Christianity and the End Times

In my opinion, your method quenches belief. You frame the entire belief within the context of human creation. Why not allow your imagination the opportunity for creative license? In my opinion, a God Who frowned upon that would be unworthy of worship anyway.Add by Edit: Yes, I see the irony in my own statement! Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

But the only available source for information on the Judaic and Christian God is the stories in the Bible and Qur'an.What do they say?AbE:When you look at the descriptions of God in the Bible stories you do see that the authors did let their imagination run wild.Edited by jar, : see AbE:

All I am trying to say to you is to also allow yourself to imagine a God Who at least acknowledges your existance and Who can at least listen to your prayers rather than simply some character in a book who tells you to go feed the hungry and never communicates with you (even within your imagination)Which leads me to ask: Why is it so hard for you to grasp the concept of talking to God and/or listening for peace? You yourself have put Him in a box limiting Him.(and limiting yourself)If creating a God character was so easy for the authors of the books, and if we can agree that many of the gods currently marketed don't fit the belief that we seek or want, why not imagine One whom you can pray to, meditate upon, and listen for inner peace and confirmation? You have told me that I seek a God whom I want. Others have commented on the anthropomorphizing commonly employed by many humans. Personally, I believe that GOD exists apart from our ability to imagine or make Him up. Is it so bad to seek communion through prayer and meditation?

Do you know what "communion" even means?We can be in communion with others humans.But how can we be in communion with anything spiritual?

I see your point.If a human could freely choose, without any pre-determination from God... then that would be making a decision God can't control.
And therefore, God would not be the most powerful thing... this decision-making human could make decisions God didn't want.So, God being the most powerful thing... has pre-determined all decisions and all actions. Because He created it all.Is that the gist of it?Now here's the mind-bender:What's more powerful? Scenario 1
A powerful God creates all humans, creating their minds, their choices, their decisions. Some He has pre-destined to return to Him. Others He has pre-destined to move away from Him.
-This would be the gist of what I described above - God is the most powerful being, creator of all and know-er of all. Scenario 2
A powerful God creates all humans, creating their minds - but not knowing their choices or decisions. Some make their own choice to return to Him. Others make their own choice to move away from Him.
-This would be against the gist of what I described above - God is still the "most powerful" being... but not all powerful. He is the creator of all, but not the know-er of all as He doesn't know what decisions the humans will make.The question isn't which God is more powerful, though.
The question is: Which scenario has a more powerful meaning?Is it more meaningful that God created humans and the ones He pre-destined to return to Him actually did return to Him (of course)?Or is it more meaningful that God created humans and the ones who decided on their own - using their own judgement and their own intelligence - decided that God was amazing and returned to Him due to their own personal decision?That is, is it a more powerful meaning if robots do what they're programmed to do? Or if a being judges for itself that it wants to do what you think it should do?I think the answer is fairly obvious.Results: Scenario 1
-Holds the most powerful God - an all powerful God, and all know-ing God
-Does not hold the most powerful meaning Scenario 2
-Does not hold the most powerful God - God is creator of all, but God does not know-all
-Holds the most powerful meaningCan't seem to have one without the other.
Which do you think is "better?"Edited by Stile, : typos

I agree with this line of reasoning, but I'd add a slight twist. Having the power to pre-determine everything does not mean that it would be best to use such power. Reasoned restraint is not weakness.

Agreed.It is quite possible to have a God in Scenario 2 that is also as-powerful or possibly even more-powerful than the God described in Scenario 1.Such a God would make Scenario 2 the easy choice for any "most powerful" God...I was only attempting to keep it as Faith-reasonable as I could guess at and still describe the point I wanted to make

Do you realize what you're saying? God is a product of our imaginations. That's like asking if we have an alternative to food. No. There is none.

Scenario 2 sounds like Open Theism. Check out the link and tell me what you think.

Not exactly. I believe that God exists even if I didn't. I believe that God allows...even expects me to use my imagination, however. If we limit our understanding of God to what others have said or written, we are not being entirely honest with ourselves regarding our belief.What I would say is that our understanding of God is a synthesis of our conscience and our imagination.

The Open Theism argument is compelling to me...especially in light of other current discussion with jar regarding imagining a "Living" and active God versus a stagnant and dated character in a book.

On the contray, if we trust our own imaginations, we're not being honest. We humans are social for a reason - our individual capabilities are limited and our individual minds are notoriously unreliable. The only thing worse than trusting your own imagination is trusting some nut like Jim Jones or Oral Roberts. You're better off trusting the people who disagree with you. That might explain why you have no understanding of God.

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God's will probably not the right way to say it since it does imply He's in favor of what He will,s but I don't mean it that way.

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But that is bizarre. The whole point is that God decides everything. Why would God will something he didn’t want ?That’s the problem with extreme ideas of the Sovereignty of God. If God’s choices decide everything then things have to be exactly the way God wants them - or there’s something wrong with God.That’s why the idea that God chooses to allow humans a degree of freedom is less problematic - and dismissing it on the fallacious grounds that it makes God weak is a dubious move.

Pretty close, yeah.I didn't intend my "mind-bending" comment to imply I'm coming up with a novel idea.
I intended it to identify something to Faith - that "being in total control" has the unfortunate side-effect of removing most (all?) meaning/purpose.But, I feel like rambling anyway.Here's a paragraph from your link, and my comments if you're interested:

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Open Theists argue that people are created to be in meaningful relationships with God and others and as moral beings must have the ability to make real, responsible choices in their lives. Open Theists argue that this cannot be accomplished as long as God exercises exhaustive control of the universe or predetermines the future because this would remove humanity's free will. The counter point to this is that critics of Open Theism say that if God is not exercising meticulous control of the universe, or does not exhaustively know the future, then this would imply that He is not in control and we are not able to completely trust in God's sovereignty. Furthermore, the question remains, will God actually be able to triumph over evil? Open Theists answer these critiques by noting that while God does not exercise meticulous control, he is "ultimately" in control.

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Fair enough for them.
Personally, I don't know why I was created. I am also only slightly interested in the answer.
I'm more concerned with what I decide to do after I was created.
Although I do agree that "to be in meaningful relationships with others" is something I find highly desirable as well. I agree that one cannot be a "moral being" unless one has the ability to make real, responsible choices. I would agree with this statement about predetermination vs. "real" free will. I don't care about God's sovereignty (I think? What, exactly, does this mean?). So I'm not exactly moved by this counter-point and I agree with the position taken by the Open Theists on this point. Is this the crux of "God's sovereignty?"
Regardless - God's triumph over evil is irrelevant to me. I don't care.I would still try to be good, and want to be good even if God (and the universe, and everything/everyone in it) was absolutely destined to "be evil."I try to be good because I think it's the right thing to do, not because I think it's going to be the "winning side."
The point is to do what you think is right... not to try to win some game. This sounds like it requires further explanation.
Taken at face-value, it seems to have a high possibility of being self-contradictory.
But, as I said above, I don't care about God's sovereignty or if God will win (or not) over evil. So maybe I just don't have any interest in figuring out the details of this statement.Not sure if this is what you're looking for or not, but... have fun! Edited by Stile, : Adding remainder of message

Talking about God as "exercising" control makes him too much like us. God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, which means He can't NOT be in control of everything, and everything He does is precisely calibrated as the perfect response to everything that happens. By His very nature He has power over all things down to the comma at the end of this phrase and all the atoms involved in its existence, has foreknowledge of everything without exception, and is everywhere at all times, including surrounding you completely. The Bible presents God in human terms to make Him more understandable, but those terms are a concession to our inability to grasp such a Being as He really is. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.