Cherry Picking God
- thebibleisinclusive
- May 12, 2024
- 2 min read
Hello friends! Over the course of the year that I’ve been gone from the website, I’ve been struggling and wrestling with my faith. During this time I watched A LOT of videos about atheists discussing why they don't believe in God. In many of these videos, many atheists claimed that Christians cherry picked the Bible to fit their perception of God. They claimed that the God of the Bible was evil and Christians ignored verses that proved the evilness of God. I’ve watched many of those videos and honestly after watching them I saw many verses in the Bible that I couldn't explain about God. Verses where God seemed angry, cruel, and unjust. Verses that I couldn't apologetically twist into seeming like a good thing. And at first this distressed me. It made me question the Bible and question God. But after watching so many of these videos I came to a realization. These atheists cherry pick the Bible to only show the verses of God in a bad light, but there are MANY verses in the Bible that show that God cares for and loves the little guy and the oppressed. And I simply can't paint God as being evil when there are so many verses that show He cares about the oppressed. And when you add in the fact that the Bible isn't perfect, and that the Bible is recordings of other people's experiences of God; you have to consider that the writers’ perception may be flawed. And I hate saying that, especially because I’m a person that often has their reality questioned, but you do have to consider that when reading about these testimonies in the Bible.
However, when I was faced with the dilemma of verses of God being painted as evil, I decided to put my personal relationship with God on a higher pedestal than what any verse can tell me about God. And yes, that means that I will be cherry picking the Bible to fit my perspective of God. And I will do that because I know that God is good and there are many verses in the Bible that prove that God is good. In my personal relationship with God, God tells me repeatedly that He is good, He loves me, and He sees me. I personally feel like God has been telling me my whole life through my experiences that He is good. And I have been a personal advocate for God saying that you should believe in His goodness to get yourself through all the bad times. So yes I'm a proud cherry picker because I believe that God is good all the time and all the time God is good.
Psalms 145:9 NLT
[9] The Lord is good to everyone. He showers compassion on all his creation.
