Throw in karma and reincarnation, and you get to keep a loving God in your religious theory. Because it would mean that the difficulty of the struggle is related to past behavior that must be dealt with now. But without those dynamics, what's left?
What's left, is a God who makes person A, and person B, with no karma and no reincarnation. Person A has sexual feelings for the opposite sex, while person B has sexual feelings for the same sex, .
So person A knows that their sexual drive is so powerful that even within the bounds of heterosexual dating and marriage, they have sinned many times. But that their sexual drive is so powerful it could never be completely extinguished. Even when they have tried to remain non-sexual, they have failed, every time.
But person A is told to completely extinguish their sexual drive and never act on it - period.
Punishments?
Person A goes to purgatory, and then after a period of time, they go to heaven - forever.
Person B goes to hell, forever.
Which means that, for being unable to stop homosexual sexual urges during a lifetime of, say 80 years - the same strength urges that a heterosexual has - that after a million years of pure heaven, of love and laughter and discovery and pleasure, the heterosexual has an infinite amount of time ahead of them for the same joy, while after a million years in hell, a million years of screamin agony, terror, suffering and abject horror, the homosexual has an infinite amount of time of the same, endless suffering ahead of them.
All because of the difference between who they were sexually attracted to, for 80 years each, at the same level of sexual intensity, which the heterosexual admits they could never ignore themselves (towards the opposite sex).
M'kay.
I could even go along with this if you admitted the God of such a scenario was a psychopath.
But a LOVING God?
Maybe that's why Pope Francis recently said "who am I to judge"?
Most of the world errs in believing the Lord is LESS kind than He is. Not MORE. They don’t WANT to be forgiven. They’d sooner keep their pride, the legacy of the fall in the Garden.
The little secret of God is that divine forgiveness and divine love enables quicker and better repentance than all the religious schemes men have plastered over Him. God’s really fuming at a lot of the Christian world. It obscures His counsel to various degrees.
The way I first became aware of this phenomenal divine kindness, incidentally, is that I realized I didn’t owe agony offerings in my head when I had done something embarrassing or made a mistake. That realization spread, and then I realized that I needed to stop damning things. I did, and my vistas opened up further. Then I offered something to the Lord that had been an occasion of longstanding bad sin, but I asked Him to be glorified in it. It was a fight, but He honored my prayer and did not condemn me. Now things really started to open up for me. Really it plays out truly that “as you give, so it shall be given unto you.” Want to feel like you don’t have to give agony offerings? Don’t expect anyone else to give agony offerings. Want to not feel damned? Don’t damn. Want something with which you sinned not to trip you up any more? Dedicate it to the Lord and ask his blessing. Want to be blessed? Bless. Want to be glorified by the Lord? Glorify Him. It’s simple and it’s wonderful, now it also comes with spiritual fights, but when followed you WILL be headed forward towards heavenliness.