h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I know little about the Gods of other religions, but I know a little about Christianity, and here's an interesting paradox:

In Christianity, God is supposedly perfectly just and perfectly merciful at all times. Being just means (roughly) that you give others precisely what they deserve. Being merciful means (roughly) giving people something better than what they deserve. Therefore, it is impossible to be perfectly just while being perfectly merciful; the states are simply mutually exclusive. No one can be both.

How, then, is it possible to be both at the same time?

[bows respectfully]

--Caledonian

The first thing to consider is that God doesn't exist, in which case your question is solved .
The second is that, rather than being both merciful and vengeful at the same time, God alternates between the two rather randomly - sort of like someone who is very drunk which starts blabbering on about how they love you and then starts getting violent and throwing things. So, in fact, God is this drunk yob/yobess who really wants to get your attention. If you try to ignore it, it throws a fit and puts you back in line .

I believe that the Christian idea of god is a delusional one. God cannot have been perfect, becuase he created man to be perfect as well and when giving man free will he made a flaw in his creation becuase humans are always apt to make the wrong decision. So, in order to be perfectly just one must consider the fact that god itself is flawed and therefore can do nothing perfectly.

but hang on. If we were free to make the right decisions only, would we be really free? What if it were 50-50 each way?
God makes humans apt to make the wrong decisions so that when they DO finally get things right, it means so much more. God is just, but many times people mean well and do the wrong thing, or do the right thing by accident. In such cases, mercy can be defined as assuming the best.
Sort of like innocent until proven guilty.
At least as far as Yahweh ("I am") is concerned.

So how do you explain all the desert walking? Did Moses decide to do this himself or was it God teaching him a lesson? Or was it all a metaphor for something totally different and irrelavent?
Until God has a mid-life crisis in the transition between the testaments, it is vengeful and brute. It throws the Adam family out of paradise for near eternity because they disobeyed him, he tests people out by asking them to kill their children and causing them traumatic stress, and then his chosen messenger is disallowed from getting to the great land because he hit a rock the wrong way.
After the change God turns into a little sheep - timid and useless. He hardly talks to anyone anymore and acts all spiritual. This change is quite dramatic. It is now that the mercy kicks in.
I don't know how you interpret all his great OT adventures as "just". But if God exists as the Bible describes it, it is either very two-faced or has violent mood swings .