The "Cultural Context" Excuse

[Esquilax]

I think you're all missing the point that God has the right to do what he wants to do.  He can establish laws for us to follow and he doesn't have to follow those same laws.

First of all, that's not much of an argument. It's certainly not a defense: "I can do what I want!" might be true in a very petulant, childish way, but it doesn't make the actions that result from it morally right, or effective at accomplishing stated goals, or even consistent with other rhetoric the party uses. It's just a thought stopper. It's "who are you to tell me what to do?"

Moreover, how are you determining that he has that right? Is it just because he says so, making your position circular? Or because none of us are empowered to stop him, making it a standover tactic? There are actual real world ways that rights are determined, you know, they aren't just asserted out of thin air for convenience.

Also, if you're judging God's love based on his actions and not looking at it through the perspective of eternity, you can't judge whether or not those actions are loving.

Yeah you can: eternity just changes the upper and lower bound of the math you get to do. If god is adding suffering without needing to, then it doesn't matter what happens next. The metric hasn't changed, only its limitations.

 If God is punishing me now for my disobedience and giving me eternal life with him based on his own son's sacrifice, then he is showing great love for me.

Only were one to presuppose that disobeying god actually requires punishment, instead of simply being the garish, self-aggrandizing display of narcissism that is being inflicted upon is. I put it to you that not a word of theology or apologetics actually makes that case.

 Another thing to consider is that the bible states over and over that he is a wrathful God.  He was demonstrating his wrath toward all people in the old testament, which was shown in the way he treated them.  Jesus took his full wrath on the cross and now we're no longer under it.

And now you're contradicting yourself.

In establishing the law for the Israelites, he wasn't trying to make it nice and easy for them.  He wanted them to be under the weight of a demanding set of laws.  Evidently obedience of parents was extremely detrimental to how he expected that society to function.  If a sentry deserts his posts during wartime he may be executed.  His function is that important to the good of the the whole team.  God also knew from the start that the Israelites would not be able to follow the laws, which they never did fully do.  He was demonstrating to them that because they were under sin they were unable to live up to what they were originally created for.  

So he caused incalculable suffering, within the context of the narrative, in order to prove a point that they weren't good enough for him... which is apparently something super big and pressing for humans.

I literally have no idea what your concept of loving even is, anymore.

Anyway, the reason a person doesn't believe in God is not because they think he's a meanie or that the bible doesn't support his actions; because it does.  It simply because you don't believe he exists.

... Do you honestly find the narrative and conversation surrounding your own religion so uninteresting that the idea that we might hypothetically engage with it is this strange to you?