Essentially.

twitch

So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

And the lives of billions are subject to his arbitrary whims.

But who are you, O man, to answer back to God?

I am a person with a brain and a conscience. A conscience that is telling me that what God is doing is a terrible thing. A conscience that God supposedly gave me, meaning that he must want me to see his actions as horrific. I also have the ability to critically think and question, so just as it is the child's right to ask his father "why?", it is also my right to ask God "why." If he didn't want me to ask, he wouldn't have given me the ability to. If he gives me the urge to know, yet holds the comfort of that knowledge over my head, then he clearly wants me to despise him and go to hell.

Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?

Do I have the right to beat my child left and right and however I please? Did Frankenstein have every right to experiment and torture the life he created? I understand the metaphor, but we are more than pottery. We have the ability to think. We have sentience. We supposedly have free will. If we were simply pots that had no desires or feelings or thoughts have our own, he would have any right to mold us however he wanted, but the day he gave us our humanity is when simply disposing of us became wrong. If he were to treat us in such a way, why make us any more than pots? Why give us free will? Why would he make us see his thoughts and actions as terrible, as insane? Is this just a way of torturing us?

What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?

And so a murderous gunman would take ten people captive and shoot five of them, just so the remaining five can feel lucky that they are alive? He simply could not simply let them all go?

How is that different from an evil overlord who publicly tortures, burns and beheads people in public to act as an example to the rest? There is no difference. This is a relationship based on Stockholm syndrome. It is a relationship based on fear of abuse and torture. It is not one of agape love. He is basically telling his supposedly beloved creation that he is going to kill and endlessly torture a number of people, myself included, just so people like you can see just how powerful and fantastic he is. This is the logic of a deranged maniac, can't you see that? Could he not simply reach into our hearts and let his power be known? Why doesn't he just show all of us his love and care and affection? Why only some of us? By that logic he is not omnibenevolent and is not a perfect God.

And why would he care about us being afraid of how powerful he is? Does the opinions of the pot matter to the maker? And furthermore, would it even work? When you're in heaven frolicking in his playground and see me in unimaginable agony, what is it going to make you feel? Fear? Sympathy? Or just a reminder on how great God is and how deserving I am to be set a light so you and your sky friends could be reminded of God's ever reaching mercy and love? If so, how would you feel up there, knowing that the only reason you're up there is because God didn't decide to use you as an example, because the terrorist did not decide to shoot you, because the king, by chance, decided to let someone else's head roll on the ground.

And this is the man we're supposed to be worshiping, and loving more than we would our brothers and sisters and parents and children? We're supposed to love this monster?