Have you ever noticed that in order to truly hate someone, you must convince yourself that they have absolutely no redeeming value at all? There have been people, even in recent history, that are so debased, so wicked, so evil, that it takes no effort to hate that person. I won’t single out any one person here; that is not my intent. However, people of that caliber are (thankfully) rare. For the greater majority of us, we make friends and (sadly at times, due to being imperfect humans) enemies in our life. Our enemies are those that refuse to see any good in us even when others do.
One person that absolutely doesn’t deserve to be hated is God. Yet, some atheists do. (Other atheists have no feelings good or bad about the subject of God.) In order to form this hatred, they look for scripture passages that would put God in a bad light. So they find scriptures about God destroying bad people; they find passages where God allowed slavery; and make other citations that seem to give credibility to their hatred of God. In order to justify this hatred, these atheists flatly refuse to view things in context or look at nearby passages that give intent, showing that God is not the heinous person they paint him to be. But then, again, that is exactly how hatred works – in order to fester a hatred, you have to convince yourself that the object of your hatred is evil through and through, no matter how unreasonable such a conviction is.
I’ve learned that some who react to God so vehemently, refuse to change. I wish they would change, but again, free will allows for this. What bothers more, though, is that they influence others who have little knowledge of scripture and convince them, infect them, with the same dark hatred. Then without any true or deep understanding of the issue, those latter ones become spiritually famished -- without real cause.
Recently I read an article, and once again I decided not to link to it because of its one-sided, God-hating bias. In it the author felt that knowing about slavery in the Bible would make even god-loving Christians, god-haters. Apparently, this man assumes that most people really do not read their Bible. (Actually, there may be more truth in that than many are willing to admit.) However, I have read the Bible – every word, from cover to cover, multiple times. I have read several different Bible translations and versions. From my personal search, I can guarantee you that such god-hating viewpoints are not honest, not complete. God is not the cruel person that some atheists make him out to be. As for the issues of God’s judgments against wicked individuals or his allowance of slavery in the time of Israel as a nation reported on in the Hebrew/Aramaic (“Old Testament”) scriptures, there are reasonable answers to those issues.
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