A God that will burn his own children in hell just because they do not worship him is not a loving God at all... In fact he is a narcissist.
Even my mom is much more loving than the God of the Bible in more ways than I can type here.
But God isn't like any other being; He occupies a category all His own. God has no peer, no other being to whom He can be properly compared. Certainly, we ought not to compare God to ourselves. Though we bear His image in some superficial ways (self-awareness, appreciation of beauty, truth, courage, etc, capable of planning for the future, and of inventing things, and philosophizing, and so on) God is far, far, far beyond us in ways we can't begin to understand. And so, though certain behaviors are inappropriate for mere human beings, for the Creator and Sustainer of Everything, the Ultimate Standard of Truth and Moral Virtue, the same cannot be rightly said. Without God,
nothing would exist. This makes a BIG difference - or should - to how we view Him and His conduct.
For example, is it
murder when God takes the life He has given and has sustained at every moment? No. If all life originates from God, and if that life continues to exist only by His power, how is it wrong for God to do what He pleases with it?
We might watch an Olympic athlete win an event and raise her arms in victory, taking enormous pride and joy in her physical accomplishment, shamelessly accepting the adulation of the cheering crowds. No one in the crowd is thinking the victorious athlete is arrogant or narcissistic; the athlete is simply getting the recognition she is due. God, though, has made
the entire universe, by His will and power keeping
everything working in the way we've come to expect it will, billions upon billions of galaxies existing and operating with such astounding size, complexity, beauty, harmony and variation that the accomplishment of the Olympic athlete, by comparison, is ridiculously trivial and pathetic.
Many are those who begrudge God His due, however, calling him arrogant and vain when He insists on taking a "victory lap." Though His doings are infinitely greater than all human feats of athleticism, or art, or invention put together, some of those whom He has made and whose existence depends upon Him moment-by-moment disdain His demand for worship. What hubris they possess! What arrogance and pride
they have - which is why they so resist giving God His due.
When it comes to the matter of God's judgment and punishment of our wickedness we have again a vast difference between ourselves and our Maker that has a vital bearing upon how we ought to understand His justice. Most crucially, we are sinners born into a world filled and fouled by sin; we encounter sin all around us, participate in it without qualm, and often greatly enjoy sin; some sins we even come to love. But God is light and in Him is no darkness at all (
1 John 1:5). He has never done anything sinful, nor has He ever even desired to do so. The thrice-holy God of heaven is unadulterated light, purity, holiness and goodness. As such, God
hates sin - all of it, all the time.
How are sinful creatures steeped in sin, and often loving it, going to understand God's proper, holy hatred of their wickedness? Well, they can't, without His help but, instead, expect that God will take
their view of their sin, adopting an easiness with it, a winking eye toward it, as they do. When, then, He doesn't, but harshly condemns and punishes the sin they often so greatly enjoy, it never occurs to them that their view of their sin is awry, badly contorted and blunted, but only that God is over-reacting and is some sort of vicious narcissist. Amazing!
The blindness and pride of sinners in this is, on one hand, horrible in its degree, but, on the other hand, exactly what ought to be expected of those bound in sin. The sinner's railing at the holy judgment of God is actually not a testament to God's cruel arrogance but to their own deep hubris and sin-saturated heart. The sinner's objection to hell reveals their profound lack of clarity on the nature of their sinfulness, not some moral deficiency in God.
God is not like the sinful earthly parents we all have, who, in accommodating our sin accommodate their own, whose human love of us is far from holy, far from the perfect moral purity, wisdom and justice that characterizes God's love. To make assessment, then, of God by comparison to sin-bound, earthly creatures is akin to thinking an elephant ought to act just like a microbe, or that a pig-pen filled with stinking mire ought to be the cleanliness standard for the kitchen of a three-star Michelin restaurant.
