Common belief that "God is a capricious God"

[LotusCarsLtd]

One of the common objections used to argue against the existence of God is that He is a “capricious, angry, violent God”. People will turn, for instance, to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah where God destroys the cities for their sins as a sign that He is angry and violent and proof that he is not and cannot be an “all loving God”.

I realize this argument is just a farce used to justify non-belief, but how do you counter it? It can be hard, seemingly, to argue for the concept of an all-loving God if He destroys entire cities. Unfortunately I am not a Biblical scholar so I can’t provide a suitable answer - hence why I come to you!

Your thoughts?

Pax Tecum.

 

[DihydrogenOxide]

God is as just as He is merciful. Think of a parent. A parent will admonish a child, and rightfully so, if the child is doing wrong. A parent does this out of love.

Teachers do the same. They correct students to make an example so other students will not err as has that one student.

Let’s face it, if people did not have any sort of correction for evil-doing, would most people change their ways? Certainly not! It’s like spoiled brats, if God gave everyone everything they wanted and wanted nothing in return, people would become stuck in their ways. God, instead, wants people to seek to become holy. Love is not being kind and willfully allowing evil, accepting everything anyone does. That is not love.

As you probably know, in Sodom and Gomorrah, God gave people a chance to repent repeatedly. Many, many chances. These people were extremely perverse. God wanted to protect Abraham from these people who would not listen, but he also wanted to teach lesson on his Truth to Abraham.

God did not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah without trying to warn the people. He gave them chance after chance to repent. In fact, God was infinitely merciful to them for their grave transgressions, but he is also infinitely just.

God could wipe us all off of the planet. Jesus died a terrible, terrible death out of love for us. God gives us all chances to change and gives us the grace to do so, if we but seek Him.

People who think of God as only Just, do not recognize his great Mercy. God has incredible mercy, more than that of anyone who has ever lived. Infinitely more than Our Lady, the angels, all humanity, things seen and unseen combined.

To those people, you have to personalize it, I believe. If you had a friend who slapped you in the face for no reason, you might forgive him the first time if he apologized, saying he wouldn’t do it again, right? Some people would.
What if, right after he apologized, saying he wouldn’t do it again, and your forgave him, he slapped you again? Would you forgive him again if he asked for forgiveness? Few people would.

What if the next day he did it a third time, and apologized, saying he would never do it again? Most people would not want to forgive after a while…and yet, God forgives us if we truly say we are sorry and repent, even though we effectively slap him, but far worse, each time we sin.

I really enjoy the talk Fr. Larry Richards gave on Confession for Catholic Lighthouse Media CDs. It explains mercy in a down to earth way, which even the most hardened person would understand. I actually played it for a person who was away from confession, because she believed God should not forgive her because He should be angry with her. She listened to it and went to confession.

 

[Mystic_Banana]

One of the common objections used to argue against the existence of God is that He is a “capricious, angry, violent God”. People will turn, for instance, to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah where God destroys the cities for their sins as a sign that He is angry and violent and proof that he is not and cannot be an “all loving God”.

I realize this argument is just a farce used to justify non-belief, but how do you counter it? It can be hard, seemingly, to argue for the concept of an all-loving God if He destroys entire cities. Unfortunately I am not a Biblical scholar so I can’t provide a suitable answer - hence why I come to you!

Your thoughts?

Pax Tecum.

There are loads of different situations that could be covered by this… and the answers aren’t neccesarily the same. Here’s one which I think makes sense in many cases:

To God, we are a species of unreasonable idiots (actually, you could cut out the “to God” bit there) - his actions are as an angry parent, i.e. expressed in a way we can comprehend, or understood as we are able to understand them. So, when he expresses anger toward a nation/city/individual and destroys/chastises/condemns them, it is a neccesary and/or cautionary act, and the emotion is there to emphasise the ‘wrongness’ of them in a way they/we can understand (or perhaps, is a matter of how they were understood at hte time), either to end the effects of evil, or, increasingly (as time progresses) to indicate what acts are wrong/evil/ungodly. Interpreting Jung in a literal (or literalistic) sense here makes good sense (or interpreting him in a Jungian sense, for that matter), given how God’s apparently emotive punishments seem to lessen as understanding increases through time, as with the relationship between children and adults (although obviously the analogy is only relevant so far)

Sodom and Gomorrah are pretty bad - they’re pretty much depicted as a bunch of sadistic, murderous, paedophilic rapist sex maniacs… the whole “it’s because they perform gay acts” stereotype misses out rather a lot of what they are clearly depicted as being like…

 

[MarcoPolo]

I very much like the Father-Child analogy mentioned earlier. How often does a child not understand the “affliction” by the parent, yet the parent does so for the good of the child? Although we don’t always know why God behaves as He does, we have this analogy to offer us an idea that it is for our best.

I also like to cite Scripture describing God as consuming fire. Fire can burn. Fire can also provide comfort and warmth. It depends on how we approach it. Does the skeptic say fire is “capricious”? Does the fire “contradict” itself?

No.

 

[Mystic_Banana]

God is as just as He is merciful. Think of a parent. A parent will admonish a child, and rightfully so, if the child is doing wrong. A parent does this out of love. ]

Oops! I spend too long editing these posts… I think I largely duplicated this, in a round about way… sorry!

 

[An_AntiTheist]

By any human reckoning, God must be capricious. Being used to explain diseases, natural disasters, and destruction, which are now understood as a product of natural occurrences, God was blamed for far too much (the tetonic plates would move despite prayers to the contrary). To wit, cruel and random might seem a persona one could proscribe to such a deity.

Today still, some would have it that God controls things that we know the mechanics of. It would be like a mechanic who thinks his car starts with magic. The mechanic understands the cause and effect, and so do we!

Although religion has lowered the role it plays in explaining the natural world, it has also exonerated God of many spurious charges. I may not believe myself, but I also don’t blame God for any natural events either.

If this isn’t true, may God strike me dead! Still here.

 

[bzkoss236]

By any human reckoning, God must be capricious. Being used to explain diseases, natural disasters, and destruction, which are now understood as a product of natural occurrences, God was blamed for far too much (the tetonic plates would move despite prayers to the contrary). To wit, cruel and random might seem a persona one could proscribe to such a deity.

Today still, some would have it that God controls things that we know the mechanics of. It would be like a mechanic who thinks his car starts with magic. The mechanic understands the cause and effect, and so do we!

Although religion has lowered the role it plays in explaining the natural world, it has also exonerated God of many spurious charges. I may not believe myself, but I also don’t blame God for any natural events either.

If this isn’t true, may God strike me dead! Still here.

Even though your name is “An AntiTheist”, what you said was actually a lot kinder than many modern atheists.

And something you said just reminds me of essentially how part of the Catholic position goes, that study of the physical cause and effect of this world is left to science, and the metaphysical is left to religion. Or as one might say:

Religion’s aim is to know God.
Science’s aim is to know God’s creation.