Thank you again for responding so quickly. I read everything you said with great interest and will reread as I try to respond.
MitchellMcKain said:
It is essential. I encounter atheists claiming that God is a miserable failure because the world is such a mess. But they are making such a judgement without understanding the purpose of what God has made.
It is one of the athiest’s best arguments to show that God is not logical.
MitchellMcKain said:
Love is the deepest expression of our free will and choice. When we talk about loving something, therein lies our choice of attention, thought and action. We are free to choose or love all things equally but not all choices are equal in God's eyes. Choosing the way of greater life is God's vision for us. So the most important choice is that of choosing life and its development over death and its destruction by sin. And therefore the most important love is to love life. But loving God Himself who is the source of all life and all of its greater potentialities is inseperable from this. You cannot love life without loving its source. In fact, I think that a faith in God is indistinguishable from the faith that life is worth living. How can you have faith in God if you do not belief that life is His loving gift to you for your benefit and growth. And if you have faith in the value of life, then you see life as a gift, and appreciating the gifts of God is the essence of faith in Him.
When, I discuss differences in theology, I am amazed how the definition of just one word can produce a huge variance. “Godly type Love” love is one of those words. It is natural to love those that love you back. It is both biological and emotionally pleasing to love a spouse. Some animals instinctively love and some groups of pagan people can love each others or even others. All those loves I see as the result of genes and/or environment. Now that is not to say you can not add Godly type Love to any of them and have a greater combined love. That is also the reason I talk about Godly type love being a love for you enemies, because that love is not natural and requires a thought out mental decision to do that which is not natural. If you know the relationship between the Jews and Samaritans of the first century, you can understand how extreme that love of the Good Samaritan was for a Jew. Jesus was describing something the Jews of that day would have thought utterly impossible. If a person expresses “love” for another doing great and wonderful things for that person without “Godly type Love” (defined by Paul in 1 Cor. 13) then that type love he is showing is worthless. There may be many people “loving” God to the point of choosing to give their lives in the fire, with what is described as worthless love 1 Cor. 13.
I am not talking about a wonderful child’s love for a wonderful parent, for that is instinctive for at least some children. God is wanting a love like His love for us, sacrificial, selfless, thought out, mature, and coming from our free will choice to love Him. A robot maybe programmed someday to really love a something, but that is not the love God is desiring from us. That does not mean this love is something difficult because it is not something we have to create within us. We have to truly accept God’s love as a free unwarranted gift (forgiveness) and those that are forgiven much will love much. The problem is that requires humbling oneself to accept something as a gift.
MitchellMcKain said:
In other words, we do not believe that a good and loving God is responsible for evil. This is one of the reasons we believe in free will. But why would God create free will? What could possibly justify creating even the possibility of evil? I cannot believe that the creation of servants could possibly justify this. Nor can I believe that God is so inept a master that a third of his servants, the angels, would rebel against Him. To imagine that they have such an autonomy would make them more like demigods, pagan gods, or the aeons and demiurge of Gnosticism.
No. The only thing that could justify the creation of free will and the possibility of evil is in order to create children. In creating a servant there is no reason to design them do anything other than the what they are intended to do. But children are different. They are created to be loved and served and to exist for their own purpose NOT in service to the parent. The only way that this is possible is if they can choose their own purpose and thus they must have free will.
You ask: But why would God create free will?
The only reason I can come up with for God to create free will is that it is required for “godly type love”. You can create robots to do most everything else.
You said: They are created to be loved and served and to exist for their own purpose and The only way that this is possible is if they can choose their own purpose and thus they must have free will.
These all go together, so I will try to address them all. God is caught in a catch 22 so to speak. He may have a need to (love) serve others in ever increasing number as His love grows (this is speculation on my part for the need to create humans in the first place). The problem is this love is very unique in that when the exchange takes place (as a free gift) it comes back as more love. So, if an independent agent truly accepts God’s love as a free unwarranted gift godly type love will come back to God even greater from the independent agent. I do not see God leaving us to our own purpose, but the purpose He has given us to accept and grow His love. If you love God with all your heart, soul, mind and energy, that will be what you are doing all the time while you are going through life.
We are not created to be robotic slaves, but lovers like God.
You asked: What could possibly justify creating even the possibility of evil?
and
You said: Nor can I believe that God is so inept a master that a third of his servants, the angels, would rebel against Him.
There is a real problem here. If God makes agents that can love of a free will with likely perceived alternative choices (sin having pleasure for a season) at some time and place they will chose to be selfish (try to serve their own interest). There has to be likely alternatives or there is no real choice so sin will occur. For humans on earth sin is not the problem, only unforgiven sin is the problem. Forgiven sins can actually be part of the agent’s witness (like Paul used it). Now, Christians do not want to sin again and the Spirit can help with that, but is it bad for the non Christian to sin if he/she is not willing to change for God’s sac at the time? Sometimes people have to reach the bottom before they want out.
We know very little about angels or heaven, so most of what I say is conjured up. Earth maybe the place where we can accept and grow Godly type Love, but heaven if there is free will without likely alternatives (a Garden place without the tree or satan) then Humans in their new state can take the Godly type Love they accepted on earth and love God without the alternative of sin. Just as the garden was not a good place to accept Godly type Love heaven would have a similar issue. I do not know what arrangement the angels had, but somehow at some time, they had real likely alternatives so they could chose to love. Like us they may not at some point been able to receive forgiveness again, so they fell. If it was a third that still might not be as bad as the human ratio. Since humans are not Spiritual beings the punishment (time in hell before being consumed) for humans should not be as suffer. That may be another reason for earth.
. God does not desire satan to be around at all, but to help humans accept, develop and grow Godly type Love, he will quench His desire and allow satan to roam. God allows Satan with limitations, to do stuff that provides opportunities for people to accept, develop and grow Godly type Love. You, I am sure have seen good things come out of tragedies, will that is what suppose to happen and can happen with each tragedy. The reason it does not happen is not God’s fault, or satan’s fault, or Adam and Eve’s fault, or bad luck, or sins fault. The blame lies with you and me. Good people must step up to these opportunities to experience, to show, to receive, to express Godly type Love. Unfortunately, Godly type Love can best be seen with the cross.
MitchellMcKain said:
But this does not make any sense. If God can make spiritual beings with free will then there is no reason to create the physical world and the angels would be far more like the children of God than we could be. Creating mankind in such circumstance would be like intentionally having children who are badly handicapped. No parent would do this. My studies of physics tells me that this physical universe was in fact designed for one purpose: free will.
I have a master in Chemistry and think the Universe was created for humans to accept and grow Godly type Love. I think the earth situation is better then the Spiritual free will agent model. My understanding of Godly type Love suggests the need for likely alternatives for acceptance, the choice to be loved. God is wanting us to choose Him over other things (self).
Can you still have free will if you do not have likely alternatives? (This would be agents that have Godly type love and very limited unlikely ways of rebelling.)
Quote:
MitchellMcKain said:
One of the reasons I believe in the angels because it seems perfectly obvious to me that the first step in a complex task like the creation of the universe would be the creation of tools that could work automatically to do the more tedious tasks, much in the same way that we create computers. The angels are obviously a lot more sophisticated and powerful than our computers and able to imitate many of the characteristics of a person with free will, but they are essentially the same as our computers because they just do what they were designed to do.
I therefore think that Lucifer was doing the job for which He was created, encouraging all living things to creatively try new things and to learn from this. He was designed to pursue this task without the direct supervision of God. But just like our computers, when they interact with living things the results can be unpredictable.
I do not want to personify God that much to need helpers. God may need others beside the Spirit and Christ to love, but helpers?
The interacting with living things might have some possibility. It would not seem to be the reason for satan’s fall but there maybe more then I can figure out there. We do not want to take our theology from “Paradise Lost”.
MitchellMcKain said:
It is far more tragic that this. God nurtured and raised up life until He finally had those with the ability to communicate with God directly and thus whom He could teach as His own children. But with their rejection of responsibility, God's presence in their lives actually became a harmful influence, as they expected this all powerful God to do everything. The only way that they could grow and learn the lesson of responsibility was to make their own way without Him, suffering the consequences of their own choices. God did not give up but tried again with their decendents, but the refusal of responsibilty was repeated again and again, forcing God to retreat from the lives of mankind, until God had a whole world doing evil continually. For our own good, God could no longer directly participate in the lives of His children, even though they were doomed to stumble into bad habits that would destroy them without His guidance. Parents of children with drug addiction have a very similar experience.
That’s an interesting possibility, but not supported much by scripture. Often in my discussions with atheist or agnostics I have said: “You do not have to believe the Garden to be literal to get the meaning from it.”
This is the first story of God’s interaction with humans and gives a tremendous amount of information in a very simple story.
1. We know that God wants us in heaven and has made a place for us there, because God starts out putting humans in a heaven on earth situation in the Garden.
2. Adam and Eve are the best human representatives we could have: they have bodies that can last forever with the help of the tree of life, they have minds without any bad mutations, and they were trained (programmed) to adulthood by the perfect Parent. They had intelligences that included the ability to talk to animals and the animals seemed to have miraculous intelligence.
3. The objective of humans we know today is to have a very special Godly type Love (Love with all your heart, soul, mind and energy) for God. That type Love we understand is not something God could give instinctively to Adam and Eve and would have to be desired by them and accepted from God as a unwarranted gift. Here in lies the problem with the Garden, for the Garden is not a good place to develop Godly type Love, for there is no perceived need in the Garden.
4. We can see problems with the perceived utopia situation the biggest being humans on their own, have to obey God’s commands to remain in an eternal close relationship with God. (Outside the Garden they will depend on God’s mercy for their eternal close relationship with God.)
5. If you have done nothing wrong then you are a very good child of a very good parent, so there is no perceived need for Godly type Love, the Children can have an extremely strong child/parent type love without ever needing Godly type Love.
6. God’s love although sacrificial, selfless, all consuming and controlling His behavior would not be seen as anything more then a wonderful parent’s love for wonderful children.
7. Even with only one way to sin humans without the development of Godly type Love will sin (if you love me you will obey me). God will not stop you from sinning. Sin will be made convenient, desirable, and satan will be allowed to tempt you. It will all be your fault for sinning since you could have said “no” at that time, but that does not mean you will always say “no”, so all mature adult humans will sin (including Adam and Eve).
8. Not sinning is not the objective, the objective is obtaining Godly type love, and through sinning we can desire and accept God’s forgiveness (Love) and thus love Him (He who is forgiven much, loves much).
9. Outside the Garden Adam and Eve can produce limited resources which they can give to others (love), they can help needy people, they can have faith in the mercy of God, they can have hope of heaven, and they have a dependence on God’s mercy (love).
As much as we might think we would love to be in the Garden situation and many will ask: “How could an all loving God allow_____” the best place for us to fulfill our objective of obtaining Godly type Love is after we have sinned and being surrounded with needy people. As far as original sin hurting us today, I see only my sins hurting me, and know I could not have done any better then Adam and Eve in that situation. The sin of Adam and Eve demonstrated that the Garden type situation does not work for obtaining Godly type Love.
MitchellMcKain said:
To put it simply there are two basic part to my explanation. The first part is that as eternal beings with the love of God waiting for us, the worst that can happen to us on the earth is just not a bad as we think. The second part is that God's highest priority is our life and growth to realize our greater potential (our spiritual growth if you will) and for these things taking responsibility for our own choices and life is essential. God's interference simply can too easily do far more harm than good, for we will simply expect Him to do everything taking no responsibility for our own lives or the evil within us.
To show how Christ addresses questions and responds to statements we would have to go through all His responses. I have done that and what I see is Jesus answers the question on people’s hearts at the time and not necessarily what they verbalize. The question on the disciples’ heart in John 9:1-7 would not have been for this particular blind person that they did not even know the name of. The question would apply to all babies born with a defect. That is something to think about, but let’s look at the issue at hand.
We have all heard of or experienced directly good coming out of a tragedy, the question is could good come out of every tragedy if good people stepped up to the opportunity created by the tragedy to produce that good. That is not to say good always results in every tragedy, for it is an opportunity that God allows.
It would be inconsistent with God’s nature to hurt innocent people (God can take the lives of innocent people). God can only allow Satan to hurt innocent people to a limit God establishes to provide opportunities for Good people to develop and grow Godly type love. Look at Job. Job was a better person at the end then at the beginning as a result of going through the tragedy.
Look at Rms. 8:28 all thing (which would include tragedies) work together for the Good of good people (it is not the result of the actions of bad people or sin).
God reveals Himself to the believer, but in ways that still require faith. (This is another long subject but faith is needed to develop (accept) Godly type Love.) Satan is limited so faith is still required. All tragedies are caused by Satan, but are allowed by God to create opportunities for good people. There are many “natural” ways, parts of God’s plan, which can over come tragedies (Doctors, medicine, councilors, fireman, armies, etc.) and we are to use these methods God has provided, so we can directly participate in the healing. What ever we do it will include pray for the best outcome. There are also those tragedies that go beyond the world’s available solutions, that will require our prays resulting in almost exclusively God’s help. Remember death is not bad.
This is a brief explanation.
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