Christianity’s Two Gods
I know that Christianity is supposedly a monotheistic religion and everything, but after talking to various Christians throughout my life, it seems like various Christians are talking about two gods rather then one.
The Bible talks very specifically about God and who this character is. God is wrath and vengeance. God is an angry and jealous god. God is the creator of all things good and evil. God orders wars, rape, genocide, and sends powerful delusions (i.e. lies). In the New Testament, God even increases his demand for blood and introduces the concept of eternal torture. But God isn’t a bad guy at all. He is the very definition of goodness if he does say so himself… and he does.
But there is another god of Christianity and that is the god who is actually a good and moral God by our human standards of morality. This God loves everyone and wouldn’t send anyone to be tortured for all eternity in Hell at all. Everyone goes to Heaven to be reunited with their family, friends, and loved ones. God wants what is best for you, not for him. He is a selfless, charitable deity who sent his only son to Earth to teach everyone about peace and love and just wants everyone to give peace a chance. That god is John Lennon, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Dali Lama all rolled up into one apparently.
This second God of Christianity isn’t in the Bible, but nevertheless, most Christians worship that god over the Biblical God. I think this is probably because most Christians haven actually read their Bible cover-to-cover because these two gods couldn’t be more different is they tried. There really is no way to confuse these two deities and yet more times than not, these two deities are confused by mainstream believers.
While neither of these deities are real, only one of them even has Biblical support and it isn’t the peace and love deity. I think more people would reject their belief in God if they realized that it is the first God which is the God of the Bible and not the second God. If more people realized that the second God is just what they wish God to be rather than what God was written to be in the Bible then they would be less supportive of the whole concept of a god.
Mark Twain put it best when he said that he didn’t know whether God existed or not, but he thinks that it would be better for his reputation if he didn’t.
Filed under: god, Religion, Vague Higher Power