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| Author | Topic: Is it 'boring' being God? | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Phat Member  Posts: 18354 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Is It Boring, God?
Brian writes:
I personally view the O.T. stories as writings of how man predicted and/or expected God to act and respond. It would be similar to IF we were writing a Bible today, and one chapter began thusly: I thought about this while composing a reply to Jar about God's omniscience and the Fall. Now, with God being omniscient, God would know beforehand that Adam and Eve would disobey His command not to eat from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, so their 'Fall' would not have been a surprise to God. Phat writes:
Moving to the New Testament and Jesus' death and resurrection. Now, I have heard many Christians claim that Jesus didn't know that He would come back to life three days after He 'died'. If we ignore this argument for now and concentrate on what Christians believe is the ultimate exampe of love, namely, sending your only son to die so that others have a path to salvation. How can we really admire God for this when he MUST have known that Jesus' 'death' was only a temporary inconvenience? Agreed. Not a surprise, but perhaps a dissappointment similar to a parent who watches their kid become a criminal,based on the decisions that the kid makes.Phat writes:
With these two examples in mind, how 'boring' an existence is it for God? He knows everything, can do anthing He wants, there are no surprises at all, and He knows that He is never going to die, it must be a nightmare. He then also should surely have known that His freewill angel turned darkside devil, Lucifer, would be unable to counter this brilliant move of eternal sacrifice trumping sinful reality!Phat writes:
This condition that God finds Himself in, could it make him angry, or affect His 'mental' condition? If God resents his omniscience and omnipotence, could this explain why He appears to be a blood thirsty barbarian in the Old Testament? Think about some of the stories in the Old Testament where God either slaughters thousands himself, or commands others to do His dirty work for Him, do these actions appear to be the work of a rational 'mind'? Well..does God think and feel as humans do? Good question. King Dubya was a proud man whom publically professed to know the Lord, but he consulted with the merchants and the wealthy men in secret. "What shall I tell the people?" His advisors gathered around him and declared, "O King, surely our God is with you, and He despises evil. Send our Armies to the land of the Babylonians and secure for our people the liquid bones of the dinosaurs deep beneath the ground. God is with us and He desires our people to prosper." So the King ordered his men to pursue the wicked Prince Bin Laden and to search every cave, nook, and cranny in the land of the Afghans. Rocks rained from the sky and the people were terrified! The Prince escaped by another way, however, and gathered the people around him to rise up and lay in wait for the Amerikites whenever they passed through the towns. The King of Babylon was overthrown, and his image was toppled in the public square. God commanded the Amerikites to slay every man, woman, and child who held allegience to either the Prince or the King of Babylon, now captured and taken by his own people. The Babylonians were wary of the Amerikites, however, for they worshipped strange gods and said that they heard from Allah, the Lord of the people. In the above "example" that I wrote, could we conclude that the scribe (himself an Amerikite) was accurate when he said that God commanded the Amerikites to slay everyone? Did God actually say to do that?  Personally, Brian, I think that we all provide a soap opera for God to watch! He stands outside of time and "pretends" not to know how the soap opera will end---just as we do when we watch reruns of movies we have seen! He finds little amusement in the churches, but He laughs with the people in the pubs and at their jobs and livlihoods throughout the world. He seeks to infuse us with His Spirit, but were He to automatically make us choose it, That would be boring! Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil. --Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
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Phat Member Posts: 18354 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
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Phat Member Posts: 18354 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
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Phat Member Posts: 18354 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
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Phat Member Posts: 18354 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
I can only explain it to you both in human terms, since you do not share the understanding (or perception) that I do.
Say thata man had an Aunt whom he considered a Saint. He told us of the life that she led, which was exemplory. She helped many less fortunate than herself and she cared for her ill husband, and she never wanted anyone to pay much attention to her and etc etc... You may say, "sounds like a remarkable person, but I would hardly call her flawless!" Why do we have a "bullshit" detector that causes us to be skeptical of anyone...be they Deity or be they Diva...of being perfect and flawless? 1) Because we know human nature. We have seen many examples of deception and flawed analogies. 2) Because we know that we ourselves are not perfect--therefore--how could anyone else be perfect. One thing is for certain, IMHO, as pertains to THIS topic: God will never be bored as long as He observes some of the human characters that I know of voicing their opinions and weaving their theories! You know how people create fishtank environments and spend hours watching the characters of the individual fish? Perhaps God observes humanity in a somewhat similar way. (again, since I do not know exactly how His perspective would be, I cannot comment fully!
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Phat Member Posts: 18354 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
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