Does God Love You?

A local church proudly announced on its billboard.

“God loves you

He always has

He always will.”

 

This is no doubt comforting. And satisfactory if you don’t over-think it – or think about it at all. But cursory consideration shows that the statement is absurd. Two claims are made here. One by implication – there is such a thing as “God”. And one by assertion – He loves you.

Let’s, for the sake of argument, stipulate that God exists and take a run at the claim that He loves you. It is hard to see where the evidence exists for this. If a father were to act as God does in the Old Testament he would be found guilty of child abuse. His sentence would be long.

In the New Testament, God’s reviews are more favorable. But his main booster is his Son. And as previously mentioned the father is so demanding and sadistic, his son’s testimony should be taken with a grain of salt. In all likelihood this poor bugger was so beaten up he would say anything to stop the pain.

Not that it did him much good, as his Father thought it a jolly idea to have him nailed up to suffer a revolting death.

When the dust has settled on that, the Bible promises such extraordinary tribulations on everyone who doesn’t dots the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s just so, it verges on torture porn.

Then let us contemplate human existence. There are some good bits. Sex, love and children are winners. As are a good meal and a nice bottle of Chianti. Good books, basking on the beach and the Grand Canyon can all be put in the plus column.

But the big negative is the capricious nature of life. It’s all going swimmingly until your 10 year-old daughter  is killed by a drunk driver or cancer. Even your arrival is a coin toss. Will you be swaddled in the finest cottons, attended to by the palace retinue? Or dropped in a field by a starving mother, gleaning a meager existence?

If you even make it. Perhaps 1/3 of us – and according to God’s most fanatical, we are an ‘us’ from conception – do not make it from fertilization to birth. Leaving God as nature’s most prolific abortionist.

At best He can be said to be from the “spare the rod, spoil the child” and “this will hurt me more than it will hurt you” school of thought. But the facts paint the Divine as an unmitigated shit.

Luckily, a complete lack of evidence suggests our stipulation – that God exists – is premature.