Is God punishing and wrathful or...?

[Miss Hepburn]

Just seems many get or see that God is SO loving, in fact, all love. :)
Others get or see that God is not that, but punishing and jealous.
Some maybe both and just.
You? And why?

(I bet others will bring up there is no 'He' and there is an Impersonal Intelligence or Mind nothing more.)
That's ok, too! Go for it.

[Unseeking Seeker]

God is Love in fullness. No doubt about it in my mind. So then why pain and suffering? Didn’t Buddha address this question?

I’d say that there’s no sin, only temporary misalignment, head & heart incongruent, out of sync with love. That causes a condition of ego (identity) doership engaging attention in thought, word and deed not in resonance with God’s impulse. Hence fleeting joy, transiting to pain, our attachment to outcomes in the world of transience, being cause of suffering.

Now, normally if we do something that makes heart contract rather than expand, it would appear that we ought not repeat our ‘mistake or error’ and align ourselves to experience joy in permanence. However, we are hypnotised by the environment, by maya. With senses externalised and there being a lack of recognition of who we really are (Ramana’s inquiry ‘who am I?’), we try to maximise ‘enhancements’ for the mind-body vehicle, which we are in occupation of for life experience. So, cyclic joy and pain in the world of duality. We set up karmic cause & effect because when we are ‘shown’ what we did (in ignorance), we seek forgiveness by repaying the debt of love.

In truth, as I see it, what happens is that God doesn’t punish us. We punish ourselves. That too is an error but yet inescapable, as long as we have unfulfilled desire (an ego desire). Once we meld head with heart, in resonance with love, karma ends. Thought then is an instrument, used only when needed. For the rest of the time, all the time, we are in vibrant stillness.

In this context, somewhere in ‘An autobiography of a Yogi’ Swami Yukteswar Giri said that presence of form in any realm or domain signals unfulfilled desire or words to that effect. It’s in that epic chapter about the resurrection of Yukteswar Giri.

When we as inseparable from singular God consciousness, being the all-that-is, recognise that the identity we are feeling as separate is but an illusion so that we may fully experience contrast, then this life becomes like a lucid dream. Let’s not argue if it’s real or a dream … what happens is that we see that the life sequence manifest has been already created in the ethereal by ourselves and is now playing out here for our experience, to fulfil heart’s (soul’s) desire. So we enjoy life and if pain comes our way, we simply witness it as a lesson for soul development. In nonchalance.

Cessation brought about by recognition of truth positions us in the world although we then are not of the world, to use an old adage. We become empty or let us say cleansed. This emptiness is filled with bliss in fullness, in permanence by divine magnetism that always is, always was in the background, as our true nature, the nature of God Himself, of we ourself.

So, short version: As long as we are in delusion of separateness, of ego identity out of sync with love, karma is at play as of our ego’s (false self’s) desire. Once we recognise and feel oneness, a unity of God consciousness, indivisible from our own, we are baptised in the stream of love, so to speak and karma ends. All then is bliss in permanence, irrespective of the external.

[ameliorate]

Not that I'm a Christian but the God of wrath stems from the Old Testament of the Bible, i.e. directly opposed to the God of Love in the New Testament. How this can be reconciled is something I ask Christians and have yet to receive a satisfactory answer. (One reply was that the God of wrath was necessary, at first (in the early days of our existence) to bring us into line!....Hmmm!

A large section of the Old Testament is from Judaism/Hebrew bible, notably Yahweh - the God of wrath.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hebrew-Bible

To me this is even MORE confusing since Jesus - king of the Jews/Israel - preached love. 🤷‍♀️ He is the only one resonating with myself from the Bible...the first hippy no less! Ha!

[Redburyva]

People try to measure God based on their own preconceptions of what earthly love is. They do not try to understand how He works, or think that it could be different to what they want.

Love is not weak, tolerant or indulgent. True love is just and strong, and does what is best for a person's development. This may appear harsh to us, because we do not see the end result, and we expect it to be easy and comforting.

If we continuously allow someone who is addicted to a certain drug to indulge in that drug over and over again, will that help them? No, it won't. The best thing is to remove them from that drug bit by bit, which will be painful for them at the start, but over time, they will get stronger and healthier, and the desire will wear off.

If God appears to us as jealous and wrathful, then we truly have not made the sincere effort to understand how His laws operate.

[Guillaume]

I would agree with Unseeking Seeker.
I am just wondering, why being misaligned is the norm rather than the exception.

[Unseeking Seeker]

Originally Posted by Guillaume

I am just wondering, why being misaligned is the norm rather than the exception.

Delusion bcoz of being bemused by maya borne illusion.

If from childhood we were under the tutelage of an ascended master or even a generally evolved being, we could have been taught that we are soul in occupation o& body and so become void-centric rather than body centric, egocentric. However, that’s not the case for the most of us, so we simply follow the herd. No safety in numbers however, as time shows!

Originally Posted by ameliorate

Not that I'm a Christian but the God of wrath stems from the Old Testament of the Bible, i.e. directly opposed to the God of Love in the New Testament. How this can be reconciled is something I ask Christians and have yet to receive a satisfactory answer. (One reply was that the God of wrath was necessary, at first (in the early days of our existence) to bring us into line!....Hmmm!

The God from the old Testament is not seperate from the god of the new testament. The God of the old Testament YHWH/Jehova is a mix of two Gods, En.ki/Yaldaboath (he goes by many names) and his son Marduk (Satan). The schizopherenic personality is proof where he is mild in temperment sometimes and in others he is this blood thirsty, God of wrath, its basically just En.ki and Marduk taking on the role of Yahweh to the people of Earth.

Jehova was originally Sophia but the name got hijacked by the Invader Force and turned into a patriarchal God.

Also it is very important to understand that the God of the old testament is NOT seperate from the God of the old testament. The God of the new testament is En.ki plain and simple whereas in the past he shared the role of YHWH to the people of Earth.

The so called God of love in the new testament is not who you think he is..he claims he is "All loving" but there is no public record of him having love for humanity, the current crop of humankind he created after the Deluge 13,000 years ago. The highest Source or All That Is is devoid of evil and is loving in a sense that we know love, it also "Just is"

The God to the people of Earth whom get praise, is followed and worshipped by people in the billions i have empahsized many times is not all goodnor is he all evil, he is a mix of good AND evil, he is of a dualistic nature and the part of the universe where we the current human civilization is trapped, the physical universe is where he (Yaldaboath, Lord Ea etc) placed himself here as God, he did this a very long time ago. He of course is not the highest God but happily sucks in all the worship he gets..

[HITESH SHAH]

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

Just seems many get or see that God is SO loving, in fact, all love. :)
Others get or see that God is not that, but punishing and jealous.
Some maybe both and just.
You? And why?

(I bet others will bring up there is no 'He' and there is an Impersonal Intelligence or Mind nothing more.)
That's ok, too! Go for it.

HE is responsible lover like a mother to her child . Mother too gets angry with child if child behaves funny/eccentric/foolish/selfish/weird all the time. Her wrath comes for the benefit of the child .The way mother's wrath too is her unique way of loving the kid , the God's wrath too is way of His love.

[lemex]

I was wondering, can't a person (just) ask God to find out what they want to know? Can't God tell a person if they listen? As far as the wrathful God, I was not there (or forgot) and so can't confirm what happened but history shows us many of our ideas were simple. Can we go to the source? Just wondering!

[Miss Hepburn]

Originally Posted by Unseeking Seeker

Delusion bcoz of being bemused by maya borne illusion.
If from childhood we were under the tutelage of an ascended master...

I agree-8 billion people living in this Maya -oh yeah, misalignment would be the norm!Could that change? You betcha!*

*(that is Minnesotan for 'You bet ya', or 'You better believe it'...a quirky, special state in the Mid-northern USA, Unseeking.)
I am often mistaken as being from there.