I am with you on this; since God knew Satan would sin(rebel), He must have created a hell just for him (and the people he knew would follow Satan)…doesn’t make sense to me; If I knew before I conceived a child that he (or she) would be evil I would make sure such a conception would never happen.
Satan must not have been too happy in Heaven, amybe it’s not all it is cracked up to be?
Monavis
oops!! That should be maybe!!!
Everyone seems to have an incorrect conception of Heaven. If there is a Heaven, my understanding is that it is a place where you will BE with God for all eternity. It is not a place where you can DO anything at all, good or bad. That is why, even if Heaven did exist, I would take little comfort from the fact since who we are is often defined by what we choose to do.
I think perhaps the best answer to the OP is, “Sure you could sin in Heaven. The point is, if you end up being someone who goes there, you won’t want to.”
The idea is that God loves us, helps us to become what He knows is best for us, reshaping us into persons more like what He intended us to be. (The Eastern Orthodox term for this is theosis; the Holiness/Nazarene term is “entire sanctification.”) So by the time you’re ready for heaven, you become someone who has no interest in sinning.
That doesn’t mean becoming a sexless, ascetic Holy Joe. It means that you get your fulfillment in the right application of your desires, the ones that are in accordance with His will, and not in the perversions of those applications that constitute sin.
I would say Poly,that Satan doesn’t quite fit that bill. Apparently he had an interest in sinning.
Scriptures paint Satan as a tempter of people,as in Genesis he tempted Adam and Eve. Now days people believe Satan is still tempting them.
I young child asked me years ago why Satan was smarter than God. He said if Satan could make bad look good and take souls away from God, why doesn’t God make good attractive, then Satan would not win souls away from God?
Monavis
The reason (and we are in angels on the head of a pin territory here) is that God is limited in a way Satan is not. The whole point of living on Earth is as to accept God on faith. If God makes Heaven and good self-evidently better than evil than only idiots would have the free choice to choose evil.
What’s to stop me sinning?
If the spirit is willing and the flesh is weak, maybe it’s just that we’ll only be spiritual beings.
Strange that God would keep Himself hidden and be called a good Father when his children must just accept the fact that he exists. A good father lets his children see him there is no need for faith, they would just know him. We would not call a man a good father if he didn’t make himself known to all his children.
If a person really knows good from evil and chooses evil he is really stupid, and doesn’t know the consequences of his acts, it would be like expecting a brain damaged person to think and act like one with all it’s facilities. It would follow that God does not know all things or he would be responsible if his children strayed, just as we blame a manufacturer for a bad product. Since God created Satan and knew he was evil, then God would be responsible for Satan’s actions since he didn’t curb Satan’s power.
Monavis
If we are truly spiritual beings living in a body,then how is the body responsible for the loss of the soul?
Monavis
Exactly! IMHO it can’t be. It is interesting to note that it repeatedly says in the NT that we will be judged according to our works and rewarded according to our deeds.
You seem to be limiting yourself to the judeo-christian idea of heaven. There are other cultures and other religions that have different ideas of what the afterlife is. Some feel it is just like regular life, some feel it is a dark place, some feel it is a place of energy instead of matter.
If you are limiting yourself to the judeo-christian idea of heaven (which to me has always implied that there is an endless amount of freedom compared to earthly life) I would assume something along the lines of a more powerful version free will would protect other people. Meaning it would be impossible to sin against other people without their consent.
Lets take your rules analogy. One of the things we have to look at is why are the rules there? Why doesn’t God want us to sin? Sin hurts us (when I sin it hurts me) and sin hurts others.
One of the sins I have worked on overcoming is my anger with other drivers. I used to scream, bang on the steering wheel, make rude gestures and cruse at other drivers (while taking the Lord’s Name in vain). I definitely broke the rules. Lets look at what I accomplished by sinning in this instance. Some of the other people who saw/heard me were pained by being called nasty things and had rude gestures made at them. Some of the other people were intimidated by my actions. Some of the other people were amused that they could get someone else’ goat so easily. Many just ignored me as a just part of the nasty cost of driving. I was quite unhappy during the drive and upset for a good 1/2 to a full hour afterwards, therefore not giving my employer full value for my pay (stealing). I was truly unpleasant to people at work/store/church/wherever I was driving to.
There is one outcome of my sin is the one I want to focus on. I was unhappy. My blood pressure went up. Because I was unhappy I would eat sugar (my personal remedy for all ills) which added to my weight problem which lead to greater unhappiness. I felt guilty.
So what did I do? I took verses and taped them to the steering wheel and parts of the dashboard (He prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies… surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever. I have not been given a spirit of fear but a spirit of power of love and of a sound mind. Whatever is good, whatever is pure, whatever is perfect, whatever is true, whatever is of good report I think on these things. etc.) I would repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat these verses while driving.
It took about 8 months, with several noticeable backsliding, but I don’t get angry when I drive anymore (nor do I normally repeat verses while driving). I am much happier both while driving and when I get to my destination. The byproduct is that I don’t make other peoples drive unhappier (by causing them pain and intimidating them), my employer gets someone who arrives ready to work (so I am not stealing any longer) and my coworkers are happier with me when I first arrive. So, I can now drive in rush hour traffic and not get angry. I still grimis when I get cut off, or when someone makes nasty gestures at me, however I spend my time in the car now listening to music, or praying, or singing along with the radio/cd, or concentrating on the drive itself – but I am not doing myself injury any more.
That is the key – I am happier. The Lord made rules about not sinning so we would be happier. Even the ones that seemingly make no sense - forgive your enemies, do good to those who persecute you. I had to learn/am learning to forgive my grandfather. He is dead so my unforgiving will in no means harm him, but it will harm me. His sin was wrong, brutal and nasty, but I don’t have to live in it, circling it, making it a part of me now. By not forgiving him I am loosing out on trusting males - so denying myself many wonderful friendships and a loving partnership. By not forgiving him I am looking to be betrayed instead of looking to be befriended. Lots of other reasons, however the greatest is that I am a happier and healthier person as I live out forgiving him.
My definition of sin is not reacting as God would react in a specify instance. So how does all this effect heaven? We are to be holy as our Father in heaven is holy. Part of being holy is not sinning. We, as a group, are called the Body of Christ and the Bride of Christ, both of these terms imply great intimacy with each other, as well as with Jesus. This kind of intimacy implies, to me, that the happiness of not sinning will be spread over all of us.
We are going to be ruling and reigning with Christ, that is the calling of the human race. I need to be able to be trusted with some pretty heavy responsibilities so I need to be holy (set apart for the purpose of God). To do what I will need to be able to do (which may be working with you ** Czarcasm** on the machinces of two galaxies colliding, designing a species to live in a particular ecological niche on a planet, maneuvering objects in the ninth dimension effect the seventh dimension, etc.) I do not know what I am going to be doing but I do know it is going to involve teamwork. God working through me, God working through other beings, other beings and I working with God to accomplish His purpose.
All things are legal but not all things are profitable. In heaven both of us will know enough (both by experience and through God’s continuing love in us) not to want to chose sin. In heaven sin will look like what it really is - evil. Paul’s analogy of our own rightness as used menstrual rags I find useful. If that is the best, how much worse is sin. In heaven we will see it as it really is and *will not chose to do it *.
So you are saying a good father gives his children everything? Nonsense. If I have a child and give him a kidney anonymously, you are saying I am a bad father because I don’t make myself known? God, if he exists, has given us far more and in return he expects faith, expects to be accepted without proof. And to allow us to accept him on faith he gave us free will. It is not God’s fault if we choose evil. It is out fault. Choosing evil is not done because one is brain damaged. It is done either because those choosing truly do not believe in God or because their short term wants, needs or hatreds are far more important to them than serving an invisible deity.
As far as God allowing evil, the implication is that the evil being committed is so monsterous that God must be monsterous himself to allow it. The way I look at it, the worst evils ever done were so trivial when compared to 10 to the trillionth power years of paradise, there is no such thing as an evil so great it can balance that eternal bliss.
If God Is all knowing he would not give a child anything that would harm him in any way, no matter how much the child begged nor would he hold back any thing He knew was for the child’s benefit. A human father can just guess and be wrong. A God would know even before a child was born what would harm him.
If my father hid himself and just wanted me to accept the fact that I had one (with out knowing) I would call him a bad father; I would not let my 2 year old play with a sharp knife and just hope he wouldn’t hurt himself or some one else. And if I knew for sure( as God supposedly doe) I would not have a knife any where near where he could reach it.God punished Adam and Eve with death because they learned the difference between good and evil when they ate from "the tree of knowledge"Yet He allows Satan to ruin peoples after life by getting them to sin.
Doesn’t add up to me;however you are free to believe what you choose to, and that is fine with me.
Monavis
I just wanted to say that if there is no sinning in Heaven, I’ll take hell, thanks.
Sinning is fun. That’s why it’s called sinning. Duh.
You’ll never make the grade to get there.