If anywhere near as many people who claim to believe in God actually do why don't they act like they do?
To be Godly, you'd invite many people in to your house, you'd give them much of your time, you'd personally seek to understand the psychology / the life history of why people do bad- or at least unusual- things rather than just leaving it up to them, alone, to work out how to make sense of a world that , on the one hand, glorifies criminality in films, and simply by putting criminals on the news (infamy- a curious turn on for some women)- and on the other hand deems certain crimes beyond the pale. Well I have news for you- the 10 Commandments doesn't necessarily regard murder as worse than coveting. So if you do believe in God you must get rid of your barriers that say that it's alright to spend your life seeking material pleasures but not alright to try to annoy people out of being so material (e.g. by coveting their possessions).
People deem what is beneficial to them as being acceptable kinds of crimes.
Isn't it somewhat criminal to you to lead a life of some pleasure whilst you know that your elderly neighbour, a person you could grudgingly admit is lovely, rarely has any visitors and lacks the confidence, outlets- and most importantly 'audience' - to make the most of their quiet inner abilities?
It's criminal to me.
If modern life encourages individuals to just do their own thing more or less at a whim why should they be surprised when some people who haven't been given easy starts in life feel aggrieved that the 'normal, common sense majority' (who I daresay are less normal by the day in their cossetted, fat, compensation culture, child benefit kind of lives with more money than ever before in the value of their houses and more complaining that they have 'no money') seem not to care that they exist?
Green Day once sang 'The innocent can never last'. If this was a Godly world the innocent WOULD last. Is having sex itself a loss of innocence? If so, why would anyone who claims to believe in God do it? Well, because religion also says that having a family is a good. But Christianity actually doesn't say that to have a family is the best thing- that is a misconception. To be a virtuous virgin is, in fact, regarded as the pinnacle of Christianity. But so many so called 'Christians' choose to overlook that. Oh no- to them to have a 2.4 children with at least 2.4 holidays a year and a middle class life is the ideal of Christianity. Oh no it isn't. If you bring dependents in to a world that already has abandoned children who could use your care you are not squeezing out your selfishness to the best of your abilities.
There are so many more ways I could go on to down to the seemingly simple fact of people not smiling at each other. Tensions like this are not Godly. Sometimes they might be politeness, a display of humbleness in some cultures not to smile. But there is such a vast difference in personalities and intellects and drives and histories and customs that it often seems underhand to me to speak of a 'human race' at all. It's more meaningful to me to speak of similar personalities.
And if we can't speak of a true human race that has sufficient emotional and intellectual connections how can we speak of us being formed in the image of God?
It seems more consistent to me that we're stuff- chemicals, nerves, memories, hopes, fears. But how much comfort God brings- or should bring- is another question. I don't know about you but Nietzsche tends to bring me more comfort, tends to make more sense of the course of my life and how others have impacted me and how I seem to have impacted them regardless of how good I was trying to be to them.
The saying 'Fortune favours the brave' might choose to neglect to say 'Fortune favours those who don't care about either their own or other people's emotions'.
After all, if you get in to the history books and don't get tried as a war criminal for unleashing 2 nuclear bombs on Japanese civilians during World War 2 because it is argued that what you did was more a good than an evil then 'Fortune favours those who don't care about either their own or other people's emotions'. No-one who cared about the emotions of 'mankind' en masse could surely have unleashed those things. They unleashed stuff that changed the chemistry of people from being living people to being dead ones.
If God is somewhere in this picture can you see what a strange picture it is. To spend centuries looking at people inflicted with plague, wars, people kept in pits as punishment, hanged or burned as witches, then to spend a shorter amount of time looking at societies that might have swung too far the other way - ultra liberal, making up its own rules in the absence of clear cut moral guidance. But it's all OK apparently- seek forgiveness - not even from the person you harmed but from God- and all's OK with the world! Even if it means you make a species or a way of life extinct in the process!