God Is Love: Reconciling The Divine Nature of God

Fundamentally what I believe is twofold: God is completely love and He loves us completely. Therefore everything He does is from a posture of love because it is from love itself. For how can someone who is completely one thing (love) ever do something outside of His character? The answer is they can't. So whenever a belief, teaching, or situation arises that shows me an unloving version of God, I always question two things: My perception of the situation or teaching and if there is something deeper and more profound at play.

So, in the bible God is described as love (1 John 4:8) and light (1 John 1:5), therefore if there is ever anything that disagrees with love and light there must be a question as to why and an analysis that goes past our preconceived notions and ideas.

For example, would a loving God destroy a whole city? By all means no! Even I, an imperfect person, wouldn't want to destroy a whole city. How absurd it is to think that God would. But most, if not all, Christians were taught to see God doing that very same thing in the Old Testament. However, let us use some deductive reasoning by using a few "If/Then" statements. IF God is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8) THEN why don't we see him destroying any cities in the New Testament?

The reason, in our mind, is Jesus. We do not say it, but often times we invertedly see God and Jesus in a "good cop, bad cop" role because we believe that, "God wants to destroy everything, but Jesus is holding back His wrath." Which is where we get a lot of our rapture theology (more on this to come). But if we hold to that internal belief of Good Cop Jesus and Bad Cop God then:

1. If Jesus was in Heaven with God before He came to the Earth, Then why didn't he stop God then?

2. Why does Jesus repeatedly say in John 10:30-38 that "He and the Father are one" and that "He has come to do the works of His father" (John 6:38), and "if you’ve seen me you’ve seen the father" (John 14:9)

So, by using deductive reasoning, either Jesus is a liar OR God truly IS good and I refuse to believe Jesus is a liar. So to answer the initial question, Why did God destroy cities in the Old Testament and not in the New? The answer, after understanding God and His goodness, is He didn't destroy any city. However, because the cities were evil and out of His will, they removed God's hand of protection from themselves opening themselves and giving themselves over to the powers of darkness or as I like to call them, Anti-God and Anti-Christ lifestyles. Which led to destruction, not BY God's hand but because THEY REMOVED His hand from them. Which is why God would always send prophets to forewarn the cities to turn and repent because God saw disaster coming for them and couldn't intervene if they didn't allow Him to (more of this to come).

See, before the crucifixion evil was here as a consequence of the fall of Adam.

Romans 8:20-21 ESV 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

But because of the crucifixion, the earth has been freed from darkness and the curse of sin. I know, you may be asking, "well why then do we still see evil and darkness?" Because now we are the ones who allow it to be here and often times we fuel darkness by feeding into it. Meaning, we are either spreading the kingdom or fueling the fires of hell on this earth.

James 3:6 ESV And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.

You are either spreading light or contributing to darkness. So join me, as I explore my beliefs and lets find out together how Good God is and how much He loves the world and what our purpose is here on this earth.