Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Only if you're deaf and blind could you not hear it and see it. Ask for the hearing ear, and the eyes of your understanding to be opened. I'll agree with you in that prayer. Peace
Right, I gotta speak the "language" and study the "method."
Right, I gotta speak the "language" and study the "method."
No, you first have to learn line upon line and BELIEVE, which is really tough when you throw out 9/10 of the books to write your own version. BUT, if you overcome that disability, then He will teach you precept upon precept. The choice is yours. Peace
She's woven an intricate web and is now trapped within its strands.
Out of the mouth of babes....what a perfect illustration you brought up. The carnal minds of men are like a spider. They created strands of webs to trap the soul of man, in them, and one to another, until there is no likelihood they will ever repent and turn to Him to receive the mind of Christ, at which point the STING of SIN, the venom of the spider gets it's victim paralyzed with sin, not able to move in the Spirit AT ALL, a sitting duck. Then sin, when it has conceived, bringeth forth death.
I've seen what the carnal minds of men create of their victims in what is called "purgatory" the holdover place for the souls of men, and it's not pretty. Receive the Spirit that is Christ while you can in this life. Peace
Out of the mouth of babes....what a perfect illustration you brought up. The carnal minds of men are like a spider. They created strands of webs to trap the soul of man, in them, and one to another, until there is no likelihood they will ever repent and turn to Him to receive the mind of Christ, at which point the STING of SIN, the venom of the spider gets it's victim paralyzed with sin, not able to move in the Spirit AT ALL, a sitting duck. Then sin, when it has conceived, bringeth forth death.
I've seen what the carnal minds of men create of their victims in what is called "purgatory" the holdover place for the souls of men, and it's not pretty. Receive the Spirit that is Christ while you can in this life. Peace
I find it rather sad that any Christian would think so little about the very God he worships. So let me break it down for you -- as I've done with every other Christian who has the same beliefs as you do.
Problem 1: "God CAN do what he wants."
If God can do what he wants, it means God has no moral compass and therefore can't be trusted. One may as well put your life (and eternal soul) into the hands of a sociopath. If God has the right to murder you for any whismical reason he comes up with, then he also has the right to lie to you, to deceive you, to coerse you into worshiping him. It means that God might be lying to you about Heaven. Perhaps everyone goes to Hell because of Original Sin, but God wants your love and worship and thus says whatever he has to in order to obtain it.
Why not? If God has no moral code and can do whatever the hell he wants with no consequences, how can God be trusted to tell the truth ... about anything whatsoever?
Problem 2: "God CAN do what he wants." The question here is whether or not God *actually* does what he wants. Just because CAN do what he wants doesn't mean he will.
Unfortunately, going by what the Bible says, yes, God does do precisely what he wants even if it flies in the face of humanity's idea of what it means to be good, just, fair, loving, and forgiving. If sending two bears to tear apart 42 little children merely because they called Elisha "old baldhead" (2 Kings 2:23-25) can be considered good, just, fair, loving, and forgiving, morality itself is literally turned on its head.
This one incident (and there are oodles of other examples) shows that God behaves more like a psychopath than a magnificent being with a rigid moral system that he, himself, decided was worth following. One cannot be inherently good while simultaneously committing heinous, atrocious acts of barbarity. One cannot make the claim that an act of pure evil suddenly becomes a justified act of goodness just because God was the one who committed the act. Morality exists independently of the actor -- the nature of the act does not change depending on who the actor is.
This would be the equivalent of saying the Holocaust was evil only because it was Hitler who caused it. But if Mother Theresa had orchestrated the Holocaust, well then, the Holocaust was a good and justified act because Mother Theresa was inherently good. Surely you can see that this is a truly twisted way of seeing morality.
Problem 3: "And our small minds are not able to, nor should the [sic.] be worthy of judging him."
Wrong.
First of all, you're judging him, as well. You're judging God to be a whole host of things: perfect, good, omnipotent, loving, fair, just, honest, etc. etc. etc.
Those are judgments. They might be positive judgments, but they are still judgments.
Secondly, the concept of humans having puny, unworthy minds in comparison to God doesn't get God off the hook in this case.
Here's why: If God's moral compass is so alien to we humans that sending bears to murder 42 little kids for a stupidly petty reason becomes acceptable behavior, then we're essentially back to problem 1.
In other words, God's moral compass is so beyond our ken that God's morality becomes unpredictable. If we cannot judge God by our own standards of right and wrong, good and evil -- moral standards that ostensibly COME from God, I should point out -- then we still have no idea if God can be trusted.
Perhaps, by his alien, unfathomable moral code, lying to humans or deceiving us to obtain love and worship is perfectly acceptable behavior. It still means that there's no reason to trust God or to believe even a single word that comes out of his divine pie-hole.
Oh sure, you can retreat back to the ages-old "faith" argument and claim that God would never do such a thing. Except ... you can't know that. Oh, and by saying he would never lie to us, well, guess what, there you go judging God again.
The fact is that if God can and does do whatever he wants -- or if God's morality is simply too alien for us to understand, then there is absolutely no reason to believe that God is trustworthy. Having "faith" that he *is* trustworthy despite the horrific atrocities God either committed himself or told others to do in his name is just plain lunacy.
It is cognitive dissonance at its finest.
Morality cannot be "whatever God wants it to be at any particular time" otherwise the word "morality" itself has no meaning. It's just a word to describe the whimsy and arbitrary actions of a God you've trapped yourself into *having* to believe is both perfect and moral at the same time. Thus, even though you have to know in the back of your mind that what I'm saying is true, you'll still try to deny it and justify God's evil antics with weak and ultimately destructive arguments like the one you presented here.
I believe she is the only one that has ever come close to answering this question:
How exactly does it happen that normal human beings, all endowed with that of a conscience, having an awareness of individual responsibility for their judgments and choices; manage to justify in their own eyes the most inhuman atrocities and acts of self-righteousness without running into intolerable cognitive dissonance within their own supreme values?
Those who carry the virus of dehumanization have not been able to answer.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
