This is where your argument falls apart, it is not the best thing for us, it is the best thing for God - providing Him the greatest glory.
While God can promise blessings, He also can and does cause hardships at times. Jesus said:
-NIV
It may not be God’s will for you to have those things you mentioned, but it may. That is up to God, and that is part of the deal, you can try to get those things on your own, or even contact the enemy to try to get what you want, or you can put that aside and surrender to God and let God provide for you as He sees fit.
Perhaps if you read the ENTIRETY of the posts you respond to, you wouldn’t make such blatant errors. My argument only speaks of whether it would be “well-advised to always do what he wills, from a purely practical standpoint.” (Emphasis added.)
There is precisely zippo that is “purely practical” about doing things to your own detriment for God’s benefit.
Too late for edit: kanicbird, if you wanted to pick holes in my argument, the first place to start is with the impossible condition: “that you cannot possibly [be] mistaken about his will”. Persons who believe this to be the case, that is, who proclaim themselves to be infallible, are either mentally immature or literally insane in my opinion.
I admit having put the proposition out there to be picked full of holes, as it was a backhanded way of pointing out that nobody can reasonably even claim to be doing god’s will, on account of lack of reliable information alone. However, you managed to pick at one of the few unassailable parts of it. Well done.
Basically yes, God lets us run our own life the way we see fit, that also includes coming back to God if we desire and doing it His way.
As for free will vs self will, self will as defined seems to be to make decisions based on your flesh only, if I’m reading it correctly, and it is not a choice in itself but a predefined path. Free will lets you chose between the paths of self will, will of God, will of others, will of the enemy.
I assume that you are saying this in the context that we would be transformed to a tri-omni ‘god’ if it really worked. instead of humans on their own left to contend with death and the like.
There comes a point where a person is allowed to decide what they want to do with their life. At some point a person will have the choice to take the knife or reject it. Some choices people make can and do lead to death, but all people have such a choice, denying someone a choice you had to make would be to control that person.
A question for the people who “give their life to god”, do you actually feel that that god took your life? Because from my perspective it looks like the person is still making the decisions, only instead of using instinct to make decisions its called god.
I’ll take a shot at this. The Bible makes the analogy of a body with God as the head. I have no idea how that might work but it seems to me that self will as **raindog ** describes it is living in the concept that we are each separate entities from each other when Jesus presents us as part of the same body. We are obviously part of the same ecosystem but what if it’s more than that. We are connected in a very real and profound way. All a part of one living organism. Our actions and choices obviously affect each other. If we can choose to try and live as if we are part of the same body we surrender self will. We tune in to our connection to each other with effort and practice. We see the people we interact with differently than we did before. We begin to feel and live and choose according to the reality of that connection. Surrendering our self will is coming to live with the realization that in a real sense , we are one.
It all sounds very out there but my experience is it has a very real positive application.
I’m not interested in debating the OP, really. But I would like to make a GQ-style response to the premise. Personally, I’m an atheist, but my mother is a fundamentalist. (Happened long after I left the home, thankfully.) I think I have a pretty good idea of what she thinks “giving her life over to Christ” means. And have heard enough radio evangelists discuss the topic (she almost always has religious radio playing in the background) to conclude that her interpretation is fairly mainstream in that belief system.
To fundies, giving your life to Christ simply means that you try to live a Godly life. This isn’t like setting an auto-pilot, sitting back and enjoying the ride. Rather, you study the Bible, looking for guideposts. You pray for guidance. You engage in thought exercises like “What would Jesus do?” But, in all cases, execution is up to you. IOW, far from being a surrender of free will, it’s a use of free will to live a certain way.
Needless to say, I have problems with this belief system. Most of all, I don’t see how believers can conclude the guidelines they derive by Bible reading, prayer and thought exercises come from God rather than themselves. Indeed, there is a great deal of concern in the fundie community over this very issue. (Which I consider refreshingly self-aware.) In the end, they accept the system because, well, how else to go about living a Godly life? But in no event do they think it’s as simple as signing a pledge card and God does the rest.
I think I understand what you’re saying. My objection is though that in order to become part of that something else, you need to choose to. You aren’t surrendering self will because it is your will that you follow God, or the connection that all humans share, or whatever your choice. Certainly I wouldn’t argue that you’re following that leader. But you’re still following your own will, just as much as any person who does not choose to do that. You and they are equally doing what you want most to do.
**raindog’s ** used the word selflessness; the idea, if i’m understanding him, that you’re totally giving up your right to decide to someone else. You’ve sacrificed that right to a higher goal. But doing so is still your own choice. Each decision that that person makes is still going to be what they want. It also is what God wants (if he’s right); but it isn’t selflessness, since you’re doing what you want as well as that.
That’s very interesting. Thanks. Personally I don’t think anyone can be sure. For myself it’s about taking certain principles like love, truthfulness, forgiveness, to name a few seriously enough to keep exploring their boundaries and finding out what that means for me in my day to day life. Almost like a personal ongoing experiment in sociology with a lot of inner searching.
Ideally I think the idea is that we become so in tune with the consciousness of oneness that we have given up the self. Christ might be one example but I think other figures in history who gave up physical comfort and literally risked their lives for their cause give us a good example as well. I agree with you that we still make the choice, but that choice is moved by a heightened awareness of our true place in creation.
Jesus asked if this cup could pass from him so it seems he still had enough awareness to want to avoid a painful death but chose to deny himself to serve a higher purpose. I don’t think we ever get to a point where we give up our right to decide and I doubt that’s what raindog meant. I think being in tune with that oneness alters our choices so we serve the whole more than we serve the self. We begin to see other people and all creation as an extension of our own lives rather than something to serve our individual desires.
If Jesus was both God and man he should have known)better than the average human) what God’s will was, so why he would say if it is your will seems unnecessary. He said he came to do the Father’s will so how would he know what the Father’s will was at anytime?
Someone has to explain to me exactly why god would want to give us free will. Or why he bothered to create us at all. If he could choose to control us completely,why didn’t he? And what was the purpose for creating us? Boredom? Does he get a sadistic charge out of watching us fuck up, or get sick or murdered? Is it a kick for him to see children grow up in poverty and disease? What exactly was the goal here? Anyone?
I don’t listen closely to Evangelist preachers, but that has never been my understanding of ‘surrending to God’. [It has been my understanding of AA.]
According my Catholic upbringing:
We were taught to “offer ourselves up to God”. That meant accepting the will of God, showing strength and faith at bad times and being thankful for the good. [“Offering our lives up to God” usually referred to joining Holy Orders and, ideally, dying a horrible martyr’s death.]
But for our life choices, we were to follow the Ten Commandments, eschew the Seven Deadly Sins, and practice the Seven Cardinal Virtues. We were to actively chose to live according to these precepts.
Surrending control was never the point. We had free will, we had control, and we had hell waiting for us if we made the wrong choices.
[Well, confession, repentance, and penance were the Get Out of Hell Free Card, but the nuns didn’t emphasize that too much when trying to control 30 or 40 elementary school kids.]
Imagine i’m walking along and I find a lovely big bit of cake. Simplify it down and let’s say I have three “wants”; I want to eat it, I want to share it out, and I want to *not * eat it. One of those things will be the thing I *most * want, and so i’ll do that. Let’s say I most want to share it out with some friends; that’s what my self will is.
Now let’s say a religious person comes along. He has the same list of wants, but his religion says no cake. His want of “Don’t eat it” is much higher now than mine would be, because he has a basic want of “Do what my god says”. He has the same level of “I want cake” and “Share the cake” that I do, but he also has that come into play. So he doesn’t eat it.
What I see this argument as being about is whether the religious person’s self will is “share the cake” - what he would do if he did not choose to follow his god’s plan - or to not eat the cake, because following his god’s plan is incorporated or a part of his wants in general. I would argue that the religious person’s self will includes that want to follow god; and so he isn’t overruling his self will anymore than I as an athiest am overruling my self will to not eat the cake. That’s something I want, but it isn’t my self will, my primal choice. We are both doing exactly what we want to do the most, what our self will wants us to do.
I think the “giving up” of onself for others is sort of a sidetrack. I’m not arguing that saying “i’m going to give money to charity and help people, because my god wants me to” is a bad thing. It isn’t, it’s very good. I’m just saying that that’s what you want to do also. After all, if it wasn’t what you wanted, you wouldn’t do it unless you were forced to - hence “against your will”.
I think you certainly can choose to server others. But you’re still serving yourself as well, because you want to serve others. It’s not selfless because because you’re still doing exactly what you want to do, you just happen to be doing what someone wants you to do, too.
I don’t think we disagree. It’s just a matter of what terminology is used. I read a great book called How Can I Help" about the nature of helping others that explored the idea {among others} that sometimes our desire is to be labeled helper so much that we aren’t really concerned or tuned in to what the people we are “helping” really need. In general unselfish would be sharing of our time and material wealth with others. Selfless would be placing the needs of others above our own. Give the cake to others and have none even though you’re hungry. Thats not always the smart thing to do. I think if we see ourselves and others as equal parts of the whole we seek to find a balance between caring for ourselves and caring for others.
I think it’s much more than superficially trying to obey certain rules when you would rather do something else. If you want to eat the cake but share it because your congregation members are looking then what you want, is their approval. You might even share it to impress those you share it with and then that becomes your true goal. It’s about the true motives of the heart and what moves us. Jesus said to value the eternal things. The more we truly see and feel our connection to others the more our true motives, and what we value changes.
I see your point and don’t disagree. Perhaps it’s aligning our vision and understanding so that while we retain our our will it is also God’s will.
I think most believers would see this as an ongoing lifetime effort.
Sure. It can be your will to do God’s will. I have to say selfless in the strictest interpretation is probably the wrong term since seeing our connection to the whole still makes us an equal valued part of the whole. I can strive to care for others but my primary responsibility is caring for myself. However, a life of service like Mother Theresa or Gandhi, might correctly be referred to as selfless even though they had their reasons for choosing it.
But, it isn’t a bad idea at all – at least, not if it really worked.