The love of God is far greater than what we can understand or comprehend here on earth, which is why the Bible tells us that: "God is greater than our hearts." From people who die and have so-called Near Death Experiences where they actually meet God, we can learn that God is not angry and that God does not punish.

   Edward who grew up with an image of a judgmental God testifies that,

In my experience, sitting literally in the lap of God, I was directed to look at my life like so many pictures on the floor from a photo album that had been dropped. I would look at my life and remember experiences and I would relive these experiences, some of which I was very ashamed of…But I didn’t have a sense of judgment other than allowing me to know that there are consequences to my behavior. But there are no emotional attachments from my creator as to how I respond.

   Here Edward clearly tells us that there can be consequences to our behavior without a sense of judgment and this is the general crucial distinction that we find in NDE research. However, this testimony goes further than that and explains that there are no emotional attachments from the creator – there is no anger coming from God – as to how we respond.

   Now, if we go back to the person that was convinced that God is actively opposed to cruelty and abuse, there is no other area as controversial as war. In our history we see clear evidence of the danger to religion when God is mixed with militarism and even in our supposedly enlightened times this militant aspect of religion, or specifically some followers of religion, is still alive and well.

   Today, we have suicide bombers on one side believing that killing innocent people gives them instant access to heaven, while on the other side we believe that God is so angry at a one particular dictator that God chooses to look the other way when innocent civilians are killed in ‘his’ name.

   I asked the NDErs in my study about the following statement: “To kill in the name of God is far from the true nature of God.” Here an overwhelming majority of 92 percent said that they agreed, with three out of four saying that they strongly agreed.

When we say “God” and the Muslims say “Allah” we are all talking about that same source. But we don’t interpret it all the same because the kind of love that I felt would never ever permit killing for the sake of this love. Anytime I hear of anything about the war it breaks my heart and I am thinking to myself: guys it’s not the way.

   Here Jayne tells us that God would never allow us to kill for the sake of love or in the name of God, which is the overwhelming conclusion from near death experiences. The love of God experienced in the NDE is so profound and its respect for life is so deep that it very clearly seems not to be able to kill and also would not endorse killing. 

   However, as we saw earlier, alongside these testimonies of profound love we still do have painful consequences through the negative experiences, so when God is love; then how are we to understand these consequences? 

   Mary explains that, “Love and truth are undivided; they are equal aspects of The Light, or God.” With this statement in mind, I wanted to go deeper into this apparent paradox by asking each NDEr to describe what the truth in their experience was based on through the question: “How would you describe the element of truth at the core of your experience?”

   Here 80 percent marked the words “truth” and “enlightenment,” while only 13 percent said “judgment” and 20 percent said “justice.” And moving deeper into judgment as, “blame” or “guilt” I found that only 6 percent used this definition.

   Getting away from the idea of truth as judgment or punishment, I found that 60 percent said that the element of truth in their experience wanted to “teach” or “show me the way,” and 73 percent said that the Light was “teaching me with love and compassion.”

   Clearly the non-judgmental unconditional love of the Light is not experienced as a punishment, but as what is most commonly found in NDE research; the Light wants us to learn as we grow our soul.

   To back this up 69 percent said that they agreed with “God does not punish” and the same amount, nearly seven out of ten, said that they disagreed with “God uses stick and carrot.” By ‘stick and carrot’ is meant the usual method of motivation through punishment and reward that we find in society, but as found in my study and general to NDE research; NDErs do not experience a reward-punishment crisis in the Light. 

   Jayne explains here how she as an NDEr looks upon punishment in religion:

The punishing God seems to be that of the Old Testament and I think that was Jesus’ mission to come and raise our consciousness into this other way of knowing God – the real God. Prior to that man made God is his image but we just can’t do that to God because that is not who God is.

   If God is love and does not punish then we will have to look for a different source of this urge to punish. Again I will let our anonymous person speak for the side of punishment: “If you knew anything about how cruel Saddam was you would realize the loving thing it was to take action through self sacrifice to free the people from his brutalization.”
   There are two major points here. First we have that the belief in a loving God does not see or “realize” the full extent of the cruelty. From this point of view, taking action to free the people is done out of love as “self sacrifice” even though a shocking amount of eggs were broken in the process.

   Secondly, overlooking the killing of a horrific number of innocent people means that end justifies the means and this process is called “creative destruction.” Creative destruction is not very compassionate because it destroys in its effort to create, and when militarism is looking towards God for an alibi religion has a serious problem.

   The question is whether a God that is love really seeks order through active destruction? Or maybe a more balanced and harmonious form of creation that includes a love for our neighbor, which also respects his or her right to live as an end in it-self? Obviously, nature and the universe is a violent place but is this also the true nature of God?

   With this question in mind, I wanted to see how a just God rated against a loving God: “Justice is more important to God than love or compassion.” Firmly based on the experience that God is love 93% said that they disagreed. And to the statement: “Forgiveness is more important than justice,” I found that 71 percent said that they agreed. 

    What we are getting at here is the common distinction between the Old Testament and the New Testament of the Bible that Jayne just pointed out. While an angry God is often found in the Old Testament, if one takes the words of Jesus to heart and interpret them according to how he lived his life – walked his talk – then we are getting closer to what the Light in the NDE is trying to tell us.

   Most of us will admit that human emotions such as fear and anger, do not always lead to enlightened or compassionate actions. Also there is a clear paradox between a relentless fight against “evil” and the teachings of religion that God is love, because if we are always fighting there is no time to love and there can be no peace.

   In the late 19th century Biblical scholar of Hebrew, Robertson Smith, give a series of lecture that were published as The Religion of the Semites. He explained that, 

However true it is that savage man feels himself to be environed by innumerable dangers which he does not understand and so personifies as invisible or mysterious enemies of more than human power, it is not true that the attempt to appease these powers is the foundation of religion.