anonymous2 said:
And Revelation says the beast which was slain was resurrected. You can say it wasn't a real resurrection. I can say Jesus' resurrection wasn't real, that it was just an illusion, that an evil deity influenced the disciples into believing a lie.
Revelation is actually one of the best support we have for the Trinity. If you follow its contours, you can actually see Satan mimicing the Trinity - complete with child, prophet and resurrection.
Prove to me he didn't. Prove to me that the God of the Jews didn't cause or allow the disciples to believe a lie in order to test his chosen people, and that some of them failed the test and decided to worship a man instead of the Creator. Prove to me that Christianity is not an ingenius construct of an evil entity who read the OT passages and distorted them to convince people that they were fulfilled, to convert the Jews away from their God and instead worship a man?...
The prophets were condemnded for believing and telling lies about God. And no man shall say that it is God that tempted him, because it's selfish desires that tempt us away from God. There is no tempation greater than God, and therefore none that can tempt you away from God unless you're willing. If you think we serve another God than the Jews, you're sorely mistaken.
If I had to summarize the rest of what you said in a word (don't worry, I read all of it), it would be: distrust. Not healthy scepticism or honest enquiry, but pure unequivocal
distrust - and not just of Jesus or the prophets before him, of God himself.
I cannot prove to you that God is trustworthy if you won't believe it's
Him being trustworthy, can I?
God doesn't use miracles to convince people? You sure about that? Is that the position of the entire Bible that God doesn't use miracles to convince people? Didn't Jesus basically say believe because of the works themselves? So wasn't he saying "Believe me for the miracles I do?"
Miracles weren't intended to engender faith - they're not up to the task. If they were, Israel would never have made themselves guilty of idolatry, yet what's the first thing they do after they have seen the ten plagues, aparting sea and a column of fire? Yeah. But Jesus says:
John 14:11
Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.
As a last resort, if you can't get yourself to believe someone who devotes his life to being trustworthy. If being loving, honest and compassionate isn't enough. As 1 Cor. 13 states: miracles, prophesies, even knowledge, fades away, but love never fails.
And if you think Christianity itself doesn't rely on the fear of hell, where do you get that from? I already quoted you Jesus saying FEAR HIM in reference to the one who can put your body and soul in Gehenna. You can try to explain away the verse if you wish.
I don't have to explain it at all. The context says it all: God was sending out his disciples, sheep among wolves, and told them that
as comfort. Their responsibility was immense, but they were properly equipped.
You don't think Muslims think Allah is loving? They ALSO think he's an eternal torturer. I think Krishna's supposedly loving. But in Hinduism people supposedly can go to a hell for a million+ years. You don't "mind" other religions' hells cause you don't think they're real, not because you don't find them revolting. "Reincarnation" doesn't necessarily negate a hell. Some people believe in both. And yea, you would have a problem being reincarnated as an animal which gets slaughtered. Horrifying, isn't it?
Oh, they're real. Maybe I have already been reincarnated from a demi0god who sinned. But none of those beliefs threaten what God did for me, or take away His promises. It's not outside people's power to realize their state quite independently of God, and search for ways to come to terms with it. Israel's sacrificial system started out as pagan as those around them - but with one difference: God chose the people behind them, and redeemed their activities. But at the same time, it wasn't exactly to their benefit:
Amos 3:2
"You only have I chosen
of all the families of the earth;
therefore I will punish you
for all your sins."
Jenyar, you can't say that God promised "forgiveness and unconditional love", when you ALSO say that one HAS to accept Jesus to GET that "forgiveness and unconditional love". If you have to DO something to GET it, it's not UNCONDITIONAL. I can't live my life how I see fit and still get "forgiveness and unconditional love", can I? The Christian God does not give unconditional love! You HAVE to "believe", "follow Jesus", whatever the Bible describes as God's laws (whichever those are, since there are many different Christian groups who interpret what the Bible wants differently). That is NOT UNCONDITIONAL LOVE DAMN IT! Unless you have a very warped sense believing God will be "unconditionally loving" eternal souls in hellfire.
Unconditional love does not appear out of thin air. To receive it you must accept the source of it. How else?
This is predicated on believing the Bible as true. Now, if the Bible is true, I find Satan a more admirable character ultimately. At least he didn't PREPARE an eternal torture pit and put people in it. And what is wrong with "knowledge of good and evil"? Why didn't God want Adam and Eve to eat that fruit? Why put it there in the first place unless when he FOREKNEW they'd eat of it?
God di not want them to eat the fruit, that is twisting the truth. They were given a choice, and God knew the result of either choice. That's why He tipped the scales in their favour by
telling them what the result would be. And foreknowledge isn't as cut and dried as you make it sound. Why did God create at all, if He knew only some would choose Him? Maybe He created so that those who would,
could. Why derive everybody of the pleasures of existence and eternal life because some would not appreciate it? That would be a different kind of unfair.
God does not let his work be dictated by Satan.
Maybe your soul could stand the fire, or get used to the despair. But I don't know if you'll get along with Satan as well as you think.
I didn't say I was SURE there isn't a hell. Have you been reading my posts? I said I BELIEVE God's not an eternal torturer. Why should I have to believe that God's an eternal torturer? Or even that he CREATED an eternal torture pit and puts people there? Or as you try to say that people walk in willingly. Yeah. Right. Nobody in their right mind would walk in there willingly. Which goes to show your argument is bologna.
Oh, and nobody in their right mind would reject God if He was the only source of life, right? Nobody in their right mind would reject Jesus if He was who he said He was, right? Nobody in their right minds, would torture, kill and rape. Unfortunately, the problem is that "right mind" and "sin" has become interchangeable concepts, willing swapped to suit ourselves.
The problem of sin is that it seduces. The problem with sinners is that they believe lies willingly. The problem with hell is that heaven exists.
Hahah.. yes, "pain is good". This goes back to the Christian reversal of things. Life is death. Pain is good. etc. Sorry, excruciating pain that leads to death is not good. If you think it is, then why don't you apply such pain to yourself and see how you like it?
So pain=excruciating pain, does it? I didn't know that. I'll remember that next time a practice a sport, or drive my body to greater heights. I'll just give up and die from the pain. The faculty of pain serves a good purpose, but the invasions made on it, don't. Get it?
One of the reasons why you might associate pain with good I think is that you believe God died on the cross. After all, if God died a painful death on the cross, and its meaning was good (in fact supremely good in Christian theology, for it is what was necessary for salvation and avoidance of eternal damnation), then maybe pain and suffering is actually good?
Not good, but redeemed. It doesn't have to be meaningless.
If you are implying that pain is good, this is as sick as what I've read about Mother Teresa (whether true or not I don't know), that basically suffering is good. And God himself is the one who brought curse into the world. He didn't need to throw Adam and Eve out of the garden. He could have simply forgiven them. But he chose not to. Instead he gave women suffering in child birth and a ground that yields thistles. He didn't need to do that, did he? And if it was merely a "natural consequence", guess who created that "natural consequence". Once again, GOD was responsible. So why did he do it?
Now you extended pain to suffering!? You're swopping heaven and hell again! If suffering was good, why did Jesus go around healing people and providing comfort? Adam inherited suffering when He was expelled from Eden. It's not as if God created the
rest of the world for him:
Genesis 2:8
Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.
And that was a mercy: they were forgiven, but the consequences could not be ignored. All their children had to bear the consequences of that sin. It was because God could not trust Adam anymore that He had to separate him from the tree of life. So what about you? Can God trust you not to choose death over life, even though He has set both paths before you? Or are you going to go the way of Adam, blaming Eve, blaming Satan, and ultimately blaming God. Anything, as long as you don't have to be trusted.
And if you don't think you
should be trusted with such a decision, then you are starting to realize something of what Jesus means - what
forgiveness means.
Where's the love? Like I said, "show me thy God". Not merely an alleged book by him. You can't say in one breath that God is love and then in the next say that he is omniscient and created an eternal hell, people with eternal souls, and foreknew they'd go there, against their will. And yes indeed it would be against their will. For the SIMPLE FACT that if such a hell exists, nobody in their right mind would walk into it and stay there forever.
And here that hell is
exactly why you would walk into, boldly demanding your rights, but rejecting God at every step.
I got older. I found out that it was full of pain, death and disappointment. Look, if I thought the Christian God was good, and that all my intellectual, moral problems I have with the Christian concept of God could just disappear, and I could just "believe" and find Christianity making perfect sense, then I might just do that.
It's not going to make any more sense if you believed it or not. Sin, suffering, wilful injustice and crime *doesn't* make sense. Because violence is always
senseless. And hell is where everything senseless and chaotic find their place.
There was a comfort in thinking I knew what the truth was, I'll give you that. Not that life is only full of pain, death and disappointment. But it doesn't show me that an all loving God created or allowed these things.
He does not allow it. Just a moment ago you were complaining about his harsh justice, and now you don't want him to allow pain, death and disappointment at all.
Choose.
God created a lot of things, but without Him, those things lose all sense and place. Pain tells us that something wrong, it's no use blaming the pain and being deaf to its symptoms. Disappointment tells us we expect something more, but where in this life did you ever get the idea that you could expect
anything at all? Death is the one thing that God warned Adam about, and is still warning us about. But God conquered it as a human, that we could see beyond it
as humans.
No, I don't buy the "human free will" argument. I'm sorry, but I have little reason to think that because Adam and Eve did something wrong, that caused natural disasters, the food chain, microscopic death every second, famine, disease, etc. That a "loving God" would even create such "natural consequences" to "sin" just doesn't really make sense.
It's a symplified conculsion, that's why you have trouble with it. What you call "disasters" are the mechanism that allows us to live on earth. You want heaven, but you're not willing to pay the price of living. What you want, is death.
I see no reason to see a rational correlation between Adam and Eve doing something wrong and things wrong today which mankind can't really control, such as painful death. I mean, sure, in theory you could try to control it, but it can still happen "to the best of them".
We don't know how much has changed between paradise and today. We only know that it's not the way it's "supposed" to be. As if we knew what it
is supposed to be like. For the most part, we can only observe consequences, but we can never find their origins. And we know we can't control it. We feel in charge, but we're not. I think it would be more accurate to say we *want* to be in charge. We want to give ourselves what only God can give, and that's the problem.
I apologize for the "angry" tone of these posts. They have that tone because I am angry. The things Christians do to try to rationalize their belief in an eternal torturing god is mind boggling.
I understand your anger, and believe it or not, I share some of it. But I will not justify my own struggles by rejecting God.
I think we should end our discussion for the moment. I'm beginning to repeat myself, and you're essentially just restating the same objections. I sincerely recommend that you go see the movie
Luther, as I think it might help you put some of your frustration into perspective. It might incite you against God further, or it might get you thinking in another direction. As with all things, that will be entirely up to you.
