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Anna Diehl #fundie 924jeremiah.wordpress.com

Real Christians have at least learned better than to pretend that there is no God. And yet many of them have found a new batch of deceptions to cling to, one of the most absurd of which is the assumption that human comfort is at the top of God’s priority list. To these people, God is a benevolent Santa Claus figure who can’t bear the thought of humans suffering. Well, this really isn’t who God is, and nothing awakens us to His comfort with our pain faster than seeing Him striking us down with some horrific disease which He Himself has invented. As we find ourselves breaking out in hideous rashes and experiencing severe pain and suffering, we are forced to question what God’s priorities really are. If pampering us isn’t at the top of His list, what is?God is His own first priority. He demands to be revered by the creatures He has made. If we refuse to do this, He knows how to drive us to our knees by terrorizing us with suffering that is beyond our ability to control.We don’t have to like God in order to revere Him. When you stay back from an electric fence that is buzzing with life, it is because you revere the power that it has to kill you. Reverence is a respect which comes from acknowledging that something or someone is superior to you. No one is more superior than God. He created everything that exists, and He could uncreate it all with a single word. He has created the world that we can see with our eyes, as well as a whole other world that we can only catch glimpses of through the lenses of powerful microscopes. When we try to figure out the way this creation works, we end up with far more questions than answers, and this should result in reverence for God’s superior wisdom and genius. When we see how swiftly a microscopic animal can shut down our bodies and kill us, we should respond with sincere reverence for God’s awesome power. Everywhere we look, God is demonstrating His immeasurable superiority over us, yet we have the gall to mock and dismiss Him. Bring on the Ebola virus. Perhaps increased fatalities will help us to rethink this delusion that God only cares about blessing us. On the contrary, He finds it quite pleasing to strike us down in large numbers in order to drive us back into alignment with His priorities. God wants to be revered. When we revere God properly, we stop treating Him like some vending machine of blessings that we can manipulate into giving us what we want. God does not exist to give us what we want, and if killing off our loved ones is going to help us realize this, then that is what He will do.

Anna Diehl #fundie 924jeremiah.wordpress.com

Of course all of these theories are based on a refusal to accept that God could find true delight in torturing people. Well, tough. HE DOES. Are we really so arrogant that we think we can define who God must be, or that we can change truths about Him simply because we don’t like them? If our Creator gets high off of torturing His enemies for eternity—which He clearly does—then we need to face this fact square on and ask the Holy Spirit to help us deal with it. We can’t let the fact that we don’t like something stop us from facing reality. GOD defines reality, not us. He clearly likes Hell, and He finds the activities in it so satisfying that He even showcases them to the inhabitants of Heaven. A disturbing idea, yes, and yet what does it teach us about God’s Character? What does it teach us about the purpose of Him bringing us to Heaven? Obviously Heaven is not just about us having fun, but it is about glorifying God and His methods—ALL of His methods. We praise Him for His generosity in giving us eternal blessings that we never did a thing to deserve, and at the same time we soberly observe what happened to those who refused to submit to Jesus.

Anna Diehl #fundie 924jeremiah.wordpress.com

It’s hard to see Jesus sacrificed on our behalf and not conclude that His Father places a higher value on us than He does His own Son or even Himself. Oh, we’d never say such a thing out loud, but our behavior declares our belief in it nonetheless. The fact that so many Christians struggle over the existence of Hell is evidence of our secret belief that humans rank higher with God than they actually do. Hell is only horrible from a human’s perspective—God is perfectly comfortable with its existence and all that happens in it. We don’t like the idea of Him enjoying Hell because our prides hate the thought that our comfort isn’t His utmost priority. Yet clearly, it is not. God’s own comfort and satisfaction are His top priorities and the fact that He is patient with us for a brief moment on earth must not be misinterpreted as a sign that He is questioning His decision to punish those who rebel against Him. Yes, God wants us to join Him in Heaven, but only on the condition that we submit to His Authority. If we refuse to do so, He is quite happy to hurl us into Hell and He finds torturing us for an eternity far more rewarding than simply uncreating us. This is the same God who describes Himself as love. Yes, He is love, but He is many other things as well. Let’s not promote that one phrase as being a comprehensive description of God’s nature for it is not an accurate description of His core. God’s central motivation in all things is to please Himself. He created us for His own benefit, and everything He does with us and allows us to do has self-serving ends in mind. Even our rebellion serves Him in the end, for He is quite clear in Scripture that it glorifies Him in the eyes of others when He doles out just discipline upon those who defy Him. We were created for the purpose of glorifying God and He gives us two options in how to do that. We can either honor Him with our obedience or we can rebel against Him and set the stage for Him to avenge Himself at our expense. In the end, God’s standards are never compromised nor is He ever left feeling cheated by the final outcome with any one of us. Should we choose to clash our wills against His, we will suffer intensely but He will end up quite content with our receiving just punishment in Hell.

Anna Diehl #fundie 924jeremiah.wordpress.com

Whether it’s good, bad, nice or nasty, it was created by God for His own pleasure. Everything God does benefits God in some way. He is a self-serving Being, and He never claims to be otherwise. We’re the ones who invented a God who only thinks of other creatures and pines over humanity with a desperate need to love us. But this egotistical fantasy is hardly grounded in truth. We exist because our existence is doing something positive for God. He has worked things out so that no matter where we end up in eternity—Heaven or Hell—He will be getting some personal benefit out of sustaining our existence. God always gives to get.

Anna Diehl #fundie 924jeremiah.wordpress.com

God is the most selfish Being there is—He wants everything we do to revolve around Him. This is why He tells us to love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. In other words, God commands us to be obsessed with Him. Why? Because He loves Himself more than anyone else, and He wants us to do likewise. This can all sound quite negative when we think about it through the grid of carnal pride, but in reality, what God demands from us is what will end up bringing us the greatest joy. Our selfish God designed us to thrive when we revolve our lives around Him. The more we think about God, crave Him, pursue Him, and worship Him, the more satisfied our souls become. We were designed to feel truly complete only when everything we do is about pleasing God. What does this set up tell us about God? Obviously His ego is huge. But in the end, we will find that we want a God who thinks He is magnificent because we were designed by God to love worshiping Him.