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It's your god...your man made god with all his EGOMANIACAL SADISTIC HUMAN CHARACTERISTICS...who orders the senseless slaughter of women, children and bashing babies heads against rocks. Sounds more like the devil to me...and not any god I would ever worship or bow down to.
Seriously...do these descriptions (which are in the bible) sound like someone that we should be in AWE of??????????? I would equate it to worshiping Hitler.
You mean a God that:
1. bothered to give you life. He didn't have to, ya know.
2. Gave us many gifts in this life, like taste buds to enjoy food, the pleasure and intimacy of sex.
3. A God that gaves us the ability to mentally check out of this world at the end of the day by enjoying sleep and dreams.
4. A God that created dogs as an animal companion for humans. Being a huge dog lover, I'm partial to this one.
5. A God that has provided a way, despite our sins, to enjoy eternal life, free of pain and sorrow.
6. A God that created every human as unique and different. There will never be another person exactly like you.
7. A God that created us with a need to love and feel love.
8. A God who is the creator of the universe yet He still takes interest and listens to the smallest of prayers. See the White Rose story:
Of course, you want to ignore all the positive and focus on a few OT stories without complete knowledge of the circumstances. That's pretty judgemental and short sighted to me.
BTW, women can be evil and wicked too, ya know. Are you really going to suggest that baby burning Amalekites deserved to spared?
Can anyone explain to me how Christianity can teach that God is LOVE...or that God LOVES UNCONDITIONALLY (which is what Christians are commanded to do)...but you must (then placing conditions on that LOVE) believe (which is truly pointless IMHO if one is not actually walking the walk) so you won't burn in eternity.
How can one LOVE UNCONDTIONALLY and then have CONDITIONS for that LOVE????
God's eternal love through Jesus is like that of the Buddha's. You have to contimplate it, and you have to live the phylosophy of eternal life in order to understand it (recieve it). The wisdom of the Buddha was such that he knew that to help someone going through a spiritual (or otherwise) rebirth, it takes guidance and compassion, hence, the Tebetan Book Of The Dead. Christians absorb the deity of Christ on the cross, and they have him as a source of guidance and compassion through the very same in-betweens. So his love is unconditional, but to recieve God's eternal compassion through Christ, you have to take him into your heart, which then in turn you live the phylosophy of life eternal, which in turn you can then contimplate, and recieve God's eternal compassion.
Of course, you want to ignore all the positive and focus on a few OT stories without complete knowledge of the circumstances. That's pretty judgemental and short sighted to me.
While the Old Testament contains some horrible depictions of God, New Testament dogma helps colour that picture in.
While a cynic and a skeptic, I still expect much of my fellow man hold them to some fairly high standards of behaviour. I expect that God should at least live up to my expectations of my fellow man, and should likely exceed those expectations. Unfortunately, the God that conservative people of faith worship falls far far short.
While the Old Testament contains some horrible depictions of God, New Testament dogma helps colour that picture in.
While a cynic and a skeptic, I still expect much of my fellow man hold them to some fairly high standards of behaviour. I expect that God should at least live up to my expectations of my fellow man, and should likely exceed those expectations. Unfortunately, the God that conservative people of faith worship falls far far short.
How can the unrighteous sinner determine what is righteous and good?
How can the unrighteous sinner determine what is righteous and good?
It's quite easy, through observation.
I'm sure it's been laid out in these forums many times before, but I'll try my best.
Let's pretend I'm having lunch with my good buddy Fred. We're enjoying our lunch immensely and somewhere across town a school bus full of school children stalls on some railroad tracks just as the 3:15 from San Francisco is rolling into town. The train hits the bus and sadly there is much devastation and death. I continue in my lunch with my good buddy Fred, sad at the headlines that we see crawling across the TV screens but there was nothing we could do, and our relationship is unaffected.
FAST REWIND...
Let's pretend I'm having lunch with my good buddy Fred. We're enjoying our lunch immensely when suddenly Fred looks up and says "You know there's a school bus that's going to be stuck on some railroad tracks and hit by a train in a few minutes." We get on our cellphones, but it's too late, somewhere across town a school bus full of school children does stall on some railroad tracks just as the 3:15 from San Francisco is rolling into town. The train hits the bus and sadly there is much devastation and death. I continue in my lunch with my good buddy Fred, puzzled that he was able to predict the sad headlines that we see crawling across the TV screens but we did what we could do, and our relationship is unaffected.
FAST REWIND...
Let's pretend I'm having lunch with my good buddy Fred. We're enjoying our lunch immensely when suddenly Fred looks up and says "You know there's a school bus that's going to be stuck on some railroad tracks and hit by a train in a few minutes." He grabs my hand and says, "come with me," and poof we're at the railroad crossing but it's too late, a school bus full of school children has stalled on the railroad tracks just as the 3:15 from San Francisco is rolling into town. We stand there in shock, as the train hits the bus. Sadly there is much devastation and death. Lunch is forgotten as I stand there with my good buddy Fred, stunned that he was able to both predict the crash and get us to the scene before it happened but knowing there was nothing that he could have done to prevent the tragedy, our relationship is unaffected.
FAST REWIND...
Let's pretend I'm having lunch with my good buddy Fred. We're enjoying our lunch immensely when suddenly Fred looks up and says "You know there's a school bus that's going to be stuck on some railroad tracks and hit by a train in a few minutes." He grabs my hand and says, "come with me," and poof we're at the railroad crossing but it's too late, a school bus full of school children has stalled on the railroad tracks just as the 3:15 from San Francisco is rolling into town. We stand there in shock, as the train hits the bus. Sadly there is much devastation and death. Lunch is forgotten as I watch my good buddy Fred, wade into the destruction and start picking up train engines and cars, observing the carnage. Stunned that he was able to both predict the crash and get us to the scene before it happened. Absolutely boggled that he is powerful enough to pick up locomotives and move them around, I walk up to him, "Hey Fred, you're really really powerful, why didn't you stop the train?"
His response, "Oh, I could have but I chose not to."
I look at him a moment, "You knew this was going to happen, you were able to get us here in time, and you could have stopped the train if you wanted to?"
"You saw the way I just picked up those engines like they were nothing, of course I could have stopped the train. I just didn't feel like doing so."
I doubt very much that you would accept that behaviour from another human being, yet you accept it from your God, and excuse it with platitudes "God works in mysterious ways." or "His ways are not our ways" or "Who knows the mind of God."
Of course, you want to ignore all the positive and focus on a few OT stories without complete knowledge of the circumstances. That's pretty judgemental and short sighted to me.
BTW, women can be evil and wicked too, ya know. Are you really going to suggest that baby burning Amalekites deserved to spared?
I focus on the positive of my Source/God...because that's ALL there is to focus on. My Source/God is PURE UNCONDITIONAL AGAPE LOVE...yours (based on the biblical descriptions) is sadistic, egomaniacal, vengeful, jealous, etc...hard to focus on anything positive with your god given his humanistic egoic traits.
How can the unrighteous sinner determine what is righteous and good?
"Which of you [unrighteous sinners], being evil, if your child ask you for bread, would give him a serpent? ... if you [unrighteous sinners] then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father which is in heaven give good things to those who ask for them?"
--Jesus
So ... it turns out that us wicked sinners have moral sense, and god has promised to exceed even our expectations. Oh, and we know how to raise our children, too ... and god has promised to do a better job with his children than we do for our own.
We're still waiting.
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