For the past week I have been living in Edinburgh with no Internet access and little access to the television. It was only upon my return last night that I finally got to watch last weekends episode of Dr. Who.
For those of you who were unfortunate enough to miss the episode, the doctor's old enemies the Dalek's made a reappearance, they needed the doctors help to destroy the asylum of the Daleks. One of the stranger features of the asylum was the atmosphere surrounding it, full of micro organisms that if you weren't protected from began to turn you into a Dalek.
In the usual manner this was one of the problems that the Doctor encountered when one of his companions, Amy, lost her protection from the Daleks. She asks the Doctor what's going to happen to her, how will she know when the process of her becoming a Dalek has begun, at which point someone else interjects and tells her that the process begins when the love gets taken out. The love gets taken out.
For some of you maybe this is like your view of God; God is only there to do me harm, the love has been taken out of him. God's judgement is the over riding principle of God you think about, his wrath and his anger, his judgement. Like the Dalek's love has been taken out.
But God is loving, God is kind and God is compassionate. God loves us so much that he sent his son into the world to die for us, to take away the punishment that our sins deserve. God has always been loving and kind towards his creation.
However love isn't God's over arching characteristic, because above all else God is holy, God is set apart, and that is why sometimes we view God as unloving because of his judgement. God's holiness means he must judge our sin, God's purity means he can't have any trace of defilement and wrong around him and that is why God must judge us. However because God ultimately is not like a Dalek, because there is love in God as well as judgement he gives us a way we can come to him and come to know him personally, through his son Jesus Christ.
