First, it was very confusing for the people in the beginning of the ages in biblical history. God seemed to be a wrathful God, killing thousands, and thousands. Unfortunately, people later developed the wrong perception of God Himself. What the people didn’t realize that God was trying to teach them something. To fear Him, then we can come to respect Him and never question His authority. ~Princess Jess
As an abuse survivor the bolded part horrifies me. My dad was like that. He used fear to instill a deep desire to never let him catch us being disrespectful. When I was a child he destroyed our mother’s clothes and all the food in the house.
He was not enraged. He did not loose control. He calmly took every food item in the kitchen and poured it on the floor. Bread, sugar, eggs, meats, vegetables, flour, baking soda and more – in a giant pyramid in the center of the kitchen that was the exact height of the kitchen table. The kitchen was not a mess from this display. It was pristine – just the way he demanded it be.
He then went to the closet he and mother shared. He removed all her clothes and laid them on the bed. He then took a pair of scissors and shredded them from top to bottom, leaving just enough intact so that they remained on their hangers. Every dress. Every top. Every bottom. Every coat. Every Sweater. Slowly and meticulously cut into strips.
He then moved onto the dresser. Now he had to have removed those items first, but that’s not how they were found. Bras had their straps cut, panties had their sides cut and pantyhose had their feet cut off. Nothing escaped in one piece. When he was through, he placed them back in the drawers – folded.
When he was through, there was no food in the house and the only clothes my mother had were the one’s she was wearing.
What was the reason for this? My mother had been disrespectful. When she found out that he had locked my brothers out of the house during the height of summer while she visited with a friend – she was angry. And she spoke up. She told him that he was wrong and that he should know better than to do that to kids.
The bible god is exactly like my dad. God, like my dad was, is a being consumed with the desire to control, to dominate, and to be obeyed. God, like my dad couldn’t, can never really follow through on threats to kill everyone. If they followed through, who would be around to be controlled? No one and that is the worst nightmare of the control freak, be they human or otherwise.
God’s behavior, real or threatened, was not about love or respect. Who threatens to destroy those they love? Who threatens to destroyed the children, family and friends of those they love? Who destroys the property of those they love? It is not an act of love to terrorize people into compliance that you conveniently call ‘respect’. It is an act of hate that produces so much fear in its victim that they won’t disagree when you call it ‘respect’
(Hattip to Repentence is Futile )
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Without struggle, there is no progress. This struggle might be a moral one. It might be a physical one. It might be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. People may not get all that they pay for in this world, but they certainly pay for all that they get." ~ Frederick Douglas