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This is so bizarre. Had you said the Earth rests on the back of a Great Turtle, and we had better all buckle our seat belts when the turtle gallops you could not have sounded more bizarre.

Bizarre is in the eye of the beholder I guess.

Most Christians regard M Scott Peck as pretty bizarre. I do too, in general.

However, I was actually endorsing your point that God doesn't consider the male or the female form more valuable to him. Apparently you missed that and chose instead to hurl an insult. Whatever. I had already gotten the point that you didn't wish to have an understanding but rather to make a big splash.

So, when a few hundred thousand people are slashed to death in Rwanda, and someone drops the comment about it, "God works in mysterious ways", what sort of nasty God are they referring to to allow such things to happen? God the Puppeteer, yes?

In contrast, the God you are hoping exists is one that controls everything so that no one has pain, isn't that what he would be, if he intervened?

You forget about the supreme goal of love, which requires freedom, and freedom requires consequences. And also the transcendent human spirit. Where you value physical life, I value spiritual life even more. If God is the giver of life, can he not also take it away? Who are we to say when it is our time?

"He is not a tame lion..." From the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

I don't think any Christian would argue that God is pleased to have people killed. It is not what he created this world to be, but what we corrupted it to be. Now it is just something we have to live with and struggle with daily. He does not like it, but he helps us inwardly, daily, if we want him to.

Ever seen Eric the Viking? When Eric and his buddies get to Valhalla, they discover that the gods are a pack of cruel, unpleasant children

And what is your theory? I am assuming you aren't thinking that Monty Python actually is a good place to learn theology. And yet you accuse God of those very things, based on observable fact. I'm not clear as to what your point is in bringing these things up. Perhaps if your theory of what God is/is like were put down, it might help me to understand.

This reminds me of the Catholics I knew who told me they went to mass to get their tickets punched just in case the things they did not really believe were true.

However getting one's ticket punched is not how one validates one's relationship with God, is it? So sadly humorous as it is (I know people like that too), it doesn't really add to the discussion.

I believe if you keep God's laws, the label you apply to yourself does not matter. God does not care about labels, and he isn't cruel or whimsical.

Then you have something in common with CS Lewis:

there is another way of demanding results in which the outer world may be quite illogical. They may demand not merely that each man's life should improve if he becomes a Christian: they may also demand before they believe in Christianity that they should see the whole world neatly divided into two camps - Christian and non-Christian - and that all the people in the first camp at any given moment should be obviously nicer than all the people in the second. This is unreasonable on several grounds. (I) In the first place the situation in the actual world is much more complicated than that. The world does not consist of 100 per cent. Christians and 100 per cent. Non-Christians. There are people (a great many of them) who are slowly ceasing to be Christians but who still call themselves by that name: some of them are clergymen. There are other people who are slowly becoming Christians though they do not yet call themselves so. There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are so strongly attracted by Him that they are His in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are being led by God's secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it. For example, a Buddhist of good will may be led to concentrate more and more on the Buddhist teaching about mercy and to leave in the background (though he might still say he believed) the Buddhist teaching on certain other points. Many of the good Pagans long before Christ's birth may have been in this position. And always, of course, there are a great many people who are just confused in mind and have a lot of inconsistent beliefs all jumbled up together. Consequently, it is not much use trying to make judgements about Christians and non-Christians in the mass. It is some use comparing cats and dogs, or even men and women, in the mass, because there one knows definitely which is which. Also, an animal does not turn (either slowly or suddenly) from a dog into a cat. But when we are comparing Christians in general with non-Christians in general, we are usually not thinking about real people whom we know at all, but only about two vague ideas which we have got from novels and newspapers. If you want to compare the bad Christian and the good Atheist, you must think about two real specimens whom you have actually met. Unless we come down to brass tacks in that way, we shall only be wasting time.
From Mere Christianity, chapter 32, Nice People or New Men?

You can read that article, which has a single line in it that can bring me to tears even though I have read it many times...

here :http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/cslewis/merechri/merech32.htm

And the text of the entire book which is actually a transcription of a series of radio monologues on the subject.

HERE : http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/cslewis/merechri/meretoc.htm