God Is Evil

[Beta Ray Bill]

Maybe God is simply not bound to your definition or understanding of the word love.

Okay then, let's look at a definition of love that I agree with:

love
ləv/
noun
1. an intense feeling of deep affection.
synonyms: deep affection, fondness, tenderness, warmth, intimacy, attachment, endearment;

Let's see how that holds up in the Bible:

1 John 4:7-8 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Okay, that sounds nice. Let's try another word:

e·vil
ˈēvəl/
noun
1. profound immorality, wickedness, and depravity, esp. when regarded as a supernatural force.
synonyms: wickedness, bad, badness, wrongdoing, sin, ill, immorality, vice, iniquity, degeneracy, corruption, depravity, villainy, nefariousness, malevolence

Let's see how this holds up in the Bible:

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.
—Isaiah 45:7

Wait, wait, wait! Hold the phone! I thought "God is love." How can God be love and yet be a creator of evil? How can someone that is supposed to, by a standard definition, be "an intense feeling of deep affection," and yet create "profound immorality, wickedness, and depravity?"

This statement from a website (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightath...ates-evil/) says it better than I can:

"The text offers numerous occasions where God could have intervened to turn events to good and chose not to. He could, for example, have obliterated Satan and the rebel angels entirely, or at the very least confined them to Hell and not allowed them to escape, so that they could never have escaped to lead humanity into temptation. And God’s behavior in the whole Eden affair, in any case, smacks strongly of either extreme incompetence or deliberate malice – not least, his choice to transmit the curse of original sin to all subsequent generations rather than letting every human start off with a morally clean slate."

You say God is not bound by "my" interpretation of love. The Word of God says that he is love. How else am I supposed to understand it? What other definition is there? I've asked this on other threads: why would God make the Bible so confusing? Shouldn't he have written it, or at least guided the human writers so that it was clear, concise and unable to be debated?

If I am in error in some way, please, tell me what your definition of the love of God is, because if you think that I don't understand something, I honestly want to know what that is!