at its word, this means that any lack in justice we have is based in our lack of love (also our lack of knowledge, but that's another discussion). Imagine how different our society would look if we judged
from compassion! Rather than the typical anti-Christian tendency of
revenge or pure litigious coldness.
Everything, absolutely everything, has to be understood in light of God's only defined essence as love. Including fear and his killing of others.