Forgive me, but I only have a Master’s in theology and sometimes this kind of (professionalized) work escapes me (and I am being facecious in no way please understand).

I guess at the grass roots, this is the problem that remains for me. The God of the heavens is terribly angry at God’s people for their many sins (we’ll keep it at the particularity of Israel, as Andrew has framed it). Yet John tells us that “For God so loved the world…”

Herein lies the problem, bound up nicely and theoretically in the penal substitionary atonement theory, at least for me.

God sends God’s son to die so that God can keep Godself from killing the people, the object of God’s anger. Father kills son (or has son killed, if you prefer the passive voice) so God won’t kill (judge/pour out wrath on) others that God also loves.

Doesn’t this sound terribly pathological to anyone but me? Seriously, I picture Jack the Ripper (for the UK’ers in here) and Sam Gacy (for the stateside reader) when I think of this. It borders on Silence of the Lambs-esque for me, in all honesty.

“I love you so I have to kill you. Wait! I will kill my kid instead to show you that I love you.”

I’m ill just writing it. But please, Andrew, others, specifically address this type of framing in your response. I need my sanity back. Perhaps the clues lie in CAUSALITY: perhaps the events were overlaid with such an interpretation to make sense of them but in no way were the motivating reasons (on the part of the Father) for why events unfolded as they did?