Christ Centered Gamer

I don't mind the WOT at all. ^_^

Free will is a controversial subject, because many people don't want to admit that they're choices have been planned and known before they commit them. They way I look at it is, God is outside of time, and the author of time and creation, so He knows how it's going to go down, and planned it that way. But I'm inside time, and don't know the future, so I still have to make choices. Because I don't know how things will end (not until THE end). So I would say you have the freedom of a choice, but the outcome is known.

It's impossible to comprehend God, so He sent Jesus, who is the full expression of His nature...It's like when you or I go to an art gallery. We see beautiful paintings, or statues, but we don't see the intricacies or time consuming details that it took to make those. Just the painting itself as an end product. Jesus is God in human form.

The bible does detail explicitly what God wants, and what He considers evil. The first five books of the Old testament are the equivalent of a modern law book. God knows who He's dealing with, so that's why He wrote it down. It's not a matter of blindness, but a matter of trust. Blindly following a stranger off the street is a bad idea, fully trusting a friend or family member is not. I trust God, and I trust His word.

An imperfect thing is imperfect because of it's creator, yes. But God did not paint us this way, He painted us perfect and someone else came along and ruined His painting.

Because the fall of man wasn't just Adam janking up, it was Adam refusing to listen to God, and instead choosing to listen to Satan. The words "devil" and "Satan" conjure up images of a bearded dude with a fork, but the Hebrew/Greek words mean slanderer and adversary. Satan is the jerk who is hell-bent on destroying what God made, because he wants to be God himself. So when Adam fell, it wasn't just him disobeying God, but choosing to disobey God, and listen to someone else, and Satan gained control of creation because it was tainted by his nature.

That's why Adam's sin broke the planet. God created this world perfect, and made it His dwelling place. Evil and God cannot mix. Holiness and sin can't go together, so when Adam disobeyed God (and obeyed His enemy), the physical realm became became Satan's domain, because humankind (then, just Adam and Eve) chose who they would serve. So the best way to explain why we're tainted, is like being born into a citizenship of a dictator. Whether or not you agree with the policies of the country you were born into, you're still a citizen, and bound by it's rules, laws, and leader. No matter what you say, do, you're still a citizen. Unless you apply for citizenship of another country. It really is a legal thing.

God holds us to a standard of perfection because that's how He created us. He can't lower the bar because we can't jump over it. He knows though, that we cannot save ourselves. He showed us the law to show us what perfection was, but we're unable to follow it (proven through history, not just something to say). But God cannot exist in the same place as evil (which we are, because of Adam's choice to change rulers), so our imperfection separated us from Him. God overcame that with Jesus. He provided a way to come up to His standards, to be made perfect. Jesus' blood didn't move the problem, or create a loophole, it actually dissolved it. His blood covers us, and literally erases our sins from God's sight. Our "imperfection" (sin) is actually washed away in God's sight. It's like an eraser on the chalkboard of our lives, not just painting over a hole in the wall.

God won't just snap His fingers and rewrite history because He won't force people to follow Him. Even at the beginning of time, God let us make our own choices. He doesn't want a people who follow Him like mindless robots. Not even His own servants (the angels) will He force to follow Him. It's the difference between a parent asking a child to do a chore, and punishing them until their spirit breaks...At the end of time, He will do this, with all evil wiped away and His servants recreated into perfection (because we're hardly perfect as is). But He can't just say "All sinners are now clean" because He would be acquitting the guilty. Only when someone admits their guilt, and asks for mercy will He give it, by washing their sins away with Jesus blood. Disobeying God holds consequences though.

I can't speak for what God's plan was. I hate to repeat myself, but I'm not God. God has repeatedly shown that even when His people (His by right of ownership, being our creator) willfully choose to ignore Him, and follow another (the "another" being one who spat in His face) He still loves us and is willing to die for us. Kenny said it best once:

"The story of history shows us how much God cares for us, and shows us His sacrificial love, a kind we otherwise would not have seen had the world been perfect." You're asking why we exist, and what God is doing with this world, why is it broken...those aren't easy to answer. Theologians have talked for years. We were created for God, by God... For His pleasure. When he created this universe, He knew what our choice would be before He created us. Why didn't He create a race that wouldn't sin? I really think Kenny is right. Love is one thing, but sacrificial love is the greatest expression of love that could exist.

Yes, He could stop this evil, but that would be forcing us to follow Him, turning us into mindless slaves. Like children, He told them/us what not to do, what to do, and then relied upon them/us to do what was right. But they/we broke His trust in us. It's odd to think of it, but when Adam chose to follow Satan, and ignored God, he broke God's heart. When you or I sin, we break it again. God will not force anyone to follow Him, He will only ask. Eternal separation (hell) is punishment for disobeying God, but unlike most punishments, it's not assured. God offered a way to get out of it to His own cost.

The judgment of this is harsh because so was the offense. A murderer is condemned to death or life in prison, and the offense matches the punishment. A life for a life. The offense against God was a choice that we'd rather cut ourselves away from Him and follow Satan (and at the start of time, death didn't exist, so it was a forever choice), so the punishment is eternal separation from God. In fact, God warned Adam what would happen if he chose to go his own way. So Adam made the choice knowing the consequences.

Why doesn't God directly reveal Himself to us? If He did fully reveal Himself, we would have no choice but to follow Him. Begrudging or not, if you saw God, you would have no choice but to submit to Him. So God uses humans to tell others about Him. He also writes Himself into history, into nature, and into your world daily. Ever had one of those moments where you were going to die, but something happened to change that? A car wreck, or an imminent disaster avoided? Things don't happen by chance. God is omnipresent. He doesn't have a throne room where He sits all day and bemoans our idiocy. God has provided more than one man thousands of years ago. God knows how much we (Christians) would fail in telling others about Him, so He works at it Himself, desperately seeking people and trying to get them to listen to Him.

God's rules aren't correct just because He's God, it's because He's perfection. He doesn't have whims, and He's not capricious. His rules are the right ones because He has the authority (since He created us) and because He can't do evil. Human laws tend to serve the makers, or only the generation's in which they're created. God's rules are universal and unending, and won't need changing. Murder will never become right, nor theft. Looking up human laws is funny, because some of them were obviously created in the 1800's. Even 50 years ago, there were laws banning black people from playing baseball with white people. God never made a law like that. His justice is...holy, I guess is the best word.

I'm not sure what you were asking about religions, so I can't answer...

The question of whether or not God is just in sending people to hell is one long asked. The answer is yes, because God cannot be unjust. It's not unjust if you understand the nature of the choice. It's not God offering us a way to do good, or to do evil, it's God offering us evil people a way to be good. If we refuse to divest ourselves of our sin, we get punished. The cost of sin isn't something equal to the evil, it's death. "The wages of sin are death". By sinning, we deserve death. It's what we get paid, because there is no neutral territory with right/wrong. You're either sinful (serving Satan) or righteous (serving God).

Views of right and wrong can differ, but if God has the absolute authority, then right and wrong aren't left up to our views, but God's. Notice, please, I'm not claiming that I'm the one who knows what's right/wrong, either. I'm human, and liable to fall. Only God's way is the right one.

Again, you may be imperfect, but God offers you a way to become perfect. You're tainted by Adam's sin, but it's easy to become clean again. God let it happen because It was His will, but I can't blame God for my being evil. Especially when we've sinned regardless of Adam, and especially since human nature clearly shows that anyone, not just Adam, would have sinned in that position. God loves everyone equally, even if the saint does get murdered. Each and every sin is equal in God's eyes, so the murderer is as guilty as the thief. If the saint get's murdered, God will still love the murderer, because it's no different to Him as if He'd told a lie. All sin separates us from God.

As you can see, the whole meaning of the word, the whole point of forgiving, is that you’re giving up ill feelings towards another without necessarily being paid what is due to you. The act of forgiving someone who owes you money as you bring them to small claims court is dishonest and contradictory. And how can God pay any price? Wouldn’t the act of giving something up entail being less than infinity powerful? Was dying and coming back to life again three days later really a sacrifice? The significance of giving up a life is that you don’t get it back…

Again, you're brilliant. God did forgive us without being paid what He was owed. Jesus paid the price for our sins, but it was out of His own blood. God gained nothing from the transaction, using Jesus' blood (His own sinless son who owed no debt) to pay for our bills, when we were in over our head. Jesus was God, but in flesh. He limited His own limitlessness to become human, one not born of this earth, and so not a citizen of this world (sinless) to pay for our sins. Jesus was both fully human, and fully God. Completely sinless, and so the only one capable of being a holy sacrifice.

Dying, and coming back to life proved that He was who He said He was. If He had been human, then He would have simply been an insane man who died in a terrible fashion, or a very cruel liar. Dying, then returning to life, proved He wasn't just human, but was God.

Chozon1 wrote: Free will is a controversial subject, because many people don't want to admit that they're choices have been planned and known before they commit them. They way I look at it is, God is outside of time, and the author of time and creation, so He knows how it's going to go down, and planned it that way. But I'm inside time, and don't know the future, so I still have to make choices. Because I don't know how things will end (not until THE end). So I would say you have the freedom of a choice, but the outcome is known.

I think free will is a controversial subject because it's existence or nonexistence is one of those philosophical questions that's really impossible to answer because it brings up so many other complicated questions. Like what is consciousness, and how does it arise? Things like the mind/body problem, or questions of whether chance exists from the standpoint of physics. Free will ends up being controversial because everybody uses it as part of their arguments when really not one of us can actually prove a deterministic or free will perception of the universe.

Personally, despite the confounding nature of the subject material pertaining to free will, I was saying that I don't see how we could have complete free will, because other forces influence our minds. Our knowledge, feelings, perceptions, and physiology is the basis of action and choice after all, and those things are clearly subject to the surrounding environment, such such as through education, social influences, etc.

I've never heard a religious explanation for how God does away with those deterministic factors, and saying that he planned everything makes it seem even more deterministic. Because, as I was poorly trying to articulate in my last post, what determines the nature of this fundamental self which is being allowed to express itself? I certainly didn't create myself, and if God exists, then it appears He did. If our fates are predetermined, God planned everything, and made everything and set it in motion, I don't see where and how free will comes in. If things had been made differently, if I had been made differently, things would probably turn out differently. Only stating that it's there is meaningless if you don't show the where and how in my opinion, because you're only making me more of a determinist right now buddy.

And why should God not intervene to help us turn out differently when He's in control? Don't give me the whole being a slave-robot thing, because being a positive influence isn't completely controling another. Just like parents try to instill positive things in their kids while warding away bad influences, God shouldn't leave us to wander a wilderness.

The bible does detail explicitly what God wants, and what He considers evil. The first five books of the Old testament are the equivalent of a modern law book. God knows who He's dealing with, so that's why He wrote it down. It's not a matter of blindness, but a matter of trust. Blindly following a stranger off the street is a bad idea, fully trusting a friend or family member is not. I trust God, and I trust His word.

It doesn't detail things explicitly, because so much is left up to human understanding and interpretation, not to mention errors that have accumulated over time (just to reference another thread in the current events forum). My irrefutable proof that it's not all obvious what God wants is that there's countless Christian denominations, each with their own vision of what God wants, along with individual members or non-denominational folk who have their personal variations as well. And there's a lot of legal prescriptions in the Old Testament that are barbaric by modern standards. What's right and what's wrong isn't necessarily easily discernable, and adhering to X simply because God is at the top of the hierarchy is a little weak. Even friends and family can be wrong, just to address your analogy.

An imperfect thing is imperfect because of it's creator, yes. But God did not paint us this way, He painted us perfect and someone else came along and ruined His painting. Because the fall of man wasn't just Adam janking up, it was Adam refusing to listen to God, and instead choosing to listen to Satan. The words "devil" and "Satan" conjure up images of a bearded dude with a fork, but the Hebrew/Greek words mean slanderer and adversary. Satan is the jerk who is hell-bent on destroying what God made, because he wants to be God himself. So when Adam fell, it wasn't just him disobeying God, but choosing to disobey God, and listen to someone else, and Satan gained control of creation because it was tainted by his nature.

No, his painting ruined itself. Which suggests it wasn't really perfect to begin with, and that God planned/allowed all this mucking up to occur. Which leaves people asking "why?".

That's why Adam's sin broke the planet. God created this world perfect, and made it His dwelling place. Evil and God cannot mix. Holiness and sin can't go together, so when Adam disobeyed God (and obeyed His enemy), the physical realm became became Satan's domain, because humankind (then, just Adam and Eve) chose who they would serve. So the best way to explain why we're tainted, is like being born into a citizenship of a dictator. Whether or not you agree with the policies of the country you were born into, you're still a citizen, and bound by it's rules, laws, and leader. No matter what you say, do, you're still a citizen. Unless you apply for citizenship of another country. It really is a legal thing.

See you're still sticking with the original sin thing where we're stuck with the choices Adam and Eve made. W$%? And to bring in some political theory here in a semi-satirical way, I belong to the school of thought that says the legitimacy of a government is derived from the consent of the governed. I don't like the choice between two dictators that's going on here, or being blamed for the end result of one of those dictators corruptive influence, namely myself.

God holds us to a standard of perfection because that's how He created us. He can't lower the bar because we can't jump over it.

Look, making an orange and then expecting it to behave like an apple is just stupid. So is throwing that orange in an eternal fire when it fails. I had to say it.

He knows though, that we cannot save ourselves. He showed us the law to show us what perfection was, but we're unable to follow it (proven through history, not just something to say). But God cannot exist in the same place as evil (which we are, because of Adam's choice to change rulers), so our imperfection separated us from Him. God overcame that with Jesus. He provided a way to come up to His standards, to be made perfect. Jesus' blood didn't move the problem, or create a loophole, it actually dissolved it. His blood covers us, and literally erases our sins from God's sight. Our "imperfection" (sin) is actually washed away in God's sight. It's like an eraser on the chalkboard of our lives, not just painting over a hole in the wall.

God "can't"? How can an all powerful being be limited by "cannots"? This is where the logic just gets bizzare. Why go through all the effort to patch a broken system, when you're all powerful and can just make it right, make it better, make it ideal through might? An example of this patching is Jesus, because Jesus' blood doesn't automatically cover us, erase our sins. It's not automatically applied. The imperfect humans in an imperfect world must first find their way there. hence, a new problem is created. Gee, guess those kids born in Pakistan really got the short end of the stick, being in a geographical region where you're statistically going to end up a Muslim.

God won't just snap His fingers and rewrite history because He won't force people to follow Him. Even at the beginning of time, God let us make our own choices. He doesn't want a people who follow Him like mindless robots. Not even His own servants (the angels) will He force to follow Him. It's the difference between a parent asking a child to do a chore, and punishing them until their spirit breaks...At the end of time, He will do this, with all evil wiped away and His servants recreated into perfection (because we're hardly perfect as is). But He can't just say "All sinners are now clean" because He would be acquitting the guilty. Only when someone admits their guilt, and asks for mercy will He give it, by washing their sins away with Jesus blood. Disobeying God holds consequences though.

Helping people to go in the right direction isn't turning them into mindless robots. If God really wanted to, He could make things so that everyone ultimately made it to heaven. Reincarnate people and give them another shot, idk. I don't really see the love and forsight behind making such a flawed world where it's so easy to end up in a pit of ETERNAL SUFFERING. I mean really.

I can't speak for what God's plan was. I hate to repeat myself, but I'm not God.

That's fine, I can see you're not God, but if you're going to tell me that God in benevolent then you need to be able to answer some of these questions, otherwise you have nothing to back your claim up.

God has repeatedly shown that even when His people (His by right of ownership, being our creator) willfully choose to ignore Him, and follow another (the "another" being one who spat in His face) He still loves us and is willing to die for us. Kenny said it best once:

"The story of history shows us how much God cares for us, and shows us His sacrificial love, a kind we otherwise would not have seen had the world been perfect." You're asking why we exist, and what God is doing with this world, why is it broken...those aren't easy to answer. Theologians have talked for years. We were created for God, by God... For His pleasure. When he created this universe, He knew what our choice would be before He created us. Why didn't He create a race that wouldn't sin? I really think Kenny is right. Love is one thing, but sacrificial love is the greatest expression of love that could exist.

Loves us soooooo much he allows most of the world to end up in hell. Thanks bro. Like I said above, if you're not willing to attempt to answer these questions then you have nothing to back up your peachy idea of God with. I don't think the one act of sacrificing Jesus is enough to blindly trust that everything else God has done must be just and in order.

Yes, He could stop this evil, but that would be forcing us to follow Him, turning us into mindless slaves. Like children, He told them/us what not to do, what to do, and then relied upon them/us to do what was right. But they/we broke His trust in us. It's odd to think of it, but when Adam chose to follow Satan, and ignored God, he broke God's heart. When you or I sin, we break it again. God will not force anyone to follow Him, He will only ask. Eternal separation (hell) is punishment for disobeying God, but unlike most punishments, it's not assured. God offered a way to get out of it to His own cost.

Yeah, God won't force you to do anything, he'll just have you suffer eternally. He won't only ask, he'll punish you absolutely. That's a really beautiful image. I'm pretty sure the only one who gains to loss anything is us.

The judgment of this is harsh because so was the offense. A murderer is condemned to death or life in prison, and the offense matches the punishment. A life for a life. The offense against God was a choice that we'd rather cut ourselves away from Him and follow Satan (and at the start of time, death didn't exist, so it was a forever choice), so the punishment is eternal separation from God. In fact, God warned Adam what would happen if he chose to go his own way. So Adam made the choice knowing the consequences.

What kind of crazy logic are you throwing at me dude? There's so many things wrong with what you just said. If, for a punishment to be just, it must be proportional to the crime, that means to deserve an infinite punishment you'd have to commit some kind of infinite crime. We live limited, imperfect lives dude, so nothing about hell is proportional.

But then you argue it is proportional because we choose to cut ourselves away from God? First of all, none of us made the choice, Adam and Eve did, so this whole part of your post is moot (especially the part about it being forever, because even if death didn't exist then, it does now. And my life is being played out now). And don’t choices reflect one’s will in a particular moment? I think having it take effect for eternity is taking it a bit far. And how can a limited being make an absolute decision?

Why doesn't God directly reveal Himself to us? If He did fully reveal Himself, we would have no choice but to follow Him. Begrudging or not, if you saw God, you would have no choice but to submit to Him. So God uses humans to tell others about Him. He also writes Himself into history, into nature, and into your world daily. Ever had one of those moments where you were going to die, but something happened to change that? A car wreck, or an imminent disaster avoided? Things don't happen by chance. God is omnipresent. He doesn't have a throne room where He sits all day and bemoans our idiocy. God has provided more than one man thousands of years ago. God knows how much we (Christians) would fail in telling others about Him, so He works at it Himself, desperately seeking people and trying to get them to listen to Him.

For some reason you seem to equate knowing the truth to being forced to follow the truth. Revealing Himself to us would simply make everyone believe as opposed to only some believing as things are now. To follow the right God, you first have to believe He exists, so revealing Himself to us could only do good. We’d have no doubt, and with full knowledge of the state of things we could make a choice to follow or not. By revealing Himself indirectly through events in the world He only leaves room for doubt or incorrect interpretation. A prime example of that issue of subjective perception is the fact that you interpret the world as the expression of God’s design, and I see it as chance. A handful of people thousands of years ago is lackluster effort on God’s part.

God's rules aren't correct just because He's God, it's because He's perfection. He doesn't have whims, and He's not capricious. His rules are the right ones because He has the authority (since He created us) and because He can't do evil. Human laws tend to serve the makers, or only the generation's in which they're created. God's rules are universal and unending, and won't need changing. Murder will never become right, nor theft. Looking up human laws is funny, because some of them were obviously created in the 1800's. Even 50 years ago, there were laws banning black people from playing baseball with white people. God never made a law like that. His justice is...holy, I guess is the best word.

You can phrase it any way you want, all your points come back to God being the top of the food chain of existence. What’s wrong or right ultimately comes down to what God wants those things to be, because he even created the concepts of right and wrong themselves. I can’t help it if the mental facilities I have say that something He says doesn’t add up. Historically that kind of reflection, as opposed to blind adherence, Has lead people to question if the interpretation of God they’re being presented with by others is actually what God says, if it’s actually a correct record.

I think human laws change because making a perfect law is impossible for us, and even if one makes an honest effort to do right there’s always room to improve or new perspective on political theory (God‘s rules btw, also seem to change a bit between the new and old testaments). Old laws often seem stupid, but if you put yourself in the perspective of people back then it’s a bit more understandable. I bet some of the people who wrote the laws banning black people from baseball where honest Christians, who had some justification for their racial feelings.

The question of whether or not God is just in sending people to hell is one long asked. The answer is yes, because God cannot be unjust. It's not unjust if you understand the nature of the choice. It's not God offering us a way to do good, or to do evil, it's God offering us evil people a way to be good. If we refuse to divest ourselves of our sin, we get punished. The cost of sin isn't something equal to the evil, it's death. "The wages of sin are death". By sinning, we deserve death. It's what we get paid, because there is no neutral territory with right/wrong. You're either sinful (serving Satan) or righteous (serving God).

There is neutral territory, because it’s not only an issue of free choice, otherwise I might agree with you. There is also the issue of whether or not you believe, of our imperfection, of subjectivity. We’re also not completely rational or understanding. In life there is constant ambiguity. Such a black and white look at humanity doesn’t reflect the existentialist realities we face every day. It justifies applying an absolute judgment to a confusing, limited, and imperfect existence.

Views of right and wrong can differ, but if God has the absolute authority, then right and wrong aren't left up to our views, but God's. Notice, please, I'm not claiming that I'm the one who knows what's right/wrong, either. I'm human, and liable to fall. Only God's way is the right one.

If right and wrong aren’t left up to our views that doesn’t change the fact that, because we’re not absolutely sure what is right and wrong and life is grey and uncertain, our own views are all we have to go on during our lives. What if you, Chozon, honestly try to do what you think is right but happened to be doing wrong all along and get damned for all eternity because of that? We are liable to fault, and that’s the problem with blaming an individual for failing to figure it all out and navigate the mazes of life successfully.

Again, you may be imperfect, but God offers you a way to become perfect. You're tainted by Adam's sin, but it's easy to become clean again. God let it happen because It was His will, but I can't blame God for my being evil. Especially when we've sinned regardless of Adam, and especially since human nature clearly shows that anyone, not just Adam, would have sinned in that position. God loves everyone equally, even if the saint does get murdered. Each and every sin is equal in God's eyes, so the murderer is as guilty as the thief. If the saint get's murdered, God will still love the murderer, because it's no different to Him as if He'd told a lie. All sin separates us from God.

Offering people a way to become perfect doesn’t solve the problem of our imperfection, because successfully becoming perfect is left up to our imperfect selves. You can blame good for being evil because God MADE EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING. We may sin regardless of Adam because of human nature, but God made that too! I didn’t determine how humans fundamentally act, I’m simply influenced by it.

Again, you're brilliant. God did forgive us without being paid what He was owed. Jesus paid the price for our sins, but it was out of His own blood. God gained nothing from the transaction, using Jesus' blood (His own sinless son who owed no debt) to pay for our bills, when we were in over our head. Jesus was God, but in flesh. He limited His own limitlessness to become human, one not born of this earth, and so not a citizen of this world (sinless) to pay for our sins. Jesus was both fully human, and fully God. Completely sinless, and so the only one capable of being a holy sacrifice.

Dying, and coming back to life proved that He was who He said He was. If He had been human, then He would have simply been an insane man who died in a terrible fashion, or a very cruel liar. Dying, then returning to life, proved He wasn't just human, but was God.

Saying that Jesus’ blood is not God’s blood brings up the issue of the nature of the Trinity. Christianity is supposed to be monotheistic, but then what exactly is the nature of the Holy Spirit, Jesus, and God? How close or apart are they? From what my religion professor told me, theologians have never really solved that issue. The point of me saying this is that I’m not sure about your first sentence about God using Jesus, as opposed to a part of Himself. Limiting limitlessness is paradoxical btw. You still haven’t resolved how sacrificing an innocent person somehow helps out guilty people too. Or how giving your blood is a sacrifice when you get your blood back by coming back to life.

As to your other point, I don’t buy C.S. Lewis’ dilemma about Jesus. To die for something that’s false, you don’t have to be insane, evil, or a liar, you simply have to honestly believe that it’s true. That’s it. Jesus isn’t the only guy in history who said good things and then died for something some would argue is false. He may have simply been mistaken, He may simply have been another supposed prophet. And those arguments only need come into place if I accept that Jesus’ life played out exactly as the bible said it did.

We seem to be missing each other here. I'm not claiming free will exists. I tried to say that in my last post. God is writing a story, including the choices we make. The bible backs this up. But since we can't see the end of time, and since we didn't plan it, we still have to make those choices as if the end was not known. God knew before my birth what I was going to do with my life, but I don't. So I've still gotta go to college, get a job, and make the choice to follow Him, even though He knew I would.

To put it simply, even Christians aren't perfect. The only truth comes from God, and it's pretty clear in the bible. People want to take it different ways though. Much like you and I will read the same textbook but come away with different understandings of the subject, with different parts sticking out to each of us, even though we read the same truth.

Secondly, I'm not sure there are errors in the bible. In fact, I'm sure there aren't. I'm one of those "The bible is truth" guys, because nothing else makes sense. I'm going to believe that God could create the world, but somehow doubt that He could write a book and get His words through time? That...is dumb.

God is the ultimate authority as God first, but as creator second. He has the absolute right to declare what He does or does not like. The definition of the Greek word sin is "to miss the mark". In other words, when our actions fail to hit God's target.

He didn't make an orange and expect it to behave like an apple, He created an apple and expected it to be an apple. But the apple chose (and He let Adam choose) to mutate into some weird hybrid. At the start, we were perfect apples with nice flavor. When the whole human race (composed then of two people) decided to abandon God, it mutated us.

Why did God allow the fall at all? The best explanation is in the Thompson's guide to the bible. This is what I've been trying to say all along: "In creating the the stars, His omnipotence was shown. In fashioning angels, His omniscience was seen. In judging Satan, his holiness was demonstrated. But one attribute very close to His heart had not been exercised. This was His grace. It is therefore not unreasonable to suggest that God created Adam knowing full well he would sin (but in now way encouraging him to do so) and then, in the fullness of time, He planned to send His only Son to die in man's place and thus display His marvelous grace."

To quote the adage, might doesn't make right. You referred to the choice between two dictators earlier, but God isn't a dictator. What He says goes, because what He says is right. But maybe He isn't willing to force the matter. Dictator He is not. We have individual personalities, with creativity and such that is our own, given by a highly creative God.

I really do understand what you're saying here, that God shouldn't even offer us the choice between His way or death, or punish us for our lack of understanding. In fact, you're not the first to ask that, and Paul answered those questions with this:

"What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at All! For He says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." It does not, therefore, depends on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth."

"Therefore, God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?" But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed is, 'Why did you make me like this?" Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble uses and some for common use? What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with patience the objects of his wrath--prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory".

I also need to correct something I said earlier. Sin entered the world through Adam, like the unlocking of the door letting something evil and otherworldly sweep in and start consuming us. It's not like Adam awoke something that was already in us by His choice to disobey God. We're tainted because the door was opened.

And believe me, I am willing to answer your questions, and trying my best. I'm not fielding you here and hoping some odd combolation of words will shock you into "seeing the light". But these aren't easily answered questions.

I'm also not saying that a punishment must be equal to a crime. At least I wasn't trying to say that. Also, you did make the choice. Adam opened the door, but we seal our fates when we do something wrong. Adam's choice becomes immaterial after that. And even if it were you or me back at the start, we would have made the same choice. No one is righteous, and no one is without sin.

Plus, you're not a limited being. You were created for the eternal. The fleshly part of you is limited, but your soul is everlasting. That's how you can be called upon to make an unlimited choice. Your body is just a robe wrapped around your soul, that will one day wear out. But you, your essence, is eternal.

And I don't equate knowing the truth with following it, I equate seeing God to being forced to follow Him. There's a verse in Revelation where it says that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. That's because the veil will have been lifted and the unbreakable truth shown. There will be no choice in the matter of that confession, because no other choice is available if the veil is gone.

The way I understand it, Jesus wants us to follow Him by faith. Faith is what saves us. "For by grace are ye saved through faith, and this not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast".

I tried to answer your questions about spending my entire life doing what I thought was good, but turning out I was wrong, above. Too, becoming perfect is not left up to us, but to us trusting Jesus.

The trinity isn't an unsolvable mystery. Even the word "mystery" in the Nt is the Greek word mysterion, meaning something revealed by God. It's three distinct persona's (think that's the right word) in one individual. Think about one man. He can be a father, a Brother, a Son, an uncle, ETC, but it's all one individual.

Jesus' sacrifice covers us because His blood pays for our cost. What we earn for our sin is death, it's our wages. Jesus had no sin, and so earned no death. Literally, He did not deserve to die. So when He died, He died in your place. For you, yes, but instead of you is a better term. He paid the check you wrote with His blood. Only an innocent person who owed nothing could do that. He paid for what we never could.

Can you quote the specific things you respond too? That would make your posts a lot easier to respond to in turn

Chozon1 wrote:We seem to be missing each other here. I'm not claiming free will exists. I tried to say that in my last post. God is writing a story, including the choices we make. The bible backs this up. But since we can't see the end of time, and since we didn't plan it, we still have to make those choices as if the end was not known. God knew before my birth what I was going to do with my life, but I don't. So I've still gotta go to college, get a job, and make the choice to follow Him, even though He knew I would.

If free will doesn't exist, then how does punishing beings who are slaves to fate make any sense? If you're destined to screw up or succeed before you're even born that sounds like God making us His robots or whatever your previous analogy was.... Free Will is pretty important to your argument here.

To put it simply, even Christians aren't perfect. The only truth comes from God, and it's pretty clear in the bible. People want to take it different ways though. Much like you and I will read the same textbook but come away with different understandings of the subject, with different parts sticking out to each of us, even though we read the same truth.

Well yes, life is subjective and we each have a unique life experience and perception of things. Hence, nothing is ever completely clear, not even the bible, and it's completely understandably/reasonable for someone to come away from the bible thinking it's not truth. Yes, that applies to truth too, because I think your analogy misses the point that while we have different understandings of a subject, that the subject itself is factual is itself an understanding, a viewpoint, an opinion. When it comes to any subject matter, we do not read the same truth or untruth, but simply the same text which must then be filtered through our perception and minds, with our resulting understandings used to create further understandings of whether it's true or not.

Secondly, I'm not sure there are errors in the bible. In fact, I'm sure there aren't. I'm one of those "The bible is truth" guys, because nothing else makes sense. I'm going to believe that God could create the world, but somehow doubt that He could write a book and get His words through time? That...is dumb.

You may be sure there aren't, but that doesn't make it an objective fact. Hence it's left to be debated. My point against the bible is exactly that a God who created the world but couldn't write a book that would get through time is dumb. For you to resolve to believe the bible is perfect and ignore contradicting evidence, simply because to admit otherwise would poke holes in something you believe in, is intellectual suicide and incredibly dishonest. In any contemplation, other things may indeed make sense, if one doesn’t dogmatically hold onto a principle in spite of everything to the contrary, making the rest of the world fit to conform to that one (or group of) principles. I don’t mean that in a mean way, simply as an exposition of a logical fallacy.

God is the ultimate authority as God first, but as creator second. He has the absolute right to declare what He does or does not like. The definition of the Greek word sin is "to miss the mark". In other words, when our actions fail to hit God's target.

That’s what I’ve been arguing; that if He’s the creator of everything, then He is the absolute authority on the nature of everything. Right, wrong, concepts like greed, justice, and mercy are not objective realities, but creations of God, as God created everything. Therefore, what is right or wrong is simply a reflection of God's will, of what He wants right and wrong to be. This makes morality arbitrary, because if nothing spawned God, then He determines Himself all paradoxical-like. Right and wrong are independent of any kind of reality other than what God wants.

He didn't make an orange and expect it to behave like an apple, He created an apple and expected it to be an apple. But the apple chose (and He let Adam choose) to mutate into some weird hybrid. At the start, we were perfect apples with nice flavor. When the whole human race (composed then of two people) decided to abandon God, it mutated us.

If He’s all powerful, then He would have know what the apple would eventually end up doing, and hence would have expected it to become an orange. And yet for some reason He still holds that predicted and designed orange to the standards of an apple.

But I guess this relates a bit to your next point.

Why did God allow the fall at all? The best explanation is in the Thompson's guide to the bible. This is what I've been trying to say all along: "In creating the the stars, His omnipotence was shown. In fashioning angels, His omniscience was seen. In judging Satan, his holiness was demonstrated. But one attribute very close to His heart had not been exercised. This was His grace. It is therefore not unreasonable to suggest that God created Adam knowing full well he would sin (but in now way encouraging him to do so) and then, in the fullness of time, He planned to send His only Son to die in man's place and thus display His marvelous grace."

Whatever, that’s just that Tompson dude’s interpretation. Does He actually have any evidence that that is the reality of God’s nature, or is it just theological musings? If that is the case, I don’t see humanity having much purpose in-of-itself other than as a tool for Him to express Himself. And if I may take it further, why a whole cosmic game for expression, why this obsession with some kind of complete expression?

To quote the adage, might doesn't make right. You referred to the choice between two dictators earlier, but God isn't a dictator. What He says goes, because what He says is right. But maybe He isn't willing to force the matter. Dictator He is not. We have individual personalities, with creativity and such that is our own, given by a highly creative God.

Might doesn’t make right, but if you can make right and wrong through your might, well then maybe it does. That's what I was touching on earlier in this post, it's why I'm argueing God's law is arbitrary, and therefore detached from reality and not truly moral or immoral.

(I might be contradicting my own argument that what God says shouldn’t be followed just because He’s God and isn’t necessarily moral if evidence contradicts it (If there are contradictions to saying X does that mean God MUST not have said it????). But now I’m just getting lost in what right and wrong really are and in what form they exist.)

He is an absolute ruler, and if He creates consequences after death for not following His law then He’s a tyrant. A dictator who destroys the individual that expresses itself in ways contrary to His desires. But then again you said earlier we might not have free will, so we’re not really expressing anything, just acting out a script.

I really do understand what you're saying here, that God shouldn't even offer us the choice between His way or death, or punish us for our lack of understanding. In fact, you're not the first to ask that, and Paul answered those questions with this:

Okay.

"What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at All! For He says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." It does not, therefore, depends on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth."

"Therefore, God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?" But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed is, 'Why did you make me like this?" Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble uses and some for common use? What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with patience the objects of his wrath--prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory".

Having mercy on whom He wants to show mercy, and hardness on who He wants to show hardness is disregarding issues of justice and injustice, simply exercising His will. So far nothing helpful here. As the hypothetical guy asks, “So we’re at the mercy of how His will blows?” Paul response to this also ignores issues of justice, simply stating that since God’s above you in a hierarchy, you have no right to complain or say anything really. I (God) can do whatever I want, tough cookies. Really, Paul didn‘t do anything to address my concerns here. So God purposefully set up half of us to fail to no fault of our own just so that there can be a contrast for the lucky ones made for the purpose of succeeding. Paul didn’t answer any questions, he rendered them moot by pointing out God’s clay is in no place to ask questions to begin with.

I also need to correct something I said earlier. Sin entered the world through Adam, like the unlocking of the door letting something evil and otherworldly sweep in and start consuming us. It's not like Adam awoke something that was already in us by His choice to disobey God. We're tainted because the door was opened.

I get the whole Pandora’s box aspect of the Adam and Eve story, but my point is that even if the evil wasn’t originally in Adam and Eve, it would be something fundamentally inside of future generations. Future people never existed in the purer state.

And believe me, I am willing to answer your questions, and trying my best. I'm not fielding you here and hoping some odd combolation of words will shock you into "seeing the light". But these aren't easily answered questions.

Np, I see that you’re having an honest conversation here, my point that you should be able to address certain questions wasn’t to accuse you of not trying you’re best, it was specifically referring to some of your arguments themselves, which I felt reached some conclusions without resolving some relevant issues.

I'm also not saying that a punishment must be equal to a crime. At least I wasn't trying to say that. Also, you did make the choice. Adam opened the door, but we seal our fates when we do something wrong. Adam's choice becomes immaterial after that. And even if it were you or me back at the start, we would have made the same choice. No one is righteous, and no one is without sin.

I am saying that a punishment should be equal to the crime though, because that’s what characterizes justice. And just because no one is completely righteous that doesn’t mean everyone is completely evil either. I don’t know why Christianity only emphasizes the later. We’re fundamentally gray beings by nature. We can’t choose to be that way any more than we can choose to have hormones or two eyes. To suggest that having the trait of being imperfect and therefore living life imperfectly amounts to some kind of conscious decision to be that way is bizarre.

Plus, you're not a limited being. You were created for the eternal. The fleshly part of you is limited, but your soul is everlasting. That's how you can be called upon to make an unlimited choice. Your body is just a robe wrapped around your soul, that will one day wear out. But you, your essence, is eternal.

When I say we’re limited I was referring to our minds and consciousness. Regardless of any kind of soul that may exist and perpetuate self, the scope of our understanding, perception, and experience is limited. We’re imperfect, yet held up to the light of perfection and told it’s our fault we’re that way.

And I don't equate knowing the truth with following it, I equate seeing God to being forced to follow Him. There's a verse in Revelation where it says that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. That's because the veil will have been lifted and the unbreakable truth shown. There will be no choice in the matter of that confession, because no other choice is available if the veil is gone.

Logic like this I just find so annoying, no offense. I feel this way because it just spits in the face of all common sense. No sane individual adheres to anything if they don’t think it’s real or correct. A major “duh” is due here. I can’t be a communist unless I BELIEVE the ideology. I either BELIEVE aliens exist or the earth is old or I don’t. Religions are called belief systems for a reason. Belief is the key word here. Similarly, being convinced that Jesus is the son of God and that Christianity is truth, BELIEVING, is a prerequisite to being a Christian. That’s not a choice. After someone knows the truth, knows that religion X is truth, or at least believes that that’s the case, they can then make a choice to follow it or not. Dispelling the veil wouldn’t force anyone to follow God, it would dispel ignorance and give everyone the information they need to make a choice. It would make everyone believe, and therefore everyone would have to make a choice, as opposed to simply going through life not knowing who Jesus is. With the truth revealed, following God would only be forced if God decided to do it that way.

The way I understand it, Jesus wants us to follow Him by faith. Faith is what saves us. "For by grace are ye saved through faith, and this not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast".

I tried to answer your questions about spending my entire life doing what I thought was good, but turning out I was wrong, above. Too, becoming perfect is not left up to us, but to us trusting Jesus.

I’m not sure I understand what your answer to my question was. Us trusting Jesus is up to us bro. As if believing Jesus exists.

The trinity isn't an unsolvable mystery. Even the word "mystery" in the Nt is the Greek word mysterion, meaning something revealed by God. It's three distinct persona's (think that's the right word) in one individual. Think about one man. He can be a father, a Brother, a Son, an uncle, ETC, but it's all one individual.

One man can’t be his own son. I just blew your analogy out of the water.

Jesus' sacrifice covers us because His blood pays for our cost. What we earn for our sin is death, it's our wages. Jesus had no sin, and so earned no death. Literally, He did not deserve to die. So when He died, He died in your place. For you, yes, but instead of you is a better term. He paid the check you wrote with His blood. Only an innocent person who owed nothing could do that. He paid for what we never could.

Justice is when one receives what is due to them. I don’t see how you could possibly pay for another’s sins, because the act of paying entails proportionality, satisfying justice. Jesus dying in my place is mercy on me, and cruelty for Him. No justice there. When one owes money, if I am to address your check reference, justice isn’t really the issue, money is. It doesn’t matter who pays it. For an actual crime, say a murder or something, if an innocent person volunteered to serve a murderer’s sentence that wouldn’t fly with any justice system in the world. Throwing some random innocent dude in jail wouldn’t accomplish anything, it wouldn’t benefit anyone. There would be no reason to put anyone but the guilty person in jail.

Reply is coming in a couple of days.

I DEMEAND REPLIES NAO

Sorry it took so long, but that's why I slapped that other post up there. I knew it'd take awhile because I wanted to study it more, perhaps talk to some folks.

If free will doesn't exist, then how does punishing beings who are slaves to fate make any sense? If you're destined to screw up or succeed before you're even born that sounds like God making us His robots or whatever your previous analogy was.... Free Will is pretty important to your argument here.

If He’s all powerful, then He would have know what the apple would eventually end up doing, and hence would have expected it to become an orange. And yet for some reason He still holds that predicted and designed orange to the standards of an apple.

And if I may take it further, why a whole cosmic game for expression, why this obsession with some kind of complete expression?

If I’m being honest? I've been trying to use my logic to explain an infinite God, and that’s arrogant on my part. I’ve told you that that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, and then claim to be able to understand Him and His ways. The discontinuity is pretty clear there. Not that I’m using that as a cop out or trying to bail.

Accepting that God is God, is accepting the fact I can’t comprehend Him and that He’ll blow my mind a lot. Remember when I said “God’s not God if He fit’s into my mind”?

All that is to say this: I don't understand why God created the world this way, I don't understand how He did so. I can use logic to say that God knows everything, being omniscient, and that being omnipotent, there is no power greater than Him, and therefore He determined history to play out the way it did. Also using logic, if God knew every outcome of every choice we would make, and acted on those, then free will is null. But God offers us choices as well. How does that work?

I don't understand how it works. I'm willing to admit that there's stuff I haven't figured out. I hope you won't think less of me for it. I have reason for trusting God, and reason for trusting the bible. Especially when I don't understand stuff.

Well yes, life is subjective and we each have a unique life experience and perception of things. Hence, nothing is ever completely clear, not even the bible, and it's completely understandably/reasonable for someone to come away from the bible thinking it's not truth. Yes, that applies to truth too, because I think your analogy misses the point that while we have different understandings of a subject, that the subject itself is factual is itself an understanding, a viewpoint, an opinion. When it comes to any subject matter, we do not read the same truth or untruth, but simply the same text which must then be filtered through our perception and minds, with our resulting understandings used to create further understandings of whether it's true or not.

Then how can truth exist? If the entirety of our literary and scientific understanding is all subjective opinion, why is it accepted as true and why is it even worthwhile? Something has to be real, or testing and concluding is useless.

Truth exists. It's not an opinion. The bible is part of that truth (part of it, meaning it's truth, not pieces of an incomplete truth) and so I trust it. People come away from it with different things, but there's only one truth in it. It's a lot like the discussion going on in Christian posts, and the point trying to be made there: There is only one truth, one way, and one life. Regardless of how people feel or read into something, or change aspects, if it deviates from the truth, it's wrong.

You may be sure there aren't, but that doesn't make it an objective fact. Hence it's left to be debated. My point against the bible is exactly that a God who created the world but couldn't write a book that would get through time is dumb. For you to resolve to believe the bible is perfect and ignore contradicting evidence, simply because to admit otherwise would poke holes in something you believe in, is intellectual suicide and incredibly dishonest. In any contemplation, other things may indeed make sense, if one doesn’t dogmatically hold onto a principle in spite of everything to the contrary, making the rest of the world fit to conform to that one (or group of) principles. I don’t mean that in a mean way, simply as an exposition of a logical fallacy.

It's not just me that's sure though. I hate to pull the L word into this (not that L word. >_>) but logically, the Bible has to be true, or God doesn't exist. Because a God that can't get His message through the ages is weak. If man could tamper with that message, that God is also weak. If Satan could tamper with that message, it means there's two gods, one evil and one good. The bible has to be true. It's a hinge upon which Christianity rests. Jesus quoted the bile, as did many of the apostles. If it's untrue, they lied or were lied too, as well. And if Jesus couldn't even distinguish truth...

Also, what evidence is there against the bible? I'm not committing intellectual suicide, and I try to avoid being dishonest.

Believing in something contradictory to evidence isna intellectual suicide. It just means you’re not willing to accept what others say because you don’t believe it’s true, and/or you believe proof will be found. What jumps to mind at the moment is the ye olde astronomers who used math to prove astronomic facts, but had no real proof. They denied what the mainstream said, and believed something else. Turned out they were right. Despite evidence to the contrary at the time. Would you consider that intellectual suicide? It’s considered not drinking the Kool-Aid.

I see the irony that it was, in fact, the Catholic church that did a good portion of the denial, but that’s not part of the point. XD

That’s what I’ve been arguing; that if He’s the creator of everything, then He is the absolute authority on the nature of everything. Right, wrong, concepts like greed, justice, and mercy are not objective realities, but creations of God, as God created everything. Therefore, what is right or wrong is simply a reflection of God's will, of what He wants right and wrong to be. This makes morality arbitrary, because if nothing spawned God, then He determines Himself all paradoxical-like. Right and wrong are independent of any kind of reality other than what God wants.

But God was not created. Right, wrong, and the concept of what sin is always existed within Him. He didn't pull a note pad up and start writing out what He thought was wrong one day. Justice is a part of him, like love. Not something He created.

Might doesn’t make right, but if you can make right and wrong through your might, well then maybe it does. That's what I was touching on earlier in this post, it's why I'm argueing God's law is arbitrary, and therefore detached from reality and not truly moral or immoral.

(I might be contradicting my own argument that what God says shouldn’t be followed just because He’s God and isn’t necessarily moral if evidence contradicts it (If there are contradictions to saying X does that mean God MUST not have said it????). But now I’m just getting lost in what right and wrong really are and in what form they exist.)

He is an absolute ruler, and if He creates consequences after death for not following His law then He’s a tyrant. A dictator who destroys the individual that expresses itself in ways contrary to His desires. But then again you said earlier we might not have free will, so we’re not really expressing anything, just acting out a script.

But God's laws are a part of Him, not just something He created for us to follow. In example, He did not create love, He is love. It's a part of Him. It's always existed. It's the same way with His justice.

If consequences for breaking the rules makes someone a tyrant, then the current government , your mom and dad, and nature, are all foul tyrants. Everlasting consequences are, I think, a result of the fact that a soul is everlasting. Think about this, if you speed and break the law, and get a ticket, does that mean the policeman is evil or that you broke a law and get punished?

Having mercy on whom He wants to show mercy, and hardness on who He wants to show hardness is disregarding issues of justice and injustice, simply exercising His will. So far nothing helpful here. As the hypothetical guy asks, “So we’re at the mercy of how His will blows?” Paul response to this also ignores issues of justice, simply stating that since God’s above you in a hierarchy, you have no right to complain or say anything really. I (God) can do whatever I want, tough cookies. Really, Paul didn‘t do anything to address my concerns here. So God purposefully set up half of us to fail to no fault of our own just so that there can be a contrast for the lucky ones made for the purpose of succeeding. Paul didn’t answer any questions, he rendered them moot by pointing out God’s clay is in no place to ask questions to begin with.

Again, I can't really answer this and I have doubts you'll accept a paradox. Speaking of which, I looked up a definition:

1. a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.

God's sovereignty plays a big role everything yeah but if God is God, and cannot be wrong, then it compares to taking a ruler who is never wrong, is perfect in entirety, then ask him to make laws and choose his servants. Who am I to question this man? I’m imperfect, I booger up a lot. So yeah, it’ll appear as though the superman is janking up, but since he can’t, it’s not an issue. It's trust.

I am saying that a punishment should be equal to the crime though, because that’s what characterizes justice. And just because no one is completely righteous that doesn’t mean everyone is completely evil either. I don’t know why Christianity only emphasizes the later. We’re fundamentally gray beings by nature. We can’t choose to be that way any more than we can choose to have hormones or two eyes. To suggest that having the trait of being imperfect and therefore living life imperfectly amounts to some kind of conscious decision to be that way is bizarre.

But everyone is completely evil. We're not slipping down a cliff gradually, hanging on to edges here and there, fallen. We're screaming like a little girl as we plummet into a void, fallen. That’s why salvation matters, and not just meeting God after death. Evil/good are not gray areas in the eyes of God, but black and white. Otherwise, the fall wouldn't have been a big deal, because Adam could have done something good to make himself not evil anymore. Salvation would be something we could achieve ourselves.

Again, I pull back up my political allegory. It's not your decision to be born in a country, you just are. It's your choice whether to leave or stay later, though.

Logic like this I just find so annoying, no offense. I feel this way because it just spits in the face of all common sense. No sane individual adheres to anything if they don’t think it’s real or correct. A major “duh” is due here. I can’t be a communist unless I BELIEVE the ideology. I either BELIEVE aliens exist or the earth is old or I don’t. Religions are called belief systems for a reason. Belief is the key word here. Similarly, being convinced that Jesus is the son of God and that Christianity is truth, BELIEVING, is a prerequisite to being a Christian. That’s not a choice. After someone knows the truth, knows that religion X is truth, or at least believes that that’s the case, they can then make a choice to follow it or not. Dispelling the veil wouldn’t force anyone to follow God, it would dispel ignorance and give everyone the information they need to make a choice. It would make everyone believe, and therefore everyone would have to make a choice, as opposed to simply going through life not knowing who Jesus is. With the truth revealed, following God would only be forced if God decided to do it that way.

That's not quite the way it is. I get the belief thing, but you're not hitting the scope of God here. To put it simply, God is a blinding white light shone into your eye. Belief wouldn't matter, ETC, the reality is that the light is painful. It's undeniable.

God came to earth in the form of Jesus, who showed through His actions that He was God, and still people deny Him. And really, there wasn't doubt in the matter. He raised the dead, healed every sickness, and controlled the weather. He even died, then resurrected. He was the ultimate witness for God, and people still den(y)ied Him.

One man can’t be his own son. I just blew your analogy out of the water.

This is a problem. You're taking analogies too literally, when their purpose to explain a more complicated point in a simple fashion. The definition is:

Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar.

It’s a comparison, not a duplicate. Besides the fact that God is demonstratively not human.

Justice is when one receives what is due to them. I don’t see how you could possibly pay for another’s sins, because the act of paying entails proportionality, satisfying justice. Jesus dying in my place is mercy on me, and cruelty for Him. No justice there. When one owes money, if I am to address your check reference, justice isn’t really the issue, money is. It doesn’t matter who pays it. For an actual crime, say a murder or something, if an innocent person volunteered to serve a murderer’s sentence that wouldn’t fly with any justice system in the world. Throwing some random innocent dude in jail wouldn’t accomplish anything, it wouldn’t benefit anyone. There would be no reason to put anyone but the guilty person in jail.

Right. And for being sinful our due is death. The problem is, we can’t pay that due. Only Jesus could, having no debt himself. The only aternative is eternal punishment, which God didn’t want. The thing about God’s justice is that it’s incontrovertible and unbreakable, because it's a part of Him. Another thing about it is that His love is greater than His justice, though it doesn't break it.

Jesus’ death was exactly mercy on us, the criminals, and cruelty on Him, the innocent. God did it because of His LOVE for us. It’s the case of the loving father paying for the son's crimes out of his own pocket. The reason you’re looking for to as to why the guilty person would stay out of jail? Love. LOVE is the reason. God’s justice can’t be broken, because that’d show Him unjust. Like a judge who acquits the guilty. Which is why He can’t simply flick His hands and do away with sin. But His love is huge. Far more than justice. So, though the judge can’t just dismiss our crimes, He was willing to pay for them himself.

Sorry I can't answer your questions though.

Kendrik wrote:

Chozon1 wrote:Eve may have eaten first, but that didn't mean Adam had to.

Later in chapter 3, during the curse, we can reason that Eve was deceived, but Adam chose to follow Eve instead of doing what he knew was right.

aka Adam sucks at least as much as Eve in that... but... I wouldn't have done any better.

Genesis 3:3 "But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, "Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die'."


I was taught that Cain was the son of Satan and Abel was the son of Adam. Eve was beguiled or seduced by the serpent in the garden. So seduction can only be linked to one thing. Sex. This is the original sin. The reason I say this is because Eve took of the serpent's fruit by touching him. In the Hebrew text the number for this word "touch" is # 5060 in the Strong's Hebrew dictionary. It reads; "Naga, neh-gah; a prime root, prop. to touch, i.e., lay the hand upon (for the purpose; euphemism, to lie with a woman), to reach, "

Genesis 3:13 "And the Lord God said unto the woman, "What is this that thou hast done?" And the woman said, "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat."

"The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat." Eve had intercourse with Satan and lost her virginity. From that union came Cain, the father of all Kenites.

Genesis 3:15 "And I [God] will put enmity between thee [Satan] and the woman [Eve], and between thy seed [the Kenites] and her Seed [Jesus Christ]; It [Christ] shall bruise thy [Satan's] head, and thou [Satan] shalt bruise His [Christ's] heel."

Eve's seed is our Lord Jesus Christ. While Satan's seed are the children, to the last generation, called the Kenites. Those offspring are born from the sexual union between Eve and Satan [the serpent, and the tree of good and evil]. God is telling us that He will put trouble between Eve's children [through Adam and Seth], and Satan's offspring through Cain, called the Kenites.

Genesis 3:16 "Unto the woman He said, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."

To "conceive" is to be impregnated with a child.

Genesis 4:1 "And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord."

To know means to have intercourse. My question is if Adam only laid with Eve once then how come Eve's conception was multiplied? Well, I will get to that.

Genesis 4:2 "And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground."

The word "again" in the Hebrew text was "Yacaph", #3254 in the Strong's Hebrew dictionary; "to continue, conceive again, to continue to do the same thing." What happens when a woman gives birth to one child, and "Continues to do the same thing" that she is doing? Of course, she has twins. These are not identical twins that Eve bare, for they had two different fathers.

Genesis 4:9 "And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother?" And he said, "I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?"

Cain knew what happened to Abel, for He slew him. Cain lied to God, which is another trait he received from his father Satan. The Lord knew what happened to Abel. Jesus even talked about what happened to Abel when confronted by the "Kenite" scribes and Pharisees of His day.

John 8:44 "Ye are of your father the Devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."

This is how I know that the offspring of Cain belongs to Satan. If you look at Genesis 5, the generations of Adam start and that is where the pure bloodline of Adam begins. Remember that Eve is the mother of all life. So this is easy to see why Cain would not be in the Adamic bloodline.

interesting theory, I can understand some of the arguments made

Chapter 4

1 And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD. (that sounds pretty cause and effect to me...seems like Adam is the father here)

2 And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. (Here I'm assuming Abel was made in the same fashion...they are brothers but I see no mention of them being twins, sounds like two separate incidents)

ccgr wrote:interesting theory, I can understand some of the arguments made

Chapter 4

1 And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD. (that sounds pretty cause and effect to me...seems like Adam is the father here)

2 And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. (Here I'm assuming Abel was made in the same fashion...they are brothers but I see no mention of them being twins, sounds like two separate incidents)

Genesis happens to be one of my favorite subjects. I just had to chime in my thoughts. I am sure I will probably contribute more to this topic.

The word "seed" is from the Hebrew word "zera" which means "seed, fruit, plant, posterity", from "zara" meaning "bear, conceive seed". The same word in Greek is "sperma", which means "that which is sown, the germ of anything, children, offspring, posterity, progeny, descendants".

The "seed" in Genesis 3:15 refers to that seed which the woman had been impregnated with by Adam as opposed to the seed implanted in her by the Serpent. Because Eve came forth from Adam's side, she was thus a part of Adam. Therefore that which was Adam's seed was rightfully also Eve's seed, which was Abel. And Cain, who was not of Adam, was not her seed in any way. Hence, Eve was only able to say that she had "gotten (not begotten) a man from the Lord" (Gen.4:1). Cain was the seed of the Serpent. The Serpent, in seducing Eve, intruded on Adam's garden (cf. Song of Solomon 4:12,16; 5:1; 6:2) and implanted that physical seed. Eve, in eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, brought forth the fruit of Death from her womb.

The word "serpent" came from the Hebrew word "nachash" and has the following meanings: "hiss", that is, "whisper a (magic) spell"; "a divine enchanter"; "use enchantment"; "learn by experience". "Subtile" is not just cunning but also wise and intelligent, having a knowledge of the understanding of life as well.

When the Devil-possessed Serpent committed fornication with the woman, that animal's seed was planted in her womb and became fused with her egg resulting in the birth of a hybrid — Cain — a perverted seed! And death came into the world! Yet DEATH was not in the seed NATURAL, but in the seed SPIRITUAL, for man originally was created a spirit being first and later put into a body of clay (Gen.1:26-27; 2:7).

Being a cross-breed of the Serpent and the woman, Cain, the son of the Serpent, inherited a part of Eve's nature, the nature of the Spirit of God which was in Adam. Remember that Adam and Eve, who were created in the image and likeness of God, had sin imputed upon them after the Fall. The image and likeness of God in them were thus "stained" by sin, so to speak. Hence, Seth (who was a substitute for Abel) and all his descendants could only bear the image and likeness of Adam (Gen.5:3). However, Cain, being a hybrid, did not bear the image and likeness of Adam, who was a son of God. He was a mongrel with a marred (or damaged) image and likeness of mankind. Falling short of that glorious image of God means spiritual death.

However, Satan, through the Serpent, must have had, over a period of time, indoctrinated Eve about partaking of the other tree, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and finally tempted her to eat of it. "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and give also unto her husband with her: and he did eat" (Gen.3:6).


"Woe unto them that call evil good...! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!" — Isaiah 5:20a, 21


Instead of eating of the Tree of Life in the midst of the garden at the appointed time and season, Adam and his wife, partook of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (which was also in the midst of the garden) of which God had commanded them not to do so.

The fruit of disobedience, the partaking of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, was the conception of Cain. Cain was a hybrid in a world where all living things were pure breeds. He was a discrepancy who disrupted the order of God. He was the seed of the Serpent (Gen.3:15) and the "son" of the Wicked One -- Satan (1Jhn.3:12). He was a part of Satan's plan to destroy the Plan of God.

Eve was a part of Adam because she was taken out of Adam. And Adam was supposed to join himself to Eve that they should become one flesh. But before Adam could copulate with Eve, the Devil had caused her to fornicate with the Serpent. Eve broke God’s divine commandment when she used her sexual organ for pleasure in her fornication with the Serpent. Being defiled, Eve was no longer suitable to be Adam’s wife. Adam knew that he would lose Eve forever when God should pass judgement upon her. Therefore, in order to "redeem" Eve, Adam must identify with Eve while she was yet in her sin (and "the wages of sin is death" – Rom.6:23). Adam had to join himself to Eve, who was a part of himself, in order to identify with her sexual passion even though he knew that she was defiled. However, "Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression" (1Tim.2:14).

Let me emphasize again. The Woman was deceived not into fornication per se but the partaking of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil which she then gave it to the Man. So, what then was it that Adam ate? He partook of the same that Eve partook — perverted knowledge. Adam knew Eve had done wrong. He knew that God would take her in death and that would mean Adam would lose his mate, his bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh. When that happened he would have no one else to spend his life with on the earth except having the animals, birds and other creatures for companions What would Adam do? Simple. He would have to do what His Heavenly Father expected him to do. Like Christ Jesus, Adam had to redeem his wife, his bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh. So he had to identify with her sin, brought about by the partaking of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Perverted Knowledge). Adam was really taking the blame for his wife. [Note: Jesus Christ, the second Man, typed Adam when He came to identify with us. For "while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom.5:8). He came "in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh" (Rom.2:3). "For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Heb.4:5 cf. Isa.53:5).

When Adam and his wife had partaken of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, sin was imputed upon them and the result was DEATH. Since they chose this forbidden tree of perverted knowledge, they had to reap its result and drink of the bitter cup.

Therefore the Divine Tree of Life (the Perfect Law of God) which governed the perfect purpose of the relation of life in the Divine Plan of God was never allowed to manifest. God had kept it (Genesis 3:22-24) but brought it forth about 4000 years later in the Person of Jesus Christ. Christ Jesus is the very Personification of the Divine Life and Purpose of God — the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is the True Wisdom (1Cor.1:24 cf. Prov.3:13, 18, 19). Whosoever eats (partakes) of Him shall have Eternal Life (Jhn.6:47-58). Without this relation to Him as the Tree of Life there is no Eternal Life.

Source:
http://www.propheticrevelation.net/orig ... seed_3.htm

I'm not sure I'm buying into that theory..wouldn't cross mixing species make Cain sterile too? That article is a fascinating read and I'll have to look over it some more.

It's an interesting theory, Genesis has a lot of mysteries and the Giants references make me curious as well. I'd have to chalk this debate into the "I'd have to go back into time and see it to believe it"

ccgr wrote:I'm not sure I'm buying into that theory..wouldn't cross mixing species make Cain sterile too? That article is a fascinating read and I'll have to look over it some more.

It's an interesting theory, Genesis has a lot of mysteries and the Giants references make me curious as well. I'd have to chalk this debate into the "I'd have to go back into time and see it to believe it"

I have more sites that refer to this.

http://www.biblestudysite.com/

http://www.theseason.org/

Both follow The Shepherd's Chapel TV bible studies with pastor Arnold Murry. I have been watching this for a few months and alot of the teaching is very interesting.

My hubby is familiar with Arnold Murry and his teachings, in fact it was him who helped him accept the Bible over people's words and doctrine. In hind sight he finds Mr Murry's teachings rather questionable and needing the same advice applied to it.

ccgr wrote:My hubby is familiar with Arnold Murry and his teachings, in fact it was him who helped him accept the Bible over people's words and doctrine. In hind sight he finds Mr Murry's teachings rather questionable and needing the same advice applied to it.

I have learned that interpretation of the bible depends on each person's understanding. Yet I know I must not lean on my understanding but God's understanding but also in all thy getting, get an understanding. I understand tat Arnold Murray is a man and may also have faults in his own teaching but I like that he lays it out plain and simple.