Have you ever noticed that there seems to be different versions of God in the Bible? One God seems to be an angry vengeful tyrant who drowns people in floods and sends fire and brimstone to destroy entire cities. Then there’s another God who seems like a nice guy who’s always looking out for us and is very forgiving and kind.
If we look at the Bible we can see there are three main teachers: Moses, Jesus and Paul.
Moses seemed to represent or reveal a stern Judge, a law-giver God of volcanoes who was often quite harsh in his judgments, condemning the whole human race because a couple of gardeners made rebellious choices with fruit 🍎
Paul’s God and arguably Christianity’s God is the Resurrected Christ - The Messiah who died for the sins of the world because the Judge was so angry that somebody needed to pay for all of human beings’ evil deeds.
The Christ was a heck of a lot nicer guy than the angry Judge, though it was still very confusing for many when this same Christ who claimed “he and his father were one” and “he who has seen me has seen the father” didn’t seem to have any of these angry wrathful qualities.
This good cop bad cop theology was still an improvement however over Moses’ version of God. The current 2.2 billion Christians testifies to the appeal of Paul’s teachings.
And then there is the God of Jesus (a.k.a. Joshua ben Joseph.) His God was and is a loving caring Father of all humanity. Joshua taught a radically different religion than any the world had ever known… And his religion is still radical even though the followers of the Judge and the resurrected Christ have never fully embraced it....
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