Time to put the fedora on. But not to argue against the existence of God, only against a certain kind of God, widely found in Christianity.

Here are two conceptions of God, which I call Loving God and Narcissistic God. Mainstream forms of Protestantism, especially evangelical, teach Narcissistic God, and I believe the Roman church mostly does too. Loving God loves the world, while Narcissistic God does not love the world, and isn’t even truly capable of love, but insists that He does.

The clearest view of their difference is their attitudes towards sin.

Narcissistic God proclaims to love the world, but in truth does not. Narcissistic God commands us to do and to not do various actions, and sin is disobedience of this command. Narcissistic God then chooses to take infinite offence at this disobedience. Sin often has a damaging effect on the world, and this damage is nominally the reason for Narcissistic God’s command, but as it turns out, it is actually irrelevant. Sin’s effect on the world, the actual damage it does, is finite, and therefore of zero relative importance to the infinity of disobedience.

Disobedience, not any finite consequence to the world, is Narcissistic God’s definition of sin.

And there is no “anti-sin”. There is no good act, no degree of supererogation, that can compensate for the infinite badness of disobedience to Narcissistic God. Bad acts are worth negative infinity, good acts are worth zero, by the account of Narcissistic God. Absolute perfection is the absolute bare minimum that Narcissistic God demands.

And since Narcissistic God has chosen to make everyone imperfect, everyone eventually disobeys Narcissistic God, and therefore everyone is deserving of infinite punishment.

For all of human history, millions of years, up until about two thousand years ago, Narcissistic God subjected every human soul to infinite punishment after death. Let us consider a typical person during this time. David is a Jew living one hundred years before the time of Jesus. David becomes aware of his sin, and cries out to God for forgiveness of it.

But Narcissistic God, who claims to be the Jewish God, will not forgive him despite any entreaty, despite David’s sincerity and remorse. There is no hope for David. There is nothing David can do, nothing the entire world can do even, that will save David from infinite punishment at the hands of Narcissistic God.

Narcissistic God, who claims to love the world, does not love David. Narcissistic God hates David. Narcissistic God will infinitely punish David, with absolute perfect certainty, and provides no possibility, no possibility at all, of his salvation. From the moment of David’s first sin, the rest of his life is worthless, just a short pointless lapse of time before absolutely inevitable infinite eternal punishment.

Apparently Narcissistic God got bored with this arrangement fairly recently on the scale of human history, and so He installed a mechanism in the world that would give Himself a pretext to forgive sinners who ask for forgiveness. But to get that forgiveness, sinners must hold certain particular beliefs about this mechanism at the time they ask Narcissistic God for it. Just to maintain the credibility of the pretext.

Devotees of Narcissistic God, when they preach to the heathen, refer to the doctrine of this mechanism as “The Good News”. And indeed it is Good News, when considered in isolation. When considered together with everything else about Narcissistic God, however, it is Bad News. It is Very Very Bad News Indeed.

Since the worldly consequences of sin are finite, and the spiritual consequences of sin upon the soul are infinite, devotees of Narcissistic God may make little concern of the former. They only wish to obtain forgiveness from Narcissistic God for the infinite benefit to their soul. Mere worldly actions, such as making amends with those damaged, or other reparations, are of no relative consequence except inasmuch as they might bear upon the process of obtaining Narcissistic God’s forgiveness. Reparations to the world, even if they were to make whole and more, can never undo Narcissistic God’s narcissistic rage at being disobeyed.

Like all narcissists, Narcissistic God is principally concerned with controlling what other people think of Him. Of course Narcissistic God commands that you love Him, on pain of infinite punishment, and obviously that you not love any other gods. But this is actually not enough for Narcissistic God. Narcissistic God also commands that you believe, or at least not dissent from, a whole body of doctrine to justify the arrangement, although the exact doctrine is disputed by various factions of devotees of Narcissistic God.

Loving God, by contrast, actually does love the world, and hates sin for no other reason than that it damages the world. For this reason, and for this reason only, Loving God commands us not to sin. What makes something sin, what defines sin, is that it damages the world, not that it is disobedience of God.

This damage, though it may occasionally be very great, is ultimately finite. We are beings of finite power, with finite consequences to our actions, and Loving God will not infinitely punish us for finite offence. To do so would pointlessly add infinite damage to our souls to the finite damage to the world caused by our sin. And our sin does not damage Loving God. God is infinite and perfect and therefore cannot be damaged by finite beings.

What is the nature of Loving God’s command not to sin? It is no more than love. When you love something, the prospect of damaging it becomes odious to you. When you love the world, the prospect of sin, of damaging the world, becomes odious to you. This odiousness is precisely Loving God’s command not to sin. This is the sense in which God is Love.

Is repentance before Loving God of any value, given that it is not needed to save from infinite punishment? While repentance before Narcissistic God focuses inward on the damage to oneself, to one’s own soul, reflecting that very narcissism, repentance before Loving God focuses outward on the damage one has done to the world. Meaningful repentance before Loving God benefits the world: it turns the repentant away from the path of sin, towards the path of loving and healing, and it inspires the repentant to make amends, where that may still be possible. This reduces the amount of damage to the world. And only because it benefits the world does repentance then benefit the repentant, does it lift their burden.

If Loving God would never allow an infinite Hell, might there still be some kind of purgatory of the sinful after death? Perhaps, but it would have to work something like this (and this is pure invention): After death, God reveals to the sinful soul the full truth of its sin and its consequences in the world. The soul, now perfectly filled with God’s love, is thus filled with remorse, and craves purgatory, which God grants. This purgatory would no doubt have something of the character of “hard work”, similar to the process of repentance. This would be a purgatory to hope for, not to fear, like anything given by Loving God.

To love the world is to be filled with God. This is the sense in which God is Love. Leigh Hunt illuminates:

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:—
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
“What writest thou?”—The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, “The names of those who love the Lord.”
“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, “I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow men.”

The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blest,
And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.

Is Loving God supportable from the Bible, or from the teachings of Jesus, or from some particular Christian tradition? I have no idea. I’m not a Christian.

— Ashley Yakeley

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