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Putting God on Trial

Putting God on Trial

Last updated on: April 5, 2026 at 2:45 pm by Karl J. Forehand

Putting God on Trial 2026-04-05T14:45:02-06:00 Karl J. Forehand

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

If it is universally understood that favoritism and selectivity clashes with justice, why do we allow God and Jesus a pass when they do it? Depending on your views of whether God exists, your narrative may be slightly different, but most people that believe in God and Jesus also allow the narrative that he has favorites, and he is selective about how he administers Justice and blessing.

When asked why was Jesus selective and who he helped, why did he refuse to help sometimes, and why was he only interested in the Jews and not the Gentiles, referring to them as “dogs.”

Why did God in the Hebrew scriptures commit mass murder and genocide, while claiming that some people groups were his favorite? How is that Justice even in the Old testament scripture?

Why do current Evangelical Christians condone terroristic attacks on some nations, and claim exemption from judgement upon themselves? Are they just following the example of their God who killed millions while attributing their opponents action to the person who killed no one in the Bible, Satan.

When asked why children are raped and allowed to starve under the sovereignty of a “loving” god, they launch almost automatically into the excuses they have preplanned much like children do for their abusive parents.

Excuse #1 – We can’t comprehend God

Even though they claim to understand God well enough to develop ironclad creeds and belief systems, when their understanding of God is confusing or contradictory, they claim that God cannot be understood and his ways are beyond our ways.

It is very simply just an excuse to cling to ignorant views of God that don’t make any logical or reasonable sense, even though the word logos means exactly that, logic and reasoning. I used to say it was like explaining biochemistry to a 3-year-old, but I have since studied harder and realized it’s all just an excuse for not doing the hard work of testing those we would dedicate our life to.

Excuse #2 – Human Choice

This also made sense to me for many years, because we want to cling to the idea that decisions have consequences. If my children made mistakes, many times, they needed to experience the results of those decisions.

Later I realized that it was more complicated than that. With my children, there were times that I protected them, and made sure they didn’t starve to death because I had the means and resources to do so. I didn’t allow anyone to hurt them, and I certainly never would have allowed them to be molested or starved to death. Skinned knees are different from life threatening situations.

A God that could stop an orphanage from being bombed and didn’t is not only culpable, but should never be excused from justice with the excuse “That’s just how he is.” If it was our child, that excuse would never be good enough.

Excuse #3 – Divine Election

Various sects of Christianity and other religions give various levels of homage to this idea, but all Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) are founded on the exclusive idea that they are right and God is on their side. When we believe we are exclusively right, and all other groups are wrong, we otherize and demote people that we feel should “get what they deserve.”

Especially in the West, we have used these ideas to exterminate native Americans, and enslave Africans, and relentlessly persecute marginalized people including women.

Excuse #4 – Evil causes suffering.

There’s no doubt that what we do has consequences. Sometimes my childish behavior causes others to suffer. But if we pay attention, it’s easy to see that we are most often attributing this cause and effect to other people and not even noticing the harm that we are doing, again because we believe that we are right and that God is on our side.

This all became very real for me, after 20 years of ministry, when I genuinely took the time to examine my life and explore the question of whether my view of God was flawed. I assumed God could handle the interrogation, and I assumed that by asking honest questions I would get better answers.

The Big Question – Is God worse than me?

Most of us were raised not to question authority. “Because I said so” has probably been the most common injunction of stressed-out parents throughout human history. But, good parents should know why they make wise decisions and be able to explain that to less developed minds.

By the same logic, God’s decisions should also be rational and they should not contradict each other. But holy books often do exactly that, give weak explanations and demand obedience because of their self-proclaimed right to do so.

In my writing, I eventually came to the conclusion that my view of god found him lacking. He had a worse temper than me, he often couldn’t explain himself, yet he demanded my complete obedience like a narcissistic toddler.

Leaders in the churches I attended and parents trying to raise their children often followed suit and did some of the same damage that religion has done over time in all parts of our world, especially the West.

As all people know who have been raised by an alcoholic parent, at some point we have to quit making excuses for them and call them to accountability. We usually don’t have a problem holding our enemies accountable, but it’s time to look in the mirror and look at our gods and religions and put them on trial.

Be where you are,

Be who you are,

Be at peace.

Karl Forehand

Progressive Christian

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