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kq: You consistently impress me with your fresh, common sense perspective on a given topic. You never make outlandish claims or unnecessarily provoke others. There are many who could take lessons from a page of your book. Posts: 369 | Registered: Apr 2007
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Well, it depends, Ron. Do you want your best friend to die due to a bad blood transfusion?
quote:Now just how hard do you think God should try to prevent us from bringing down on ourselves things like AIDS, syphillus, hepatitus, bubonic plague, etc.?
I'd like Him to wave His hand and immediately remove all such things from the world. Why not?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Tom, if God were to remove everything evil from the world right now with a wave of His hand, He might have to remove you too, with it. Do you want that? God is not being patient because He is weak or indecisive. It costs Him a great deal to give you more time to repent and be reconciled with Him, so you need not miss out on living forever in fellowship with Him and other righteous beings in the perfection of Paradise Restored.
In the meantime, He must leave us largely to the rule of time and chance. "Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all." (Ecclesiastes 9:11; NRSV)
This is what came to rule over our lives when we dethroned God. He allows this because we need to learn that evil really is bad--all of it, not just the parts we would gladly do without.
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Tom, if God were to remove everything evil from the world right now with a wave of His hand, He might have to remove you too, with it.
I'll settle for the infectious diseases, thanks.
quote:He allows this because we need to learn that evil really is bad--all of it, not just the parts we would gladly do without.
So, to clarify, it's your belief that the evils we all don't want -- like fatal diseases -- are permitted to exist so that we can learn to agree that the evils some of us do enjoy occasionally are in fact bad?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote: It costs Him a great deal to give you more time to repent and be reconciled with Him, so you need not miss out on living forever in fellowship with Him and other righteous beings in the perfection of Paradise Restored.
I'm kind of curious as to what it could possibly cost an eternal, all-powerful entity to wait a bit?
I was coming around to your way of thinking Ron, but I've got to admit, your belief that God is a pansy is kind of hard to get past.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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God revealed on the Cross of Calvary what tolerating evil has felt like in His heart since its inception. God is perfectly pure and Holy, and His nature recoils from evil, and yet for us to continue existing, He must uphold that existence constantly, by the active exertion of His Spirit moment by moment, knowing us from the inside out. This forces Him to have the knowledge of evil. The intimate knowledge of our evil.
God knew what it was like to be the victim thrown into the furnaces at Dachau--His Spirit was there within the victim experiencing all the pain and despair and rage and sense of injustice with him. God also knew what it was like to be the Nazi prison guard, forcing victims into the fire (or poison gas "showers," or whatever), feeling all the things that he felt.
As the Apostle Paul said of God, "In Him we live, and move, and have our being." (Acts 17:28) The same truth is stated in the Old Testament as well: "In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind." (Job 12:10; NIV) And again: "But you did not honor the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways." (Daniel 5:23) Calvary is but a dim manifestation at one point in space of time of how we have been torturing God for all our generations.
Why has God chosen to endure this for so long? To give us a chance to be reclaimed, restored to His fellowship. He provided a way of forgiveness for us, where He took upon Himself full resposibility for all our sin, and executed in Himself the punishment divine justice decreed against the sinner. In Jesus Christ, God in our flesh, humanity has been executed, sin has been fully punished. A totally new righteous heritage for humanity has been created in the Risen Christ, who stands as the New Adam of a Redeemed race. And yet God must wait for us to choose to accept it all, so He can complete His deliverance of us in fact, without violating our free will--without which there can be no true love.
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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But, also, apparently, a sissy, right? I mean, you don't seem to see him as a particularly strong being. More of eye-liner, all black clothes, and an emo haircut than a white beard, robe, and sandals sort of god, right? He's a whiner, not a smiter?
That's just not something I can get behind.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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MrSquicky, I suggest you read my last post again. The greatest strength an Omnipotent Being can possibly have, is the power of self-restraint, because in restraining Himself, He is restraining omnipotence. That it not weakness, it is Supreme Strength!
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I don't know. When a 15 year old boy gets dumped by his girlfriend and holes up in his room, writing songs about how life stinks, that doesn't sound much like self-restraint or Real Ultimate Power to me. Likewise here. I think you may be crediting his withdrawl as restraint.
Maybe the reason that he's not out there kicking evil in the face is because he's trying to work out how to fit "abandonment" into a rhyme and rhythm scheme, not because it's ultimately for the best. How do you know that this isn't the case (metaphorically, of course)?
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edit: For that matter, that depressed youth could likely find his way onto the internet and start going on about how he could kick everyone's butt with his super martial arts abilities. It's easy, because no one can check it. Couldn't your God be doing the same thing? It's pretty easy to claim to be omnipotent without actually being so, especially when apparently the greatest power you have is that you don't actually do anything.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:The greatest strength an Omnipotent Being can possibly have, is the power of self-restraint, because in restraining Himself, He is restraining omnipotence. That it not weakness, it is Supreme Strength!
He's strong enough to let us die! Tremble at His power! Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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God never meant for us to die at all, but all the death we die is temporary. There is no need for any human to die the "Second death," which is death totally apart from God, from which there can be no resurrection. This Second Death is the death that Jesus died for all of us. He was cast off by His Father, when He was made to be sin for us. But because He is also God, He was able to rise from the Second Death.
Believe it or not, but there are things more important than your death or my death. We could die forever, and that is what God seeks to avoid.
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Squickys version of God is giving me some great ideas for a comic series. It would definitely start with God getting his butt kicked by Satan in Junior High, and rapidly progress downhill from there. Goth God. I like the ring of that.
Posts: 499 | Registered: Mar 2004
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In response to my observation that God need only eliminate all infectious diseases to prevent a wide variety of horrible deaths, Ron responds with a post that only observes that, thanks to the potential torment of an afterlife, it could be worse.Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Sorry, I thought better about my post and deleted it. I didn't realize it had gotten a reply.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:Now just how hard do you think God should try to prevent us from bringing down on ourselves things like AIDS, syphillus, hepatitus, bubonic plague, etc.?
Not very. He could just make all those diseases cease to exist. Shouldn't be too tough.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I think originally, we were meant to live forever. Then Adam and Eve sinned, creating death. Without Sin, there's no death, because it wasn't until they sinned that there was death.
"for when you eat of it you will surely die." Genesis 2:17
"For the wages of sin is death" Romans 6:23
Posts: 349 | Registered: Oct 2007
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The Apostle Paul said that all nature was brought under the grinding pain of corruption for our sakes:
quote:"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance." (Romans 8:18-25)
What purpose does it serve for all of nature to be placed under the bondage of corruption for our sakes? So we could see enacted all around us an object lesson that reveals to us what is the true nature of selfish striving, how it results in endless suffering, and in bloody, painful death. This is the true end of "evolution." If we think we mortals can evolve into godhood just by being selfish and self-seeking enough, competitive enough, by being the "fittest," look at nature. Look at the diseases that afflict humans without mercy, despite our medical science. You want evolution? Here is AIDS and Syphillus and Bubonic Plague and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. This is what evolution produces. Do you still imagine sinful self-seeking is the way to godhood? The individual may indulge his pride while he is healthy and seems to be on top. But look at all those who failed, scattered beneath his feet. And look how easiy he himself can join them. Eventually all that is sinful and imperfect and wrong in this world will end in the Lake of Fire.
There is one hope for this world. That is for its Creator to remake it in the perfection of Eden, Paradise Restored. But only unselfish love, faith in goodness and righteousness outside of ourselves, can lead to that desired end. Anything else leads to the Lake of Fire.
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: What purpose does it serve for all of nature to be placed under the bondage of corruption for our sakes? So we could see enacted all around us an object lesson that reveals to us what is the true nature of selfish striving, how it results in endless suffering, and in bloody, painful death.
I think this anthropocentric was of thinking is twisted and harmful.
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Do you still imagine sinful self-seeking is the way to godhood?
Nope. Never have. Never will.
What if all of our sinful ways wiped us out for good. Would the sunrises be any less beautiful? Would all of the animals and plants be any less majestic, brutal, and wise?
I think that the way I look at things is so far off-base (and vice versa) from the way you look at things, Ron, that I have trouble even following what you're saying.
Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Of course, most evolutionists also believe that evolution produced Ron Lambert.
Oh, snap! Curses, my recreational reading of Hatrack has finally shaken my faith in the religion of evolution!
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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