[All emphases his.]

For the purpose of this post, I'm going to assume two premises:

1. Jesus is God. When I say this, I mean that Jesus is 100% God (and 100% man). He is fully God. He is not 1/3 of God. He possesses in Himself all of the fullness of divinity.

2. The orthodox Christian doctrine of the Trinity is true. This means that God exists in three persons, which maintain separate identities, yet remain fully one. Don't ask me how that works, exactly. But we do know that when one Member of the Trinity acts, the other two act in concert. This is the pattern throughout Scripture: we are saved by the power of the Holy Spirit, because of the sacrifice of the Son, and to the glory of God the Father, who gave His only begotten Son (who in turn gave us His Holy Spirit).

Every Christian in the world is still with me (if you're not with me, you're by definition not a Christian). The trouble seems to come in when we actually apply the truths above. We have this idea that Jesus is very, very separate from the Father and the Holy Spirit, and it leads to all sorts of wrong conclusions.

But Jesus is God, and the Trinity means that all three members act in concert with one another. They have the same nature, the same sense of right and wrong, and they assist in and approve of all of each other's actions. Which means:

1. Jesus closed the Red Sea, killing Pharaoh's entire army.
2. Jesus flooded the world and killed everyone except Noah and his family.
3. Jesus ordered the Israelites to slaughter everyone in (certain parts of) Canaan.
4. Jesus killed Ananias and Sapphira for lying
5. Jesus sent bears to kill the youths who mocked Elisha

...and the list goes on. It's amazing what kinds of conclusions automatically follow from the premises that all Christians already accept.

In conclusion, please don't be a Marcionite. Be a Christian. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We don't have to apologize for the "big, bad Old Testament God."

Jesus is the Old Testament God.