[Lalwendë]

Well seing as we cannot presume to know one man's relationship with God, how can we say for sure that Eru is Tolkien's own view of the real world 'God'? What we can say though is that this is the god he created for his secondary world and we have to work within and understand Eru within those boundaries first and foremost. And Eru is not always 'nice' by a long way. In fact, as he was the one who created Morgoth and it was Morgoth who then created the discordancies in the music that brought evil into the world, and Eru allowed it to hapen, he was not always 'nice' from the beginning.

If he was bringing any other aspects of 'god' into the text then I suggest a good place to start is to look at how that Northern literature dealt with such concepts; it was Tolkien's hope to give this work a Northern air, so that might point as to why Eru is a bit of a thunderer and smiter.

Eru's different because everyone can cop for it, whether good or not. I also don't think Protestantism has an overall 'good' God, as there's plenty of scope in all sects for shrugging your shoulders and saying "well, God works in mysterious ways" when something horrible happens. Another good reason for analysing what Eru does and understanding why he does it from within his own secondary world I think.