Path of Grace

I love this debate on YouTube and I’ve added the link below so you can understand my reference and form your own opinion (and as a disclaimer, it’s not my content).

I come from the privilege of not questioning God’s authority. This doesn’t mean I don’t argue, sin, or try to get my own way, but when I read the Bible, my first thought isn’t: I can’t believe God did that in the Old Testament; look how nice Jesus is in the New Testament. I hear this argument often, but it’s not one I relate to. To me—and you may have heard me say this before—the Bible is God’s love letter about how we, as the human race, chose to separate ourselves from Him, and how He created a way for us to come back to Him. And it’s not through mental acrobatics or pious self-sacrifice.

Going back to this debate between the college student and Cliffe Knechtle—whilst I love how articulate this young man is and appreciate what he’s trying to ask—what I’m actually hearing is: surely God is so loving that He’ll give endless second chances. I want to do my own thing until I have indefinite proof that God’s way is the best way. It’s a rather simplistic way of putting it, but that’s my conclusion of what he’s trying to understand.

I do understand what he’s saying. God does seem to give multiple chances for us to obtain eternal life, and I suppose this is where I’m privileged or perhaps self-indulgent, but I don’t equate salvation to going to paradise for all eternity. Heaven to me—which I may have mentioned before—is where God is. So hell isn’t the fiery pit of torment; hell is the absence of God. Trying to do my own thing because I know better is just my selfish, self-centred human bad habit. It’s not my preferred way of being because I don’t like being away from God. I don’t like letting Him down or feeling empty, desolate, and apart from God.

In simple terms, heaven is on earth when God is with me. It’s not because things are perfect—it’s the calm despite the storm.

I think we project our feelings and self-condemnation onto God, labelling Him as some big angry deity because we struggle to think beyond ourselves. In our own small way, we need to feel necessary, so we assume God only imposes His will on us because He wants to feel necessary too. We couldn’t be further from the truth. God doesn’t need us. He doesn’t need our prayers, our praise, or even our presence. But He does want us, and I don’t think we understand how to grasp or accept that reality. Since we don’t know how to love unconditionally, we automatically assume God’s love is a lie and that He must want something from us.

My question is genuinely for those who call themselves atheists or agnostic, or say they don’t follow God because He appears as an angry deity in the Old Testament but a compassionate one in the New Testament. To me, this suggests you recognise God’s reality on some level. You’ve made a deliberate choice not to follow God because you disapprove of what you understand about Him from different historical periods—before and after Christ.

So here’s my question: if part of you acknowledges that God is real and that He performed those actions you find troubling in the Old Testament, why would you choose to oppose Him? I mean, think about it logically for a moment. If you’re willing to accept that an all-powerful, all-knowing Creator of the universe exists, and that He has the authority to judge nations and individuals as He sees fit, then what exactly are you hoping to accomplish by standing in opposition to Him? Are you suggesting that your finite human understanding of morality and justice somehow supersedes His infinite wisdom? It seems to me that if you truly believe God exists and acted as the scriptures describe, then the rational response would be humility and submission, not defiance and moral outrage.

Link: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvw_EuT4_0I>