I dunno... I didn't read the whole thread because it was signifigantly longer than my attention span, but I have issues with the Christian God because he spends a good majority of the Bible being a total bastard... wars, plagues, burning down cities and the Apocalypse aren't my ideas of nice behavior- I can't feel comfortable putting my faith in any deity who's that big of a prick- sorry
and no- the new testament version doesn't completely cancel the old testament/revalations version out- I can't get the smiting out of my head
I like your quote about the thread being longer than your attention span, that made me laugh.
I've got to say that I dont recognise the Christian God in what you're saying here, perhaps you're familiar with the whole idea through or from secondary sources and not the bible or Christian literature at all?
In the new testament God when he is talked about as a seperate entity from Jesus is a pretty forgiving deity, slow to anger, quick to forgive, likewise in the books of revelation, book of James, chapter thirteen of Mark which are all the references which I can think of which deal with apocalypse, they describe horrible things happening but they are a consequence of the actions of demons or men, not God.
In fact the only explicit mention of judgement which I recall is in Matthew and it details Jesus talking about the flip side of failing to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, ie that he'll reward those individuals as they rewarded him when he was in need and they shunned him, to me that's just desserts and not too terrible.
I'm much less of an authority on the old testament, although I can see a progressive revelation taking place, in which it appears that either God or Man or perhaps both in unison are under going progressive revelation about one another and developing as a consequence. Its pretty complex and I cant recall it verbatim but Jung talks about something like this in his Answer To Job book.
To be honest the Christian God is one of the only deities to have experienced incarnation as a man, suffered pretty much the worst life had to offer and one of the worst deaths I can imagine, whether you have total insight into the existence of an afterlife or not (which I actually dont believe Jesus had being true God and true man and crying out that God had abandoned him on the cross) that's some excurciating shit there. To me that pretty much pays for any suffering which God may have visited upon mankind or any all to human accusations of caprice or callousness at creation per se or the tragedy of mortal existence (life being too short and too full of misery), not that that was necessary.
It makes the Christian story appear more plausible to me than other religions because it answers certain questions, although they are perhaps human, all too human questions, about why a deity would bother with creation at all because is not a process of divine design or even divine accident which has resulted in creation but creation is something which God is actively engaged with, in each of us, in everything but especially in the one complete incarnation which was Jesus Christ.