{"id":3208,"date":"2024-09-03T02:52:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-03T02:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=3208"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:31:58","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:31:58","slug":"pugnacious-bully","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=3208","title":{"rendered":"PUGNACIOUS BULLY"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cGod is a mean-spirited, pugnacious bully bent on revenge against His children for failing to live up to his impossible standards.\u201d \u2015 Walt Whitman, American poet<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As far as I can tell, Whitman was a Deist and did not shy away from proclaiming a belief in a &#8220;universal Spirit&#8221; type of God. Apparently, &#8220;pugnacious bully&#8221; was his term for the God of &#8220;conventional religion&#8221;, which he openly disdained.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have to admit that his characterization of God is not too far off from what many modern Christians seem to believe. (Of course they wouldn&#8217;t put it so bluntly or negatively.)<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It makes me wonder if Whitman hung out with Calvinists.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This illustrates an important motivation for presenting the gospel accurately &#8211; you don&#8217;t want someone avoiding Christianity and Scripture after rejecting a &#8220;God&#8221; who is not even the God of the Bible.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cGod is a mean-spirited, pugnacious bully bent on revenge against His children for failing to live up to his impossible standards.\u201d \u2015 Walt Whitman, American poet As far as I can tell, Whitman was a Deist and did not shy away from proclaiming a belief in a &#8220;universal Spirit&#8221; type of God. Apparently, &#8220;pugnacious bully&#8221; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3208"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3209,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3208\/revisions\/3209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}