Define God

Actually, what you are saying is you don't care to look into scriptures that challenge your confirmation bias.

Many of us would prefer Jesus to have said something more in agreement with our confirmation bias

Precisely, Neo.

Sorta like the people who claim GOD has spoken to them. The GOD just about always says what they expected, and wanted, IT to say.

Good morning, Frank

Merry Christmas, Neo.

Christmas is really a religious holiday, but HAPPY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR WITH GOOD HEALTH, PROSPERITY, AND MANY MORE!

My wife and I are going to my niece's for our Christmas meal with family.

Thank you, Frank. All the best to you.
Grandsons out beachcombing. I can't always keep up.
I've been spending more than the usual time trolling, er, surfing here

neo, I always knew you were a troller, but a friendly one! Happy Holidays.

The best to you, CI. Winter holiday has me on Washington shore, trying to keep up with the younger set. When they get back, I will take care of them in the pool. They may be faster but I'm still stronger.

God is what cannot be defined. It is everything and in everything and everywhere. It is the source that runs through everything. This is what the term god means to me. It is the source that beats our hearts and breathes our lungs. It is what everything arises out of, and back into. It is what holds the wood together for a door to work. It is nothing but love, and that love is the source of all creation, no matter what that "thing" might be. It makes a flower grow, coal to form, diamonds to shine, and even the entire universe to remain perfectly in chaotic harmony.

Interesting. His dominant quality is love, to be sure.
However, his name, Yahweh or Jehovah, literally means "He who causes to become" or "He who creates"

Not sure how you, Robert, or any other person could possibly determine that the god described in the Bible is LOVE...

...but I think the words speak to "anything but love."

The ancient Hebrews needed a god to protect themselves from the god of their neighbors. Most of the gods of their neighbors were barbaric, murderous, jealous, fitful, ruthless, pitiless, often cruel, preposterously demanding gods…

…so it appears the Hebrews invented a barbaric, murderous, jealous, fitful, ruthless, pitiless, often cruel, preposterously demanding god as a protector.

That most assuredly is the kind of god described in the Bible.

How do you guys come up with “a god of love”…except as a reaction to fear of the god?

It's an intellectual version of "this hurts me more than it does you".

The love is for the human race as a whole and the persecuted are those who are deemed to be destructive to that aim by those empowered to do the deeming. And there is no-one else if rats fighting in a sack is to be avoided.

An evolutionary explanation so to speak. Not a solipsistic one.

That the persecutions were a bit gruesome to our delicate ears is because they couldn't afford incarceration industries or economic sanctions and the population was only beginning to get used to not having human sacrifice with torture as periodic entertainment. They had not the resources to tempt the population to be good. And life was such a continuous nightmare that the lethal injection might have caused queues right round the block. ( That's how to do anachronisms.) Which would make the death penalty, which Europe has dispensed with, counterproductive.

Anachronisms concerning a culture in 1000 BC done from a rocking chair in New Jersey in 2014 AD are simply ridiculous. Baby talk in fact.

We persecute. Christianity has mellowed us out a bit which is why we treated Bernie Madoff so leniently. And allowed Bradley Manning a fair trial.

It won't take 3000 years for people to consider those persecutions inhuman. Assuming 4% growth of course. Some might consider them worse than being knocked out with a rock if what we have been shown of US prisons is anything to go by.

Apisa is trying to parlez a light smattering of knowledge, with an ingratiating appeal to delicate little parlour-maids to make it easy to swallow, into a theological interpretation. Like with air guitar. Or the Sam Snead swing.

Setanta treats the history of the world in the same way.

The spare the rod and spoil the child idea is self-evidently not to Apisa's taste. He just sits wallowing in the outcome of it and doing a sweet number on how simply awful it was.

I bet Apisa's military service was in the Bilko style rather than the one Audie Murphy is said to have adopted.

As far as the issues and affairs raised in the Garden of Eden, it does resemble a 'hurts me more than it hurts you' situation. The human race has been thrown into years of agony by it. Sometimes a loving parent must allow his child to experience a painful operation in order to recover and have a happy life. In a similar way, God has allowed Satan's influence to continue until such time that a healing may take place. This he has promised many times, if you will deign to read the scriptures.

If he's able to eliminate Satan in heaven, why not now?

Are you saying God's clock is not adjusted correctly?
Perhaps he is waiting for us to choose sides.

Why the wait? He already knows who the sinners are.

We are all sinners. It is deliberate sin that gets ya.

Let's see...a "sin" is an action or thought that a human has...that somehow offends your god.

Seems to me, Neo, that your god ought to get over itself!