Resolving Cognitive Dissonance Issues in Theology

We all ascribe different weights to ideas based on where they came from or the circumstances around them.  We may believe things more or less based on whether we learned them from our parents or through personal experience or because the Bible says so.  I'm realizing that for me there's another category that adds weight to an idea - if it solves an area of cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive Dissonance is when you have competing ideas in your head that are at odds with each other.  If you wake up thinking it's still night but there's sun shining through your window, you may experience it for a moment.  And I've long had areas of theology where what the church teaches doesn't quite make sense to me.  Here are a few:

1. The God of the Old Testament seems to have a very different personality from the God of the New Testament, but they're the same person.

2. Jesus is 100% God and 100% man.

3. A loving God created people that He knows will burn in Hell for eternity.

Now, I've been a Christian all my life and I've heard all of the arguments on each of these.  Like:

1. 'In the Old Testament God treats humanity like a child but in the New Testament He's laid the groundwork so He can treat us differently.'

2. 'It's a mystery.  There are some things we're not meant to understand.  Embrace the mystery.'

3. 'God loves people so much that He will let them choose to walk away.'

These and other explanations are ultimately unsatisfying to me.  They don't scratch the itch in my brain.  I suppose some issues have been resolved along the way when someone has explained it in a clearer way.  But some issues remain.  And they nag at me.  It's like someone is telling me 2+2=5 and no matter how many different ways it's explained, it just doesn't add up.

So when I find an idea that fixes one of these problems, I give it weight.

Examples:

1. God came to Earth as Jesus and was able to experience what it is like to be a human being, which allowed Him to fully understand us for the first time.  And this experience affected God so dramatically that it altered His tone or way of dealing with us from then on.

2. We use the word 'God' as both God's name and what He is.  What if we separate them out?  Think of it this way.  My name is Matt and I am a human being.  If I were to step into a transmogrifier that turned me into an ant, I would then be Matt the ant.  I'd be the same person, but a different type of creature.  Back to God.  Let's separate those into Jesus the Deity.  Jesus the deity gave up his deity and became a human being.  So he remained the same person, but became a different type of creature, 

3. The love of God is so great that everyone will come around eventually, in this life or the next.  For some, it may be after a period of time in Hell,

Each of these ideas resolves a conflict for me.  But! you say, what if the idea contradicts the Bible?  Yes, that would be a problem.  If something clearly contradicts the Bible, then I need to take a step back and rethink some things.  But I don't think any of these do.  Some of them may appear to contradict the Bible at first.  But I've experienced time and again that the Bible doesn't always say what the church says it says.  Don't get me wrong - I'm not advocating twisting the Bible around to fit your own taste.  If you know me, you know that's not like me.  If anything, the Bible rings truer to me because there are things in it that I don't like or struggle with - it doesn't placate or condescend to me.  I think the problem is when people in the church decide what the Bible means and then try to interpret it in that way.

I'm not going to explain all of this theology right now.  But here's an example.  The Bible says people will be thrown into hell for 'eternity' or 'forever and ever'.  But it shouldn't.  It didn't used to.  That used to be translated as 'eons' or 'ages'.  Which would be a very long time, but not into infinity.  When the Bible says God's love is 'everlasting', that's a different word (aidios) than what's used for the long period of punishment (aeonios).  So why did the translations change?  Maybe because the church decided on a doctrine and then skewed the text ever so slightly to make it agree.

Not everything is so cut and dried.  On many issues the Bible seems to argue both sides.  Both free will and predestination people have verses they can point to and argue over.  But if I find an idea or a theological construct that solves the cognitive dissonance in my head and I can back it up in the Bible to a reasonable degree, then that weight will tend to sway me.