But this fails to answer the question of why God would instill lust within people in the first place. Why would he not make the sexual act something more progressive and not ,at times, overwhelming of good judgement?
God didn't instill lust. Lust is simply the wonky operation of what was originally a very well designed mechanism. God didn't put the spanner in the works. Adam did.
Yet the laws ,if put in place by a God to test humans, should fail to prevent humans from following the impulses that the laws are supposed to limit, then failing to follow them is a response of the nature that the God allowed us to have. He cannot hold responsible humans who had no part in the creation of those impulses that he himself instilled.
Like I said he did not instill these things. Neither did he put the laws there to test us. Tell me this: how would you know you were a lawbreaker if there was no laws to break? How would you know that you were doing wrong in stepping on the grass if there was no sign didn't tell you to keep of the grass? You could ask "Well then, why did he make the laws in the first place - if he had not then we wouldn't be able to break them?" The thing is, sin is present in us. A stain, a blot on our character. We have that blot as born before we even get to actually sinning. This blot needs to be dealt with in some way. Giving the law was Gods way of dealing with it. In giving the law sin is allowed to express itself. The law acts as a lure in order to get sin to become fully active. Sin (to personify it) sees the law and comes out of hiding in order to break it. That is the weakness of sin - it cannot hide when laws are about. If no law then sin just sits there like a blot. But if lured out, if allowed to fully express itself then there is an opportunity to deal with it. To lop off its head. The law is trap. A God designed trap. It aims to trap sin within us.
But why the punishment for following free will {which is another topic related to this} when we cannot do other than follow the choices as a consequence of who we are?
We do not have free will in the sense normally understood. Adam had free will before he fell. We have not. We are addicts of sin. Born addicted and injecting at the first opportunity. To say we have free will is to say an addict has free will to not inject heroin. No! We are, as the bible says "slaves to sin". Try to insert that into your questioning an see does it alter your difficulty. It is important to see it that way.
Any law that is in place can be broken of course but if we are created then why are we given the capability of breaking the laws?
Again I must point to the way it is. Adam was given the capability to break or not. We are not Adam, we are not born with the capability to break or not to break. As we are born, we, of ourselves, are incapable of keeping any law. We are, of ourselves, completely depraved. Left to our own devices we would do nothing but break the law as fast as we could.
The only reason we don't fall into total depravity (if indeed we do not) is down to Gods action upon us. Romans 1 talks of Gods wrath poured out on the wickedness and ungodliness of man - who suppress the truth about God. Paul describes the depravity that occurs as a result of that suppression of truth. A man who suppresses the truth that God reveals to him (say through conscience) is given over to sin. Gods truth holds a man from a slide into complete depravity. As man (and we all do this) suppressed truths so a man slides further and further into the abyss. Hilter was a case of a total slide - but all men are on that same slope.
If we had a choice to be able to choose a life where we did no harm to anyone ,while cognizant of all the harmful ramifications of the action we might make, would anyone ever do so? I think not. It is because we have insufficient knowledge and/or are not mature enough { a responsibilty that would fall to God I might add } or overcome with emotional interactions that we do break laws and do harm others.
This is just not the way it is. What ifs are fruitless avenues. It is how it is.
Either way I assert that the responsibilty for the capability would lay with a creator God since the whole ball of wax is, supposedly his doing in the first place.
God did give the capability of free choice to Adam. There is no other rational option for having a person freely love God. It is Gods right as sovereign to decide to do so. It is not the same situation for us - we do not start off with a clean slate to chose either way. But it turns out that if we are finally saved we too will love God freewillingly (at that point - his plan involves changing our will so as to be able to love him freely - all without interfering in deterministic fashion with our will to reject him. There is a Great Debate thread between me and Larni which covers this a little more but simply put: if we do not reject we will be brought to a place where we find we want him)
To be human is to realize that you likely cannot avoid harm or break law throughout your life since laws are man made and socially enforced.
Man made laws arise out of a conviction in man that law is good. He didn't lick that idea off a stone. The laws reflect very often Gods own laws. How many laws actually expound on Love your neighbour as yourself. Most I'll warrant. Mans laws are a derivitive of Gods laws.
It could also be , as I suspect, that God simply does not exist and that we take the actions we do based on the evolved social structures and interactions with others.
I know it is not so although I cannot prove it. Expanding "the workings of God" into "does God exist in the first place" broadens things to a pointless level - there is no profit in casting the net that wide.
Edited by iano, : No reason given.
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