Hello? I don’t think I’m suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
Rather, I think that “man creates God in his own image” far too often. Or to be more specific, “…in his parents’ image.” The God of whom I speak, and whom I claim to have had experience of (and for gosh sakes let’s save whether that was a delusion for another thread; I only bring it up because it validates my personal impression of Him, if itself true), is one that practices good parenting – lots of love, freely expressed, discipline where needed and with the idea of instilling a moral sense rather than punishing, enough freedom to experiment and test one’s wings – and invevitably fall off one’s bike the first time – combined with some guidance on what to avoid in doing so. He is validated in Jesus’s explication of Him, combined with His own self-description in various Old Testament works.
The Bible being what it is, you can prove almost anything from it, including that pigs wear porkpie hats and dance in conga lines. Using different source material from the same book, the conservatives hold up a wrathful God who’s inclined to get pissed off at all and sundry for offenses – not the ones the conservatives are inclined to commit, no, but rather the ones that the ostracized minorities are likely to. And because this God is likely to throw a hurricane, an earthquake, a series of blizzards, or a volcanic eruption at everyone, good and bad alike, like the sort of parent who at the last minute cancels a vacation looked forward to for months by all five kids, and grounds them all for three months, because one of them left a sock in front of instead of inside the laundry hamper and won’t admit to it, so they feel compelled to make darn sure that you guys, or us Liberal Christians either, don’t do something that will piss Him off.
I feel sorry for them – living in fear of a God you’re supposed to love (and not loving whom is one of those sins you’re supposed to not commit) has got to be a bitch. But the only effective way I’ve found to combat it is to argue down their points, and instead point to Jesus’s own teachings.
As to why my cherry-picking is better than theirs? Simple: when faced with incompossible dichotomies, find a touchstone as to which set of answers is right. If Jesus is God the Son, Lord and Master, and He specifies what’s right belief and behavior, then that’s the key. And He does just that, in the Summary of the Law, the Golden Rule, several dozen parables. Not rigid adherence to the rules of the Law, but compassionate, just behavior and trust in a loving God, is what He says.
And if you are not going to believe Christ over anyone else, it makes little sense to call yourself a Christian.
