1 - III or "Do you want a happy god or a vengeful god?"

Too many people approach the good vs evil problem as exactly that.......there is some sort of good force and some sort of evil force. Most of our actions lie somewhere in the middle. There's an angel on the right shoulder and a devil on the right. There is thus peoples' problem with Christianity - how can an omnipotent God of love allow the devil a more-or-less equal say in things?

What if, though, there was no evil force? What if instead of being like people in a tug-o-war, morality was more like temperature?
There is no such thing as cold - cold is merely the abscence of heat. By the same reasoning, there is no such thing as evil - evil is merely the abscence of good. God is good. Thus, the further we are from God, the further we are from good, the 'colder' our moral themometer, and the more inclined we are towards evil.
What's my point - how does this change things?

Although not a thing in itself, cold is a relative term that makes no sense by itself. For example, if, everywhere you went, and whatever you did, it was always 25 degrees Celsius, no-one would complain that it was too cold or too hot - because we wouldn't know what it was like to be any colder or hotter.
God is a good God - a God of love. Again, such things would make no sense in the absence of those that are not so good or lovely. For God to be a God of love, there must, somewhere, somehow, be something that does not love as much that it can be compared to. In the absence of sin, God is not good, and He is not love - simply because good and love are only good and love relative to evil and hate.

God wants humans to be good and He wants us to love. He must therefore present us with choice - yes, it boils back to that term that non-christians seem to disagree with more than anything; 'free will'. As it was said in 'Moulin Rogue' - the greatest joy I have ever known is just to love and be loved in return. It must therefore be the greatest pain when that which you have created to love and be loved in return instead turns away, arguing if you even exist, let alone that you are good and worthy of relationship. And it must cause God even more grief knowing that anytime He could show up with signs and wonders, but realising that doing so would merely cause temporal attraction which would soon evaporate, since those attracted would be so only for what said miracle did for them. Hah, not me, I hear you say, what proof is there that people wooed by miracles turn back and do it their own way? I'm glad you asked. You want proof? Then find a bible. Start reading at Genesis, stop at Malachi. I think you'll see your proof.

The people of Israel were held captive by the Egyptians. They were slaves. God came and performed ten miracles to cause the Egyptians to let them go. God then parted the Red Sea. He then daily gave them food from nowhere. He often showed up at other times - on Mount Sinai, or as punishment for their sin. So when they got to their promised land, you'd think they'd just walk on in and not worry about what enemy they found? Nah. They said 'it's impossible, we would be better off as slaves back in Egypt'. And all that's just in Exodus.

I find the book of Kings and Chronicles very interesting - they class all the kings of Israel, and later also Judah, as either a good king, or a bad king. And the prime sin of a bad king, that is always, always, mentioned first, is that they rebuilt the shrines to other gods. And a good king destroys those shrines. And then you get people who tend to think that no god would care about if we paid attention to them, just that we're a 'good person'. And the sayer of this phrase would always include themselves in the 'good person' definition. You want my retort to that? Just wait till the next post.....