More on God...

Let's say that God is ALL powerful.

Why would he:

1). Create evil?
2). Sacrifice his son (who is he protecting us from)
3). Hide from us?

just curiooose

I don't believe that Jesus was really his "son", in a family sense. Just a gifted spiritualist.

Evil is here because we're on a hard-level planet. Just like putting Mario on a dangerous world in a video game.

God isn't hiding from us. We're hiding from him.

I like this... well said. Like a test.


So you think God is apparent to those who look?

Toose:

Mmmhmm. I don't think you're gonna find an old man's face in the sky saying, "Hello, Toose. I am God. Want a Hershey kiss?" If you do, tell us about it. However, you can find God in yourself, in other living things... essentially everything that is matter. It matters! God makes it all work. Everything here is connected by energy, in this realm and in others. Electricity is the way. Know how when your TV goes out and you get that static? Imagine that static is the force of God and the programs on TV are us. Has your TV ever gone out at night for no reason, only to come back later? It's because something from another realm is saying hello. Everybody in those places are off doing their own things. We're left alone here because we're supposed to be. When we die, we go out like a TV and we go beyond the static, but everyone else still alive just sees the static.

Let God look for you. You're supposed to be "on the air". Yes, we're hiding from God, but many of us are supposed to. If you want God to find you, go LIVE on your TV program and ask for God to call you. Give him the 1-800 number. You'll hear the voice when he calls.

Uh oh, another profound spiritual question that I don't think I can answer.

But here is how I feel in a nutshell:

I believe we are a part of God. The human race is like the gestalt of higher power. Like God is the pie crust, and we are the individual pieces cut up into millions. Therefore we are free to do with our slice what we want.

Evil is done by evil people. We create evil. Some people are very good at doing evil, say the way Martha Stewart is good at doing dinner parties. But just like a dinner party there are consequences; like cleaning up. Evil people don't mind the consequences. In fact an evil person is so driven to do what is percieved as bad by others, that they forget they are living within the consequences of their own actions.


Sacrifice is a choice. Everyone has sacraficed something or another in their life and it was usually a gift to someone other than him/herself. That sacrafice also made life better for everyone.

Now if you subscribe to what I believe; that everyone in the world is just a piece of God, and together we make up God entirely, then you'll see that God is not hiding, we are simply not looking.

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I have been formatted to fit this screen.

r66-The member who always asks WHY?

I don't think He created evil, so much as endowed us with the ability to do as we please.


Justice, in a sense. Lewis says well on the matter: don't think of it as a crime to be punished for, so much as a debt to be payed. Jesus paid on our behalf. He also put it another way:

"Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it."


Perhaps it is a test of sorts, which is why we find so many "clues" as to His existence all around us. Then again, you could make the case that He's not hiding from us at all.

It helps me to envision a giant sign that some of us are standing right next to; it should be the most obvious thing in your surroundings -- because it is so near, and so large -- but as we all know, you can't read it standing alongside it. You need to back away. To see God, you need to step back, mentally, and see the message that was right next to you the whole time. Think of the library scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Citing Lewis as a reference? That is new.
Almost as new as me being a jerk in a God thread.

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www.esotericrabbit.com

That second line was supposed to be mine.

Punk.

I know. I edited it in before you had the chance.

God? If you can hear me...please, no more God threads.

PLEASE!!!!

__________________
"Today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."

hey, questions of a theological nature can be fun and enlightenning, slayton. just ask samuel beckett:

"Certain questions of a theological nature preoccupied me strangely. As for example.
1. What value is to be attached to the theory that Eve sprang, not from Adam's rib, but from a tumour in the fat of his leg (arse?)?
2. Did the serpent crawl, or as Comestor affirms, walk upright?
3. Did Mary conceive through the ear, as Augustine and Adobard assert?
4. How much longer are we to hang about waiting for the antichrist?
5. Does it really matter which hand is employed to absterege the podex?
6. What is one to think of the Irish oath sworn by the natives with the right hand on the relics of the saints and the left on the virile member?
7. Does nature observe the Sabbath?
8. Is it true that the devils do not feel the pains of hell?
9. The algebraic theology of Craig. What is one to think of this?
10. Is it true that the infant Saint-Roch refused to suck on Wednesdays and Fridays?
11. What is one to think of the excommunication of vermin in the sixteenth century?
12. Is one to approve of the Italian cobbler Lovat who, having cut off his testicles, crucified himself?
13. What was God doing with himself before the creation?
14. Might not the beatific vision become a source of boredom, in the long run?
15. Is it true that Judas’ torments are suspended on Saturdays?
16. What if the mass for the dead were read over the living?"

-molloy

But biblical evil is supernatural and cannot be created by man... please don't think I'm being intenntionally abrasive... I've NOT studied the bible much.

But to whom? It's like paying the bully your lunch money to protect yourself from him... that's not a good example but do you get a sense of where I'm going?

What more meaningful topic is there? There isn't one that matters more and we've not even scratched the surface of WE can imagine... much less the imagination of a supreme being.

Personally, I can only talk about other things (sex, film, drugs, money, etc) before it ends up going down this road again.

Sorry if it bugs you...

Nah, it doesn't bother me. It just winds up being the same thing all the time, at least it seems that way.

1. Because without Evil, how could you know what is good?

2. I thought Jesus sacrificed himself to cleanse the world of its sins. I don't remember God crucifying him anywhere in the bible, or Him telling his son to hop on board the big T.

3. This I have no answer for.

__________________
"The good fight, yeah? You never know until you'e been tested. I get that now." - Allen Francis Doyle

Um, isn't the rule no deleting posts AT ALL? That was the number one rule when I got my mod duties. And I sure don't appreciate having my post deleted. I wants it back. And I wants it back now.

I was in the wrong thread. Wow. Disregard.

Don't worry; I'm not taking it the wrong way. Anyway, Biblical evil is supernatural, sure; but the same rules apply. Lucifer has Free Will just as we do, I believe, and as such has exercised it so as to rebel against God.


Yes, I think so. You're basically saying "why do we need to be saved by a sacrifice? Can't God just wipe our slate clean?"

To that I'd say this: technically, sure, but God is as much about justice as He is about love and compassion, so that consequences are inevitable. A truly just God couldn't necessarily forgive everything without ANY consequence, because such a God would be a bit of a softie/pushover. At least in my mind. The fact that a sacrifice was required impresses upon all of us the gravity of sin.


That's pretty much my philosophy, too. It probably seems redundant to those who are not enthralled by it, but then again, the same could be said for the bulk of movie-related threads here in regards to someone who doesn't care much for movies. The thing is, when you're into it, you look at it up close and appreciate the subtle differences in each exchange, even if they're similar. The same goes with the various discussion relating to God.

I must respectfully disagree with this. Doesn't this kind of logic dictate that God is FORCED to create Evil, in a sense? Or forced to co-exist with it at ALL times, even before our creation? Or is God somehow exempt?

I'm of the mind that goodness can stand on its own, but badness cannot. No one really desires badness unless they derive some satisfaction or pleasure from it. People can delight in being good for its own sake, but I don't think the same can be said for being bad. I believe badness NEEDS goodness to even exist in the first place just as orange cannot exist without the existence of red. Badness is goodness perverted, and thus, is contingent on goodness existing (on its own) before it.

Thanks SB, really, I needed that!