God neither judges nor blesses. He's not an actor. Nothing that happens in reality is deviant from random happenstance. But that doesn't stop people from engaging confirmation bias selectively, giving god credit for everything that pleases them, and meekly accepting the blame and shame for what doesn't.
At any rate, god is just a proxy for people's own judgments. He's someone whose robes you can hide behind when YOU want to judge someone. When some fire-and-brimstone type asks rhetorically from the pulpit, "Blasphemers! Idolaters! Workers of iniquity! How shall you escape the judgment of god!!" ... what they are really asking is, "How shall you escape MY judgment?" Or if this were a political ad, it would go something like, "I'm Bob Smith, and God approved my judgment".
Gods judgment is not a factor anyway according to Christianity. God is said to be just yet they only reqirement to be in his grace is belief, which is not just and makes his judgement inconsequential.
If God is real I don't believe he's judging. If he is real I think he loves every one.
Merely an equal opportunity destroyer? A really nice god may be such, I don't believe I ever heard of one like that. Nor see evidence of such benevolence.
The notion that god judges sin, is for people with such a weak moral compass they need good and bad defined for them by an external authority.
The notion that god judges at all, is a prerogative for an external authority that needs to legitimize social control.
Belief is the buy-in to that system of control.
Everything I dislike in a nutshell.
I read this somewhere, I don't know who said it. Maybe Hitchens.
"If it takes the threat of hell or the promise of heaven to keep you from being a bad person, you're already a bad person.
If you want him to them your gone. If you are willing to stand up for what you truly believed was just and right then you have a conversation or defense if it was ever needed. Love thy Neighbor is not a commandment but an inborn natural feeling. Hatred has to be taught and re inforced.
God loves the embryo, the fetus, the new born child, until they become Gay, then they go straight to hell, quote by Ricki Gervais
Absolutely not....we judge ourselves. We certainly don't need a criminal to do that for us!
I agree. The only one to judge us is ourselves.