Hatred directed at God?

[Corrigan37]

I have a hard time with others who call God names.. such as brutal, and genocidal,unloving, sadistic.. a tribal God..baby killer.. and on and on..
I have even read some who say they wonder about the people who worship such a deity as this one..Of course it hurts my feelings..
At first it's a shocker to hear someone speak out so boldly against him.. over time you get used to it i suppose..

I don't know how to respond to those types of attitudes and remarks.

How do you handle this might I ask?

[VLinvictus]

I wish I could help you, but I don't understand why anyone saying nasty things about God should hurt anyone elsefeelings or make them upset.

Anything anyone says about God says more about themselves and where they are coming from than about God, largely because we really can't say anything about God whatsoever.

So, if someone says that God is brutal, genocidal, unloving, sadistic, a tribal god, baby-killer, they are generally reacting against depictions of God in the Bible and elsewhere which are ethically and morally disturbing. Why should God feel the need to wipe out all life with a flood, or kill the first born of Egypt, or command his people to exterminate the tribes living on the land he has supposedly given them, or send plagues and pestilence and other horrible punishments to those who flout his will? And then, if in the Christian scriptures God doesn't do much of that any more in this world, there are still allegedly ghastly punishments in store in the next world for those who don't pick the right religion or such. I think it's good to be offended and appalled by such things.

And then, of course, God doesn't act in the world so much as those who believe in him do, and believers in God -- of every religion -- have done their fair share of vile, evil, brutal, bloody deeds in his name. It is right and just to be angry and offended and disgusted by these things.

In this light, God becomes a symbol of evil and it is right and good to hate such a symbol. Hatred and love are two sides of the same coin; what is worse, IMO, is apathy and indifference.

How do you respond to such people? You don't have to. You're not the one being insulted. God, to all accounts, is capable of taking care of himself.

Rather than feeling hurt or upset, it might be better to engage with these people and find out why they feel that way -- not to change their minds but to understand. At the core there will likely be some things that you can do in your own life to try and make things a little bit better.

[metis]

I think V is right on target-- it says much more about them than anything else.  And it's not too likely that you'll change their minds.  However, I do think it wise to state your disapproval and then move on without taking it personally.  I know it's hard to do, and I'm not certainly not often exemplary myself in this matter.

But your concern tells me you are a caring person both in terms of your sensitivity but also your concern about how to react. 

Good luck and don't get discouraged. 

[Howiedds]

Corrigan:

Jews may be the wrong ones to ask about this. Although we often speak of God in the same anthropomorphic and anthropopathic term as Chistians do (God having eyes to see, ears to hear, loving and hating, rewarding and punishing), we really don't live our lives as if theses characteristics can be applied to God. We really can't get our heads around the nature of God using the words and images available to us as human beings.

I think our testaments have laid out, using the analogies and metaphors that are the biblical events, the prescription we have been given to create and just, merciful, loving, peaceful world. We just keep screwing it up.

As for your concern about others referring to God, be secure in knowing what you know and let it cause you to raise the average.

[allthegoodnamesweretaken]

I understand what you are saying Corrigan. 

Although I don't have any special reverence for the deity that you claim, I have been told that my gods are demons enough times that I have a bit of empathy here. 

It may help if you think of the people who say such things as suffering souls who are really crying out in fear and hurt, and as such deserve our compassion and not our ire. 

all

[JRosemary]

This question reminds me of a time at Torah Study in my shul. Looking at a difficult section of the Torah portion, our rabbi was asking, "but why would God act this way?"

One regular shrugged his shoulders and said, matter-of-factly, "Because He's a ba***rd."

We all laughed and leap-frogged into a debate about how we perceive God--while many folks in my shul see God as far beyond human attributes, others others view God as, to use Howiedd's phrase, rather more "anthropomorphic and anthropopathic," at least in their daily thoughts, if not in their ultimate philosophy. (And I freely admit to being one of the latter.)

I had my own issues with God at the time of that Torah Study class--and somehow that response helped me get over them. It's ok to wrestle with God and it's even ok to call God names. Sometimes we are, indeed, working out our own issues--but other times we're raising valid problems with the whole concept of God.

At any event, unless the name-calling becomes gratutitous, I'm just as happy to hear people express what they feel and what they're struggling with. Might as well put it all out there on the table.

 

[metis]

At any event, unless the name-calling becomes gratutitous, I'm just as happy to hear people express what they feel and what they're struggling with. Might as well put it all out there on the table.

First of all, welcome to BC.  And let me just add that, for what it's worth, I fully agree with the above.

Shalom,
Vern

[bunsinspace]

I have a hard time with others who call God names.. such as brutal, and genocidal,unloving, sadistic.. a tribal God..baby killer.. and on and on..
I have even read some who say they wonder about the people who worship such a deity as this one..Of course it hurts my feelings..
At first it's a shocker to hear someone speak out so boldly against him.. over time you get used to it i suppose..

I don't know how to respond to those types of attitudes and remarks.

How do you handle this might I ask?

BS"D

I understand your feelings.  But you must also understand that hatred towards the divine is just the flipside of love towards the divine in the emotional sphere.  If persons persist in interpreting the love of the divine as an emotional response vice a directive to follow the divine commands, there will always be the opportunity for its opposite emotioanl response.  For instance I can love the divine for sparing my grandfather in the Holocaust and I can at the same time hate the divine for murdering the rest of my family on that side in the Holocaust.  I can love the divine for giving me life and I can hate the divine for eventually taking it away.  They are all illegitimitate uses of Torah terminology IMHO - valid only in their positive aspects which is to say not valid at all.  As Jews we ascribe no such attributes to the divine as being "loving" or being "hateful" and we maintain that the divine is beyond such human categorization.  That is one of the primary lessons of the gan edan story and this issue with the "tree of knowledge of good and evil."

So I am in complete agreement with everyone's assessment so far that when one hates the divine, oneis merely exrpessing their own pain and really not imputing any quality to the divine as that would be absurd.  But emotionally, it is very real.  And how I deal with that is to understnad that their pain is real and deal with their pain, not any superficial religious garments (language) in which that pain is expressed.   

[Chiyo]

So, if someone says that God is brutal, genocidal, unloving, sadistic, a tribal god, baby-killer, they are generally reacting against depictions of God in the Bible and elsewhere which are ethically and morally disturbing. Why should God feel the need to wipe out all life with a flood, or kill the first born of Egypt, or command his people to exterminate the tribes living on the land he has supposedly given them, or send plagues and pestilence and other horrible punishments to those who flout his will? And then, if in the Christian scriptures God doesn't do much of that any more in this world, there are still allegedly ghastly punishments in store in the next world for those who don't pick the right religion or such. I think it's good to be offended and appalled by such things.

And then, of course, God doesn't act in the world so much as those who believe in him do, and believers in God -- of every religion -- have done their fair share of vile, evil, brutal, bloody deeds in his name. It is right and just to be angry and offended and disgusted by these things.

In this light, God becomes a symbol of evil and it is right and good to hate such a symbol.

Well said! Bravo. You have a complete understanding... Of course, if someone equates the Bible with an inerrant form of God, then you have an added wrinkle to the problem.

[sacrificialgoddess]

I am confused.  How is calling YHWH a tribal god actually an insult?

[MaineCaptain]

I am confused.  How is calling YHWH a tribal god actually an insult?

I don't quite understand that either. There are many beloved tribal G-ds all over the world, I can not see why that would be insulting. I would not intend it to be insulting.

[itty]

SG, Cap, you brought something interesting to the discussion. What does a tribal god do?

Takes care of the tribe. Takes care of the people this god has chosen. I think those fit the bill.

The next question that came to my mind was about a God of the world. Is there such a god?

I don't think so but it set me to thinking about how a tribe might view their world and their God(s).

It seems to me if we look back to the time of the bible the world was a much smaller place. Most people never went more that a few miles from home. Most people really didn't communicate as much with other tribes. I know this is a broad brush and I apologize for that. Please bear with me, I do have a point.

What I am saying is that in a world where communications isn't very rapid, where people don't move that far from where they were born, where people live with their tribe members then the world is a mighty small place and their God is the God of that world.  When these people migrated their world wasn't that large. It was a big as the area where they camped and the pastures where they grazed their livestock. When the Hebrews migrated from Egypt it took them forty years. I think that was because moving a lot of people took a lot of time.  A 'move' might be a couple of miles.  The tribe might stay in one location for months or years before moving on. So at that sort of pace it would take years to go from one place to another.

For a people like this wouldn't it make sense that the God of the world was their God and their world? 

As travel and communication became easier the world expanded so to speak. There were a lot more tribes in it. Those tribes had gods. As far as they were concerned THEIR gods were the Gods of the world!  So now we've got a conflict brewing. Which god is the best one? Which tribe is right about their god?

Might this sticking point in some monotheistic religions be one of perception? Could it be that the God they consider to be God of the world is in fact a tribal God and when the world expanded their conception did also and they took their God along with that expansion?

Musings here. Dunno if they make sense or if they matter.

[MaineCaptain]

Itty your musings make perfect sense to me. That is exactly the way I view the situation. We are all members of tribes. Whether we are aware of the affiliation or not, IMO. And our gods are tribal gods,   And all different.