You have missed my point entirely. The god of christian theism has revealed his character through Jesus. That was the whole point of Jesus so can know what god's standards are and imitate them.
That's an interesting suggestion, but are you sure that you can tell Christians what Christianity is? In other words, Christianity is as Christians do, right? If they want to quote Hebrew scriptures at you that say that God is above our understanding, then that's their belief, which you have to address.
Personally the only counter-reasoning point I know of is to say that one would expect that a loving God would allow us to use the brains he gave us to understand his purposes so we can make an informed decision. That can be countered as well, by simply saying that our brains are really quite limited in our imperfect condition, and that in any case God does not have to explain himself. It could be that his "mysterious ways" are actually fair (that is, just) precisely because of their mystery -- because it puts us in a position where we have to be humble and ask God to help us.
God is not interested in having his motivations questioned, is he? He values humility, so he puts us in a position where we know very little and waits to see whether we choose to proudly say, "I have a good grasp of this situation all on my own and I can make my own choices", or humbly admit, "I'm just dust, and need God's help to make it through this life."
If god is love everything he does must be motivated by love. "God IS love". Even when he punishes it cannot be based on anything apart from love.
This is one way of reading that scripture, yes. But personally I think a Christian would be perfectly entitled to read it as a poetic hyperbole, rather than a precise, all-encompassing description of God. As a JW I was taught that God IS love, but that somehow his love is not mitigated by his justice or other attributes when he has to act against the wicked, etc.
That seems like a Trinity-style mystery to me, that somehow absolute love co-exists with the other properties and is never lessened by it. For instance, if it would be loving to take away the wicked so that the righteous do not have to be plagued by them, why is it necessary to actually kill the wicked? Why not move them to another planet to let them live the way they want to live?
But if we instead look at the Christian God as one who is perfectly capable of putting aside love for a moment to exercise justice, then there's no essential conflict between his attributes any more than a father who punishes his naughty child even though he loves her.
The challenge apologists have is to show that drowning a quarter of a million people is a perfect act of love
So, you are intentionally conflating inaction with action, am I right? If God doesn't stop something, it's the same as if he caused it since he's omnipotent and could have prevented it? I feel this is an unfair position to try to force on the apologist. Why can't God simply be allowing things to happen as a result of Adam and Eve's rebellion? In the end, everything is sorted out in the afterlife, so all those people who died as a result of living in this imperfect world will be dealt with fairly in the next life. Most Christians would say that they're already in heaven!
(Just for anyone who doesn't know me, I'm playing the apologist here, but I'm actually agnostic.)
