All I'm interested in is the truth
As I'm sure you are too
Absolutely! But the truth can sometimes hide in plain sight.....
I don't consider worship to be grovelling, as some do
I believe it to be celebrating - giving praise
I like what you said here.....I don’t believe that God wants us to grovel either. He has dignified us with moral sensibility and it is we who, by our own actions, take dignity away from ourselves.
I believe that the God I worship created us in his own image because we have an assignment here on earth. If we go back to Genesis we can see that we were put here as caretakers of this earth, of its creatures, and of one another. A usurper stepped in and hijacked the human race for his own selfish agenda....but he raised issues that needed addressing......Was God a liar? Was he withholding something beneficial to his children? Would having complete self-determination result in greater happiness for mankind?
What better way for God to respond to all those issues than to hand the rulership of the human race over to the one they chose to obey, and let him be their god and ruler? An important object lesson.
When Jesus was tempted by satan, he revealed something very important that most Christians are not really aware of.....that God does not rule this world, but has handed it over to the devil in order to prove his claims.
“So he [satan] brought him [Jesus] up and showed him all the kingdoms of the inhabited earth in an instant of time. 6 Then the Devil said to him: “I will give you all this authority and their glory, because it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. 7 If you, therefore, do an act of worship before me, it will all be yours.” 8 In reply Jesus said to him: “It is written, ‘It is Jehovah your God you must worship, and it is to him alone you must render sacred service.’” (Luke 4:5-8)
If all these kingdoms of the world had not been his to give, Jesus would have corrected the devil with scripture as he did with all his responses. The fact that satan can give rulership to whomever he wishes, explains why human rulership is so corrupt and inept....with one failure after another. A world filled with bloodshed.
As we all know, the old saying “power corrupts” is demonstrated by world leaders down through history. It is certainly nothing new. But doesn’t it help us to see the wisdom of God in taking the long term view to answer satan’s challenges with real life answers to the issues he raised. That way, God has a written record of all satan’s failures, set now as precedents for all time to come. Free will can never be used in a wrong way, ever again.
Most people never realise that we have never had what God purposed at the beginning.....rulership by God himself. He gave the humans the very best start, but satan tempted the humans with self interest and took them away from under God’s protection. The devil wanted worship for himself and the only way to get it was to separate the humans from their God.
All we have ever known is a world of sin, trouble, suffering and death......this is not the life that God planned for us, but as free willed beings, we had to learn to use our free will in a beneficial way, not selfishly.
Abusing free will means robbing others of their free will. Every act that goes contrary to God’s instructions always results in bad outcomes for others. We become “victims” rather than “recipients” of the actions of others. Can’t we see this every day?
When Jesus taught us to pray for God’s Kingdom to “come” and for his will to be “done on earth as it is in heaven” do you know what he was referring to? Most people don’t have a clue what the Lord’s Prayer actually means. What are we praying for?
This is the restoration of God’s original purpose....to have humankind living in peace and security, in paradise conditions.....taking care of the earth and all its inhabitants as he would....forever. There was no natural cause of death in paradise, and no creature would do harm. The restoration prophesies in Isaiah paint beautiful word pictures of that time to come. Jesus as the king of God’s kingdom will bring us back to what we should have enjoyed in the beginning....(Isaiah 11:1-9; Isaiah 65:17-25)
God was never going to take humans to heaven originally, because there was no need. This is where he placed us with the opportunity to live eternally in the best conditions possible, taking each day as the precious gift it was meant to be.....and using our free will to praise the one who gave it to us, and to make sure that every living thing, enjoyed its place here.
That is what I look forward to according to my study of the Bible.
Could we ask for more?
