Tiberius said:
So, just to get the record straight....
We don't love God, God uses us to love himself. And he finds some of us more suited for this task than others, and those people who are particularly suited are called Christians. Those others that are not so suitable are just religious (maybe Jewish? Muslim?), and those few who he made to be so pathetically useless for god's habit of loving himself through us are called Atheists and are to be sent to hell for being so useless?
Okay, I'm really confused now.
You said before we can't do anything without God's help, but now we can make our own choices without God's help?
God doesn't use us. God loves us. Love isn't manipulative.
A long time ago, our perception of God was as a powerful angry deity who punished us if we did not worship him. So, we began throwing virgins into volcanoes to appease this God.
Later, we came to understand God a bit differently. We understood God as a God who loved us, but who tested that love by asking us to make choices and do things. So, we began to "prove our love and devotion" by tying up our firstborn and burning them on altars.
Today, we understand God as a God who loves us unconditionally. God is sovereign and made us for God's self. Because God is love, God made us in order to be in relationship with us. God's greatest givft to us is our life, and, in the end, that's all we really have. Jesus showed us that selfless love, shown forth in self-sacrifice, (giving our lives to God -- dedicating our desires and hopes and ventures to God) is the best way to return the love that God has given us.
It's not about God using us, or about us attempting to use God. It's about us realizing our Source and the love in which we were created and given life. It's about us returning that life, in love, to the One who created us. It's about
relationship.
God gave us the free will to love God -- God does not force us to love God. But, the free will with which we make the choice is
also from God -- we didn't invent it.
No, I don't believe that God finds some of us bettersuited than others. I don't think I'm any more favored in God's sight than a muslim -- or an atheist, for that matter. God loves all of us equally, and created us to be with God equally.