Why does God need to be worshipped?

I'm not sure that it's accurate to say that God needs people to worship him. Where did you get the notion that he did?The reason why some people worship God is simple enough. They want to express their unreserved love/devotion/admiration of God.

Not if pain generation was your aim.

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To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children.

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I couldn't find anything on the appendix in the Bible but the above goes to show that "apparent absence of use" can be the result of absence of knowledge as to use.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Whatever about that, this is about Gods supposed needs. The question stands.- There is no maybe about the "some people" I was referring to. You are probably referring to some other people and why they worship. I would agree with you that this is the case. In my opinion the majority case.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Which doesn't really tell us from whence the notion of God's need came from. It might be that I want a cream cake. It doesn't mean I need one.Sorry to be pedantic but I don't recognise 'organised religion' saying that God needs anything at all. If anything it would say that God needs nothing at all from us.- Fair enough

Fail so badly (and absurdly) as he did when he created ... Which only goes to show that absurdity resides in the mind of the beholder. "I don't get it therefore it's absurd" (translated as: "I'm god")

I can understand perfectly why an unbeliever would see only absurdity. To them the story has all the fantastical hallmarks of a fairytale and I can see no way for an unbeliever to come to any other conclusion whilst remaining in that state. Such is unbelief and when I was an unbeliever I would have seen things exactly the same way as you do.Once placed in a position of belief (by act of God) however, there is ample information to draw many of the base conclusions that are drawn.Not that the information contained in the Bible is intended to build a case which would lead an unbeliever to belief - the Bible has other fish to fry and is aimed primarily at those who already believe.

God is relational and his intention in the matter of mankinds creation is relationally-focused. As the Luke 3 geneology puts it:

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the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God

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Adam, the son of God. God had kids in other words. And a key element of his overall goal is to restore people (those who would want it in any case) so that they can have the kind of relationship with him that he always intended for them.Worship is expression of love, devotion, praise, admiration, awe etc.And the first sense in which God can be said to want our worship is because he wants us to be able to express ourselves. Simply because it is healthy and fun and necessary for us. Imagine if you loved someone and you were "bound up" so that there was no way for you to express that love to them. You couldn't hold them, speak to them, do things for them. Well, you'd burst from the stress of it all. You wouldn't be happy with that state of affairs.Thus, God provides his people with various means of worship and instructs us to worship - because it's good for us. We feel released and fulfilled and content because we can express the love we have.Secondly, God "inhabits the praise of his people". Which means that he expresses his love and care towards us during worship. This is not to say he can't or won't do it at other times but worship is one area where he reciprocates relationally. It can be that his love for a person is poured out on them, or worries soothed, or confidence raised, or questions answered, or waning and battered faith in God restored. Its a theraputic time oft times. Thus God wants our worship in order that he can inhabit our praise so as to deal with us emotionally, spiritually, physically, psychologically. He want's it because he loves us.Then there's plain old joy at being the recipient of anothers love. Why wouldn't God be something like us- seeing as he made us in his image and likeness. Wouldn't any father love when his children jump into his lap squealing with happiness and love? Wouldn't any father enjoy being the one who his children turn to with their troubles and thrill at being the one to wipe away their every tear? Don't all fathers enjoy the admiration of their children and being the centre of their lives?God wants our worship because he's a thinking, feeling, relational person for whom love sits above all. It's not that worship is demanded - "demand worship" is a contradiction in terms in fact. It's that it's natural and good for all concerned. The product of a heavenly father/heavenly child relationship.

As pointed out, it's also for Gods enjoyment. Whether that could be said to be beneficial to God is another thing. That's fair enough - the cycle of life/death demands it be so. They are dependent, then independent, then exceeding you as your powers wane. But where no cycle of life and death the reasoning of this world would break down. Not even God can help us being dependent upon him. Everything is sustained by God by his will and his will alone. If he's taken out of the situation there is nothing else to hold things together and it ceases to exist. God cannot create something that is not totally and completely dependent upon him for it's existance. Not even God can remove sticky toffee paper from his fingers.The nature of the 'thing being sustained' will determine what is required to sustain it in the state God intended for it. That which is required to sustain "us" emotionally, psychologically and spiritually won't be the same that that required to sustain "iron" as iron.It is possible for us to reject being sustained in optimal state. Those in Hell, for instance, won't be worshipping God. They will be conscious beings but very far removed from the ideal that occupies Heaven. And pretty far from the less-than-ideal that we see walking around in this world

The reason God hasn't acted so as to have you believe in him (etc) is because you refuse to be convinced of what God is attempting to convince you of. God says that your a hopeless sinner. He says that for all the nice exterior you might present to the world, your heart is black and evil and perverse*.An important thing to note is that you don't have to believe in God to be convinced of the essence of what he is trying to convince you of. Once convinced of that, once you believe that to be the case about you, you can then be saved.It's Gods job to convince you of this - and it might well be that he will eventually convince you of it. But he won't force that you be convinced meaning that you can evade conviction until your dying breath, if that is your hearts desire. It wouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out who gets the blame for that state of affairs.-*Don't be offended - that's what he has to convince everyone of - for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of GodEdited by iano, : No reason given.

I work off a model of eternity which has God occupying all points in time - now. Our past, present and future are all now to God. We're the time-bound ones and talk in time-bound langauge decribing time-bound concepts. He's not time bound. Mixing up the units of time and eternity you get sentences like this.God knows now whether you will be convinced in your future because he is there, at your future, with you, now. He can see, by plain old observation now, whether you will persist in your refusal to be convinced or whether you will relent and succumb to conviction.He'll present enough evidence to convince you - but won't prevent you suppressing that evidence. In a general sense, suppressing evidence is something we do in order to remain unconvinced of something. Take this truth which we see operating in the world around us day in, day out:

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It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -Upton Sinclair.

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The manner by which governments and business' and individuals ensure they get what they want, at times, is to suppress the evidence that would prevent that occuring. The nature of truth is to set free from lie. But if the lie is desirable then the truth must be surpressed.And so it is in the specific. God presents evidence, you want something else and so the evidence is surpressed. In one way this is no bad thing. Suppression of evidence involves pressing it down, compressing it, shoving it down deep. But pressure builds up and Gods hope and plan is that the pressure of suppressed truth buried PLUS the accumulated shame and guilt resuling from actions following that suppression - will erupt in a massive explosion which results in our very being dying. Not our physical bodies necessarily - just our being.- If it was easy then he wouldn't have sent his son to suffer and die. I know of some who arrived without that much turmoil. I know others who went through the mill.Skepticism isn't the thing which would have a man resist the work of conviction that God is engaged in. It's a mans pride and self-sufficiency and unwillingness to get off the throne he imagines himself to occupy.A man can fool himself into thinking he's okay with his fine house, his beautiful wife and kids, the car, the job, the etc. And he can fool other people that he's a decent, upstanding citizen. Gods job is to use a mans sin to convince a man that there really is something rotten and sick inside him. At the core.Man is born a slave to his pride and the battle rages between its refusal to accept anything that would have it play second fiddle - and Gods rightful place in a mans life.Skepticism? Skepticism is like murder and stealing and queue-skipping, all mere lackeys of Pride. All sin serves pride ultimately. Take a look at your own sin and you'll see that that's the god being served.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

I'm not sure it was intended to be convincing - in the sense of a person being 'converted' by reading the Bible through cover to cover. God knows, it took our Bible study 2 and a half years of Tuesday evenings to skim, and I say skim, through the gospel of JohnPerhaps some could get a ways in without nodding off. But they'd be few and far between in my view.Nope. The evidence comes at you obliquely, stealthily, fairly well unbeknownst to you. For it's not primarily a head-gig. If those I have witnessed coming to faith are anything to go by (and I include myself in this) then you'll either have a Damascus road like experience (Saul could be said to have been downright antagonistic to Christianity right up to that point). Or it will be a gradual affair where you look back and realise that you've become a Christian at some point but can't remember exactly at what point you crossed the line.It doesn't matter much which it is. There's a lot of Christian cosmologists, evolutionists, geneticists, geologists. My fiance is a Christian psychologist in training. The one apparently doesn't exclude the other.Read up on the fathers of modern science: Newton, Kepler, Morse, Faraday, Watt, Joule, Boyle etc. It was their conviction that the world was the product of an ordered and logical mind that got them thinking that the way to investigate it was to apply order and logic. Alchemy became chemistry as a result.Christians the lot of 'em.- The sense of conviction of sin is something that (hopefully) builds up, causes (hopefully) an explosion resulting in your certain salvation. Thereafter you have no right to feel guilty and ashamed - although habits (and satan) die hard. To feel shame and guilt as a Christian is to say Christs sacrifice wasn't enough. The Christian has no right to wallow in guilt and shame. He needs to get on his knees and face his father.You might be mistaking Christianity for Christian Religiousity. The two share a name. But a name only.- It has it's uses in that regard. I meant it in regard to it's serving pride. Not see. Saw. Don't feel sorry, it brought me to my knees and God killed me off and bore me again. Me now is kind of different. It can't be helped that it has to occur this way, your relative notions of morality are well and good as far as they go. But if God says your relative is actually rotten then it is.He said "let there be light and there was light". If what he says carries that kind of weight then it wouldn't be wise to cling all too hard your relative notions. Relative can be so many soap bubbles when faced with the absolute. No matter how concrete that soap appears at this moment.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

This doesn't exclude gradualism. What seems to have been the case is you believed without evidence and because you believed that way you were prone to arriving at the conclusion you arrived at. Which is no bad thing. Better facing your unbelief than be an unbelieving believer.Clearly you haven't met Gods criterion either for a Damascus road or a gradual-but-now-behind-me experience. Which is why he hasn't seen fit to issue forth. This would indicate that a) (from your perspective) God doesn't exist b) he hasn't managed to convince you of that which you need to be convinced of in order that his criterion in you be met. I agree. Unless God gives you some evidence as to his existance there is nothing to reason out and so nothing to abandon. You'd be completely in the dark. I understand your view and I wouldn't engage in such pursuit myself - I believe that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation - not scientific argument. But there is no reason to suppose that science won't come up against limits beyond which it can't reach. If that were to occur at the end of all the radial spokes science travels out along, if the pursuit of knowledge terminated in mystery at all points, then the rim encircling us might get some to thinking of god. Which might well lead to God.ID might not be so much aimed at proving God as it is aimed at indicating arrival at the end of a Knowledge spoke. In this case the spoke called biology. Perhaps ET-did-it is a fine conclusion for the the ID-ist.- Faith is described in Hebrews 11:1 (KJV) as the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Faith is evidence Jim - but not as we empirically know it. I know that I couldn't believe in God without evidence - and evidence pretty much flowing all the time at that. When the taps get turned off (and they do) then I do like an automobile during an oil crisis. God isn't unreasonable. He doesn't require anyone to believe blindly. Instead, he provides them with the kind of evidence that will either:a) convince them so that his criterion for saving them is satisfied (after which he he provides them with the evidence to..)b satisfy them that he exists once he has saved them.orc) satisfy them as to the justness of their punishment. It will cause them anguish in Hell as they view all the opportunity for salvation which was provided them but to which they said in their heart "there is no God". They will agree with God that they were fools. For whatever about lack of concrete evidence, only a fool says in his heart that there is no God.- Under you own steam that's about as far as you could and should get. As I say, blind belief and God are mutually exclusive entities. Under his steam is a different matter however. And salvation is by Gods grace - not by your efforts.You'll get what your given whether you like it or not. I sincerely hope you like it.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

The Bible is clear. You must believe God.Seeing as you don't need to believe in God to believe God there is no obstacle to salvation other than the person refusing to believe God Indeed. Refusal to believe is a choice. Or to put it another way..

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2 Thessalonians 2:10 They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie 12 and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.

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Worrying here is that God provides the evidence required to content yourself as to the wisdom of your Godless path .. all the way to damnation it would appear. So much for the empirical evidence which allowing a person to conclude there is no God.