Can Anecdotes become Data?

Christianity
1

I have a question:

Do Christians reflect God’s love, hate, or any other emotion or feeling that God has towards us?

How should we interpret varying degrees of “getting the cold shoulder” from Christians?

I believe that Christians reflect Gods emotions, although imperfectly.

Thus, if many Christians who are very strong in their faith love a person, it is strong evidence that God loves them.

Alternatively, Thus, if many Christians who are very strong in their faith hate a person, it is strong evidence that God hates that person.

I believe that if one or two Christians have a particular opinion, that most likely is a reflection more of their individual character than that of God.

This is my understanding, and I want to hear what people think. I want people to disagree with me (respectfully) and explain why.

2

I think the issue is treating self-described Christians as a monolith; it’s difficult to draw data-based conclusions when you don’t know what proportion of self-described Christians are actually Christians. We know a lot of people only identify as Christians out of convenience and I would argue they don’t really say anything about God’s nature. Though it’s difficult to draw a solid conclusion from that if you don’t know if they’re 1%, 99%, or anywhere in between.

3

I see what you’re saying. Someone who claims to be a Christian but actually isn’t one would naturally not necessarily reflect God’s feeling towards a person.

Let us suppose that the self-described Christians in my example are people whom we can be very confident are Christian.

4

I do not believe that God hates any of His creation. He may be disappointed or saddened by a person’s actions, but He is perfect love, and does not hate any of us. He created us with free will. When you find Christians hating, it is a matter of free will and the imperfections we have, and is not a reflection of God’s feelings. In fact, I would say that a Christian who is hating a person is not reflecting God’s feelings at all. You may hate the actions of a person, but not the person. Hate the sin but love the sinner.

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