Christian responsibility to beg for mercy

[angellous_evangellous]

Lately my prayer has been:

"Lord, please do not be the God that I imagine, but who you are."

My curiousity is directed towards Christians who believe that God will send people to hell who do not believe in Jesus Christ. According to this view, a very strict minority of human beings will find peace in the afterlife.

If you believe this, don't you have the responsibility to beg God to change God's mind and become more humane?

The rest of the theists, myself included, have the responsibility to beg God to change his character as well.

If I were God, I would be much more humane to human beings. As a human community, we are in communal and individual suffering. We have genocide, war, famine, and starvation, and a whole host of human suffering that God is unable or unwilling to stop.

The power, mercy, and grace of God should not be continually withheld from us.

"Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil."

 

[nightwolf]

Imagine this:
You send your son to war, he dies for this country so you can sleep safe at night. Would you want your son to have the reconization that he deserves? Of course you would!

Now in Gods eyes he sent his son to die for our sins. God does not ask much, only for us to reconize that he did die for our sins. God asks us to know that and to live by his word.

Now I don't really call that not humane. For the same reason you would want your son to be remembered as a man who faught and died for you/me, God wants his son to be remembered for what he has done. Asking God to step back and change his stance would be like asking you to change yours (about your son), now you might have to see your son as wasting his life and dieing because he had no love and respect for you. Now this paints a very sad picture. God sent his son outta love, your son faught outta love for his country, do they both not deserve to be remembered as heros?

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Lately my prayer has been:

"Lord, please do not be the God that I imagine, but who you are."

My curiousity is directed towards Christians who believe that God will send people to hell who do not believe in Jesus Christ. According to this view, a very strict minority of human beings will find peace in the afterlife.

If you believe this, don't you have the responsibility to beg God to change God's mind and become more humane?

The rest of the theists, myself included, have the responsibility to beg God to change his character as well.

If I were God, I would be much more humane to human beings. As a human community, we are in communal and individual suffering. We have genocide, war, famine, and starvation, and a whole host of human suffering that God is unable or unwilling to stop.

The power, mercy, and grace of God should not be continually withheld from us.

"Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil."

I will add two thoughts:

1) Anyone who claims to be a god should be immediately tried for crimes against humanity and we should do our very best to kill them, if possible. They have had the power needed to stop all of the suffering in the world and have refused to do so, and this crime is unthinkable.

2) This is why the redemptive message of Christianity is useful. Jesus Christ did die willingly for all sins, including the oversight of God in allowing human choice, which Christians believe will be remedied in the afterlife: we won't be able to sin when God heals us. God had to die, and we have to die to be purified and made whole. God resurrected and we will resurrect to perfect redemption. That's the message, at least, and why Christians pray for God's kingdom to come.

May God have mercy on us all!

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Imagine this:
You send your son to war, he dies for this country so you can sleep safe at night. Would you want your son to have the reconization that he deserves? Of course you would!

Now in Gods eyes he sent his son to die for our sins. God does not ask much, only for us to reconize that he did die for our sins. God asks us to know that and to live by his word.

Now I don't really call that not humane. For the same reason you would want your son to be remembered as a man who faught and died for you/me, God wants his son to be remembered for what he has done. Asking God to step back and change his stance would be like asking you to change yours (about your son), now you might have to see your son as wasting his life and dieing because he had no love and respect for you. Now this paints a very sad picture. God sent his son outta love, your son faught outta love for his country, do they both not deserve to be remembered as heros?

Soldiers should be remembered as heros if their actions were heroic. Dying on a cross for others certainly fits heroism.

However, arbitrarily sending someone to hell for not believing something so foolish as a criminal dying on a cross and rising from the dead is God is rather infantile and inhumane.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

The Christian cross allows for humans to pour all of their malice against God into the sufferings of Jesus. Being God (in Christian theology, of course), Christ bears in himself all of the human judgment against God for God's inhumanity.

I wonder where his grace and kindness will end when he judges us for not being God.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

The Christian cross allows for humans to pour all of their malice against God into the sufferings of Jesus. Being God (in Christian theology, of course), Christ bears in himself all of the human judgment against God for God's inhumanity.

I wonder where his grace and kindness will end when he judges us for not being God.

Perhaps the humanity of Jesus atones for this. After all, Jesus is fully God and human in the Christian tradition. He is both God judging humanity and humanity judging God at the same time. The resurrection as God and man is redemption for both God and humanity, allowing God to both have mercy on Himself and on humans.

 

[nightwolf]

Soldiers should be remembered as heros if their actions were heroic. Dying on a cross for others certainly fits heroism.

However, arbitrarily sending someone to hell for not believing something so foolish as a criminal dying on a cross and rising from the dead is God is rather infantile and inhumane.

Jesus was not a criminal. We as humans seen him as so, but he was not. He died an innocent man. We as SINNERS put Jesus to death.

God just wants us to reconize this. Jesus was not a sinner yet we know it all humans took his life. Was it to much to ask for God to give us a opertunity to goto heaven? All he wants for giving us the chance is for us to reconize his son. That is no to much. Just for the select few, without doubt, to know that Jesus saved our soul from eternal damnation.

Sin rules this world, it is everywhere. God does not cause our pain, WE DO, and thinking God should change his mind about people believeing in his "criminal son" is crazy.

We as people in a whole have done a great job of pushing Jesus/God/Gospel away from our own lives. Sin fills the world. I think for us to ask for a solution to our own sins and the solution being for God to let up is arrogent! God gave us the tools (his Son, the word, life, food, etc...) and we choose (as a whole) to turn a blind eye to all this, we have a right to be punished as a whole as a father would punish his children. We want things to be better? Pick up the bible, read it, believe it, live by it, and I will see you all (everyone on this site) in heaven!

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Pick up the bible, read it, believe it, live by it, and I will see you all (everyone on this site) in heaven!

Huh?

If we can't trust God to end suffering here, why on earth should we entrust him with our future?

 

[nightwolf]

Huh?

If we can't trust God to end suffering here, why on earth should we entrust him with our future?

Because we cause the suffering! Not God! We are so fast as humans to point the finger and blame this person and that, and we refuse to point the finger where it belongs, at ourselves. God does not want us to suffer, he wants us to live by his rules!

OK, picture this:
We are Gods children, he gave us all we needed and only a few rules to live by in our life. Some chose to live by the rules, but some chose to follow what they wanted (sex outside marriage, drinking to get drunk, killed, blasphemy, etc...). Now God has a whole bunch of disrespectful children. So now because we have made our bed as sinners, we are getting back what we have sown. God does not like suffering, he also does not like our ways. We push away our father, what is he to do? Should he step in and save a world that cares less about him and his rules? He gave us life, he already done us a huge favor, now we blame him for everything? There we go pointing the finger! Where is God? He is watching as we give into sin and waiting for that moment when he will come to get his people. We cause our problems, not God.

 

[lunamoth]

Because we cause the suffering! No God! We are so fast as humans to point the finger and blame this person and that, and we refuse to point the finger where it belongs, at ourselves. God does not want us to suffer, he wants us to live by his rules!

OK, oicture this:
We are Gods children, he gave us all we needed and only a few rules to live by in our life. Some chose to live by the rules, but some chose to follow what they wanted (sex outside marriage, drinking to get drunk, killed, blasphemy, etc...). Now God has a whole bunch of disrespectful children. So now because we have made our bed as sinners, we are getting back what we have sewn. God does not like suffering, he also does not like our ways. We push away our father, what is he to do? Should he step in and save a world that cares less about him and his rules? He gave us life, he already done us a huge favor, now we blame him for everything? There we go pointing the finger! Where is God? He is watching as we give into sin and waiting for that moment when he will come to get his people. We cause our problems, not God.

Well, I see a lot of reaping what you sow there, and a lot of karma. But where's the grace?

Grace breaks the cycle. That's what the cross is about.

2 c,
lunamoth

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Should he step in and save a world that cares less about him and his rules?

Yes! That's why we pray for the kingdom to come! How could we even entertain the thought that God should leave the world as it is! How inhumane and intolerable it is to all people to detroy themselves in madness when you can effortlessly heal them! Who in their right mind would wish for their own destruction?

He gave us life, he already done us a huge favor, now we blame him for everything? There we go pointing the finger! Where is God? He is watching as we give into sin and waiting for that moment when he will come to get his people. We cause our problems, not God.

No huge favor to be born into an evil world. No thanks.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Where is God?

If you can adequately answer this question, then you've truly accomplished something.

My answer is that God is in the same place today that he was when Jesus was crucified.

He is watching as we give into sin and waiting for that moment when he will come to get his people. We cause our problems, not God.

In ethics, there is something called an obligation ethic. The premise of the ethic is quite simple:

We are obligated to assist others on a sliding scale based on the effort or risk that it costs us wieghed against the benefit that the other person receives from our actions.

For example, if someone is drowning and we could quite effortlessly throw them a life preserver, we are greatly obligated to do so - even if they want to drown. We can assume that a person who is healthy does not want to die, and we should help them be restored to health because a normal person desires to care for their body.

God, who could give unimaginable benefits to everyone could effortlessly heal humanity. Withholding his healing to the masses is comparable to us sitting and watching the whole world drown, while we sit comfortably on the shore with plenty of life-saving equiptment - unwilling or unable to help our fellow humans. In either case, withholding life-saving devises in unethical and inhumane.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

bump*

 

[evearael]

God, who could give unimaginable benefits to everyone could effortlessly heal humanity. Withholding his healing to the masses is comparable to us sitting and watching the whole world drown, while we sit comfortably on the shore with plenty of life-saving equiptment - unwilling or unable to help our fellow humans. In either case, withholding life-saving devises in unethical and inhumane.

Good and evil are the natural products of free will. The opposition of good and evil causes struggling. Without struggle, there is no spiritual growth. I don't want to see God intervene and end all evil in the world... I want to see humans rise to the occassion and do it themselves. It is within our grasp, all we need is the will.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Good and evil are the natural products of free will. The opposition of good and evil causes struggling. Without struggle, there is no spiritual growth. I don't want to see God intervene and end all evil in the world... I want to see humans rise to the occassion and do it themselves. It is within our grasp, all we need is the will.

If we have to rise to the occasion and do it ourselves, what does that say about God? Why should we be responsible to end suffering by great effort while God can end it effortlessly?

I completely disagree that we need a struggle between good and evil for growth. It is possible to struggle for good things only. It is tough to learn things, but we could enrich ourselves only with the good if evil did not exist - and good can exist without evil. To conclude otherwise is the worst kind of dualism.

 

[evearael]

what does that say about God?

He is a good parent. There comes a time when a child must stand on their own. Children will stumble, children will fall, children will tumble, but without these experiences they never learn to walk on their own two feet. These struggles are a spiritual growing experience, however painful, and they make us stronger if we can only see it.

Why should we be responsible to end suffering by great effort while God can end it effortlessly?

Ecclessiates 3:9-14:

9 What does the worker gain from his toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on men. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. 13 That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.

 

[sojourner]

If we can't trust God to end suffering here, why on earth should we entrust him with our future?

We humans (especially Americans) see suffering as the absence of God. Perhpas we should be looking for God within the reality of human suffering, not outside the realm of human suffering. I believe that God is most available to us in our suffering, and God, having suffered on the cross, stands with us in solidarity in our suffering.

Because we cause the suffering! Not God! We are so fast as humans to point the finger and blame this person and that, and we refuse to point the finger where it belongs, at ourselves. God does not want us to suffer, he wants us to live by his rules!

Huh? We don't always cause suffering! sometimes we are quite simply victims. What about people who are born with birth defects through no cause of their parents? What about those who are mentally ill, through no cause of their own (drugs, stress, etc.)? Humanity just suffers. We always have. If we're looking to end suffering or to blame it on someone or something, we're looking in the wrong place for peace and happiness.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

We humans (especially Americans) see suffering as the absence of God. Perhpas we should be looking for God within the reality of human suffering, not outside the realm of human suffering. I believe that God is most available to us in our suffering, and God, having suffered on the cross, stands with us in solidarity in our suffering.

Compare to post 5 and 6.

I appreciate your insights, but it does not address the question.

God is not ending suffering now, so why should we entrust him with our future?

Suffering for growth and solodarity is not a good enough reason for evil to exist.

 

[evearael]

God is not ending suffering now, so why should we trust him to end suffering in the future?

He has given us the means. It is our responsibility to use them.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

He is a good parent. There comes a time when a child must stand on their own. Children will stumble, children will fall, children will tumble, but without these experiences they never learn to walk on their own two feet. These struggles are a spiritual growing experience, however painful, and they make us stronger if we can only see it.

A good parent would not place a child in a briar patch full of certain misery, and being able to effortlessly prevent a child's suffering, continue to allow the child to endure evil.

Evil for growth is a perverse dualism. We can grow from the good alone.