Posted on 08/15/2006 7:35:13 AM PDT by Salman
Satan at one time was good, Satan turned against God and God cast Satan out of Heaven. Satan produces evil. God permits evil, He doesn't create it, He permits it to exist so that we may reject it by turning toward Him or accepting it by following Satan, through free will.
God loves all His creation. That's the part most people can't get past.
I say He isn't responsible because knowing something is going to happen isn't the same as causing it to happen. For instance, I can give my son a choice in certain things, knowing that he'll pick the wrong chioce. I do this in order to teach him how to recognize how to make right choices. Did I force him to make the wrong decision? No. Am I responsible for his wrong choice when I set up the test? No. He had the ability to see it. He just made the wrong choice. It's his responsibility for his choice.
God created angels with free will also. He greatest desire is to be loved of the the other's own free will. Here's the basic dilemma--how does one love of one's own free will wen there are no other alternatives?
He allowed Lucifer to rebel and create Evil. He allowed the angels to make that decision (BTW--that group of angels aren't the only group to Fall). He now allows us to make that Decision. Do we make the correct choice, or the wrong choice?
I understand where you're coming from. I was there for a very long time in my life. Here's how I look at it now: every day I get up is a mercy. I have a job, a loving family, a home, food, and life. As a creation, I cannot ask my Creator for more. I am totally at His mercy in terms of my life and where He wants me to go. My purpose in life is to do what He wants me to do. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Remember the story of Jonah? After he had preached to Ninevah, Jonah went up to a mountain and pouted because he knew God's mercy would spare Ninevah. God's object lesson there with the vine tells me a lot. Who am I to tell God, the Lord of all creation, what to do?
It takes a lot to come to that point. There's a lot of pride standing in the way of wanting more mercy, and accepting that the Lord knows what He's doing with me and my life. I've only come to this realization in the last year.
Like having Britain simply live up to the Balfour Declaration.
"Evil is a product of Satan...Some suffering (e.g. disease and natural disasters) is the result of Adam and Eve's rebellion against God."
Evidence please?
I think it's high time we let go of our medievil-era thinking. Volcanos do not erupt because of an angry God. I am susceptible to disease because I am mortal.
I'm with you on the first paragraph, but the rest of your post is rather fantastical. Adam and Eve rebelled, and so all of humanity is smote with disease and disaster? Please.
Furthermore it's a contradiction in terms. If my forbears exercise their free will and sin (e.g., Adam and Eve's 'rebellion'), and that earns me devine punishment (e.g., disease and natural disasters, or 'generational curses' as I've heard described), then that punishment constrains my ability to exercise my free will as you define it. In other words, the dogma of original sin is antithetical to free will and the autonomy that free will requires.
Your concept of choosing freely is also problematic: Say I tell you to 'choose freely' between a balogna sandwich or meatballs for lunch, but then I tack on the condition that choosing balogna will get you a million bucks (or say, a Heaven with streets of gold...or a Heaven with 72 virgins, each being equally ridiculous to me) and choosing meatballs will get you a bullet in the brain (or say, an eternal lake of fire). Wouldn't you agree that I'm not exactly presenting you with an option to "choose freely"? Wouldn't your choice be constrained somewhat? Isn't this more like coercion?
How does the concept of free will that your faith gives rise to differ from that handed down from authoritarian regimes the world over? If one freely chooses to convert from Islam to Christianity for example, sure, this can be done--but under pain of death. In other words, under those regimes the public is coerced to follow the religion of the state. However, you've just allowed those regimes to argue that they don't actually coerce the public, but instead allow them to "choose freely." Who cares that all choices but one lead to eternal punishment? This doesn't seem to be a problem for you or them.
Aside from all this, free will does not mean having the ability to do what you choose to do. Free will means having the will you choose to have. If I'm locked in a cage, I can choose to escape, but this doesn't mean I can carry it out. Free will in this case, generally speaking, means being free to choose to have the will to escape.
I know I'm coming off as pointed if not rude here, but I think when people profess dogmas that should have gone the way of alchemy,humoral theory, and the burning of heretics and witches centuries ago, it warrants a challenge. Especially when it influences the way one advocates for a response (or non-response) to a pandemic like AIDS.
So Hitler's victims are collateral damage as he learns his lesson?
I wasn't disagreeing with that - of course they blamed Reagan, just as they now blame Bush for everything under the sun. But flawed arguments don't get us anywhere; if there's a point to be made, we need to do our homework in the process.
These young men get AIDS from being improperly reared.
Uh, no it doesn't. You're permitted to sin all you want, but don't count on that being your ticket into Heaven. Matthew 13:41 simply states: "The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil."
Many of the things which prompt us to sin now won't be there in heaven. We won't have a physical body (1 Cor 15:42-44) or any physical needs, so we won't have to worry about things like sexual sin, gluttony, etc. Our emotional and spiritual needs (love, acceptance, fulfillment, etc.) will be met, so we won't be tempted to sin in an attempt to meet them ourselves. Negative external influences, including Satan and other evildoers, will be removed. While it is theoretically possible that we could sin (Satan proved this by rejecting The Father in Heaven and was thusly cast out), since we'll have free will, it will be much easier for us to live a sinless life in heaven than it is on Earth. The difference is, Satan sinned in Heaven. We were born into it by the Original Sin (Adam & Eve), but our sins were washed away by Jesus sacrificing His life here on earth so that we may (not shall, or will) have eternal life in Heaven. To answer your question of bologna sandwiches vs. meatballs. Jesus made that choice for us by accepting the bullet to the head (in His case dying on The Cross) for us. Our choice is to either follow Him or follow Satan. Jesus already lived and died for us. We either accept Him or reject Him through free will.
Exactly. May I never be the pawn who loses life or liberty for the sake of God's teaching ShadowAce a valuable life lesson.
Also, I wonder if ShadowAce would present the same choice to his son, knowing that the wrong choice brings eternal punishment, and knowing his son will make that wrong choice. Where would the lesson be there?
All this philosiphisin' is making my head hurt!
You missed my point. If I exercise my free will and choose to go to church to worship God or to go to the store or do whatever else, but in the process I'm struck by an aneurism and die (the possibility of which was brought into existence through Adam & Eve's rebellion) or was bowled over in my car by a tornado (the possibility of which was brought into existence through Adam & Eve's rebellion), this cross-generational devine punishment has constrained my capacity to act upon my free will as you defined it, because it has limited or eliminated the array of possible actions that I can carry out by my choosing. In this case, the cross-generational devine punishment, or original sin, has constrained the very free will that is necessary for me to 'freely choose' to do anything except bear the brunt of that punishment for which I'm not even responsible. This is why I argued that original sin and the devine punishment it has allegedly unleashed upon the world is antithetical to free will as you defined it. Since free will is a necessary condition for choosing God and gaining access to Heaven, it seems to me that one can't simulataneously believe in eternal reward, free will, and original sin.
Also, Christ's dying on the cross does nothing to eliminate the choosing scenario I presented. You merely replaced the items. In your scenario, God is the balogna and Satan is the meatballs. Your still presented with the possibility of experiencing two extremes based on your decision--eternal punishment or eternal reward. In any other discourse except that having to do with the Christian notion of redemption, this would be coercion--not free choice. It still boils down to this: serve me or pay the penalty for all eternity. If that's the dogma you accept to believe, that's fine by me. But let's not be disengenuous and couch it in the language of freedom and choice.
Nope. The whole point is lost on you.
No. The OT is full is examples where Israel was disciplined much like WWII. It wasn't about teaching Hitler anything. It was about Israel.
Where would the lesson be there?
By the time eternal punishment arrives, the time for teaching is over. It is not a lesson anymore.
May I never be the pawn who loses life or liberty for the sake of God's teaching ShadowAce a valuable life lesson.
Agreed. But it's not out of the question. Job lost his entire family (except for his wife) just so God could prove what a righteous man he (Job) was.
Our lives may be all-important to us, but not to God. After all--He created us, and He can do with us what He wills. Life belongs to Him, and He can do whatever He wants with it. It's not up to us to dictate to God what He can and cannot do with it.
Yep. It's black and white. Justice is not a scale, or balance, to be weighed. You either sin or you don't. There is no middle ground.
A crock of an article. This disease is priviliged by the government. It is treated differently from others. This means that the disease will infect more people. PC kills.
So in essence we're God's pets, the equivalent of his ant colony. He'll kill our families to teach them a lesson, or to prove some other point (Job's righteousness), or just because he's feeling cranky. And for this we're supposed to love him?
Second, we're suposed to love Him because that is why He created us. That is our purpose. Love is not selfish--we don't (or we shouldn't) love someone because of what they give to us. We love them for who they are. Love is giving, not getting. Real love is an intellectual decision, not an emotion.
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