Thank you.
For people talking about angels not really having free will, what about the rebellion and fallen angels? It would seem to me that angels have as much free will as humans do.
They were programmed to turn out that way.
With free will, humans may choose to love God, or reject him. It makes each human journey far more interesting to witness, and pleasurable for God to torture for eternity.
Considering how often God is referred to as “father”, the answer might be: for the same reasons all parents make children.
That’s not in the Bible.
Interesting. I guess you’re right.
It still implies that in order to gain eternal happiness one must first,know God(which is impossible since he keeps himself hidden, and one must depend on another human’s intrepratation of God ) serve Him even if one doesn’t know how,and love Him even if he is unknown, and doesn’t act loveable. If God is Love, as Christians believe, why would he need more love? Why did the angels who saw Him, knew Him etc. rebel? For them Heaven must not have been that fullfilling!!
If I remember right, Man was made a little less than the angels, but were punished with death because they did not know as much as Satan( A fallen angel) and listened to him!
It would seem the creation story contradicts that theory, God was said to punish the Angels because of the rebellion of Lucifer,and the one’s who followed him! So the bad angels tempted man away from God! Yet God allowed it so didn’t care too much for humans he created, to allow a monster he created destroy what he was supposed to love!
I know the reason a lot of kids are created, so I’ve got to ask-Just who is God having hot supernatural sex with?
It would seem to me a good parent would have children to have an extension of their love for each other, and to have some one more to love, not have a child to love them, that is a selfish desire!
Good point. That is the reason a lot of teenage girls have children, and we don’t praise them for that reasoning.
I don’t disagree. Frankly, I don’t know where this whole “God created people for the sole purpose of loving him” thing comes from.
It does seem to follow from the characterisation of God in the early books, IMO. God is quite needy, impatient, insecure and extremely jealous when people pay attention to other gods.
I’ve never really seen it that way. God, at least in the beginning, is portrayed much like a king - and what king likes it when his subjects disobey his decrees, or worse, pay tribute to other monarchs?
This whole attitude of religion as a lifestyle choice is a very modern invention.
In the priestly version of the creation, I can read God as kinglike, but in the J-text version, I don’t think God is exactly dignified.
God is very hands-on in sculpting adam and planting the garden. The picture is of the deity with muddy knees, a trowel and a bag of tomato seeds, not a royal robe and throne.
I’m not sure what you mean by “religion as a lifestyle choice” - do you mean compared with a cultural/national identity? I agree if so.
Considering Jewish history, in the earliest days of Israelite identity, “king” meant a tribal leader - someone who demands absolute loyalty and obedience, but at the same time loves his people and cares about their well-being. Tribal leaders had no problems getting their hands dirty.
That’s exactly what I meant. To the Israelites, worshiping strange Gods was not just a betrayal of the Almighty, it was a betrayal of one’s fellow Israelites. It was treason in the political sense, not just the religious.
It seems clear to me that according to the Bible, religion and worship were intended to benefit humanity, not God. God, being eternal, doesn’t need our worship - we need to worship him.
I agree - of course, the creation myth is a giant ‘just so’ story, so the end is simply assumed to be the purpose.
The only actual biblical commentary is given in the first version of the creation myth, Genesis 1 - though admittedly, it isn’t detailed. God makes plants, the sun and moon, and crawling and flying creatures, and in each case his reaction is:
Finally, God makes people, and his reaction after that:
In short - creation without people is merely “good”, but creation with people in it is “very good”. Why, the text doesn’t say.
It is certainly not because God wanted an equal. That is made perfectly clear in the second creation story, as God expells humans from Eden to avoid that exact possibility:
So God made us to provide wearable skins, meat and slave labor for angels? I’m calling dibs on this concept for my great American novel.
Think sex slaves. Genesis 6:
Assuming “sons of God” = “Angels”.
God created us for God to love, as well as for us to love him. I think the “why to we want to have children” is a good start to trying to answer the question. Some people do it for selfish reasons, but at it’s most pure, we have children so we can love them and watch them grow.
This is not spelled out in the Bible but I think it is consistent with what the Bible says about God’s loving and creative nature.
Wouldn’t that mean that good and evil are relative, contradicting what god is all about according to pretty much all major religions? After all, if there is nothingness and thus good is meaningless, does that mean doing evil in nothingness is ok?
Didn’t some angels turn away from god? They had a war and everything.
Why not just create something happy and already in heaven? Why put us mortals through earth and the possibility of spending eternity hell?
Seems like if what Paul said is true, there was no evil and suffering in existence. God created the universe and man in order to make sure that some suffering and evil was possible, just so that some others could make it to heaven. And then what? What good comes from humans being in heaven?