Salvador
RF's Swedenborgian
But your enemies' little ole' children? Really?
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Does God make everything happen how he plans no matter what?
- Thread starter Frank Goad
- Start date
But your enemies' little ole' children? Really?
Axe Elf
Prophet
That is probably because God is also benevolent, and a benevolent God would want to create the best of all possible universes. An omniscient God would know how to create the best of all possible universes, and an omnipotent God would have the power to create the best of all possible universes.
So if an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient God exists, we are logically constrained to conclude that we live in the best of all possible universes, cancerous children and all.
What if you were also omniscient, and knew all the terrible consequences of unleashing the cure for cancer upon the world, including the slow death of the human race as overpopulation drains the Earth's resources? Would you still be immoral for keeping it to yourself?
As we have just seen, that is palpable nonsense.
Axe Elf
Prophet
I think a lot of people are rather drawn to the idea of a God Who will utterly annihilate their enemies for them. Little do they know that it doesn't really have that much to do with THEM; rather that some people are just created for destruction. But hey, whatever lets them sleep at night.
Well I don't think it works but not being God myself, I have to take your word for it.
I mean apparently a lot of folks believe it does else they'd change the laws right?
Unveiled Artist
Veteran Member
A child with cancer is no different than a 70 year old woman in good shape jogging, etc. Since, if I understand god, is the mover and sustainer of life, that doesnt make one repsonsible for the life in which it sustains.
Its like a bumper cart race. Some people get hurt and others dont. Do you expect the whole game to stop (god just appear out of nowhere) because one person or two is hurt?
Its kind of like you have fifty people in a militant mission and to save fourty nine of them, one has to die. If that one out of forty nine has cancer, would god take care of that one percent or treat everyone equal from their birth, life, and death?
That, and curing children of cancer doesnt keep one from dying eventually. So, maybe god is saying let that child die naturally because everyone has their time. The circumstances are equal for everyone.
It makes sense. Not something I agree with but thats how I would make sense of the issue with: why cant god save the ill. What exactly is god doing when he helps the sick? No one lives forever.
Its like a bumper cart race. Some people get hurt and others dont. Do you expect the whole game to stop (god just appear out of nowhere) because one person or two is hurt?
Its kind of like you have fifty people in a militant mission and to save fourty nine of them, one has to die. If that one out of forty nine has cancer, would god take care of that one percent or treat everyone equal from their birth, life, and death?
That, and curing children of cancer doesnt keep one from dying eventually. So, maybe god is saying let that child die naturally because everyone has their time. The circumstances are equal for everyone.
It makes sense. Not something I agree with but thats how I would make sense of the issue with: why cant god save the ill. What exactly is god doing when he helps the sick? No one lives forever.
Axe Elf
Prophet
It's not a "job," creation is a spacetime sculpture, with every detail of every moment and every millimeter planned out in the initial design. Once the universe was created, there is nothing more to be done.
Axe Elf
Prophet
That's not what I said. I said there is no difference between God-created spacetime and naturally-expanding spacetime; they are one and the same. God created spacetime to be naturally expanding.
So God is nature, and nature is God? ...That's a differently defined God than the classic theistic God who is all-knowing, all-powerful, and purely Good. ...
I define God by five axioms:
1. God exists.
2. God is omnibenevolent.
3. God is omniscient.
4. God is omnipotent.
5. God is omnipresent.
Skwim
Veteran Member
Why? During both WWI and WWII both the allies and the axis took prisoners, which I find more benevolent than annihilating them---making each more benevolent than the god of Abraham.
And, do you honestly consider children and infants to be enemies?
.
This was only the God of Israel at the time. Other folks went about deciding it's supposed to be their God too.
What if we read the OT as just the God of Israel. The rest of humanity need to look to their own Gods for salvation. Or perhaps the rest are just NPCs in God's game for the chosen.
Why would God necessarily be any of these things? The bible shows God as being none of them.
Different God, sure, not the God of the Bible then, but a God based on personal idealism? Wishful thinking?
Axe Elf
Prophet
I was being a bit facetious about the enemies thing--like I said, it really has little to do with who is an enemy of who. Everyone dies, and everyone dies at the time that God has appointed them to die--some of them even as infants and children. It doesn't really matter when we enter and exit this physical world, it only matters whether we were created for salvation or destruction.
Axe Elf
Prophet
I can't really conceive of there being any more than one omnipotent, omniscient being, so I tend to think that there is only one God, Who goes by many (MANY) names. And while I wouldn't necessarily call them NPCs, there are a lot of people who were created for destruction--maybe call them NSCs (non-saved characters)?
Of course, a benevolent God would create the greatest possible number of people for salvation, and the least possible number of people for destruction, so I must trust that He has done that, since omnibenevolence is one of the qualities by which I define God.
Axe Elf
Prophet
God is not "necessarily" anything. God may not even exist. Those are merely the qualities by which I choose to define God. I wouldn't call it "wishful thinking" any more than it is "wishful thinking" to believe that two parallel lines never intersect; it's just an axiom, a definition.
I see our responses are known, thus life is more choices based on the outcomes of those choices. Regards Tony
Audie
Veteran Member
A lotta folks believe a lotta things.
Folks dont have to be real bright to notice
that punishment potential doest not
prevent murder, but some time spent S of 49st
St. in windy city might clarify things for even
the slow witted!
Maybe she does. Maybe she doesn't.
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
False banter. There is no God, no soul, no creation, no heaven, no hell, no birth, no death. It is our illusion. In reality there is just 'physical energy' which keeps 'popping out' and 'popping in' into void. Whatever seems to happen or is felt is just a mirage. Play the game (according to rules -'Dharma'), and be happy. Don't take it seriously.
Presuming that God created our physical planet and the physical stars in six days, but it seems to be talking about something else the new creation that is the church. In that, to me much more reasonable, case Ephesians says something entirely different. It opens a conversation about inheriting from God specifically what things people inherit from God as opposed to what we inherit from our natural fathers. What first comes to mind is God's image spoken of in numerous NT Bible texts and Genesis. Man is made in God's image, and at the same time we know that God cannot be represented by any image. The language of inheritance in this verse alludes not to the physical world but things that cannot be physically interpreted.
even if there is a perfect plan, doesn't mean everyone chooses to follow it. they have to repent. there are those who are adverse to love because they wish to rule without serving
jesus notes that there is the will of self and the will of all as self.
“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”
In context...." He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him 10 with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him 11 also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, 12 to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory." (Ephesians 1:9-12 NASB)
There is no doubting God's power but not many understand how he uses his power in the outworking of his purpose.
It is always useful to have a concordance and several Bible translations to compare.
First of all Paul talks about "the mystery" of God's will. From the fall of man it remained a mystery until the coming of the Messiah, (Jesus alluded to it) and after his death and resurrection, more was revealed by the holy spirit at Pentecost. Up until that time, God's purpose in connection with his Christ was not well understood.
Even as he was ascending to heaven, his apostles were still wondering about the establishment of God's Kingdom. They knew he was the King, but it wasn't clear how he would rule or where his kingdom would be situated. (Acts 1:6)
What did Paul say...? God's will was "according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth."
Here we see the setting up of an "administration" which is a term linked to how a government operates. This government was spoken about in Isaiah's prophesy about the coming Messiah.
Isaiah 9:6-7 says..."For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;
And the government will rest on His shoulders. . . .
On the throne of David and over his kingdom,
To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness
From then on and forevermore."
God's intention concerning this government (God's Kingdom that Jesus taught us to pray for) was for this administration to unite the things in heaven with the things on earth. Up to the present time we have seen things disunited. The fall in Eden separated humans from their Creator, but it also set up division in heaven because the first rebel was a spirit.
Reading through the Bible we can see that right there in Eden, God set up the solution to the problems introduced by his creature's abuse of the free will he gave them. (Genesis 3:15) He spoke about a seed who would deal the devil a mortal head wound, but the serpent was to deal this seed a non-fatal heel wound. This was the foundation upon which the sacred mystery was based. Only after Christ's death was the prophesy in Genesis understood.
The heel wound from which he recovered was his death and resurrection....but the fatal head wound for the devil has not yet been delivered. God is not finished with him yet.
So God purposed that a government would unite all things again in the future, but not until humans had fulfilled their mandate to "fill the earth". He would then give all humans opportunity to choose his rulership or the devil's, (a rulership which God handed over to satan to prove that he was the better god and ruler for mankind. Luke 4:5-7; 1 John 5:19)
What God foreordained was the government in the hands of his Christ. Individual members of that government were chosen by God but not until Jesus had fulfilled his mission, so no individual was "predestined" but the governmental arrangement was.....The 12 Apostles formed the foundation of that government (the "first to have hoped in Christ") and others were added as time went on.
Not all Christians will go to heaven as it has a limited number as all government do. A minority rule over the majority.
If everyone's life and future was predestined then free will is a cruel joke. It means that God already knows what we will choose before we are even born.
He doesn't work that way. Our choices must be ours. We determine our own future by the choices we make.
This is what I believe.
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