Is God as harsh as I was taught?

I hear something tender and weary in that question, as though harshness was pressed into you before you had the chance to choose it. So let me say plainly what I hold to be true: no, God is not harsh. The God that Jesus revealed is Love, wholly and without shadow: "God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him" (1 John 4:16, KJV). When you were taught otherwise, you were likely shown the punishing deity of a limited human perception, not the Father Jesus knew and called Abba. Consider how gently Jesus corrected the harshness of the received law: "Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye... but I say unto you, Thatye resist not evil" (Matthew 5:38-39, KJV). He read the old texts through the lens of Love, and so may you. When they wanted to stone the woman, he did not thunder, he knelt and wrote in the dust and said, "Neither do I condemn thee" (John 8:11, KJV). If God were harsh, would Jesus have compared the Father to one who runs to embrace a returning child before a word of apology is spoken? "But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him" (Luke 15:20, KJV). That running Father is who God is. The harshness you were taught was never in God; it was in the human perception of God, mistaking fear for reverence. In truth you are the very image and likeness of that Love, "for the kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21, KJV). What you feared as a judge waiting to condemn is in reality a light that has only ever wished to be recognized within you.