The Incongruity of God

In Richard Holloway's memoir 'Leaving Alexandria: a Memoir of faith and doubt' I gained the impression that Holloway gradually lost his faith through a growing sense that God's logic just doesn't add up.  Holloway struggles with the incongruity of life and sees that there is no way he can fit the concept of a just, loving, merciful God into the reality of the world he sees around him.

My position is that in many ways I agree with Holloway, but I start from the position that my faith is secure, it's just my doubts that are not.  I remember the inspiration I took from an old university friend Christina, who said, "keep it simple, love God, and know God loves you."  Like a marriage that starts from the assumption that the two are staying together, so differences had better be sorted out, no matter how long it might take.

The incongruities I see in my faith are:-

The Bible - with bits missing.
This is a book made from the collision of different stories and narratives over 2000 year ago.  So many of the stories have tantalising bits missing.  I respect the wisdom of the early church fathers in putting the 'best bits' together.  But they were 'fathers'.  The sexual inequality of the time was preserved in this book, and then influenced many hundreds of years of civilization, reach out across the world.  A lot of it was fine, but a lot was not, such as slavery, and other discrimination.

All Born Sinners.
My favourite incongruity is the way humanity is designed to fail.  My analogy is that it is like waking up in the driving seat of a car heading full pelt towards a wall, and being expected to swerve and save the situation.  Not possible.  God does save the situation in a wonderful way, but why the set up?

The Creation of Destructors.
We are hearing about the horror of Ebola.  Generations before us were hit hard by the black death, and bubonic plague.  These are viruses that just kill.  They even kill themselves.  They appear to achieve nothing.   And they are described as some of the earliest life forms, perhaps important in the development of biological replication.  I is hard to argue that these mechanisms entered the world after the fall.  They are intricate to all life. This concept is accepted in Eastern thought as 'Yin and Yan'. God being both 'love' and 'hate'.  My logic is clearly very different from the Divine.

The Place of Organised Faith.
Another favourite theme of mine.  Evidence points to human existence over many thousands of years. Clearly knowledge of the events surrounding the life of Jesus are not essential for a meaningful existence on this earth.  There is no way many people can have known anything about Jesus in centuries past.  Other aspects of 'life' must be crucial to living life to the full.  Otherwise it just not fair.

But isn't that what Holloway was saying? However I do believe God has got the answers.