The Judaic/Christian concept of God is often described as equivocal – meaning God speaks with the possibility of several different meanings and is deliberately ambiguous. Some people might say all-loving God who is all powerful would not let himself mislead or give unclear instructions to the people he created. An equivocal God also contradicts the description of God being ‘univocal’, which means to have one meaning. It would make sense for a loving God who wants as many people as possible to follow his path to give one, clear message to unmistakably show people the right way to live life. Not living a good life can result in spending eternity in hell – so an all-loving God would surely give the most un-ambiguous message possible to make sure the people he loves do not end up in hell? Looking at the idea of freewill, maybe God is purposely equivocal as he wants humans to make a freewill choice to search for the truth or not. God might want to give possibly misleading instructions for people to work out and to search for a deeper meaning within.
God is often called forgiving, as he loves and forgives those for their sins. God forgives but still punishes. This challenges the idea of eternal hell, as those in hell would be forgiven by a God with a loving and forgiving character.
A popular story within Christian religion is the story of Lucifer, who betrayed God and became Satan the devil. This indicates that before Lucifer betrayed God, there was no Satan (no Satan, not evil). So why doesn’t this all-powerful God use his power to take away and destroy Lucifer or convert him to good? Some people would say God gave humans the freewill to choose between Satan’s path or God’s. This suggests God made a decision to expose humans to Satan, in order for them to make a choice. But why wasn’t this evil source that is Satan there from the beginning? This could challenge the idea that God is ‘immutable’ – which means he changeless, as a change of character and decision is evident from the fact that he decided to have a devil and keep him there.
The concept of evil and suffering in the world is often debated. Some might challenge the idea of an omnipotent God as they feel maybe evil and suffering is not dealt with by God because he is not all-powerful – or that maybe God is not omniscient (all knowledgeable) as evil and suffering would be stopped if God knew about it. On the other hand maybe evil and suffering are not works of God and cannot be stopped by God, because really evil is just the absence of God within people’s choices – just like darkness is the absence of light and cold is the absence of hot. On the other hand people might say an all-powerful God could use his power to prevent this absence of God within people. But again, this could be argued by the concept of free-will and that God does not want to intervene with the choices people make.
All in all, I think so many of the Judaic and Christian attributes of God can be contradictory and not seem to make sense. Many attributes are opinionated and interpreted in different ways. I think people should decide for themselves the character of God and His attributes.
