How Strong Does God Have To Be To Be God?

Is a god who encompasses all that is "good" by your definition of "good" worth worshiping even if ultimately that god is not all-powerful?  I've been thinking about this a good deal lately, mostly as a result of conversations with atheists, Christians, and an old ladies' bridge club that insisted on me playing a couple of hands with them last week when they were missing a fourth.

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The Nature of God: Conversations With An Atheist

To adopt an idea that God is all powerful is, as Touchstone rightly points out, to take on a rather awful burden.  All people are in the position of Pharaoh in Exodus, of whom God says, "I will harden his heart" (Exodus 4:21) so that one is punished for failure to do what God has not allowed one to do.

While I've read a tremendous amount of theology on this, I don't really see a way around it.

And I cannot agree that it would be just, or that such a god would be worthy of worship.

Notice a few things, though, that the Christian notion of God-as-love implies.

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Is God Sovereign?

I'm writing this post, in answer to somebody asking on another (closed) forum about the sovereignty of God, from my mother's hospital room.

The question was this (with author's permission):

Not just the canned answers - what does "God is sovereign" really mean, and what do you base the conclusion of it on? What do you observe around you that builds up that belief?

If not for having read it in the Bible and so knowing you are supposed to believe it, would you come to the same conclusion simply from observations in your own life and that of others right now?

help me out here. I sometimes feel like these are just words people say, so they seem empty, or maybe I don't understand the code they are using, or....something.

Mom's a few hours out from exploratory surgery that discovered her abdominal cavity is riddled with cancer.

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