The problem I have with the Bible is that the Old Testament seems to conflict with the New. The Old demonstrates God's wrath, whereas the New demonstrates his love. Does God have a split personality?

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No. Rather what’s happening is that what humans need from God has changed over time.

Realize that the Old Testament occurs over thousands of years of human history. While the New chronicles roughly a hundred years, at a very very pivotal moment. One is the blink of an eye, and the other is longer than the time between the New Testament and today.

It’s different because the times were different. The people were different. The situations they dealt with were different. The psychologies they were grappling with, and the understandings they had of them, were different.

God is the provider of last resort. When you cannot proceed under your own steam, and you feel that the only alternative is to die or ask for help, when nobody human can help you, you ask for help from God.

God’s primary gift to us is hope. This seems weird. God is omnipotent, why should his primary gift be something that doesn’t directly help anyone at all? Why doesn’t he just help everyone that needs it in the way that they seem to need it most?

It’s because God’s perspective is different than ours. He knows what happens when we shed this mortal coil. Heck, He’s the one that decided it. And God’s decided that the greatest gift He could give humanity is the ability to decide, to choose. He didn’t have to put the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden. He didn’t have to command Adam and Eve to not eat from it, He could have just made it impossible for them to have done so.

Did He know Adam and Eve would eat from that tree? I’m sure He was aware of the possibility. Perhaps He saw many different ways that situation could have played out. And He made plans for all of them. That it went one way or the other didn’t have to be fixed.

God can be all things to all people. He was the jealous, spiteful God that the Hebrews needed, and the kind, loving Son of Man that He was to Roman Jews.

The only personalities that are split are ours.