Dear Cosmicmystic:
I see that your loving attempts to uplift the thinking of Pomegranate are doomed to failure. You attempt to use logic and informed, illuminated, loving reasoning. This is anathema to Pomegranate, who is exactly like the God he worships - no big surprise there. As I have pointed out in other threads, it is fruitless to appeal to the intellect when dealing with emotional people or issues. And the idea of a warlike God who goes on a rampage against his "enemies" like the Hebrew's Jehovah is an emotional issue indeed.
As you are certainly aware, fundamentalist cults attract a certain type of personality. Essentially, these are personality types that hate: they hate themselves and wish to loose the hated self in something large, cosmic, and sweepingly grand. They hate all who are not a part of the cult, and who do not share their feelings about the hated "other." They hate the present, and look forward to the time, usually advertised as being just at hand, when all the hated "others" will be annihilated. In short, hate is the underlying motivation of the entire fundy cult movement and the people who are its constituent parts: think of the Hitler cult, the Stalinist cult, the Maoist cult, indeed, the Jehovah's Witness cult. All are haters of any "others" who do not share this most negative of feelings.
I much prefer the God of your conviction, and therein lies the problem with Pomegranate. He doesn't seem to be able to grasp that the majestic, eternal, and loving Father who lives and rules at the center of all things is not Jehovah, local war god, who was created in the very image of the people who created him, the warlike semitic tribe called Hebrews. About the only differences I can see between Jehovah and Baal are that with Baal, the people owned the property and with Jehovah, HE owned all the land and could parcel it out as he chose. Additionally, Baalites engaged in human sacrifice, while the Hebrews sacrificed animals.
And that brings up another point. Why would the Hebrews so readily accept the idea of a complex system of animal sacrifice just out of the blue like that? If you'd never thought of offering sacrifices at all, how would it suddenly occur to you that the awful smell of burning flesh somehow constituted a "restful odor" to God? In my opinion, Moses replaced the ancient practice of human sacrifice in the minds of the Hebrews with animal sacrifice - a definite improvement in creator/createe relations. Think about it. And think about how the Hebrew's alter would look and smell in just a few months will all that blood, and fat, and chared flesh, and rot, and corruption. This was the highest representation of God? That is personally offensive.
No, I must agree with you Cosmicmystic, God does not change. Our ability to conceive more and more about him does change as we so very slowly advance in our ability to comprehend ever more spiritual concepts of the reality of the beautiful and loving nature of the Father who lives in every human heart, and who realizes more real expression in our lives as we more and more reject the angry judge/warrior/accountant who speaks from a fulminating volcano and who is chiefly interested in recording the failures of his erring, but ignorant children on this planet, so that he can ensure they are properly punished later.
Pomegranate in my opinion is not ready for this god of Love. He seems to be a bibliolator, a literalist, who cannot see that Hebrew scripture is the overblown secular history of the Jews, raised by their ego to constitute some divine revelation and record of the daring-do of its leaders, egged on by an angry, hate-motivated God.
I wonder if the human race as a whole will ever be ready for your God of Love?
Francoise
