Does God have a multiple personality disorder?

At last count, there were . . . well . . . I won’t even try to count all the different religions in the world! Besides the large, well-known world religions such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism, there are countless smaller religions, including many varieties of traditional, cultural, and nature-based religions, throughout the world. There are also a billion or so people who don’t belong to any particular religion, either because they are atheist or agnostic or because they follow their own personal spiritual beliefs.

All of the religions have some concept of God—although some do not talk much about God. However, if we ask adherents of the various religions what God is like, we will get many different descriptions. Within the different religions God has been pictured as a male or female human being, as various kinds of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and insects, as being with a human body and the head of an animal, as a tree or a plant, as lightning and thunder, as the sun, moon, or stars, and in many other ways.

When we start talking about the different mental and emotional characteristics of God, things get even more interesting. God loves and hates, is wrathful and merciful, is omniscient and forgetful, is unchanging yet relents from punishments that were planned, is all-forgiving but condemns everyone who doesn’t believe or do certain things.

Does God have a multiple personality disorder? How could one God be so many different things all at once? How could God be so many contradictory things at the same time? After all, if we ask people of the various religions how they know what God is like, most them will say that their beliefs originally came from God.