FirmFare
Posts: 48
Joined: 6/21/2005
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I hope I'm not butting in, but think I can contribute to Lord and Master's honest request to understand why we believe. First I would like to describe where I am coming from so you may know 1. I am authentic and 2. perhaps you can attribute a new experience to self professed followers of God.
I am 45 years old and have been in a relationship with God for about 14 years. I don't profess to know all but I am speaking from a perspective of experience. I do not hold any degrees. I am not a scholar and never attended any colleges or seminaries. Over the 14 years I have tried to follow God, I have studied the subject of God's will to know better how to serve Him. About the most edgimacation I can lay claim to is a couple of trade schools since graduating from high school in 1979.
I am so glad you have expressed an honest interest in understanding the Christian's faith. I am sorry you've had such bad experiences in the past while seeking answers. I will make no excuses for bad behavior but please understand that people in the church are often immature, passionate, and ignorant of their own religion. This is most likely because they are either still fresh out of the secular mindset or are too preoccupied with other things to study it. I will try to respect you and be as honest and thorough with my responses as I can.
So, here goes. For me the topic isn't academic, but it is about my personal experience. What I've learned about God's creation is that it started out perfect. He gave free will to all of His intelligent creations. (Meaning angels and people) I don't know about the reasoning ability of other creations but of these two the Bible clearly attributes intelligent reasoning with God. I believe that is what it means to be created in God's image. When Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, they were made aware of right and wrong. Not the specifics really, but knew a sense of dread in wrong doing. Obviously, they knew one specific, "God said, "You may not eat of the tree in the center of the Garden." By this act of defiance, they brought sin into the world. (Sin is anything done outside of faith) (Faith is believing and trusting God) The consequence of that act was curses. God cursed the snake and took away his limbs. God cursed the entire female gender with greatly increased pain during childbirth and with the menstuel cycle and with being under the authority of her man in His (God's) revised plan. God cursed the earth and made it produce thorns and thistle. " In toil you shall eat of it. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread." Mankind would have to sweat to make a living. (Before that all they had to do was reach the nearest plant and find fruit on it that would sustain them. Then, during the flood, (another consequence of more sin) God caused the founts of the deep to break open. There's your earthquakes and volcanoes. That's when the seas and mountains were formed. At the tower of Babel, another consequence of sin. God confused the language so that people didn't understand one another.
My point here is that sin did cause earthquakes, God uses terrible events to show us how destructive sin is. Now, if you need to convince a child that he is doing something that will bring harm to him, you spank. But, if you want to convince generations that there is terrible consequences to their behavior, a personal spanking won't accomplish it. You need stories that will be heeded forever. Adam and Eve are the mother and father of us all. Their consequence fall on us all. The Bible also describes the whole earth groaning as a woman in the throes of childbirth. So what is more terrible than death that God is striving to protect us from? Eternal separation from Himself. This is hell. A popular proselytism slogan is "Everyone lives forever, one place or the other" We are eternal beings like God and the angels. When we die, we get incorruptable bodies. (Meaning we can't die again) So imagine living forever without any favor from God. No air, no food, no water, nothing. That's what He is trying to save us from. But, in order to maintain heaven as heaven when we get there, we can't be living outside of faith, outside of His will. Here we have some knowledge of the necessity of living by His guidelines. There, we will have full disclosure, but if our wills are against His will, we will corrupt heaven. Heaven would wind up just like earth. Wars, crime, sickness, and suffering. Let me specify here that freewill without the opportunity or ability to oppose God's will is not FREEWILL.
That's why there has to be a judgement day. That's why God had to make a way for the sinner to enter Heaven. Man is a very visually centered creature. So God started instructing His followers to sacrifice animals for their sins. So man would understand that their sins cause death. The sacrifice is a symbol of what will happen to the sinner when he doesn't hold on to faith. But man in his callous heart grew accustomed to sacrificing animals, till they meant nothing. The shock of bleeding an animal out all but wore off. So this was only a foreshadowing of the sacrifice to come. These were only temporary fixes for the problem of sin. This is why God sacrificed Himself in a manner of speaking. Only a sinless Man could pay for the sins of others. But there were no sinless people, much less one that was willing to die in there stead. To suffer the all the consequences of others' actions.
This is where it gets tricky. The stumbling block of trying to comprehend (wrapping our minds around) the concept of God. God came to earth as a sinless man to pay that price Himself. Now come all the questions nobody can answer sufficeintly. If God was on earth, Who did Jesus pray to? etc., etc.,
SirKenin stated a great point. The purpose of our relationship with God is consentual love. Thus far, everything I've presented is motivation for selfish concerns. But the original design was for mutual love between God and man. So, when we come to a relaionship with the Living God, we begin to experience this love in that relationship. In fact, this relationship is compared with the Jewish traditional marriage. So, when we come into what Christians call "The saving knowledge of God" we are engaged to God. In Jewish tradition the engagement last for about one year during which time the groom goes and prepares a place for them to live. (Builds a house usually) Then, one day without warning the groom comes to collect his bride and take her home. This second coming is what we are waiting for. In the meantime, we have been given a Comforter, the Holy Spirit, a.k.a. the Wonderful Counselor. A true believer senses God's presence and communicates with Him. He can pray, and he can 'hear' God. Not necessarily audibly, but in some form of comprehension. Newbie Christians can confuse their own wills with this comprehension. So, there is much debate about authenticity of present work of the Holy Spirit. One denomination says the Holy Spirit doesn't speak anymore, another says every feeling they get is from the Holy Spirit. All I know is, if I allow Him to guide me, I can see actual miracles take place through my hands, voice, whatever.
On the subject of miracles, God intervenes in some and not others because of the heart of the individual He wants to bless. Not because of some cosmic dice roll. There is purpose in everything He does. I don't always get it, but I know His heart. He is for us, not against us. However, if you set your heart against Him, you make yourself an enemy to His will, you make yourself His enemy. He doesn't reward poeple for setting themselves against His will. The Bible says, "If you seek Him with all your heart, you will find Him."
Now, to why good people suffer. And let me add another, why bad people seem to prosper for being bad. These seem to go together. Let me start with the second one first. The Bible says sin can seem good for a season, but in the end it brings death. So, from our flash picture perspective it does seem like sin can profit. But nobody gets into heaven by force. It is God's will that all of us get into heaven, but not at the cost of corrupting heaven.
I don't know the answer to the other. I can conjecture some, but my answers seem inadequate in my own ears. I will share my conjectures with you none the less. I don't remember who it was but somebody here made a great point about an aunt who'd asked God to heal her but eventually accepted her lot and used it to witness and minister to others who suffered. Paul is another case. He was, of all the writers of the Bible, the most successful missionary, proselyte, recruiter, pastor, etc., Yet he suffered constantly with something he called a thorn in his side. He asked repeatedly for God to heal him and was finally told, "NO." He attributed his illness with keeping him humble so that he was better able to accomplish the task set before him. He also was stoned twice for his efforts, was lost at sea twice, flogged uncounted times, slandered, so on and so on, and eventually beheaded for his faith. If good people are really good, they will be examples of how to love God in every circumstance they fing themselves. This does not address the issues of why babies die or viruses wipe out large numbers or tsunamis strike certain parts of the world regularly, wars are common place in world events yearly. However, after each trajedy, more souls come to Christ than when all is well. So, I suspect that each and every event has a purpose. If nobody died until and unless they accepted His will, what would be the motive to submit to His will? 'cause you want to die?
Now, if God makes diseases and earthquakes and tornadoes, is God creating evil? Pesonally, I don't think we are in any position to judge God. For one thing, we don't see all the results of His work, for another, Satan is at work as His enemy trying to confuse us and kill any chances of our making it into heaven. One of his tactics is to claim God's work as his own and another is to claim his work is God's. He can't touch God even though he tried to take over God's creation. So, the worst thing he can do to God is hurt what God loves. Us. For God's part, He allows Satan to test us. How else will we be proven whether we are willing to live by His will or by our own? But Satan is not the king of hell. In hell, he will be like anyone else. Alone, suffering from lack of everything he needs to feel comfort. In that day, we will look at him and say, "Is this the one who terrorized the world for mellenia?" God does move the earth from time to time, but not every event is by His desire. In fact, most of the time He is acting to preserve us/earth from disasters. He is patient and He does view us as His children. Somewhere in this thread, Jonah was referenced. He was sent to Nineva to warn of impending disaster if they didn't change their ways. Does God warn everytime? No, I don't think so. I think He does whatever it takes for maximum soul harvest. (Meaning proselytism)
Finally, there are really only two rules in the Bible. Every other rule is derived from these two. 1. Love the Lord with all your heart, mind, and strength.
2. Love your neighbor as yourself.
If everyone on earth lived by these two rules, all the death and sickness would stop except for one thing. We still have an enemy out there doing everything he can to hurt us.
To summarize;
Creation=perfect Freewill=Opportunity to corrupt
Intervention=Purposeful restoration of consentual relationship
I hope this is helpful to both the debate and to LaM honest request.
Bob
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