I have struggled with my understanding of the nature of God for almost all my life — from my bar mitzvah days, through my teen years where my doubts about the Bible caused my father to often call me an “atheist”, and through my adult life all these years, as I explored different religions and philosophies.

Events in my life would often convince me that God didn’t like me very much and was often out to get me.  Among other areas were issues with marriage, my issues with my looks,  love life, and the sense of despair that hit when I found out that my only child was autistic.  Rightly or wrongly, I often felt like a fly captured by a schoolboy who delights in slowly pulling its legs off, one after the after.

And what kind of God existed that seemingly stood silent during the Armenian genocide in the beginning of the 20th Century, the Holocaust of the Second World War, the continued poverty and suffering of so many innocents across the world., a God that watches as madmen invoke His name as they kill those of different faiths or beliefs, a world continued to be bathed in blood.

And even in nature, there are horrors:  what sort of a worshipful God would come up with things like parasitic wasps that “impregnate” a caterpillar with its eggs.  The caterpillar continues to eat and grow while the larvae suck its blood and grow as well.  Then the wasp larvae use their specialized jagged jaws to cut through the tough, thick layers of the caterpillar’s skin that would otherwise present an impermeable barrier. The larvae also release chemicals that paralyze their host, rendering it powerless as they eat their way out.

Who comes up with elephantiasis? Bubonic plague? Ebola?

This is the creation of a loving God? Or is it the work of a sadist?

And do not say who are we to question the ways of God. If a parent tortures a child, is that okay because he is the parent?

No, if this is willful of God, than that God is NOT worthy of worship. That God is not worthy of us.

So, I am left to conclude that IF this is God, I have to disown him. I cannot believe in such a God

Or I must come to a different understanding of what God is.