Christian love?

I talk a lot about love.

I even have a tattoo on my arm that says "Live Loved"!

Coming from a strong born again bible waving Christian background I can say with absolute certainty that christianity is convinced it has the monopoly on love. And I'm talking about real meaningful love. Not fleshly/worldly love - the real deal love!

Christian love says that God loves you. It also says that He loves you so much that he sacrificed His son for your sin. He says that the most loving thing we can do is bring people into His kingdom so they too can experience His love.

They also say that we were conceived in sin. That our inherent nature is sin and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it. It was our choice however, although Adam made that choice for us, but somehow its still our choice, so we have to chose God's solution to the problem which is accepting the sacrifice of Jesus so we can take on Jesus' perfection and live vicariously through him.

We will then live happily ever after, basking in God's love.

I used to believe this was the one truth - the only way to peace and eternal bliss.

But then I re-read 1 Corinthians 13, and then I looked at my heart, and I looked at the rest of the bible, and I looked at the church, and I scratched my head. Something just doesn't add up here.

So here it is:
⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
⁸ Love never fails.

Notice anything odd about this?

Is God patient? Only to a point, it eventually gives out, as it did quite regularly in the Old Testament stories, and it eventually gets too much for him in the New Testament too.

Is God kind? Only if you do the right things, say the right prayers and don't get up his nose too often, but he's definitely not kind to the unsaved.

Does he envy? You bet! He's a jealous God and will have no other lovers!

Does He boast? All the time. He's God, He's awesome and you better believe it!

Does he dishonour others? He dishonours everyone who isn't "saved".

Is He self seeking? Well, He seems to want our absolute and total worship and devotion, so I guess he is.

Is God easily angered? You bet, in the Old Testament he was one angry dude, and He loses it again when Jesus returns.

Does He keep a record of wrongs? Now this is a doozy. He keeps complete records of everything everyone does, but then gets rid of them if they get "saved", but if they blaspheme the Holy Spirit, or turn from God, he digs them out again. And apparently we all get judged anyway so there's not much point.

Delight in evil? Obviously his definition of evil is different to ours, but he thought it was great to wipe out entire nations, murder babies, rape women, all that stuff. He thought it was perfectly acceptable to displace other nations from their rightful lands by whatever means they saw fit.
He delights in seeing his enemies defeated.

Protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres? When it suits his interests.

His love never fails? As long as it only concerns the "saved". His love for teh rest of the world fails all the time and will ultimately fail completely when he's had enough of us scum.

And then there's all the stuff Jesus said about love and forgiveness!!

So all up, God expects far more of us then he's willing to do himself.
Does he love his enemies? Nope.
Does he turn the other cheek? Nope.
Is he fair and just? Not in this life - hopefully in the next.

Sure, I can sprout lots of complicated theology to wriggle out of stuff like this, and to be frank, that's what the church has been doing for centuries - creating more and more complex convoluted doctrines to make sense of the mess.

There's no getting out of it though. The God of christianity is a psychopath.

(I'll be writing a lot more about this stuff soon)