Charismatic Chaos

I'm not sure what your objection is. Ultimately you either love what God stands for and want to spend an eternity in a realm containing that. Or you don't.God has set a mechanism in place whereby we are the one's who (effectively) get to choose where it is we end up. In a realm containing God and what he stands for, or in a realm containing God and what he stands opposed to. The choice presented us is made a balanced one too.It's a simple offer ultimately and I see absolutely no cause for complaint. Perhaps you could skip past the posturing, cut to the chase and tell me precisely what problem you have with the way it is (assuming I describe it as the way it is).- Correction. God created human with a will that could chose equally either way. When man fell and in doing so, obtained a strong desire to sin, God countered that imbalancing of the former free will with a knowledge of good and evil.Our will might not be free in the sense that Adam and Eve were free. But it's effectively free, our imbalanced nature being compensated for by Gods work via conscience.

True. And I'd point out at this stage that our will isn't free in the sense created by God in Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve, I'd argue were the first and last (bar Christ) to have a free, unfettered will. Once sin entered man, man's will was skewed by an addiction. An addiction and tendency towards Sin.We can't speak of an addict having a free will. So I usually put the word 'effective' before the words 'free will' when talking of the will of post-fall humans. The imbalance caused by our natures addiction to sin is countered by conscience which gives our choice an balance as if we had an Adamic style free will.We could go into that more if you like. But for the purposes of considering the justness of God's dealing with mankind, I consider us to have a free will.- What matters is that you have a range of things to choose for in order that your choice wrt to your eternal destination can be established. There is no need to give you the possibility to do simply anything in order to give you sufficient for the purposes intended.Free will as I understand it, involves the ability to chose equally either way; without predisposition or undue influence pushing you in a particular direction. It might simply involve eating a particular fruit or no. It is not diminished by the inability to choose to fly.Desiring to hurt someone doesn't involve the same degree of wickedness as actually pulling out their fingernails. Given that our evil brings consequences which can be utilised by the mechanism of salvation, we shouldn't object to our evil be left to run riot. It might very well be the saving of us - and the person on whom we inflict suffering.- See what I mean by free will above. It should deal with this.- Gods ultimate purpose for all of us is that we have opportunity to say yes/no to his desire to form an eternal loving relationship with us. Because we are all fallen, our natural tendency, whether we're the ones pulling someones fingernails out or whether we're the one whose fingernails are being pulled out; is to resist God's advances.Inflicting evil involves the suffering of a guilty conscience. Experiencing evil involves the suffering of being treated unrighteously. All people do both. And so all people suffer. Suffering is natures (and thus God's) way of telling us that there is something wrong. And there is something wrong: we're lost sinners heading towards wrath.You're suggesting that God should eliminate one of the central things that might bring us to our knees before God? To do so would diminish the opportunity for our salvation - why on earth should God do that.He want's us saved and went to extraordinary personal suffering to enable that.

Despite it being pointed out to you a couple of times now, you persist in ignoring something which operates in addition to, and contra, the sinful nature.The (God powered) conscience.Sin is our responsibility - arrived at in the following way (as far as I can make out) We are the ones to cut the restraint imposed by conscience - we do this in order to have what sin offers. That we have a nature that chases after evil like mice after cheese isn't the end of the story. If it was, we'd have a fair case at Judgement seeing as we didn't ask for this sin-loving nature.Along with the joy of doing evil comes something else. It's a 'force' called 'guilt and shame'. Guilt and shame aim to bring us to our knees before God, it aimed to disturb us, to upset us, to make us unhappy about ourselves in our sin. It's a resistable force of course: it can be denied and buried. It can even be denied and buried til your dying day.If damned you'll acknowledge that it was you who insisted on persisting with your addiction when a way out was made available to you. You're not to blame for being born with an addiction. But you are to blame for insisting in persisting along with it when it wasn't necessary or inevitable that you do. Your persistance denied what the truth was trying to tell you about you - that you're evil at heart.In this way you're culpable for your sin. The addict who refuses to escape from his addiction and refuses to acknowledge his addiction - despite evidence to the contrary is responsible for actions taken due to his addiction.I'll try and get back to this later..Edited by iano, : clarifying ideas

a) God isn't your parent. Far from it at the moment. So that attempt to draw comparisons needs serious re-working. At this moment you're position before God is variously described as; rebel, God-hating, foolish, child of Satan. Do continue along that vein if you must..b) The option to drop out of the game isn't available. It's eternity with God is love or eternity with God is wrath.c) We are made in Gods image and likeness and as a result are relational, creative, loving, etc, etc. If you want to live without God then you can live without those aspects of God for a start. Indeed, the environment of Hell would appear to involve just that - your being stripped of the image of God in which you were made. The results don't look all that attractive.

Indeed. And the point has been made that if God has indeed installed his sense of right and wrong in you then there is no need for you to have information as to his existance in order to decide on the issues he utilises in allowing you to determine your eternal destination."All we can ever do..."You're doing it already, Stile. Hundreds of times a day in all likelyhood- Spoken like a lost man. A man who wants the light but not the electricty, the sound but not the musician. Seriously Stile, the most fascinating being in the whole Universe, the one who would be the source of your purpose (your own purpose being a self-generated illusion).And you can do without.- All you're expressing is your lostness and hatred for God, Stile. If you were God? The thing is you are not God. You are a creation of God (if somewhat sullied by sin) and you were created for a reason (somewhat succintly put as "to love God and enjoy him forever".).Any other idea you have about the way it should be is the result of Sin in you. And Sin in you does as Sin in people always does. It makes them God hating slanderers and rebels, waving their tiny fists at God not realising whose grid they are plugged into - when they raise their fists so.It was never the deal that you would rebel for ever. The deal is that you acknowledge your creator for who he is (w.r.t. you) and take up the position he assigned for you (which is the correct and fitting thing for you to do). Or continue in your rebellion to the end as you are currently doing.Assuming for the moment that it's only evil that has a man rebel from God, would not the wise thing to do be to ask God that if this be so, you'd request that he show you a way out of your dilemma. Even if you don't yet believe that evil is the reason why you show God so litle respect.- As per above: who said that you're not making relevant decisions regarding your eternal destination all day long. You've vented quite a few in this post already. For example.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

That's all we're doing; assuming for the sake of argument.- The purpose of the conscience isn't to curb sin uber-effectively. The role of the conscience is to;a) Apply resistable restraint to our natures desire to sin.b) Apply suppressible guilt and shame after we've resisted the restraint above, and followed our natures desire.Resisting the restraint of conscience is a wilful act and so we are rendered culpable for our sin. We earn the guilt and shame that follow. That guilt and shame is intended to finally cause us to arrive at the conclusion that we are what we actually are: rotten sinners. If it does it's work, we'll be convinced of what we need convincing of and so will be saved. The only way it won't do it's work is if we persist in suppressing it so that it can't do it's work.And so we'll be lost.Our lawbreaking is an essential element in our being saved (or damned): how could we be convinced of our being sinners if the purpose of the conscience was to eradicate our sinning?- Eh? God delivered on the (far reaching) consequences promised to Adam for his choice. We can't really blame Adam either - Adam had no knowledge of good and evil then. To blame someone requires that they knew they were doing wrong.- I'd be pretty certain that such devotees aren't in any way pleasing God. Take Paul on the night after having been beaten, flogged and thrown into a dungeon. What does he do? Sing joyul hymns to God!! Not a fractured psyche in sight.Whilst it's not easy resisting the desires of the sinful flesh I see no fracturing of the psyche being necessary. What possible fracturing could be caused by resisting that which is evil? It's the fractured psyche that see's no problem with their own selfishness, greed, lust, slothy, envy, malice, gossip, slander. It's the fractured psyche that sleeps easy with itself when it is these things.- It was Richard Dawkins of all people who cited scientific research in his recent book "The God Delusion" which concluded such thing as a universal morality. The researchers posed moral conundrums which had been stripped of the influences of one's culture, upbringing, wealth, education, religious beliefs. And found that mankind, even primitive tribes hithertoe unexposed to Western mores, saw things 'moral' fundementally in the same way.I can't see how it matters that one culture deviates from God's standard in different ways than the next. What matters is that they deviate. Nor would I suppose any fundamental difference in the motivation behind their various deviances: we might recoil in horror at the actions of a cannibal. God recoils and both them and us as we in the West consume the lives of those in 'less fortunate' areas of the world than ours.- Warmth and comfort are to be expected after you've been winched from the stormy sea in which you flounder. Not before. God's first job is to convince you that you flounder in stormy seas.- We have already seen that nobody is to blame for our evil nature. I've already mentioned that you won't be damned for having an evil nature you did nothing to earn. You'll be damned because you insisted on hanging onto it when God was attempting to wrest it from your grip.God is the author of life. We are the authors of death - if death is what we choose.- Given the stakes and given the undoubted trails we all face? It's understandable to sigh as you do. But you'd be forgetting the honour done you which the angels could only yearn for: the opportunity to be raised to the status of the Divine. Yes, there is the potential for absolute disaster but only you would be the author of that outcome.It need not be disaster, if you don't want it. If you don't want it, and I mean truly don't want it, then God's mechanism of salvation will ensure that that isn't what happens.

That the consciences job isn't as you suppose it to be (ie: ensuring the successful, day-to-day curbing of all sin) doesn't render it imperfect. It renders your supposition regarding it's purpose, imperfectThe conscience will either bring a man to his knees so that he can be saved. Or it will undergird Judgements declaration regarding the culpability of the man who insists on his own damnation. The conscience saves or the conscience condemns; that strikes me as a pretty effective, not to say remarkable, piece of equipment.- God didn't impart the desire to sin (outside of delivering up the promised goods associated with mans choice). The image behind consumption of the forbidden fruit isn't accidental; Adam consumed sin into himself in the very act of his choosing to disobey. It was like a persons taking of heroin; sin, like heroin, is a highly addictive 'substance'.Adam addicted him-self. And God facilitated Adams' doing that - as part and parcel of offering Adam a free choice. It doesn't mean God wanted Adam to sin however.- God doesn't force us to be sinners. We are born that way by virtue of being children of an addict. God doesn't have to do a thing in order for us to be that way. Other than deliver up on the promised consequences involved in Adams choice.I think you're making too much a thing out of this. Either we're born with free will and are given our own balanced choice. Or we are born with an addicted will which is balanced by God's effort (conscience) so as to effectively provide us with a balanced choice.In the heel of the hunt, it's man who determines his own eternal destiny.- He delivered up consequences of choice. Any sense of them being punished arose out of subsequent knowledge telling them that what they had done was also wrong. I say 'also wrong': if they hadn't have been given a knowledge of good and evil all they would have been perceived, arising out of their choice, would be negative consequences. Not moral indictment.Offspring frequently suffer as a result of the actions of parents. It's the consequence of the parents choice.- Great movie. But I'm not sure what the relevance of your point is to the discussion.- Indeed. It's one thing determining a mans morality from the comfort of a hypothetical case. It's quite another when a man's own interests are threatened. What was that turn of phrase from the movie "An Inconvenient Truth"?'It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his livelihood depends on his not understanding it'- No worries m8Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Heartache? In what sense: from a believers position of being in a relationship with him - yet life remains difficult or unbearable even? Or from the unbelievers position of seemingly speaking into a void - where God doesn't respond? The former position would attract a vastly different response than the latter. I'll assume the latter (or it's ilk).A person can be sincere but sincerely misdirected, you would agree. How very often people here say they don't believe in God but wish he did exist 'because it would be great to know there was an afterlife'. Or it would be great 'because good people would be rewarded and bad people would be punished'. Or it would be great 'because it would be fascinating to meet someone able to create all this'. What they don't say is 'how great it would be to be made holy'. And the reason they don't say that is that they don't realise that they are unholy.But IF a persons unholiness is the barrier preventing their entering into a relationship with God, AND God has a means whereby he attempts to break down that barrier, AND if the only way to come into a relationship with God is if he succeeds in breaking down that barrier, THEN all the prayer and worship in the world isn't going to alter anything* for the unholy person.Square pegs will not fit into round holes - no matter how sincere the attempt to hammer the one into the other. * God sees the heart so it isn't correct to say that no aspect of a persons prayer/worship/study is beneficial. But it will only be those parts of the prayer/worship/study that assist the wheels of the mechanism of salvation in their turning. All the rest will fall on deaf ears. God heareth not sinners.- That's a correct belief - although your tone indicates you believe the opposite, in which case you're being led to believe the opposite by someone else. Someone else whose vested interest you should take note of.God is about humility (although humility isn't to be confused with weakness). His way is contra the worlds way. The world encourages us to serve our own needs - God tells us to consider others needs. The world gives us proud false gods who are found in elevated positions far above us: wealth, fame, power. God is humble and is found in the bottom of a mans own barrel - at the point when man can't fall any lower. (Did you hear that: God, the glorious creator of the Universe, gets down into the murky bottom of our evildoing so that if/when we finally sink down that far and despair as we've never despaired before, he can be found. That's humilty on his part - which happens to meet us in a place of our humility). Man sacrifices himself to false gods. God sacrifices himself for us.'The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom'. That fear isn't a craven, shrinking fear - it's an awestruck, wonderous fear. The kind fear than runs down your spine in a (not unpleasant) thrill when you realise that to be last is to be first in the Kingdom of God. And humility, rather than being sign of weakness in the Kingdom of God, is a sign of strength.One step for the unbeliever along the path towards Saving Humility (at the end of which is found God) is to accept that which you have more than sufficient evidence for: your imperfection and your failings. Another is to begin to surmise that there might be a bit more to this God than meets your imperfect eye. You might do well to leave your judgement of him until you meet him. That's a prayer God is sure to listen to. Here's another one I came across once which I'm sure he'd listen to. He did in my case anyway;

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Lord, I don't know you
I don't want to know you
But I want to want to know you.

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- As per above. A person can be sincere, but sincerely wrong. The one who directs a useless 'prayer' to the right God is as misguided as the one who sacrifices himself to the wrong god.How does 'the conscience saves' tie in with 'salvation by faith'? Well, faith in this saving context is the same as 'believing what God says' (Abraham believed God and was justified vs. Abraham had faith in what God said and was justified. It's the same thing: to believe God what God says/have faith in what God says). So how does the conscience produce salvation? Well, it's aim, as I have been pointing out, is to bring a man to the conviction that he is a desparately sinful, wicked, evil, rotten creature. But the conscience is, as I have also been pointing out, the 'voice of God' to which we are exposed. Combining those two notions we see that a man convicted by his conscience is a man who has ..... believed what God says (even if he doesn't yet believe in God)And having believed God, he has done just as Abraham did. And so God does with that man the very same thing that he did in Abrahams case: He justifies/saves that man. A man who is convicted by conscience, is (in other words) the man who has been brought, by God - through application of conscience, to the point where he satisfies Gods criterion for saving him. And so God saves him.- As per above we can see that saving faith isn't to be confused with blind faith. Blind faith might pray, study, worship - fly into buildings. But it's not saving faith. Saving faith involves an earnest conviction about the state of oneself. And that earnest conviction is based on anything but blindness. No, no! It's got all the evidence it needs at it's for it's sustanence - that evidence involving all the rotten dealings done over a whole lifetime.- God didn't create sin. He created freewill and so created the potential for sin. The freewill creates the sin when it expresses itself contra-God (which is our working definition for sin/evil/wrong. Sin = that which goes contra-God). God is responsible for sin in the one-step removed sense of having created the potential for it.A free will without anything to choose from isn't a free will. It's a free will in seed form. Only when there are options to choose from - with the freedom to choose from them - can the free will be said to be free. Indeed, it's only at the point of actually choosing that the free will can be said to be fully realised, fully free. And so God provided the necessary choices to realise free will.His knowing what man would choose doesn't necessarily affect the freedom of the choice: we cannot assume God's foreknowledge is determining because we don't know the nature of the mechanism of God's foreknowledge. Suffice to say, the justness of any consequences that follow hinge on the choice being free.- I've pointed out two things:- promised consequences delivered to Adam, which includes his children being infected.- Adam not to be blamed for doing wrong because he wasn't a moral creature at the time of his choosing the way he chose.Failing a mechanism by which blame can be laid at the door of God, I don't see how you can lay the blame there. Rethoric won't do it. Insisting won't do it. Feelings won't do it. You need a mechanism.- Ditto the above.- God cannot make an object too heavy for him to lift - his omnipotence/omniscience being unaffected by his inability to do so. Nor can God create a being who (effectively) freely wills to come into relationship with him without giving that same being the potential not to come into relationship with him.God has higher designs for man than he has for angels. Angels serve God and his adopted children. We're to be his adopted children .. or not. That the process by which angels decide for/against God is different than the process whereby potential children decide for/against God is to be expected: horses for courses.- It's the nature of God that acting contra-God brings suffering. To act contra-God is to act contra your Creator, is to act contra-the preferred design goal. Have you ever seen what happens when you throw spanners into works? It's just the consequential nature of things - not a plan.- I agree. I hate that 'come to buddy Jesus' gospel. It completely sidesteps the reason why Jesus came: mankind lying under the furious wrath of a holy God and needing saving. That partial gospel is as likely as anything else to produce false professions.It's as if the Old Testament doesn't exist. It's as if Jesus didn't issue stark warnings to a sinful world.- Eh.. when it comes of unveiled warnings to flee the wrath to come, Jesus is your only man. I've no difficulty with the 'difficult' parts of the Bible. It comes from my beginning to have an appreciation for;a) how unholy I am*
b) how holy God is (how much God hates sin) * technically I'm fully holy. Practically I'm not yet, but will be.- I'm afraid I don't agree with you in the case of Adam and Eve. We can't prove things either way but might agree that the Bible (and this life - assuming God exists) begins to make some kind of sense if they had. If they hadn't then we're left talking a nonsense.But you are right that our (effective - not Adamic) free choice is limited to a particular end goal: where we spend eternity. We don't get to choose to exit the game altogether (by opting to become an angel/ existance destroyed).- We were always in need of him. And we still are. We rely on him for everything and there is no way to avoid our relying on him for everything. That's simply the nature of being a created being. Although God didn't create sin, he utilises sin in the process of letting us determine which eternal destination we'll plump for.It's brilliant really! God can't be morally attached to sin - other than by being responsible for creating the free-willed potential for it. His hands are clean in the creation of sin/evil - the free will is responsible. Then he uses sin (which was created by a lower being, an angel) for the purposes of achieving a laudible goal in the case of the most high (or potentially most high) creatures he has created (us) giving those creatures the free (or effectively free) choice to become children of God or no.- Consequences positive and consequences negative don't need to have a moral dimension (good/evil) attached to them in order to be decision drivers this way or that. We make decisions every day that have positive and negative consequences but have no moral element attaching.I can stay up late and watch a movie and be tired the next day as a result: negative consequence but no moral element (so long as it's not a naugthy movie )- They had a sense because they understood language. We can't say what they understood of "surely die" but to suppose they had no understanding of it involving negative consequences is to suppose they had no understanding of language at all - when it is clear they did. Beside, Eve responded to the serpents temptation to eat with a "..but God did say" indicating she understood a prohibition.Understanding a prohibition means understanding negative consequences attaching to disobedience.Foreknowledge has been dealt with above. Not necessarily determining.- Consequences followed. Negative consequences. Promised negative consequences.- All hinges on free choice. If Adam and Eve had it, the rest follows: God isn't to blame, Adam and Eve aren't to blame. It is how it is and we get on with it. Now, quite how God can create an undetermined freewill is beyond me - but that's all that's required.- Ah..okay.Supposing Eli to be a Christian (as defined by God), we can see the possibility of him worshipping at the altar of false gods. In which case he can expect to be disciplined - unto sickness, even unto death (as Paul tells us). God disciplines those who he loves (the saved).Make no mistake about the holiness of God, Hyro. God will not be mocked: not by an unbeliever, and certainly not by believers. If it takes the shredding of a believers psyche to wrest a man from the altar of a false God then God will do that. He tells us that "He who began a good work in you (the believer) will bring it to completion until the day of Jesus Christ". Began.. will complete. A promise - come what may.Then there are the people who should be torn apart by events but who reflect the power of God operating in them mightily.

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Gordon Wilson held his daughter's hand as they lay trapped beneath a mountain of rubble. It was 1987, and he and Marie had been standing watching a peaceful Remembrance Day service in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, when a terrorist bomb went off. The rescuers dug them out of the rubble and rushed them to hospital. But, by the end of the day, Marie and nine other people were dead.

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A few hours after the bombing, when interviewed by the BBC, Gordon Wilson forgave the terrorists who had killed his daughter. He said that he would pray for them. He also begged that no-one took revenge for Marie's death. "That", he said, "will not bring her back."

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The loss of Marie shattered Gordon Wilson and his wife Joan, but, they were anxious that bitterness and hatred should not rip apart the small town of Enniskillen. Before the bomb, Protestants and Catholics in Enniskillen had lived side by side, and the Wilsons wanted it to stay that way. The bomb had done a lot of damage, not just to the buildings in the town but in the relationships between Catholics and Protestants. As Christians, the Wilson wanted to help repair this damage between people.

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After his television interview, Gordon Wilson received many letters from people across Britain and the rest of the world. Many supported him, but many others criticised him. Even though he insisted that terrorists should be punished for their crimes, people accused him of excusing them.

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Throughout the rest of his life, Gordon Wilson worked hard to bring reconciliation between people in Northern Ireland. The Irish government rewarded his work by making him a Senator in the Irish parliament.

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Gordon Wilson came face to face with the people who had planned the Enniskillen bombing. The terrorists apologized for killing Marie. But when Gordon asked them to stop bombing and shooting, they refused.

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Gordon Wilson died a few years ago. After his death, many people in Northern Ireland carried on his work. Today, in Northern Ireland, the bombings and shootings have stopped thanks to the work of people like Gordon Wilson.

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- A little regard for the holiness of God, a little appreciation for the sheer distance between us, who are awash with evil - and him, in whom there is no darkness at all - would clear most, if not all of those misapprehensions of yours away.Perhaps there's a little cognitive dissonance going on in your own mind: an inner conviction that there is such a thing as absolute right and wrong, an inner conviction that you fall far short of that ideal. A knowledge (somewhere inside) that God does, or should, exist. A knowledge that (somewhere else inside) demands rejecting.And so you remain able to stay standing before him - by bringing him down to our level. He's holy Hyro. And the nature of holiness is to be furious wrath against evil. Which explains so much.That's the only fly in your ointment. Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

And if your very desiring love, peace, happiness is a function of the image of God in which you are made (ie: if it's God-in-you harking for (re)union with God: who is the source of love, peace, happiness - being by nature; love/peace/happiness)?God cannot create an object too heavy for him to lift. Nor can he create music without a creator of music. You're desiring an irrational and illogical form of God. It appears.- See above. By doing away with the musician you do away with the music altogether. Yet you suppose this musicless environment more musical? How so. If God is love and the source of our being able to love ... and you exclude God..then were do these supposed virtues go.I mean, how can you have something without the source of something. It's completely irrational Stile.- That's a rather black and white way of looking at it - especially considering how difficult it is for even agreed facts to be contructed into a compelling case.My approach isn't to construct a compelling case in any objective fashion. Rather, my approach is to present elements of the gospel of God (as I understand it) in the belief that the gospel itself is the power of God unto salvation. Not my abilty to argue same.I've made previous mention of the fact that my tactics involve the application of a Trojan Horse: rational/intellectual debate is the horse, the gospel message (or element of same) being the contents of that horse.Generally I remind folk that I'm discussing from the point of view of supposing God to exist and the Bible to be his word. And generally my conversations with others look at the workings of the mechanisms of God from that standpoint. My apologies if I've led you to suppose I'm attempting to make any absolute statements which would be supported by facts (that said, I frequently base my arguments on what I figure would be areas of commonly held belief: notions of what constitutes just actions, etc)Fact? As my somewhat cynical journalist friend is wont to state:

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Never let the facts get in the way of a good story

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Quite!

There are various ways to understand the word omnipotent. I apply one that supposes God constrained to operate according to his own nature. His being constrained so doesn't impinge on his omnipotence.- All any theology hopes to do is to understand what it supposes Gods revelation regarding himself to say. It is like a scientific theory in the sense that if the theology successfully accomodates all the 'observations' then it is a sound theology. If it cannot be modified to accomodate an observation then it is scrapped.- You sound like a Dawkinsian7 - Indeed. And I've stated what my intention is on more than one occasion. It's not a problem in order that it can have a root.- I would disagree. I very frequently argue a justification for my position. But rather than basing it on facts (which don't apply to a case "built on the assumption, for the sake of argument, that God exists and the Bible is his word"), I base it on areas where I expect there might be common agreement.Perhaps if I argued a Creationist position your demand for facts might be relevant. Not as much so in Faith & Belief however.

Rather than reverse it, let me reword it: according to the theological model I am using (based as it is on the nature of God revealed in the Bible), God cannot be illogical. Being logical is part of his nature.Clearly, the God revealed in the Bible could be hiding part of his nature and could in fact be lying when he says he's incapable of lying. Or be capable of illogic when revealing himself to be logical.- Few atheists would score themselves 7 on Dawkins scale. Or make statements indicating that they score themselves 7 on that scale. Declaring 'your God is make believe' is a Dawkinsian7 style statement.- Not bad. Most folk are prepared to believe the Bible is the word of God - for the sake of argument. Which allows discussion to progress along channels of common agreement. For example, folk think that God should act justly in order to be considered good. And I think God should act justly in order to be considered good. There's also a lot of agreement on what constitutes 'good' - which allows discussion to progress on the issue of Gods goodness.Of course, the wheels always fall off at some point. I am talking to unbelievers afterall and unbelievers are at root opposed to the things of God and find them foolish. But I'm not too put off by that - given that that's an expected. Given my post count, it appears they aren't too put off either. Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Hy Hyro,Sorry about the delay in getting to reply to your post. It's a long one to a long one - and I'm tight on the time it'll take to deal with it.asap, okay?Ian

Indeed. I'll try to cut to what I think is/are the chase(s). If I've left out a point you think important then by all means..Having just finished writing I see it's still long. Perhaps read it through first and figure out which, if any, points you'd like to plough on with?- Ah, okay.I was supposing the case of a believer (but not a believer as defined by God). If actually supposing the case of a believer (as defined by God) then surely the 'sincerity of the study' put in over the years would give some indication as to why the seemingly cavernous distance between believer and God. Discipline? Proving of faith?- If pointing the finger at some deficiency in God rather than deficiency in yourself - after years of sincere study, then I find it difficult to suppose anything else.- God forsakes his beloved son and neither the father nor the son suffer because of that?I'm not of the opinion that God loses in the case that man maintains his rebellion. Either God is love will have a man, or God is wrath. God is satisfied either way.Angels aren't the raw material of children. It takes something into which God has breathed his own spirit to be that kind of raw material. And if the nature of God is to want children, then it seems fair enough that he should try for them.- I agree. Which is why I was supposing you a believer, perhaps, of non-biblical type (albeit in the biblical God). Then again, it can be too that the believer (as defined by God) is running on an empty faith.Biblical faith holds you up because biblical faith gives you the evidence you need to stand. It, biblical faith, is what permits a person to move mountains. Or stand at street corners when all point and say 'fool'. Biblical faith enables people to resist satan and counter their fleshly desires and do work pleasing to God. Biblical faith is the fuel that keeps a believers engine running. If there is none of this faith then the person either isn't a believer, or they are, but are running, as I say, on empty.- Yet you'll have learned that God disciplines some unto sickness and others onto sleep (death). I'm not saying it's easy (I'm not one for drawing all that near to God so as to enjoy soaring myself) to undergo what you are (let's assume for the sake of argument) undergoing. But it's hardly that much of a mystery.- Faith.- Forgive my switching suppositions in your case - I'm back to supposing you an unbeliever (as defined by God) for the purposes of dealing with what you say above. Faith, we have seen, is a kind of fuel and is not at all blind (which you are supposing). If you've never had exposure to this kind of fuel, the only kind of faith you'd know is the blind type - the one that relies on your own power for it's hangiung-in-there power.I'm not able to imagine how someone could at some point in their lives know (by God supplied faith) then at another point, unknow what they knew. God might be distant - but he can never be gone.Knowledge, if knowledge, cannot disappear totally.- The simple argument would be that extremist Muslims aren't being instructed by God-given conscience. Rather they are being instructed by hate masquerading as Gods-voice. The Crusaders fell for the same voice it would appear.- I think he was speaking figuratively. People of faith have thrown mountains into seas: William Wilberforce being one rather obvious example, the apostle Paul another, Jesus himself achieved so much this way.Gordon Wilson (of Enniskillen bombing 'fame') might better reflect the kind of case Jesus was referring to: regarding the moving of huge personal mountains: expressing love where hate had every right to manifest. Expressing forgiveness when an eye for an eye could be demnaded- If you had saving conviction then you are saved. And are struggling with a lack of faith.- Again, God created the potential for sin via free will. And so he is indeed creator of sin, and end responsible for sin - but in once-step removed fashion. A fashion that means the existance of sin impinges not at all on his goodness. Nor on our culpability for our sin.- Goodness can exist before evil - if evil is brought about by a freewill and that freewill has yet to be created.I agree that nothing can happen outside the will of God. Even that which God doesn't want. I'd see it as the ranking of Gods will. His primary will is that free will express (which necessitates making provision for evil). His secondary will is that the freewill would do as he pleases. His primary will trumps his secondary will.Gods secondary will succumbs to his primary will.We do this all the time (me, currently, with my primary will to laze on front of the tv trumping my secondary will which would like to rid itself of this hint of flab eminating around my middle)- If you were tormented by the urge to murder or rape and feared as nothing else your actually succumbing to that urge - and killed yourself so as to prevent such evil happening then I'd be convinced you'd be saved. Great love hath no man..If, on the other hand, you killed yourself to escape the pressure that would bring you to your knees before God..- I'm afraid those bets are off once God is removed from the contraining influence of time. When the Bible speaks of predestination, it speaks (I'd argue) of what is predestined to occur to that category of people called the saved. Not that they are predestined to become to belong to that category of people.- True .. answer to your question Consequences for choice .. delivered as promised. "Because you have done this thing..."- Were not angels cast from heaven after exercising choice? It's not that relevant how a freewilled being is given an option so long as option is given. Irrefutable proof of his existance and love was patently countered by God in some way shape or form.Else angels are just dumb.- What's bleak about the prospect of a realm in which only righteousness dwelleth. I can only think of one thing in a person that would perish at the thought. And that thing is called Sin.- Suffering is indeed part of this life: for believer and un.In the unbeliever it's aim is punishment from a wrathful God who promised consequences and will not be mocked. In that same unbeliever it's aim is to cause terminal despair so as to cause the unbeliever to fall to his knees before a God who loves him enough to suffer and die for himThe believer too can expect the wrath of God to fall on his sin. And he can expect discipline from a father who loves him and knows better than to spare the rod. Suffering for the believer is designed to produce perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope.It's God at work in the believer ensuring suffering has this goal. And God at work on the unbeliever attempting to ensure suffering has that goal- That's the singular flaw in your argument throughout this post of yours: blind faith vs. biblical faith. You labour, it seems, under the one, supposing that this is the kind of faith you are supposed to exhibit.- I'm afraid her understanding a prohibition is extremely important. It indicates something else on the scales besides the serpents temptation.Granted, we can only suppose the weight of understanding of the consequences attaching to the prohibition ("you will surely die") matched the weight of the temptation, so as to render the choice equally balanced and thus, hers. An equally weighted choice makes the argument contained in the rest of the Bible possible. A determined choice made by skewing the result makes discussion of the biblical mechanism pointless.We have to assume one or other for the sake of argument. And the former to continue arguing. - Good/evil doesn't have to attach to a prohibition. A prohibition can simply carry amoral negative consequences.- That brain should begin with what you're told and try to figure out an answer from there. Else it must begin to juggle with the notion that what it's been told is inaccurate. Which means the brains got nothing to work on at all. And is truly stumbling around in the dark.- Perhaps you could highlight 1 or 2 particular difficulties and we can see whether this notion hold true of them. If they can be defended or stalemated then the elephant will become less elephantine

A day and a half? Isn't God eternal? And if so, won't the forsaking be experienced in the units of the existance of father and son - rather than in (h)ours?The issue is forsaking and if that's the word used we need good reason to suppose that shouldn't be the word used (or the experience experienced). Shoehorning your units into Gods units is not a way to sidestep the point. Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Spent - Eternity?I understand the dilemma: folk have gotten it into their heads that eternity is time ever-elapsing - therefore it is something that can be spent ('spent' indicating progression along an elapsing timeline).A more proper theological notion of eternity supposes it devoid of time. Meaning we cannot use words/concepts associated with time in a quantitive way (although we can use them in a qualititive way)We can say that:- foresaking occurred between beloved persons
- foresaking between beloved persons produces suffering
- God experienced this suffering in the realm of eternityWe cannot say that:- Jesus is still suffering and will suffer for all time.