Before I do, let me just ask you.
Do you believe the coveting blinds a person's ability to discern?
What I believe is not at question. What does the Bible say about this? Which is what I asked you.
We are created in God's image. For that reason, when you get to know yourself, you can get to understand the attributes of God more readily.
I'm not sure what you're not getting here, but it's really simple.
When we do things wrong, God gets angry, and rightfully so.
No, when we do things wrong He responds to set us right.
You seem to think that he can't get angry because He knows the outcome of the thing, yet, you know the outcome of a thing if you get angry at a child, yet you still get angry.
I am not God. I am but a human with ties to my emotions, and quite a bit less control over them than God. Are you trying to make God in my image? I don't recommend it.
I believe you are glumping a belief that God is afraid with Him being angry. Don't and it may make more sense.
I don't think I even mentioned that God was afraid of anything. You will have to provide some reasoning behind how you drew this conclusion.
Who said anything about "bad"? Sure it's bad for the person going through it. Death is bad for the people who loved the person who died. Bad does not mean evil. God uses death, both physical and spiritual to punish those who disobey Him. God cannot do evil, so those things cannot be evil.
You're getting all caught up in the language.
I would suggest that you get a Strong's and an Interlinear and look up evil and bad and other related words in these contexts so you can better understand how it works.
Refocusing, you originally said:
The Bible never says that either spiritual or physical death is evil.
Simply not true, but again, you have define evil before we continue, otherwise, there's going to be confusiong.
Indeed I will look up evil in Strong's. In the meantime you could maybe show me how, if death is evil, that God was not doing evil when he destroyed Sodom. Are you saying that God does evil things?
Additionally, I don't need to define evil for you. You stated that death is evil, so support it with Bible verses.
I agree that you didn't think you were providing this conclusion. However, since you say that God was angry when he punished Sodom, Jericho, and the whole world except Noah, then you need to Biblically support why my conclusion is "perverse" and "far-reaching".
No, you need to do some research. Bible study is your job. You have to deal with your own feelings of guilt and determine for yourself how your emotions should work.
That's your job, not mine.
No you need to support your idea that God punishes in anger but somehow I am not to emulate my Father in Heaven and punish my children in anger. Bible verses please.
Perhaps I am. However the concepts are simple and easily understood if you decide to avoid thinking about God's attributes. You want an angry God at the expense of his omniscience and omnibenevolence. I follow a God who is just and dispenses justice without anger, but uses it not just for punishment but for good. I follow a God who allows only those things to come against me that will help me grow closer to Him. Not angry spanking but lessons from hardship that turn me into an adult and brother to His Son.
Wow. You make a statement, ask a question, and then changes the rules midstream.
Not one of those statements was a question. You did take English in high school didn't you?
As for "changing the rules", perhaps you could point out where this took place?
Believe it or not, God really does get angry, just as you do. Now, if you don't believe that God gets angry, how do you reconcile all those verses in the OT?
Anthropomorphosizing of God, by people who wrote the Bible.
Do you still wish to make God in my image?
I'm real interested in this one.
Yet the second example is the kind of God you seem to want to worship.
God is God. He is all that he is.
It's not up to me to define Him.
He is loving and angry at times, but He is only angry when it's right and beneficial to be angry.
He was right to be angry in the OT. It was beneficial; For our benefit.
You say it is not up to you to define Him, yet you do so right here. The Bible says He is just. Justice delivered in anger is not Justice. You cannot reconcile the petulent anger portrayed in the OT with a just and benevolent God unless you realize that the actions of God were misinterpreted as anger.
Do you believe the Bible is accurate or not?
Accurate in defining the character of God, yes, if you read the whole thing and not focus on individual verses. Accurate rendition of history, no, because the requirement for historical accuracy was not part of that culture. The main point of the "histories" was to provide and emphasize particular truths about God and man's relationships.
