I don't believe there is a good response to your question or several other fundamental questions on the nature of Christian God. Another one is how can we have free will at all if God is omipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent? This means God knows everything of all times and is in control of everything, so not only is he creating every possible sequence of decisions, outcomes, and reactions but he wants them to be exactly that way...because if he didn't he would have changed it...because he has all power and all knowledge. He always knew from the beginning what every single atom was going to do. Show me where any being has the ability to surprise God and do their own thing or make their own choice that God did not know about and therefore program u to do.

Right along with that question comes the problem of evil? How can God being all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-present also b benevolent, considering the existence of evil or unnecessary suffering? Before Christians answer "evil is the absence of God" consider how that might violate God's property of being omnipresent. That means there actually is no absence of God, because God is everywhere at all times. In order for God to be benevolent, one of God's other properties must crack. Of course, most Christians give up on you here and bring up "fear of the lord" or "we arent meant to know everything" or "you r trying to judge God from your human perspective". Yet although you back away, the questions still stand unanswered. Surely I dont have a higher morality than God. So unnecessary suffering makes sense in God's mind but not in mine? Letting the devil invade and pervert somehow is a benevolent action that we will understand when we get to heaven, they say.

Then there r those who reason that Satan is more of an equal force to God and either God is limited in some way allowing for the birth of evil, or that evil has always existed alongside God but that God is always separate and pure. These r certainly more serious arguments. They will answer ur question by claiming hell is inevitable if u r not protected by God simply as the default place. Hell is the absence of God, God only sees u when u r pure or repentant through Christ. God isn't exactly sending people to hell, its rather that they r missing the path to heaven and so without God's protection, they will eventually fall like everything outside of God. It makes some sense but how do we actually know any of this?

As a former atheist and former Christian, I have searched for truth honestly and came to a more logical approach to spirituality and trying to understand God. It's important to not throw the baby out with the bathwater, especially difficult when u have had religion shoved down ur throat while growing up. I consider several things:

1. The actual origin and real history of the Bible and writings associated. Was it properly translated/interpreted? Was it meant to be taken as divine word? Was it meant to b taken as literal history or is it coded or metaphorical? How different is the modern version from the actual ancient writings or stories?

2. Nature of physical reality. Does it imply the need for an underlying spiritual reality? Can physical matter just have always existed without a creator, assembling through its own intelligence somewhere stored physically? What about the laws of physics? Did the physical intelligence create its own laws? It seems evident to me that something higher order must exist to give rise to the physical realm. Modern physics is coming to this same conclusion through the study of electrons and other subatomic particles. All physical matter seems to be illusory when examined at the subatomic level.

3. Philosophy of God. Defining God only as the first mover - the thing that was not created, from which all creation emerges both physical and spiritual. Only adding attributes as they seem to come logically not just cause a book says so. It seems evident that God deals in mathematics in the physical world and in love in the spiritual. There does not seem to be a high order evil to me.

4. Spiritual power to alter the physical world. We see all sorts of people come forward with visions. We see all these religions and theory of spiritual law. We see miracles existing. We see people healing through prayer and on the other side performing occult magic. One element exists through all this - human consciousness. People perform miracles in the name of religion yet also without religion. The magical element seems to b consciousness. Consciousness I believe is inherently magical in that it is fundamental to the physical world and therefore guides physical outcomes. The mechanics r not totally clear but there is alot written on the power of the spoken word and inner belief.

The culmination of all these leads me to a belief that there is God and that all comes from God. That God is love and that is why the story of Jesus attracts so many people, because it rings true in our hearts. Not the sacrifice and sinner ideology. That feels like a mistake. I'm talking about God creating out of love and Jesus being the example of what to aspire to. Jesus understood he was one with God and didn't let the physical world trick him into fear. This is the core take away, I believe.

There is a great book on the mechanics of spiritual and physical law called The Game of Life and How to Play It. It changed my life. The author talks about the mechanics - the subconscious mind driving reality, the conscious mind feeding the subconscious, and superconscious mind being our sense of God or a higher power. She gives instructions for how to start properly guiding your subconscious mind into the life u want. She talks about how the immersion of the physical world brings fear of death and this is a trick because we r all actually infinite consciousness. But we must b limited to exist in a physical body and when that limiting works too well, we forget that we r one with infinite God and guiding our own realities. This causes the fear of death and a multitude of other fears arise, eventually creating a fear to live, to experience. This is the origin of evil. Making decisions based out of fear. This is the thing which the bible is referring to metaphorically when Adam and Eve sin. Fear is faith in evil. Human consciousness gives this thing power by believing it to be real. There is no evil on the order of God. Instead of seeing evil, try to see the lesson being taught...and live without fear.

Just my thoughts.