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by Tony Cross (Author)
My memory of the church in my childhood years was a dichotomy of some of the most loving people I have ever known, as well as the angriest people also. It made me wander-usually out into the woods where I skipped Wednesday night services. I would slip in the back just before the closing prayer had ended in time to close one eye. I could tell, the angry ones always knew I was missing by their scowled look.
Is God angry? The New Testament says, "God is love," and "God so loved the world that He gave His Only begotten son..." The Bible also has many Old Testament scriptures that say, "The Lord met him Moses] and sought to put him to death " and "Let me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them..." Here's a good one, "Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, 'Every man of you put his sword upon his thigh, and go back and forth from gate to gate in the camp, and kill every man his brother, ...his friend, ...his neighbor " (his dog)-oops, sorry, the last one was added. However, there are scriptures that God had instructed the Israelites to wipe out the entire city, every man, woman, child, including the livestock. Then there's the favorite: "The Lord struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt."
How can a God of love be this harsh? And why? Even seemingly to the point of punishing the innocent future children before they are born: "I will not leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, ...even unto the third and fourth generations."
Is there a "righteous" anger? Do we know what it looks like? How can we trust this God as a father to love and protect us? Why did God and Jesus use the analogy of "a father" in relation to Himself, repeatedly throughout the Scripture? Does our belief about the answers to these questions affect the way we live, see ourselves, and treat others, even the ones we love the most?
Overcoming these questions and the deep-seated anger left inside me from an "absent-father syndrome" was the hardest and most painful quest of my entire life. This book explores what seems like two different natures on the surface and attempts to provide some of the answers to the dilemma of the gentle loving nature of Jesus and God the Father of the Old Testament. God is good-all the time My soul is now at rest, and the anger of my childhood is learning to find peace through the information provided here. May it also bless you.
