“Simon Peter replied, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life” – John 6:68

I wish I could have the kind Jesus.

The Jesus that spoke to the woman caught in adultery. The Jesus who healed the sick, simply because he had compassion on them. The Jesus who stood against the powerful and religious in defense of the outcasts.

I remember the illustrated bible story book I read as a child of when Jesus called the little children to him. I always wanted to be one of those children. There seemed to be such safety and serenity in sitting in Jesus arms.

I wish I could have that Jesus.

I wish I could just stop reading at the Gospel of John. I wish I didn’t have to continue into Paul’s epistles. I wish I didn’t know of the misogyny and injustice endorsed in those writings. I wish I had never ventured into Revelation and I wish I didn’t know that the kindness of Jesus is only one candlestick away from turning into wrath. I wish I didn’t have to read that the same Jesus in whose lap I desperately wanted to sit, takes pleasure in slaughtering nations.

I wish I could stop caring.

I wish that now, seeing the cruelty of the scriptures with open eyes, I could walk away and not look back. Yet every time I try I pause, and I don’t know if it’s fear of hell or fear of losing my friends and family, but I can’t just let go. If I’m being honest, it’s hope. It’s hope that I’m wrong, that all of that cruelty, all of that suffering can be explained away. Because something inside me comes alive when I read the scriptures. Something which I don’t know if it’s real or if it’s a learned emotional response, but it’s something that nothing else can fill. It’s the deepest parts of me, that still want to believe in the God of the green pastures and still waters.

I just wish I could find a way to not see.

I want the god of the green pastures, but not the god of the lake of fire. I want the god who’s plans are to prosper and not to harm, but not the god who will laugh at my calamity. I want the compassion without the cruelty. I wish I could un-pull the strings, un-think the thoughts, un-chain the reaction. I wish I could just have blind faith that “God is love” without having to learn that that definition of “love” includes torturing his creation in order to gain glory for himself.

I hope I’m wrong. I hope all the progressive Christians are right and the bible is simply a fallible book that points us to the compassionate god.

I hope that someday there will be room for me in the arms of Jesus.

But deep down I know that hope is false.

If the bible is right, then there is no place for me in heaven. I refuse to stand with the oppressors while the weak are tortured for all eternity. I refuse to worship a god that takes pleasure and glory from that torture.

I don’t know where to go. But I guess I better start figuring it out.