Is God good?

But of course his point was that places and historical events mentioned in the bible are true, right?And the things you would dispute are ideas, aren't they?You would say that Truth is the mesdiah, correct for mankind correct?John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the truth,
the way, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

The topic is about whether God is truly good. I believe of course God is.Paul spoke of the kindness and severity of God- "Behold then the kindness and severity of God ..." (Rom. 11:22)It makes sense to me that over the centries of God's actions in many many varied situations, the revelation of God would present a wide scope of instances.There is no question to me about God's kindness. In the 150 some Psalms there are so many passages on His patience, kindness, longsuffering with men. It is appropriate that we also be provided samples when God HAD to be severe.We need to see that an all-inclusive God has more than just one side. So I believe this Perfection would present over the 1600 years of bible history some instances of His more severe reactions.No doubt some TOUGH instances are among these. I do not say they are easy for me to explain. But the total SCOPE of recorded ways God dealt with the world rightly should be revealed if we are to get a full view of God.The Amalakites attacked the Hebrews in the Exodus from behind, killing the stragglers and weakest travelers. It doesn't surprise me that God therefore reserves severe recompense to them.We are told God would not bring the Hebrews into Canaan until the people had degraded so bad that they merited a conquest.I believe some instances of the hardest of the hard who did not scatter died. These were probably combatants. The "cities" were termed as fortresses which indicates a military base.The first instruction was to drive the Canaanites out rather than to exterminate every living one of them.The presence of some of these people in the land proves that Joshua did not literally kill every last on of any of those societies.Jonah is a book reserved for the subject of God's reluctance to have to judge a nation.Why did the Hebrew kings have a reputation of being merciful ?Too many words of judgment are uttered by God against nations who went overboard in making warfare. So it is doubtful that He condoned genocide or excess.It may be very hard for us to imagine that a society could sink as low as some of those societies did. Obviously God's judgments vary. The varying judgments of God in the Old Testamen demonstrate that He regarded different levels of culpability.Why were not ALL the enemies of Israel dealt with as harshly as the Amalakites ? There most be with God VARYING levels of His chastizement.If there are varying levels, it is His responsibility that we be informed of the whole wide scope, including some of the harshest.Any stereotyping of God as always as severe as in the few instances in the OT is not realistic or honest. One has to work hard to keep a blind eye to the hundrends of merciful and kind actions of God.The last manifestation of God is in Jesus Christ of the New Testament. God's hatred against sin is all the more reason to regard that on an eternal basis ALL men for ALL sins may be justified by Hiss redemptive death.The terminated lives of some OT figures is not at all the final destiny of them in the eternal scheme.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

I can see your point. But what you seem to be doing (addressed below) is implying that when God does something awful (such as the Fluod) that he is actually doing good and that he is doing good because anything he does is by definition good.That is special pleading. A fuller picture? How is this not qualifiying the bible based on your interpretation of what the bible means? As far as I can see if God says to kills gays they should be killed (from a loving Christian perspective). This is not a good analogy. God does not change his mind: what is righteous is always righteous (unless God decides it is not; so again special pleading).Psalm 100:5 For the LORD is good, his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generationsPsalm 119:160 Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever.Isaiah 40:8 The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.Matthew 24:35 Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.Truth does not change. If it's okay to eat with your fingers it is ALWAYS alright to do so. When you say open heart what you mean is to rationalise the bad bits. When I read the bible I read all of it, not just the bits you like.

quote:

---

The level of the disclosure of God's purpose and nature renders somewhat different speakings as the word of God progresses.

---

Pretty clear cut. You go out of your way to handwave the bits where your god is a psychopath. Lets think about this: the sin of the world is down to him rigging the game so that sin was inevitable. Good planning omniscient one! You miss the point entirely: IT IS NOT WRONG TO BE GAY. You do not need to repent for being how God made you. God decides on a whim that being gay is bad but he sets the rules. He could say "no it's fine, go to heaven when you die". Don't forget that God is not constrained by anything. If one says he has traits which he cannot change then these traits can be accurately described as homophobic and distastefull. Again you miss the point: IT IS NOT WRONG TO BE GAY. Only your god has decided it is wrong.That's like telling ginger people that they must dye their hair otherwise they will be forced to live in a ghetto. They can easily dye their hair so what's the problem. Would that fly? of course not. What if ginger people don't dye their hair? What oif instead of dyeing your hair black you left it ginger. It is the same argument. It is morally wrong to force your views on other people with the threat of punishment for motivation. Sin is just what your god has decided is wrong. Like someone deciding red hair is wrong. Sin is what your god has decided he does not want people to do (after creating each individual with an insticnt to sin). What perverse reason could he have had to rig the game in such a way? Madness. I'm not going to put up with gingers flaunting their ginger hair forever. Can you see a pattern here?Your foolish god created this whole problem by deciding for no good reason that some harmless things are sins. So he created sin: nice move. Not true. God should be held to account for not being good by rigging the game to force us to do it his way to avoid eternal torment. That's no different from gentically engineering people to express ginger hair and then punishing them if the don't dye it. Nothing like it at all. Jesus and God are the same. The best that on could say is that Jesus is God in disguise so that people can conveniently forget what a psychopath God is. It is then impossible to use bible quotes at all. By your logic if one does not quote the whole bible one is selectivley quoting.....Does God want gay people to be killed or not? If not then he has changed his mind and his eternal unchanging character traits are incorrect.

quote:

---

"All scripture" is the operative phrase there.

​

Selective usage to try to nullify the New Testament salvation is not clever.

---

Correct. All of it. So Lev 20:13 is just as relevent (and morally repugnant) now as it was back then.

quote:

---

You are not allowed to rewrite the Bible to fit with your individual notion of what it really says. it says so in the Bible, for God's sake

---

If I was unclear here, I appologise. What I meant was that you twist the meaning of the bible to suit you moral relativism.

There we have it. You would RATHER beleive. By saying this you render your entire position one of emotional relativism.It makes you feel better to think God is not a psychopath in spite of what the bible says.ABE: just saw this: A great get out clause, don't you think? God can do anything because you get a bag of sweets in Heaven.If those kids were going to Heaven they did not need to killed, did they?Edited by Larni, : Last three sentences.

I say the "awefulness" of the Noah account is accompanied by the wonderfulness of His salvation, His righteous termination of such a low sunken world.It is perculiar that you see this judgment only from the side of a Cain like attitude. You know Cain had no remorse whatsoever about his sin. He only chided God about the chastizement coming to him. "And Cain said to Jehovah, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Now You have driven me out this day ... and I will be a fugitive and a wanderer ..." (See Gen. 4:11) Not the slightest hint from Cain about his murdering his brother. We see ONLY complaints about God's chastizement being unfair. Similarly with you, that nearly a century of violence and continual imiginations of wicked doing is not regarded by your complaint at all.I am glad that God realistically warns the world that things CAN actually get that bad. On your part selective outrage. Not too much interpretation is needed in the Noah story. Quotation is sufficient to realize that the society had gotten so rotten that it would have been unrighteous for God not to intervene.That future generations learned from the example is His goodness. This requires little interpretation but rather simple quotation: "And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that EVERY IMAGINATION OF THE THOUGHTS OF HIS HEART WAS ONLY EVIL CONTINUALLY." (Gen. 6:5)"So what?" complains the starry eyed humanist.So the need for a new beginning from this ruined humanity. And that these things are an example to us God seekers today only requires quotation and belief -
"Now these things [of the Old Testament] occured as examples to us, that we should not be ones who lust after evil things, even as they also lusted. ... Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our admonition, unto who the ends of the ages have come." (1 Cor. 10:6,11) We are exhorted to recall the Noah story a number of times in New Testament.The more foolish expoundings come from those who senses are so dull that they only see fault in God's terminating that world. I will discuss this in some detail in another post. It will be discussed by me fairly with the most important facts considered. The analogy is not bad. The instructions of the mother are given appropriate to the child's age. To eat with fingers is good for one stage of growth. To use a fork is better with further maturity.We are told that the law was a child conductor leading us to grace.
"So then the law has become our child-conductor unto Christ that we might be justified by faith. But since faith has come we are no longer under a child-conductor." (Gal. 3:24,25) This verse shows that the Levitical laws were a step in the progressive leading of man to Jesus Christ and the Gospel of grace.So what the growing child analogy corresponds to the progressive spiritual apprehension of the unfolding character of God.This is all the time I have right now. To be continued latter.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

So the ends justifies the means: gotcha. Cain made a decision to sin. Humanity has sin from conception; as dictated by God. For the comparison with Cain to hold any water people would have to individually decide to sin before they were born. Of course. I will only be outraged (in this context) when your god acts in an outrageous way. Why on Earth did he decide to punish people for being HOW HE MADE THEM? Not too much, because it fits in with your personal idea of the character of God, rather than an unbiased reading of the Bible. Let me guess: when the bible does not conform with your personal version of Yaweh more 'interpretation' is required. No, they learnt that God will punish them for being how he created them. It was not an act of goodness, it was genocide. Yaweh could have resolved the problem if he was not so wedded to punishing people for how he made them.He seems obsessed with punishment. He even punished himself in the form of his own son because he could not imagine a resolution to the problem he created without SOMEONE getting punished. He's a sadist and a masocihst. If you cannot see the difference between god killing every one and a human military leader killing every one then you have a problem. People are dead; but with the military leader doing the killing the people may go to Heaven, yet.So the actions of your god are actually worse and more monsterous than a genocidal military leader. I'm sure you know this was part of an attempt to bring Gentiles into the fold to soften the imapct of the harshness of the Law.Matthew 5:17-19 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.I'm equally sure you know this part of the bible is about how god and the jews parted ways based on non-adhearance.Here Jesus clearly says untill the law is fulfilled we must not change anything.Romans 8:3-4 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.Here it clearly states that the law might be fullfilled in us if we walk after the spirit. Not that it is fullfilled for us.So only by continuing to toe the party line (kowtow to God or dyeing our ginger hair black) can we avoid eternal suffering. I could go further and interprest it to mean by following the spirit we could do whatever we want and still get to Heaven.But I won't because I'm NOT interpreting the bible, I'm simply reading it and beleiving (for the purpose of our discussion) what it says.Yaweh contructed the universe with the rules it has and made people the way they are and is for some reason butt hurt because it is exactly how he planned it: he takes it out on people by sending them to Hell.Nice.Edited by Larni, : Started on iphone but it got too difficult so I moved over to the PC.

So an omnipotent creator of all things was forced by his own creation to "intervene" where "intervening" is strictly defined as "slaughtering by rainfall."Really, Jaywill, can you not see what Larni is saying? Can you not even read your own Holy Book for the words that are written there?!

The issue is moot for bible people, isn't it?Matthew 19:17
And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God:

Until one identifies God as the father of Truth, and thereafter realizes that "God" is an euphemism for the Reality which corresponds to Truth this evaluation makes no sense.The force behind the ever unfolding Reality that fathers Truth and what is to be consider true in its wake is good bcause kiving in a Fantasy World is the definition of insanity.Isn't it?John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the truth, (a personification of that ideal)
the way, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, (almighty Reality), but by me.

You are simply interpreting the bible rather than reading it properly.As such hour post is pointless.

I am certain that you are too intelligent to believe otherwise that that everyone who reads interprets what any book or Bible says, and then asserts that the interpretation is proper.Your comment implies that my "book report" differs from yours.''It differs from the book report down through the ages.
It differs from the medieval book report on Genesis that has come down almost unchallenged and unchanged since the Dark Ages.My book report says that the academic facts and the sciences discoveries on the modern age show your book report does not make rational sense anymore.This is a very important matter for the whole Christian community.Only the Pope has made a public statement to accept evolution.
He no doubt remembers when the Roman Catholic Church opposed Galileo.The foolish leaders of the Christian churches today can either suffer a Reformation later, or drop those poor and erroneous interpretations they have maintained though the Middle Ages that did not properly understand Genesis.They can join me in preaching the Bible to be scientifically and factually true, or they can watch the atheists ridicule them, their religion, and their bible.This is the moment of Truth for you, first, then your church, and last, Christianity.Rev. 3:18 I counsel thee to buy of me gold,... (the golden spiritual insights of the irrepressible idea of psychic Consciousness emerging from scripture) ... tried in the fire... (of time),... that thou mayest be rich... (in continued church leadership); and (re-interpret upon) white (yet unwritten, new pages), raiment,... (of revised books of your evermore obvious misinterpretations), ...that thou mayest be clothed... (and protected in thine thinking with secularly acceptable scriptural confirmations), ...and that the shame... (as visited in Geocentricism does not reoccur concerning magical Creationism, impossible literal world-wide floods, genealogies of individuals who lived inordinately long personal life times, Sun and Moon and Stars absent from the Heavens while light shines through the Cosmos, etc) ...of thy nakedness... (of your unsupportable intuitive irrationalities) ...do not appear... (and confront you as happened before The Reformation); ...and anoint thine eyes...(awaken!)... with (the) eyesalve... (of reality!), ...that thou mayest see... (socio-psychologically).

LOLThat was really funny.
If we accept the idea that these church people have about this God they read about in the Bible and then assign such characteristics and behaviors to, your point would show right here how silly they are.The God who the bible preaches is an ideal, a spirit of mind.
"He" is Truth.The Truth is that all men went extinct, 40 thousand years of "days and nights" ago, during a massive "flooding" Out-of-Africa which ended with Modern man spread world wide and even to the tops of the mountains.The Truth is that are all trapped and living in an Almighty Reality that both nurtures and threatens us, and our species.
The Facts-of-Life are that we, too, could become Extinct if we do not adapt and ow down to "His" ways.

God's word does not change down the ages, no matter how much you want them to fit socio-political and scientific realities.In this instance I would echo Faith by saying that when science or the socio-political climate conflicts with the Bible a Christian should still go with the Bible: because it says so int he bible.

?
I though the Bible said christians always go along with The Truth.John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the truth,
the way, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
For where two or three are gathered together in my name, (i.e.; The Truth: [ John 14:6]), there am I, (Truth), in the midst of them.

The Truth is not defined by man but by the God of the bible and the only way we can be informed of this Truth is via the bible.What you are doing is twisting the Truth^tm of the bible with man's flawed interpretation of the evidence.That's not following the bible: that's following your own conscience.