My WAG is our (great great…grand)parents A&E decided to move outside the Kingdom of God. As our parents they chose where to raise their children, as the children are not capable on deciding.
But whenever we put our own interests ahead of God, we are acting as our own God. It is something I am guilty of. God lets us experience the consequences of that, but ready to accept us back when we find that it leads nowhere.
This is part of the message He wishes us to learn - we were never made to make it on our own, but He lets us try.
When does this not happen. You think you have freedom of choice when you go into 7-11 when you can chose coke or pepsi? or is it much more likely that a few chose your choices will be coke or pepsi?
You see, if you wish to contact God, or the Light, or the Oneness, or any of the other hundreds of names we humans use to denote God you need to get in touch with yourself, your real self, your spiritual self than resides within this shell of a body. That is where the Kingdom of God is, within you. Now there are many ways to get back in touch with your real self. Meditation clears your mind of wandering thoughts and let you listen for God. Prayer focuses thoughts on your gratefulness and desires. Catalytic and/or traumatic events can bring you closer to God. But if you don’t want to put out much effort, the easiest way is to follow the teachings of a Master.
You will not realize how different the world becomes when you look at it without prejudices, biases, and pre-programmed belief systems.
The absolute fastest way to contact inner self is to Love everyone you meet.
Definition of love:
Just two weeks on living in love will make you want to never quit, will connect you with yourself, God, and all the spiritual realm.
I’m also curious to see what your responses were to the verses quoted, raindog. Other than that, in deference to the topic, although I used to believe in this pervailing stance among (most, it seemed to me) fundamentalist Christians, I concure with lekatt about the authors of the bible and hence what all that means.
I had a long response last night, but the Devil made the Dope time out on me.
I meant a sociopath who can’t help himself from doing evil. We need to protect ourselves from such people, but we can’t really blame them. Since no person in the history of humanity (except Jesus, not really a person) hasn’t sinned, and one tiny sin seems as bad as lots of big sins, you got to think that a sinless life is impossible, and god made us that way. Imagine if god made a rule that we all had to jump 100 feet in the air, and punished us if we couldn’t do it. Same thing.
Actually, 7 clean animals and 2 unclean. (Genesis 7:3) And once again the atheist knows the Bible better than the theist. In any case, a few animals for carnivores (and for Mr. and Mrs. Noah) would be slim pickings for that long a trip. No matter - this may be a shock, but the flood never happened, and it would be easier if you just said god miracled up food for everyone.
The wages of life is death. Sure animals don’t have human rights, but why must they suffer? I’m guessing you don’t support dog fights and cock fights. Why not? Why does god get to make animals suffer worse than Michael Vick does?
Whyever would Satan want his supporters to suffer? If he were in charge, wouldn’t it be more like the Ritz? If it is a place of hellfire and suffering, maybe God designed it that way? Satan does nothing that God doesn’t allow after all.
Really, if you’re going to believe in myths, please make them a bit more logical.
Satan’s supporters are the demons and fallen angels, who hate us (as we are made in the image of God), the demons and fallen angels are delighted in tormenting us. While God made Hell for them, which would be less then ideal then heaven, I’m sure they are much better equipped to deal with it then we are.
Now that sin has entered this is true.
Death is from sin, do you expect it to be pleasant? Sin is not only committed against God, but each other, how can you have a place where you can sin against another without causing suffering?
I’ve never been to one, I think I’d dislike them. More so because of what they represent then the actual suffering. Yes it’s a waste of one of God’s animals He trusted to our care, but I think the real darkness is in the motivation of the people behind it.
Don’t know, but I’d wag that God had His own Son suffer more then any animal has.
OK you got me there , but as pointed out above that Noah had provisions for that trip for his family and the animals commanded by God.
Show me a live in the flesh nephelium and I will believe you
It’s been done just not here, Jesus and the fishes and bread, mana in the desert.
I’ll agree with this except for Jesus. We are made to have a God and God wants us as His people, I don’t see a big issue here.
Ah, but incapability to decide doesn’t imply fault. In terms of law, we don’t say that if someone is mentally handicapped or by other means were incapable of making the good choices, we throw them in jail anyway.
Besides, we aren’t children anymore. Why shouldn’t we each be given that decision once we reach adulthood? If my parents move to France, as a child certainly I wouldn’t get a say in that. But as a 21 year old, i’m quite within my rights to move back. We have to be allowed to make new choices sometimes, otherwise we’d all be wearing skins and eating mammoth.
Not a comparable decision, though, is it? God hasn’t come down from the heavens and given us clear instructions. I’m an athiest, but hey, if an omnipotent being came down and told me not to eat some fruit, I think i’d be ok not doing so. So why should I or you be responsible for another’s decision in which we had no say?
But we weren’t given the choice to try! That we have to make it on our own is the result of a decision we didn’t make. Thus God is leaving us to live lives we didn’t ask for and that he doesn’t want. Why?
It happens quite a lot, though we don’t have 7-11s here (although if I remember my American TV right, it’s a convenience store chain?). Your point is that our choices are limited by the choices of others - but we still get a choice. We don’t have to drink only Coke because however many generations back our relatives picked it. We could switch to Pepsi, or choose neither. With A&E, we don’t get to make any choice. It’s just applied to us. We must always drink Coke (metaphorically) because they did. That to me seems silly, especially since God has no apparent need for trend markets.
RT I’d like to say we do have that choice, to come to God through Jesus and inherit the kingdom of God. In a way it’s true, but then again God has to call us to Him as well. This goes into the free will vs predetermination debate, which I consider a apparent contradiction not a actual one.
Jesus has come down from the heavens and given us clear instructions.
I don’t know much about legal arguments, but it seems like a poor argument to use at judgement in your defense. If you know you couldn’t make it on your own why didn’t you get yourself a God?
Somethings the Father has not revealed to man. I suspect that A&E’s actions basically made us property of Satan, A&E decided, God allowed.
Jesus ransomed (meaning of ‘saved’) us from Satan.
Traditional Christianity, up until evangelicalism perverted the popular understanding, spoke of a world in which God was in charge, with people free to choose to come into a relationship with Him, mediated by Jesus, or not. This is God’s world, not Satan’s – including the people in it.
Or, “from ourselves,” or “from annihilation.” As natural creatures, our minds, our souls are operating in our minds’ RAM, so to speak. Salvation is, in this metaphor, God writing us onto durable media – if we choose to let Him do so. Because He loves us, He gives us that choice.
I think it’s the “God has to call us to Him as well” part that seems unfair. We don’t have the kind of Godly access that A&E enjoyed, because* they* chose to forsake it. That we have the ability to go back is fine and good, but shouldn’t we be given the same courtesy that they were before that? We should all have to face our own apple temptations, and I believe you’d say we do, but until we do I don’t see why we should be held as if we failed it when A&E were treated as if they hadn’t (until they did). Why don’t we get to start off in Edens? IOW, innocent until proven guilty, because that’s what happened with them (as I understand it).
Hmm. Would you agree that Jesus coming down 2000 years ago, doing all he did, and leaving the Bible (both of which are highly debated as to meaning today) is, while clear in your view, less clear than God looming out of the sky and simply telling us exactly what he means, as he did with A&E? I’m not suggesting per se that it isn’t clear (though I believe that), just that one is less clear than the other.
This is exactly my point, however, it works in reverse.
Your argument is that we weren’t made to make it on our own, rather, that we were to hold God’s plan above all else (if I understand you correctly). By eating the apple, A&E chose to reject that plan and put themselves above God. By doing so, they moved from a “neutral” of his plan to their own, and were treated as sort of anticonformists. Now, God will let us again choose to follow his plan or our own, though he’d prefer the former. However, unlike A&E, we don’t get to start with that neutral; we are treated as anticonformists from the start, inheritors of A&E’s decision.
So the point isn’t that we should have got a God; that part’s fine. The point is that we are treated as though we’ve rejected God, as A&E did, when we may not have.
And this seems like justice to you? That we are property of Satan because two people we’ve never met or known decided it? When they themselves started out not as such property, but we do? It’s a double standard, and if God allows such unfairness I would have to agree with Der Trihs on some of his interesting insults.
Different thing, if I understand correctly. Unless you’re saying that Jesus essentially reversed the decision A&E made, and allowed us to be treated the same as they were?
Edit: Ooh, I remembered a question I wanted to ask. Are you a man or a woman? I’ve generally referred to you as a woman, but others have used “he”, so I thought i’d better find out for certain (and hope I haven’t accidentally insulted you!).
IIRC, you said Satan and demons don’t have free will, and must torment sinners. So it’s still all God’s fault.
I didn’t realize animals could sin.
Those aren’t bad reasons, but I’m sure you’d also be against torturing cattle before they are killed for food - no waste there. I agree that the motivations are nasty, but I think that is true only because of the torture of the animals. It can’t be gambling, since those of us not in PETA don’t feel the same way about the owners and trainers of race horses.
It majorly pisses me off that you goyim moan and groan about how much Jesus suffered. He spent almost no time on the cross compared to many other Roman criminals, and was killed early for the Sabbath. I’m pretty certain that many of my ancestors were tortured much worse by the followers of this poor Jesus. In addition, he knew he was coming back. As a thread in some other place a long time ago put it, “Jesus gave up a weekend for your sins.”
And as for animals, nothing Jesus went through could be anything like having the larva of a wasp eat its way out of your still living body. So stop whining about the awful torments he went through. If Jesus was indeed God, he deserved a lot worse for all the pain he caused. Unfortunately, given the history of the past 2,000 years, it didn’t teach him an empathy.
Yeah, I love that. God’s sons humping human women. It is one of the holdovers from what must have been the original religion, when the tribal god was one of many, just like the Greek gods. Are you nutty enough to think I believe in them either?
Someone should make a movie about these dudes. They’d have semi-Godly powers. It would be great!
Only because the author of the legend never thought through the problems. He’d never sell it to Analog, I guarantee.
What’s your take on the problem of natural evil? Why would a loving god create a world where innocents die for no reason? Surely he could figure out how to build an earth without earthquakes?
We all choose to live in places where natural disasters are possible, though unlikely at any given time. In my own case, I chose to move from an area that was experiencing regular power-out-for-a-week ice storms every second winter, to an area that experienced the blunted brunt of the occasional hurricane-now-declined-to-tropical storm every few years. I could instead have picked areas with blizzards, earthquakes, potential for volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, or other phenomena.
In your home there are devices that have the potential to burn or to freeze human flesh or to electrocute or drown a small child. It would theoretically be possible to live in a home that omitted these devices, yet you choose to expose children to the risk of them. What’s the logic? Because you keep small children away from them, and older children and adults find that the convenience of having them far outweighs the steps needed to protect oneself and one’s family against their danger.
A good father equips his children with a home that has useful devices, and teaches them to avoid the dangers.
In this thread I said no such thing, in some old past threads I may have but don’t believe that to be true now. It is true that Satan and the demons are already condemned, so what is there incentive to do advance the kingdom of God, it would be at their own expense.
And they LIKE to torment man, they don’t have to.
Animals are placed under man. Man has introduced sin and death, the animals under man were also included in that.
Honestly I can’t see a non-dark reason for intentionally causing unneeded pain and suffering in a animal for any reason that is not dark/evil.
I can’t explain this, it is something entirely of faith, but something you come to know is true, but Jesus took on every sin, every curse, our wounds, our poverty, our shame, our rejection of every saved person. He suffered each and every one while the entire forces of Hell were unleashed onto Him. The Father requires righteousness, that means for each saved soul, that would have suffered for ages of ages (or forever), Jesus took on a equal punishment. Totally equal, that is a requirement of the Father.
So it was not what we know of, suffer on the cross, then 3 days in Hell, it was far more then that.
Jesus died before He was pierced.
Where do you think demons come from then
It does seem unfair. As we view things we like to put things into a box, or define rules, God does not fit in any box, nor can be confined by any man made rule. With God you can have predestination totally alongside free will, and the need of God to call us alongside our option to search and find Him.
My WAG is that A&E became ‘property’ of Satan ‘legally’, as such their children became property of Satan. God has set rules for us, God also has set rules for Satan, which may have allowed this to happen.
Jesus will come again as you state, in power and glory and will tell us exactly what He means. I know that’s not what you were talking about, but I find it ironic that you have just described exactly the 1st and 2nd coming of Jesus to earth why asking why God has not come done to earth.
It is unclear because it is spiritual, which people firmly grounded in the world, looking for scientific proof, can’t see it. The physical world blinds us the the spiritual world. Yes it does seem unclear at first, but it made understandable to those who seek God, as God Himself lives in that Word. I know you don’t understand it, but it is needed in that way. It is like trying to right a book on how a 2 dimensional being can step out into the 3rd dimension, what worldy information can you give that being based on 2d science as to how to step into 3d. The world just doesn’t contain that information.
We always were to follow God’s plan. Right now following God’s plan is to frustrate Satan IMHO
I’m not sure they moved from neutral, but would agree they were put into the catagory of anticonformists, or a better anaolgy would be what is commonly called the Prodigal Son.
The best answer I have for this now is Satan has fair legal title to us as a starting point.
Again Satan’s legal title to us through A&E is a WAG, I don’t have the answer, nor is it something I have really researched, it is something that makes sense. God has set the order of God>Angels (including fallen angels, Satan)>man>animals. Man can legally own and breed animals, is there any reason that Satan can’t own and breed men from that heirachy?
Jesus paid our debt to Satan, in Satan’s kingdom death comes as the result of sin. Jesus took on our sins, so when we die we are blameless, so that death was unrighteous, which goes against the Father’s plan and we will be raised from the dead and restored to the original condition of A&E in bodies that God created that won’t wear out.
Then God isn’t fair, or good, or right, or wise, or whathaveyou. You can’t say he fits in no box and also claim that there are boxes he fills. Either he cannot be categorised or he can; pick one.
For someone whose plan is to frustrate Satan, allowing him to have dominion over everyone seems a mite silly. If God does exist, I think your WAG underestimates him.
I don’t, because it’s not happened yet. Thousands of years have passed in which people have had no contact with God directly. Thousands of years may continue to pass. Plus, IIRC, the second coming is the judgement; at that point you’re either in or out, you don’t a chance to follow rules or not by then. We are expected to do so without direct intervention - unlike A&E.
Now it’s my turn to say it; ironically, you haven’t understood my point, despite me saying it right out. My point isn’t that one is unclear and the other clear, my point was that one is less clear than the other. Jesus coming down once in however many years to speak directly the people there at the time? Or God personally revealing himself and speaking to people? I would pretty much say the latter is a much clearer message.
And since God himself can do, well, pretty much everything, it seems somewhat odd that he would choose a system where he may only be understood once people attempt to find him. It guarantees that every single person who is interested in learning about him knows nothing about him to start with; it makes their motivation a lie, really.
But he’s given him us, according to you. Doesn’t sound very frustrating… rather it seems to be quite an impressive gift.
Not sure i’d call that a better analogy. The Prodigal Son did acts to earn his prodigal status; my point is that we’re essentially being treated as prodigal kids even though we didn’t do the act for which we’re blamed.
Doesn’t sound all that in-character for God.
Sentience? I can’t own and breed other people, why should he be able to?
Plus I assume you don’t think he can; you think that should only be God’s right, I would guess. And it seems strange that God puts a being he wishes to actively thwart above us, who have done him no such slight (or at least not as an entire species).
Why do we have a debt to Satan? Your argument here suggests that all people will be saved; could you put it in a different way?
The truth is that God is here - through His Holy Spirit and is in the heart of every true believer. People of the world can not see Him however. We (believers) are called to become as Christ. To be in this world to reach others, but receive the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the spirit world. To act a a mediator between the two worlds.
And you are correct, the second coming allows no chance to change as I read it.
Again that was a WAG, another WAG would be if you think of Satan as the Prodigal Son but will not come back, instead he would rather live off the beings outside the Father’s land.
I think their motivation of wanting a God would not be a lie.
It would seem so, but it’s really not.
Yes, we are the prodigal’s kids, born outside the Father’s estate, really the Father doesn’t really owe us the chance to live with Him, but He does accept us as His children if we ask.
What law of physics that God has set which would prohibit this. Now it may not be easy due to current legal systems, but there is nothing physically stopping you. And how much easier for Satan, not bound by the laws of man and set over him as we are over animals?
God allows Satan free will, Satan chose to go away from God.
Good point, unless you use satanic/demonic powers you may not.
Jesus paid our debt to Satan for those He came to save, in Satan’s kingdom death comes as the result of sin. Jesus took on our sins of those He came to save, so when this group of believers die we are blameless, so that death was unrighteous, which goes against the Father’s plan and we will be raised from the dead and restored to the original condition of A&E in bodies that God created that won’t wear out.
In any case, a few animals for carnivores (and for Mr. and Mrs. Noah) would be slim pickings for that long a trip. No matter - this may be a shock, but the flood never happened, and it would be easier if you just said god miracled up food for everyone.
, but as pointed out above that Noah had provisions for that trip for his family and the animals commanded by God.