~~ The Positive God ~~
God is good, just, and kind. These are characteristics that virtually every person of faith will agree with; however there is ample evidence every minute of every day where God is not good, just, or kind. Often these acts are easily dismissed with the statement "God is mysterious".
I've heard people say that God has 3 answers to every prayer: Yes, not yet, and I have something better in mind. This should sound somewhat familiar to most Christians. If one asks for something from God and gets it, then He must have answered the prayer with "yes". If one doesn't get it right away, but it happens at a later date, then He must have answered it with "not yet". If one didn't get it at all, then He must have a better plan in place. That might sound nice and it likely gives a religious person comfort in their ability to reconcile the lack of a direct response from God; however as I do frequently in this book, I'm going to compare this to a real world example. If we look at the situation in the countries across East Africa, we see children so malnourished that they are the very definition of "skin and bones". As they and their parents cry out to God in desperate prayer for help, what is God's response? He surely hasn't said "yes". All evidence to the contrary. He hasn't said "not yet" because children have been dying like this for years. So, we're left with "I have something better in mind". I would ask everyone to be rational about this. What "something better" could He possibly have in mind? Is God telling us that he'd rather let these children starve to death so that they can spend eternity with Him in heaven? If someone can have faith in a loving god in the face of this kind of abject suffering, that kind of faith is both callous and obscene. When a religious person says that God will never give us more than we can handle, a statement like that shows a level of ignorance that is simply astounding. Are we to believe that a child dying of starvation can handle it? To see children dying like this from absolutely preventable causes should be enough to demonstrate the heartless and cruel nature of the all-too prevalent belief that God would never give us more than we can handle.
God loves us unconditionally...as long as we believe in Him, worship Him, and aren't born into third world poverty.