Consider this scenario: A guy chops off your arm with an ax. You go to court against this person. The judge says, "well, it was wrong what he did to you, but seeing as how I am such a forgiving fellow, I am going to let him off without any punishment." Is this just? Would you like it if all judges were like this?
By Jesus's own words, "We forgive those who trespass against us".
Yes he did. In addition to being perfectly just, he is also perfectly loving and merciful. Think for a minute, given the example above, how you can reconcile these two traits? They are, in a sense, contradictory.
So how do we resolve this 'divine' paradox? God cannot fail to punish sin, but the punishment will destroy those that he loves. And so, we have Jesus , the son of God, who takes our place and our punishment.
If Jesus is still alive, then he wasn't sacrificed, by definition. To offer something and then yank it back is cheating.
I think if you really want a good explanation for this, you should check out this web page.
And why would he say that? Especially why would he expect people to be able to follow rules when they don't even have a conception of good & evil yet?
Why would it require knowledge of evil to obey your creator?
So, if I tell my daughter "Don't turn on the TV or I'll kill you?", you would support me actually carrying out that literally murderous punishment if/when she breaks the rule?
Consider the hypothetical scenario: you are a being that cannot be approached by those who are not pure in heart. If a person comes within 50 feet of you and thinks an evil thought, their proximity to you will cause them to immediately die. Your will is not that they should die, but your nature is such that it cannot be otherwise.
I think this is a (possibly poor) analogy of how it is between God and man. God is absolutely holy and any sin cannot coexist in his presence. It is like matter and antimatter. Combine them (atleast on star trek) and boom! Except, in this case it is us that goes boom and not God. Thus the warning, eat from that tree and you will surely die. Can you see how this is different than just saying arbitrarily don't do a particular thing or else I am going to kill you?
I think to say that God created sin is slightly inaccurate. Consider that God perhaps allowed sin as a side effect of something good that he created.
You can basically define sin as disobedience to God. So, what I believe, is that God created man with the ability to obey or disobey him. This is a very special gift to mankind in that it elevates him above his other creations and makes them more than just blind automatons or mindless slaves. The problem with this truly good thing that God did, is that it allows for the possibility of disobedience, or sin.
The problem I have is that God appears to take a one-size-fits-all approach to the problem. A mass murderer spends an eternity in hell, but apparently so does an atheist, reguardless of what good deeds said atheist does.
Disobedience or sin really just boils down to rebellion. We want to do it our way and not God's way. This can manifest itself in infinite ways, from breaking the 'small' rules to the big stuff like murder and child molestation. But the core issue is rebellion, and the punishment for rebellion against God is separation from God, or hell.
A hell which was indirectly created by God.
I really don't know what hell will be like. I used to this think it was all just a constant torture chamber of some kind. I read a book called The Case For Faith which really made me think about hell differently. Consider that hell really may be the eternal conscious separation from a perfect, holy, loving, wonderful, good being. There are references in some of the parables in the NT to 'the outer darkness'. Imagine, because you chose not to accept God's free gift of reconciliation and forgiveness, God said, well, then you can't live with me for eternity. And he puts you into this place which is the absence of all the good things that he is the source of. Consider the possibility that all the joy and all the good things in this life and in the next, flow from God. When we leave this world, if we are not restored to God, but cutoff, we are then cutoff from all the good that comes from him. Could this not be truly hellish? To spend eternity knowing you missed out on spending forever with the one source of true happiness?
If God is omnipotent, why would he have to sacrifice his son in order to change a system he set up in the first place? Couldn't he just correct the problem with a raise of his hand, without resorting to putting his son through torture and a slow death?
This goes back to the whole freedom to do right. If we had the choice to obey or disobey, and we chose to disobey, God is left with no other option but to execute divine justice. If he failed to do this, he would violate his own perfection, which he can't do, because it is not his nature. That is why he couldn't just snap his fingers and make the problem go away. It would have been possible for him to carry through and make us pay for our sins, but, in his mercy, he allowed his son to take the penalty of our sin. And so, the rebellion which satan incited in the garden of eden, has been put down on the cross by Jesus.
Unfortunately, I can't have faith if there are unexplaned inconsitancies. I don't understand why there has to be sin. I don't understand why it was necessary for someone to be tortured and killed on a cross for it to be absolved. I don't understand why lack of faith warrents an eternity in hell.
You know, I really want to encourage you not to just have blind faith. God demands no such thing. He lays it all out for us in the Bible. If there are inconsistencies, talk to christians, ask questions, read, try to figure out if they are real issues or not. I have been a christian for 7 years now and ever
I can see you are to far gone in the cult to see the horror of killing children, maybe we should have eradicated the entire German race for what Hitler and the SS did in WWII or how about all the Russians for What Stalin did? Maybe we should just nuke Iraq and Afgannistan?
If you really want a detailed explanation for the violence in the OT, I will refer you to this page which provides a pretty decent explanation.
and please do tell me exactly how (and I know you can, if you can actually justify what God ordered and did in the OT) what the Canaanites were doing is worse that say the Crusades and the Inquisition or the current dilemma of Priests molesting children, where is Gods justice now? or does he support murdering innocent people and child molestation as long as it is fits his plans?
God commanded the Israelites to do violence in very specific situations. The general commandment in the new testament regarding violence is to receive it but not give it (turn the other cheek). All of the violence and evil perpetrated by the church is inexcusable and will be judged accordingly, as will that perpetrated outside of the church.
Or, perhaps, by not condemning everyone who doesn't worship you to eternal torment. It's difficult for me to understand people who say that God loves me, but that He will also condemn me to burn in hell for eternity if I don't worship Him.
I totally understand your viewpoint. It is like God is holding a gun to your head and saying worship me or die. Right?
Well, it isn't really like that. God is holy and perfect. He judges perfectly and he loves perfectly. Now, he creates humans to be in fellowship with him. Everything is fine until the fellowship is broken by sin. Now, the perfectly just thing to do is not to simply ignore the sin and let humans go on their merry way, without judging the sin. Yes, this is what you might think of as human mercy, but true justice demands that someone pay the penalty for the crime.
This puts the perfect God in kind of a tight spot. In order to be true to his character, he has to execute judgement. But in addition to perfect justice he also has a perfect love. So, he comes up with a solution in his son, Jesus Christ.
Here is the key, though. We were all guilty and doomed to hell. God could have left the situation as it was or even snuffed out Adam & Eve before they started reproducing. But he had a plan to fix us, by allowing Jesus to atone for our sins. Now, if God were truly evil like so many people seem to believe, why would he bother sacrificing his Son? This seems irrational to me!
Finally, you have to understand, worship DOES NOT SAVE US. Our degenerate nature is incapable of true worship of God. It is our faith that Jesus died for our sins AND that he rose again from the grave that saves us. By our faith in his death, the penalty is paid for our sin. By our faith in his resurrection we can look forward in hope to eternal life with God. It is purely faith -- you don't need to do anything--just believe! Once you accept (by faith) what he did for you, then he (not you) will start changing your heart, so that, instead of being forced to love him, you will want to love him.
First of all, God used Israel to judge the Canaanites. They were bad bad bad. They were into all kinds of sexual perversion and idolatry. They sacrified their children to their false gods. God is very serious about idolatry, especially when it comes to Israel. Why was it necessary to kill individuals and whole people groups? Because this Israel was God's chosen people, a nation set aside for his purposes. Allowing idolatry to remain will eventually cause an entire nation to turn away from God.
We actually see the evidence of this in Israel's history. They failed to fully exterminate those peoples in the land who were practicing idolatry, and instead lived side by side with them, eventually marrying with them, and adopting their evil practices. This in turn eventually led to God judging Israel using the unbelieving nations! God brought great judgement on Israel using Babylon and others and eventually removed them completely from the land for a time. Many were killed or died of starvation and only a remnant remained.
Now consider this promise to Abraham (Genesis 26:3-4):
3 Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham.
4 I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed
The plan is not that all nations will be destroyed by the descendants of Abraham, but that they would be BLESSED!
So we can see from this that there is a special case of the canaanites where God commanded Israel to take the land of Canaan and destroy its inhabitants. They were acting as an instrument of judgement, just as the Babylonians did in later times. God's overall plan for Israel, though, is to be a blessing to all nations.
And finally, when we reach the new testament, there is no commandment to individuals to do violence against anyone. In fact, the command is to not even resist evil men with violence. If somebody is robbing you (believer or unbeliever) with a gun, you are not to resist this man with violence. This commandment comes from none other than the Son of God himself, Jesus Christ, who I believe, fulfills the promise in Genesis 26:4, that all nations would be blessed through Israel.
But this does not seem moral to me at all. Why is it right to punish people for actions their ancestors committed?
I don't think this is the case. In fact, the Bible says this in Ezekial 18:19-20. But, we do inherit the sinful nature of our ancestors. As a result of this sinful nature, we will break God's law.
Now, yes, you can argue that God is omnipotent and he rigged the whole system, but:
One of you will say to me:
Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?
But who are you, O man, to talk back to God?
Shall what is formed say to him who formed it,
Why did you make me like this?
Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?
What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience objects of his wrath--prepared for destruction?
What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory... (Romans 9:19-23)
So the question remains, are you a vessel of wrath or a vessel of destruction?
I can't think of any crime that warrants an eternity of punishment. Why do we deserve to be in Hell?
This is an extremely valid question. The answer, at least partly, goes back to Adam & Eve. God said, don't eat from this one tree, or else you are going to die. Well, we all know what happened. Now, if God didn't punish Adam for what he did, especially after he said they would die, how could he be considered true to his word? It's the same with us. If we break God's perfect law, the penalty is death. It really doesn't even matter how small the misdeed is.
It seems harsh, but it really has to do with his perfect holiness and justice.
But the important thing is, God knows we can't keep his law, cuz we have inherited Adam's curse of sinfulness. The Bible says: ALL have sinned and fallen short! This includes even the most holier than thou among us. The point is, that God has made a way to escape the penalty we so rightly deserve, and his name is Jesus Christ. It is simply up to us to make the choice, believe that he has saved us from our sins, or deny it and face the justice of God on our own merits.
And if God tells you to strap on a belt of explosives and slaughter the infidels, well, that's His will and you'd better obey, right?
The God of the Christian Bible never commands Christians to kill unbelievers. He is perfectly loving and perfectly just. He made a way for each of us to escape the hell that we so truly deserve. And he didn't just write our sins off (because he is so just), he took them on himself!! And what is more, he did it without ever knowing whether any of us would respond to his wonderful self sacrifice. Call me a fool, but that sounds like a God of LOVE to me.
So, if somebody is going around 'slaughtering infidels', you can be pretty darn sure--even if they say they are Christians--they absolutely ARE NOT!
What is exactly wrong with having a greater tax burden on those who can afford it? Think of it in terms of paying for the greater opportunity that this nation has provided them to allow them to get so rich. The notion that they earned all their money themselves and they deserve to keep every penny of it belies the fact that the government and the rest of the people in this country have played an important role in creating an environment wherein they can prosper. Would a rich guy be as rich as he is in a third world country controlled by a megalomaniacal dictator? It would be a lot less likely, unless of course he was the dictator.
Here is another detailed article on this topic. In particular it discusses how Bev's website was not allowed to move after being blocked until after the recent california vote count.
As a developer I am a bit surprised by this statement? I don't believe I am seeking any such holy grail. What is he talking about? Are there any programmers out there who actually believe they might benefit from such a thing?
I think I may have been unclear in my words. I never said that God's will wasn't sovereign. I believe it is, but consider John 12:31 'Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out.' which is referring to Satan. Also, Satan doesn't practice deceit according to God's will, but is permitted for a time to deceive the world (I think this is what you actually meant). Satan has no REAL power, accept that which we give him. In rebelling against God, we give a measure of our own power to Satan. God permits this to happen because He gives us free will. In the end God triumphs, but for RIGHT NOW, Satan is "ruling" this world.
Matrix's storyline which projects the world as a simulation is very similar to what Eastern philosophies say. Eastern religions like Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism treat the world as Mayajaal or web of deceit/temptation/unreal things.
I certainly won't disagree with the statement above, but I will point out that the same can be said for the Christian philosophy of the world. It basically works like this, we are living in a fallen world, where dark forces, prinicipalities and powers are at work. This world is under the ownership of the #1 baddie, Satan, who rebelled against God. Through the rebellion of the first man, Adam, all men have come under the bondage of Satan. Because God loves us and wants us to wake up to the reality of this situation and no longer be influenced by the great Deceiver, he sent his Son, the Christ to die for our sins. By believing in Him and what he did, we are set free from the enemy of God and we are able to see things as they really are.
So the robots in the Matrix are Satan and the other fallen angels. The robots have "deceived" humanity into believing in a certain reality that doesn't really exist. Neo is the Christ figure sent to break the deception of the enemy. What's interesting is that the key to salvation in Christ and salvation from the Matrix boils down to belief, or faith. If you believe that the matrix is not real, you are free from it. If you believe in Christ and his sacrifice for us, you are set free.
Geez, man, this is history, go to the library and read it for yourself. If that is not PROOF enough for you, perhaps you would like to dispute the holocaust or maybe the American Civil War? There is nothing extraordinary about the claims of these other posters in regards to Edison.
Apparently there is a movie in production about Tesla which will hopefully educate those who aren't keen on learning their history. Click on the links to read more about Edison and Tesla.
Yet you are so sure its the word of god ?
Like wise, on one knows who wrote the ancient hindu, islamic and buddhist texts...
And there are MANY more people who believe in these other religions.
If I was a tarzan(or an alien if u'd rather) who met a "civilized" man for the first time, how do u convince me that the bible and not these other books state the word of god ?
For eg all hindus and most buddhist sects believe in re-birth which is totally opposite to christian beliefs. Your argument is not cogent enough to make these 1 billion plus belivers switch over(and vice vera)
Shouldnt it be convincing ? when u say that the bible is the only light that god has given to save u from eternal damnation...
My personal belief is that if a person sat down and read the Bible, read the Koran, read whatever Buddhists read, they would (with the help of the Holy Spirit) reach the conclusion that the Bible is true, and the others are lacking in comparison. I believe it is kind of like giving someone 5 magazines to read, one of which is true news magazine with real facts like USNews and the other are supermarket tabloids with a mixture of true and false stories.
As to whether it should be convincing, I believe it is. The problem is that God has left room for doubt. Even those living at the time of Jesus had the opportunity to not believe, despite the miracles he did in their presence. The fact is, if we have a 100% concrete evidence, it is no longer a matter of faith, but becomes a fact, no different from the law of gravity. This would take away our freedom to choose whether to believe he is who the Bible says he is.
Millions and MILLIONS of hindus, buddhists and assorted ppl like american indians, africans, eskimos etc have been BORN AND DIED since jesus stepped on earth.
What do u say has happened to their souls ? Are you trying to tell me that god condemned them to hell merely because of an accident of birth ? Because they were not BORN christians with no one to tell them the word of god ?
In Romans 1:18-24 Paul says that from the creation of the world God has shown man his eternal power and divine nature. Basically he is saying ALL men know God, and none will be able to stand before him and say they were not aware that he existed. I believe that for those who have never heard the Gospel preached or read the Bible, Jesus has supernaturally revealed himself to them, through dreams and visions, and whatever other means he so desires.
If you re-read the parent post, you will see that I wasn't trying to prove the validity of Christianity based on the 'popularity' of Christianity. I was simply pointing out that the Bible has not survived simply by it being forced on people by governmental/religious institutions. There has clearly been a lot of evil done in the name of religion but the fact is believers like myself were not forced into believing it (I was saved at 21, after years of being agnostic).
Look, first of all, read Mere Christianity, Lewis does a much better job of explaining things than I.
I will try to do my best, though. God exists. He is perfectly good, and he is also perfectly just. His perfect justice means that if you break his perfect rules, he basically has no choice but to punish you, because if he failed to do so, he would not be perfectly just.
Now, man exists. Man is sinful, ie he naturally breaks God's law. Now, in order for God to be perfectly just, he must punish man for breaking his law. But there is a problem, God loves man as only God can. To punish man appropriately, he would have to kill him, which goes against his loving nature. There is an intrinic conflict.
What is the solution? God becomes fully man in his Son Jesus, and in doing so is able to take the full punishment all humankind deserved to receive. So, the punishment for our sins has already been dealt out, and we are forgiven. But, here's the catch: You have to believe that he actually did this in order to receive the forgiveness. If you don't, you get the punishment you deserve, end of story.
Now you can believe God doesn't exist. If he exists, and he is as perfect as I say he is, then you are going to be punished, regardless of your belief. The only way you are going to be forgiven and saved is if you believe that he died for your sins.
You can call this "Turn or Burn" if you like, but regardless, you have to make a choice, is it true or not?
Even babies are born with sin, it is a curse on all humanity, though, in ancient times there is what is called an age of accountability, which I think was like 12 years old. I believe there is sufficient justification to believe that babies who die at birth are not judged, simply because they aren't accountable under the law of God, just as youth offenders are often not held accountable as adults.
According to your own religion, humans can never attain the status of God. If your religion is "right" (thusly negating all other religions in the world with people who believe in them as strongly as you do in yours) I think there is a very good reason for this - Humans can never achieve the same level of unbiased objective judgement as God. This is illustrated quite constantly by self-righteous people such as yourself. You of all people should know that judgement is not your job, you are to be but a follower. Do not try and play God little one, or I fear on your judgement day you may be surprised. I think your time here on Earth (you know, that planet we're on? Welcome to it!) might be a lot more enjoyable if you simply learned to accept others no matter what their belief.
I am not judging anyone. I am simply stating what I believe the Bible says. ALL men are sinners, ALL men deserve to be punished. Only those who have accepted the free gift of Christ's substitutionary sacrifice on the cross (in place of us) are free from the punishment we justly deserve. I accept everyone as they are, but don't expect me to keep my mouth shut and not proclaim the truth.
I don't follow the Judeo-Christian beliefs (i.e. the bible) because I feel it misses the mark on many areas; it's existence was forced on people for hundreds of years, which IMO is why it was allowed to endure - this is published fact. The writings in the bible itself are somewhat the result of political pressure - this is fact as well.
Ok, this is just wrong. The old testament of the Bible is made up of the Law & the writings of the prophets. It was the foundation of the Jewish people's theocracy, with God as their spiritual leader. As far as I know, citizens of this nation were not coerced into believing in the writings of Moses. Now fast-forward to the time of Jesus. Before it became state religion of the Roman empire it experienced explosive growth throughout the known world. Why? Not because governments or churches were forcing it down people's throats, but because of the real power that undergirds the word of God. It was (and is) a set of beliefs that were worth dying for. In the dark days of the Roman Catholic Church, people's lives were controlled by a pseudo-religious government, and in fact, for many years people were not even allowed direct access to the Bible. My point is that people who have used religion for power were not following Jesus. In reality the Bible (and Christianity) continues to endure because it is in fact what it claims to be, the Word of God.
Actually genocide and other evil things are caused by people, not meaningless or random chance, whatever that is. So isn't the solution to preventing evil also in the people?
Good point, and I have to agree that there is something in individual people which causes things such as genocide. What is it? I believe it is sin, and I believe we are all born with it, and one day we are all going to be held to account for it.
I think you might be over-simplifying my statement, or perhaps I just didn't say what I meant clearly enough. I didn't intend to say that atheist's believe behavior is dictated by random chance. I meant that [some] atheist's believe the existence (and thus the origin) of evil in the world is meaningless (or random, ie arising simply as the result of random chance). I am not really talking about the 'events', but more the general problem of evil in this world (genocide, greed, etc).
And as for you being a 'good' person, I sincerely hope you aren't banking on that to save you when judgement day comes, because it isn't going to make a bit of difference. I know, I know, you don't believe in God, and thus you don't believe that you are ever going to be judged (and punished), but just because you don't believe it doesn't mean it isn't true!
See this link on a prominent atheism website under the question 'Isn't the whole of life completely pointless to an atheist?'. (sorry, no direct link, you'll have to do a little keyword searching)
Here are some quotes:
'It is a natural human tendency to look for 'meaning or 'purpose' in random events.
'[Some atheists]...believe that life has no purpose or meaning, it just is.'
Ok, I could be wrong but these statements appear to be very similar to the one's I made above. These are atheist's statements on an atheist's website. The only inconsistency is probably that I should've have said that only some atheists believe that evil simply is and is a result of the randomness of life.
As a Christian, I have to agree with you that part of what drives my faith is a desire to make sense of the insansity of this world, but I believe everyone does this, not just 'theists'.
An atheist does this by saying, "all the evil (and all the good) in the world is completely random and I shouldn't bother with trying to understand why it is happening". A theist on the other hand believes a supernatural explanation for the evil in the world. In the case of the Christian, he or she believes the Bible's explanation for evil, that the sin of man is at the root of all evil, and only by the redemptive work of Christ on the cross can we be saved.
An honest atheist would have to agree that their approach to dealing with life is as much about what they believe (ie, have faith in) about the world than about what can actually be proven about it.
If you are still not buying this, I highly recommend C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. Lewis was a staunch atheist who became probably the best Christian writer of the 20th century. He presents the case for Christianity in a number of reasoned and very logical arguments.
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Yes he did. In addition to being perfectly just, he is also perfectly loving and merciful. Think for a minute, given the example above, how you can reconcile these two traits? They are, in a sense, contradictory.
So how do we resolve this 'divine' paradox? God cannot fail to punish sin, but the punishment will destroy those that he loves. And so, we have Jesus , the son of God, who takes our place and our punishment.
I think if you really want a good explanation for this, you should check out this web page.
I think this is a (possibly poor) analogy of how it is between God and man. God is absolutely holy and any sin cannot coexist in his presence. It is like matter and antimatter. Combine them (atleast on star trek) and boom! Except, in this case it is us that goes boom and not God. Thus the warning, eat from that tree and you will surely die. Can you see how this is different than just saying arbitrarily don't do a particular thing or else I am going to kill you?
I think to say that God created sin is slightly inaccurate. Consider that God perhaps allowed sin as a side effect of something good that he created.
You can basically define sin as disobedience to God. So, what I believe, is that God created man with the ability to obey or disobey him. This is a very special gift to mankind in that it elevates him above his other creations and makes them more than just blind automatons or mindless slaves. The problem with this truly good thing that God did, is that it allows for the possibility of disobedience, or sin.
Disobedience or sin really just boils down to rebellion. We want to do it our way and not God's way. This can manifest itself in infinite ways, from breaking the 'small' rules to the big stuff like murder and child molestation. But the core issue is rebellion, and the punishment for rebellion against God is separation from God, or hell.
I really don't know what hell will be like. I used to this think it was all just a constant torture chamber of some kind. I read a book called The Case For Faith which really made me think about hell differently. Consider that hell really may be the eternal conscious separation from a perfect, holy, loving, wonderful, good being. There are references in some of the parables in the NT to 'the outer darkness'. Imagine, because you chose not to accept God's free gift of reconciliation and forgiveness, God said, well, then you can't live with me for eternity. And he puts you into this place which is the absence of all the good things that he is the source of. Consider the possibility that all the joy and all the good things in this life and in the next, flow from God. When we leave this world, if we are not restored to God, but cutoff, we are then cutoff from all the good that comes from him. Could this not be truly hellish? To spend eternity knowing you missed out on spending forever with the one source of true happiness?
This goes back to the whole freedom to do right. If we had the choice to obey or disobey, and we chose to disobey, God is left with no other option but to execute divine justice. If he failed to do this, he would violate his own perfection, which he can't do, because it is not his nature. That is why he couldn't just snap his fingers and make the problem go away. It would have been possible for him to carry through and make us pay for our sins, but, in his mercy, he allowed his son to take the penalty of our sin. And so, the rebellion which satan incited in the garden of eden, has been put down on the cross by Jesus.
You know, I really want to encourage you not to just have blind faith. God demands no such thing. He lays it all out for us in the Bible. If there are inconsistencies, talk to christians, ask questions, read, try to figure out if they are real issues or not. I have been a christian for 7 years now and ever
If you really want a detailed explanation for the violence in the OT, I will refer you to this page which provides a pretty decent explanation.
God commanded the Israelites to do violence in very specific situations. The general commandment in the new testament regarding violence is to receive it but not give it (turn the other cheek). All of the violence and evil perpetrated by the church is inexcusable and will be judged accordingly, as will that perpetrated outside of the church.
As regards to your other points, please refer to my other posting on this thread: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=131604&cid=110 09898
I totally understand your viewpoint. It is like God is holding a gun to your head and saying worship me or die. Right?
Well, it isn't really like that. God is holy and perfect. He judges perfectly and he loves perfectly. Now, he creates humans to be in fellowship with him. Everything is fine until the fellowship is broken by sin. Now, the perfectly just thing to do is not to simply ignore the sin and let humans go on their merry way, without judging the sin. Yes, this is what you might think of as human mercy, but true justice demands that someone pay the penalty for the crime.
This puts the perfect God in kind of a tight spot. In order to be true to his character, he has to execute judgement. But in addition to perfect justice he also has a perfect love. So, he comes up with a solution in his son, Jesus Christ.
Here is the key, though. We were all guilty and doomed to hell. God could have left the situation as it was or even snuffed out Adam & Eve before they started reproducing. But he had a plan to fix us, by allowing Jesus to atone for our sins. Now, if God were truly evil like so many people seem to believe, why would he bother sacrificing his Son? This seems irrational to me!
Finally, you have to understand, worship DOES NOT SAVE US. Our degenerate nature is incapable of true worship of God. It is our faith that Jesus died for our sins AND that he rose again from the grave that saves us. By our faith in his death, the penalty is paid for our sin. By our faith in his resurrection we can look forward in hope to eternal life with God. It is purely faith -- you don't need to do anything--just believe! Once you accept (by faith) what he did for you, then he (not you) will start changing your heart, so that, instead of being forced to love him, you will want to love him.
First of all, God used Israel to judge the Canaanites. They were bad bad bad. They were into all kinds of sexual perversion and idolatry. They sacrified their children to their false gods. God is very serious about idolatry, especially when it comes to Israel. Why was it necessary to kill individuals and whole people groups? Because this Israel was God's chosen people, a nation set aside for his purposes. Allowing idolatry to remain will eventually cause an entire nation to turn away from God.
We actually see the evidence of this in Israel's history. They failed to fully exterminate those peoples in the land who were practicing idolatry, and instead lived side by side with them, eventually marrying with them, and adopting their evil practices. This in turn eventually led to God judging Israel using the unbelieving nations! God brought great judgement on Israel using Babylon and others and eventually removed them completely from the land for a time. Many were killed or died of starvation and only a remnant remained.
Now consider this promise to Abraham (Genesis 26:3-4):
3 Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham.
4 I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed
The plan is not that all nations will be destroyed by the descendants of Abraham, but that they would be BLESSED!
So we can see from this that there is a special case of the canaanites where God commanded Israel to take the land of Canaan and destroy its inhabitants. They were acting as an instrument of judgement, just as the Babylonians did in later times. God's overall plan for Israel, though, is to be a blessing to all nations.
And finally, when we reach the new testament, there is no commandment to individuals to do violence against anyone. In fact, the command is to not even resist evil men with violence. If somebody is robbing you (believer or unbeliever) with a gun, you are not to resist this man with violence. This commandment comes from none other than the Son of God himself, Jesus Christ, who I believe, fulfills the promise in Genesis 26:4, that all nations would be blessed through Israel.
So you are going to judge God?
Let me ask you this: If you were an eternal, omnipotent and loving God, how could you demonstrate that love any better than dying for your creation?
I don't think this is the case. In fact, the Bible says this in Ezekial 18:19-20. But, we do inherit the sinful nature of our ancestors. As a result of this sinful nature, we will break God's law.
Now, yes, you can argue that God is omnipotent and he rigged the whole system, but:
One of you will say to me:
Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?
But who are you, O man, to talk back to God?
Shall what is formed say to him who formed it,
Why did you make me like this?
Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?
What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience objects of his wrath--prepared for destruction?
What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory... (Romans 9:19-23)
So the question remains, are you a vessel of wrath or a vessel of destruction?
But the important thing is, God knows we can't keep his law, cuz we have inherited Adam's curse of sinfulness. The Bible says: ALL have sinned and fallen short! This includes even the most holier than thou among us. The point is, that God has made a way to escape the penalty we so rightly deserve, and his name is Jesus Christ. It is simply up to us to make the choice, believe that he has saved us from our sins, or deny it and face the justice of God on our own merits.
The God of the Christian Bible never commands Christians to kill unbelievers. He is perfectly loving and perfectly just. He made a way for each of us to escape the hell that we so truly deserve. And he didn't just write our sins off (because he is so just), he took them on himself!! And what is more, he did it without ever knowing whether any of us would respond to his wonderful self sacrifice. Call me a fool , but that sounds like a God of LOVE to me.
So, if somebody is going around 'slaughtering infidels', you can be pretty darn sure--even if they say they are Christians--they absolutely ARE NOT!
What is exactly wrong with having a greater tax burden on those who can afford it? Think of it in terms of paying for the greater opportunity that this nation has provided them to allow them to get so rich. The notion that they earned all their money themselves and they deserve to keep every penny of it belies the fact that the government and the rest of the people in this country have played an important role in creating an environment wherein they can prosper. Would a rich guy be as rich as he is in a third world country controlled by a megalomaniacal dictator? It would be a lot less likely, unless of course he was the dictator.
Here is another detailed article on this topic. In particular it discusses how Bev's website was not allowed to move after being blocked until after the recent california vote count.
As a developer I am a bit surprised by this statement? I don't believe I am seeking any such holy grail. What is he talking about? Are there any programmers out there who actually believe they might benefit from such a thing?
I think I may have been unclear in my words. I never said that God's will wasn't sovereign. I believe it is, but consider John 12:31 'Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out.' which is referring to Satan. Also, Satan doesn't practice deceit according to God's will, but is permitted for a time to deceive the world (I think this is what you actually meant). Satan has no REAL power, accept that which we give him. In rebelling against God, we give a measure of our own power to Satan. God permits this to happen because He gives us free will. In the end God triumphs, but for RIGHT NOW, Satan is "ruling" this world.
So the robots in the Matrix are Satan and the other fallen angels. The robots have "deceived" humanity into believing in a certain reality that doesn't really exist. Neo is the Christ figure sent to break the deception of the enemy. What's interesting is that the key to salvation in Christ and salvation from the Matrix boils down to belief, or faith. If you believe that the matrix is not real, you are free from it. If you believe in Christ and his sacrifice for us, you are set free.
Apparently there is a movie in production about Tesla which will hopefully educate those who aren't keen on learning their history. Click on the links to read more about Edison and Tesla.
As to whether it should be convincing, I believe it is. The problem is that God has left room for doubt. Even those living at the time of Jesus had the opportunity to not believe, despite the miracles he did in their presence. The fact is, if we have a 100% concrete evidence, it is no longer a matter of faith, but becomes a fact, no different from the law of gravity. This would take away our freedom to choose whether to believe he is who the Bible says he is. In Romans 1:18-24 Paul says that from the creation of the world God has shown man his eternal power and divine nature. Basically he is saying ALL men know God, and none will be able to stand before him and say they were not aware that he existed. I believe that for those who have never heard the Gospel preached or read the Bible, Jesus has supernaturally revealed himself to them, through dreams and visions, and whatever other means he so desires.
Look, first of all, read Mere Christianity, Lewis does a much better job of explaining things than I.
I will try to do my best, though. God exists. He is perfectly good, and he is also perfectly just. His perfect justice means that if you break his perfect rules, he basically has no choice but to punish you, because if he failed to do so, he would not be perfectly just.
Now, man exists. Man is sinful, ie he naturally breaks God's law. Now, in order for God to be perfectly just, he must punish man for breaking his law. But there is a problem, God loves man as only God can. To punish man appropriately, he would have to kill him, which goes against his loving nature. There is an intrinic conflict.
What is the solution? God becomes fully man in his Son Jesus, and in doing so is able to take the full punishment all humankind deserved to receive. So, the punishment for our sins has already been dealt out, and we are forgiven. But, here's the catch: You have to believe that he actually did this in order to receive the forgiveness. If you don't, you get the punishment you deserve, end of story.
Now you can believe God doesn't exist. If he exists, and he is as perfect as I say he is, then you are going to be punished, regardless of your belief. The only way you are going to be forgiven and saved is if you believe that he died for your sins.
You can call this "Turn or Burn" if you like, but regardless, you have to make a choice, is it true or not?
Even babies are born with sin, it is a curse on all humanity, though, in ancient times there is what is called an age of accountability, which I think was like 12 years old. I believe there is sufficient justification to believe that babies who die at birth are not judged, simply because they aren't accountable under the law of God, just as youth offenders are often not held accountable as adults.
Good point, and I have to agree that there is something in individual people which causes things such as genocide. What is it? I believe it is sin, and I believe we are all born with it, and one day we are all going to be held to account for it.
I think you might be over-simplifying my statement, or perhaps I just didn't say what I meant clearly enough. I didn't intend to say that atheist's believe behavior is dictated by random chance. I meant that [some] atheist's believe the existence (and thus the origin) of evil in the world is meaningless (or random, ie arising simply as the result of random chance). I am not really talking about the 'events', but more the general problem of evil in this world (genocide, greed, etc).
And as for you being a 'good' person, I sincerely hope you aren't banking on that to save you when judgement day comes, because it isn't going to make a bit of difference. I know, I know, you don't believe in God, and thus you don't believe that you are ever going to be judged (and punished), but just because you don't believe it doesn't mean it isn't true!
See this link on a prominent atheism website under the question 'Isn't the whole of life completely pointless to an atheist?'. (sorry, no direct link, you'll have to do a little keyword searching)
...believe that life has no purpose or meaning, it just is.'
Here are some quotes:
'It is a natural human tendency to look for 'meaning or 'purpose' in random events.
'[Some atheists]
Ok, I could be wrong but these statements appear to be very similar to the one's I made above. These are atheist's statements on an atheist's website. The only inconsistency is probably that I should've have said that only some atheists believe that evil simply is and is a result of the randomness of life.
As a Christian, I have to agree with you that part of what drives my faith is a desire to make sense of the insansity of this world, but I believe everyone does this, not just 'theists'.
An atheist does this by saying, "all the evil (and all the good) in the world is completely random and I shouldn't bother with trying to understand why it is happening". A theist on the other hand believes a supernatural explanation for the evil in the world. In the case of the Christian, he or she believes the Bible's explanation for evil, that the sin of man is at the root of all evil, and only by the redemptive work of Christ on the cross can we be saved.
An honest atheist would have to agree that their approach to dealing with life is as much about what they believe (ie, have faith in) about the world than about what can actually be proven about it.
If you are still not buying this, I highly recommend C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. Lewis was a staunch atheist who became probably the best Christian writer of the 20th century. He presents the case for Christianity in a number of reasoned and very logical arguments.