Calvinism and Arminianism remix

God didn't do any of that; that's all the consequences of the Fall.

It's the orthodox view of Christianity based on the Bible. How do you justify preferring your own wrongheaded idea of what Christianity teaches to what mainstream Christianity says it teaches? We don't teach the God you describe, that's your own invention; we teach that the Fall is responsible for the circumstances you impute to God based on nothing but your own imagination.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Christians have disagreements but I don't know any who believe in the God you keep describing.My "we" refers to Bible believers. GDR denies parts of the Bible, so he's not part of my "we." He doesn't believe in the God you are describing either; he wrongly thinks that describes the God of the Bible so he refuses to believe that part of the Bible. "We" don't believe the God of the Bible is the God you are describing, or the "God" GDR refuses to accept.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Genocide is murder. So many people these days don't know the difference between justice and criminality, so they go out and protest the death penalty though it is justice against murder. What God commanded is justice -- earned judgment. That's why I have no problem reconciling two supposed pictures of God -- God is severely just and He's merciful and loving.

You cannot know anything about God without the Bible. You certainly cannot know anything about God if you pick the Bible apart.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Since it isn't the God Christians believe in you are not describing the world God created. The historical mainstream church attributes all the suffering and evil to the Fall; GDR solves the problem by simply refusing to believe in the parts of the Bible that seem to him to call God evil, and I'm sure there are other views, but there are certainly not "billions" who disagree with me on this point, in fact there may be absolutely none, no matter what else we may disagree about.

I count the Hebrew scriptures as just as much THE Bible as the New Testament, I find it astonishing anyone would think they were either not the Bible or some "early version" of the Bible. They are to be read through the interpretive system of the New Testament because they are fulfilled in Christ, which is even apparent in the OT itself, but they are just as authoritative as the New Testament rightly understood, and they teach us about God's doings in history and His character, which we are to use to guide our understanding of our lives and today's world as much as the ancient Israelites were supposed to.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You are quoting me but attributed it to GDR, as he has pointed out in the post immediately above.Remember that the topic is suffering, and I was responding to your accusation of God for creating all the suffering in the world.Of course God created the physical world, but not in its current deteriorated condition. We're used to the physical world and find much beauty in it but considering what the Fall did to it, followed by the destructive effect of the Flood, I for one have to suppose that its original beauty and order far surpassed even the best in this world. And suffering was not a part of the original Creation.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Goes something like this: It demonstrates the extreme seriousness of sin or disobedience to God. Human beings are made in His image, originally spiritual like Him, ruled by His Moral Law. It's His universe, governed by a spiritual law, the Moral Law. If that is broken the physical universe is broken. Living things become subject to disease and death. After accumulating sin to a great degree the world had to be completely destroyed by the Flood.He knew it would happen, it had to happen if He made a creature in His own image that could rebel against Him. The idea of why He let it happen that I'm aware of is that His ultimate plan will be much better as a result of our going through all this. I think something like this is what kbertsche was saying: the suffering is nothing compared to what will be in the end. The apostle Paul said that in so many words too: Our current light afflictions are nothing to the glory that will be revealed in us.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.