Is it just me or is this conversation hard to follow?
To simplify: the thread deals with implications of the interventionist God by addressing 3 points.
Point (1) establishes that God positively intervenes both within and outside the Judaeo-Christian tradition and is not exclusivistic.
Point (2) argues that, though God is experienced personally as a loving God, God is in essence not a Person, whose actions and policies can be deduced from what would be expected from a loving parent. Texts were cited where God denies He is human or male, whose ways and thoughts can be inferred via human analogy.
What I plan to post on next:
(1) My next planned post will survey the feminine imagery of God in the OT and the Gospels, imagery that points to nurturing experiences of the divine but not to the Personhood of God any more than the masculine imagery does.
(2) Finally, my most important point: At creation God brought order out of chaos, but never completely controls the forces of Chaos (caused by the impersonal operation of the laws of Nature). Bad things happen to good people in part because God is not in control of natural disasters, human abuse of free will, accidents, and blind chance. Therefore, divine intervention is a mystery that must account for these facts and often is thwarted by the laws of Nature. Thus, God cannot be blamed when bad things happen to good or innocent people and the popular concept of divne omnipotence needs to be retought in this light. That is the consensus of OT scholars. So stay tuned.