Also, I don't want to hate God. I see God as someone who destroys.
Well, He does destroy. But He also creates. God gives life and He takes it. This is His unique prerogative as the Creator. In fact, there would be nothing to be destroyed if God had not first brought it into being. Why do you neglect God's creative acts and focus only on His destructive ones? You're only seeing a distortion of God when you look at Him this way; you are hating something other than the actual God of the universe. The real God of the universe has given us stunning sunsets and sunrises, chocolate, humor, thrilling thunderstorms and calm, easy breezes along sunny, ocean beaches. He has given us romance, sex, love and joy. He has made us able to climb mountains, surf ocean waves, play golf, or football, or soccer, eat delicious food, read good books, be entertained by music, or a movie, or puppies playing together in the yard. Most of all, God has made us capable of knowing and loving Him. But all you see is a God of destruction. Something is seriously wrong with your eyesight.
My brain is wired to think about the cup being half empty, not half full. That's why I sometimes have a hard time thanking God.
I dunno'... Seems like a bit of a cop-out to me...You choose what and how you think, friend.
I was reading in the old testament about two men who got into a fight, and one of them blasphemed God. They took the man and stoned him to death in front of the entire camp. I felt sorry for this man.
I'm sure no one enjoyed putting him to death, either. But the terrible judgment God rendered upon his blasphemy shows us just how awful his blasphemy was. It was so bad, so evil, that it deserved the death penalty. The man sinned and God punished his sin. Should God let our sin go unpunished? If He did, He would not be a holy, righteous God. I don't think you'd like a God who wasn't holy and righteous.
I am wired towards feel sorry and empathy to poor, defenseless creatures even if they are guilty.
The man was not a cute, little bunny rabbit who pooped on the carpet without knowing better. He was guilty of willfully blaspheming the name of the One who made him and sustained his life. He had blasphemed God Almighty, Ruler of heaven and earth.
God would have destroyed me back then. For anyone who acquitted the guilty was cut off from the community or God destroyed them.
God has acquitted the guilty. That's the story of the Gospel.
Hell enters my mind a lot. I have read about it, not just from the Bible. I have heard the screams on youtube from recordings that people say come from hell (I don't if they are real or fake). however, it puts fear in me.
Well, I would be very careful about what you take as truth from Youtube clips.
My anger comes from the fact that obeying God to avoid this punishment is unacceptable to God. I have to feel this way or that way when I obey him. I am naturally selfish. I can't obey out of love.
No, you can't. And God doesn't want your human love anyway. The only love God desires is
His own love.
It's like putting a knife to someone's throat and say give me your money. So the victim gives the offender the money out of fear. But the offender still gets mad and says "did you only give me your money out of fear?" Then he kills the victim anyways, because the victim was afraid when he gave him the money.
This is not an accurate analogy at all. First of all, God doesn't demand of us what He doesn't deserve. He is, simply by virtue of who He is, worthy of all the love we can give Him. Second, God has loved us first. He has sacrificed Himself on a cross in part to show us just how incredibly He loves us. He does not ask us to love without cause. "We love Him
because He first loved us," the Bible says.
My salvation is being threaten if I continue in my sinful habits. Didn't Paul say in Hebrews 10:26 that if we continue in sin, we will no longer be forgiven. For this reason, I fear.
Paul is not speaking of someone who struggles with sin and sometimes fails. The apostle John made it clear that we all sin and to think we don't is to make God a liar. (see
1 John 1) It is the one who has made a lifestyle of sin (especially after knowing the truth of the Gospel), who is easy with it, who is in reference in Hebrews 10.
Selah.