Thriving Women's Initiative - Alaska

Matthews goes on to say: Paul imagines Christ at the end of time, handing over the kingdom to God, but only after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power” (1Cor 15:24). 2Thess 1:5-1.0 promises a final judgement with Jesus revealed “in flaming fire,” and inflicting the “punishment of eternal destruction.” Luke’s parable of the nobleman’s return, likely meant to represent Jesus’s second coming, calls for his enemies to be brought forward and slaughtered in his presence (Luke 19:27).”

Your Brain on a Violent God The violent God of the Old and New Testament and early and later American Christianity is certainly one to be feared, and that fear continues to linger among many believers.

In their book “How God Changes Your Brain,” co-authors Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman (2012), examine what the human brain looks like when it contemplates God. In this work they discuss the results of a Baylor University national study that asked, “Americans to describe which qualities symbolized their impression of God.” They found that “four distinct personalities emerged:” authoritarian, critical, distant, or benevolent. More than one-third (34 percent) of the respondents believe in an authoritarian God who is “very angry and willing to punish anyone who is unfaithful or who acts in an ungodly way” (p.107).

These folks might “even believe that God causes earthquakes and human disasters as a wake-up call about the sinful behavior of people.” For instance, in 2017, a number of Christian leaders claimed that LGBT people and acceptance of their lifestyle caused Hurricanes. Minister Kevin Swanson, who “holds notoriously homophobic views” said “God set California on fire for legitimizing Homosexuality,” and sent Hurricane Harvey to Huston, Texas because it sinned by having a ‘very, very aggressively pro-homosexual mayor” (Robinson, 2017).

The next largest group (24 percent) consider “God as distant and uninvolved.” In their view, God “does not hold opinions about the world or about personal behavior; thus we are left to our own free will to decide what is right and wrong. This God is less of a person and more like 32