Bible contradictions?

[Voltair]

One of the biggest inconsistencies I have noticed within scripture is the character and actions of God.

The God of the Old Testament is very warrior/tribal like in his actions. Many of his solutions to his people's problems and many of his punishments involve death, very brutal death at times, of mass numbers of people. I believe in one day he killed 30,000 of his own people and there are numerous accounts where whole cities are wiped out. The God of the Old Testament is represented as patient yet extremely wrathful and prone to lashing out.

However the God of the New Testament is much more tame and to the point of almost never manifesting his power outside of miraculous works through Jesus, the apostles, etc. God's character goes from killing 30,000 people and ordering his followers to slaughter their enemies even down to the infants to love and forgiveness. It goes far enough to essentially choose death over violent rebellion. This is a huge flip in character not only for God but for what he wants his people to do as well.

One of the biggest contradictions however has to deal with the idea of sin and punishment for sin aka Hell. The Bible says that God desires no man to perish but all to come to repentance. However God never had to allow any man to perish in the flames of Hell because the only one who had the power to create Hell was God himself. In fact the only one who decides whether or not you go to Heaven or Hell, in the end, is God/Jesus anyway. If God had to create Hell then he is not all powerful because something greater than him obligated him to do so. To simply say it was God's nature that required him to create Hell is not provable.

You may counter with that God had to create Hell because he is by nature a just God. No God did not have to create Hell because the assumption is that eternal punishment for temporal acts is just. I would say it is quite unjust from the perspective of cruel and unusual punishment. God's eternal punishment does not fit the crime of temporary acts. In addition to this the things that can send one to eternal torment are not really things that cause great harm but things he just does not like. Most people probably wouldn't have a problem with cereal rapists/killers/psychopaths etc going to Hell. After all they would view this as evil but in God's eyes a homosexual is just as bad as the above.

Perhaps you would counter by saying well God's wisdom is above man's wisdom. Rather the wisdom of God is foolishness to man. However that feels like it is often a statement of "I know this doesn't make sense but I am going to give up understanding it and just give deference to God". You can do that but it avoids thinking through the issue and taking certain things to what appears to be their logical conclusion. Hell is not necessary and God did not have to create it. Due to this God CHOSE to create Hell and therefore CHOOSES to send people there. Kind of funny that he didn't want anyone to perish... he could have solved THAT at the beginning of time as we know it.

Now onto the idea of sin itself. What is sin? Sin I believe is defined as "missing the mark" or whatnot at least I keep hearing that from someone. Who set the target/mark up though in the first place? This again falls onto God. So the whole idea of sin in the first place, there needing to be punishment for sin, etc is all the responsibility of God. Saying that God is a just being by nature doesn't change the fact that he MADE UP the rules HE wanted to enforce. Unless you are going to argue there is some moral standard that God is obligated to then he INVENTED what was right and wrong. God could have therefore ultimately chosen to create a universe where Hell/punishment for sin did not exist.

As far as man being out of control with that idea I am going to go ahead and tell you that without God I am not "out of control". I find value in moral standards for a different reason then fear of punishment + the lure of reward. God also is directly responsible for the nature of man. You say it is simple free will that caused us to be so rebellious? God created man with his inherit nature and apparently God knew man was going to fall.

Lets say for the sake of argument though that for whatever reason God had to create Hell/punishment in the way that it is now. If God knew that most of mankind would inevitably be punished and if, for whatever reason, God was not powerful enough to STOP that he should have never made man in the first place. God's desire for companionship/love/worship should not have caused him to create a situation where MOST of his creation gets to suffer forever while he enjoys the company of the few. That would be EXTREMELY selfish and contradict the idea of all loving.

There was an early Christian who recognized the inconsistencies between the Old and New Testament God's named Marcion I believe. He formed a group known as the Marcionites who believes that the two representations of God were actually TWO DIFFERENT Gods with the New Testament God being the stronger God.

In short I believe that the Bible has a major contradiction with the portrayal of God:

1. God is all loving yet seeks what he wants aka his own glory/praise and worship. He also is willing to create/setup a situation where many suffer so he can enjoy the good pleasurable company of a few of his chosen.

2. God is prone to outbursts and mass killings + the orderings of genocides in the Old Testament. Yet this God is also seen as all loving?

3. God wants no man to perish/go to Hell but is ultimately responsible for the system that causes this. God being all knowing/all powerful makes it unnecessary for the sin/Hell system to exist.

4. I didn't mention this earlier but, God in a sense sacrificed himself to satisfy his OWN wrath that he CHOSE to have. Why did he have to sacrifice to himself? That seems quite illogical, he could have made the decision himself. Again saying that it is just that there is sacrifice doesn't really make sense because you would have to prove that this is intrinsically true.