Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

              Jonathan Edwards was a well known preacher, in the year 1741, and his main goal was to scare the Puritans from God. He preached that God would punish you if you sinned. In the story, Jonathan Edwards tells us that God is pretty much ready at any moment to destroy you if you do something wrong. Edward was very known so all the smaller preachers would listen to him, and then they would go back to their town or wherever they came from, and preach the same thing. This fear spread throughout the the Puritans, and I think the reason for the fear was that if the Puritans lived their lives being scared they would not sin.
               The way I interpreted this story was that God is this evil monster who defines the word 'power'.  The Puritans are these tiny ants that cannot do anything because God will punish them. These ant live in constant fear of being stepped on, or in this case drowning or burning in hell.  God is just waiting with his arrow, ready to strike at any moment at whoever sins.
               In reality I find it extremely hard to believe how a theocracy could have been going on for quite some time. When I look at it, I can't even imagine in the slightest bit how the Puritans could have believed this. It's not like if I do one thing wrong all of the sudden God will come out of the sky and punish me. Speaking in reality, that isn't possible and I'm pretty sure God didn't do that in 1741 either. I could see that at the beginning when you could be scared that you will be punished if you sin, but because nobody is perfect, someone would sin and nothing would happen to them. Didn't the Puritans have common sense, or was Jonathan Edwards blinding them?