The Potter: Do You STILL Want to Worship This? (page 2)

BurnTheShips

but purposely so I'm sure, so as to not have to face the real issue...how is one's use of free will punisheable for some but not for others?

Well, at least I do not impugn your motives. In what way did I say our choices were punishable?

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undercover

Well, at least I do not impugn your motives. In what way did I say our choices were punishable?

You have to impugn the motives of people who dance around the issue... at least bob came right out and said it.

But since we're answering questions with questions; are you implying that those who chose to not serve god will not be punished?

Wizard, the potter worked with the clay. The clay is the medium and if it contains the right stuff and has the right texture, the potter can create something beautiful and elegant from it. You have to enter the potter's house to behold the work taking place on the wheel. A "wheel" is a symbol for the ever-turning, ever-changing nature of reality. In the center of the wheel, nothing changes. That is the nature of spirit. The outer wheel changes, is molded, created, and re-created. Together, you have the great wheel of life that encompasses both spirit (mystery) and life (form)...the inner and outer workings of the two universal forces.

When I read this passage, I think of how we are vessels of clay on a potter's wheel. The potter creates the vessel, but he needs a medium (clay) by which to do so. It is up to us (the clay) to allow the potter to wrought his work, let the creator's hands work through us...take us from an ugly lump and turn us into a creation of beauty. It takes both: the spirit and the form.

mkr32208

Anyone who could worship this clown has a diseased mind...

snowbird

It's all about choices.

Adam made the wrong choice; boy, did he make the wrong choice!

Are we going to play the same fool?

That, imo, is to what it will ultimately come.

We will all get an opportunity to come to His table.

Some will accept; others will reject.

What will be the fate of those who reject?

Well, if you invite someone to commune with you and get an emphatic NO!, what would you do?

Exactly.

Sylvia

BurnTheShips

are you implying that those who chose to not serve god will not be punished?

Yes, that is what I am saying. The place or state called Hell is the choice of those that have freely and definitely chosen to seperate themselves from God.

But remember, God is the ultimate source of Love, Truth, and Goodness. These that choose eternal separation have chosen the lie and the darkness as their abode.

I like the way Tom Cabeen explains it here:

.....following the teachings of the earliest Christians, believe that it is impossible for God not to love us, his earthly children. Love is his very essence and he made us expressly so that he could love us. God loves us so much that he sent his only-begotten son to save us and demonstrate the length he would go to to show us he loves us.

Out of love for us, he made us in such a way that our deepest longings, our most profound needs, are satisfied in Him. He made us to find our fulfillment in the best he had, Himself. He made us to be his lovers; thus we will never be satisfied until we are in perfect relationship with him. When that happens, we will also be in the correct relationship with all other creatures who are in relationship with him, a huge loving family of giving and shared experiences. That is why he made us, so that he could love us and share his life with us.

Love, by its very nature, must be spontaneous. It cannot be forced or coerced and still be love. In order to meet that condition, God had to give us free will, along with the qualities of character we would need to exercise that free will, including intelligence, curiosity, and the capacity for faith and love. As a consequence, we must make a free choice to obey God; we must come to him in pure loving response to what he has done for us. God would never try to force us into obeying him, even though He knows we will never be completely happy until we conform our thoughts and actions to His.

But free will also has a downside. Since we have the God-given capacity for choice, He must also give us the right to reject Him. If that were not true, we would not truly have free will. If we choose to go down that path away from our Creator, God will use every means at his disposal, short of violating our free will, to call us to repentance. He offers free forgiveness and He demonstrates his love for us over and over again, in hope that we might come to realize that only in full, complete relationship with him will we ever realize our potential as his children, made in his own image. But ultimately, we have the right to reject him, even to hate him, to substitute love we ought to have for Him and give it to other, lesser things.

In the words of C.S. Lewis on this subject, it boils down to this: "In the end, we either say to God: 'Thy will be done' or God will say to us 'Thy will be done.'" God knows (because he made us) that once we get to that point, despite all his efforts to demonstrate his love for us, that our hatred will grow until we hate Him with all our heart (just as Satan does). Those who ultimately will end up hating God will seek to be away from his presence, even if they would be welcome there.

God will abandon such creatures to their own devices, and thus, they will be in what Jesus called "outer darkness". Just "where" that will be is not the point at all. Even if God were to allow such people full access to his presence, they would hate to be there. Like a Rock & Roll fan at an opera, or an opera fan at a Heavy Metal concert, the same "place", God’s presence, would be heaven for one and hell for the other. Imagery like fire is used in Scripture to represent the pain of separation from God (which is the Catholic definition of hell, by the way).

One more point about eternity. Eternity does not mean an endless succession of days; millions, billions or trillions of them. Eternity means being outside of time, timeless (that is the literal meaning of the word). All of our linear, sequential time is included in timelessness. One way to envision that is to think about the relationship of our linear time to the "time" in storybooks on a shelf. We can open a book and enter a particular "time", the succession of events found in that story. Then we can close the book and be completely outside of that "time", then later reopen it and be right back in it. That is how some orthodox thinkers have compared the linear time we live in to the eternity in which God dwells.

Those who reject God will end up living in timelessness also, but without the one thing they need to be happy: God. But it will be their own choice about the matter. They will not just be sent somewhere because they inadvertently broke some little rule or other. It will be because they have made a fully informed choice, of their own free will, knowing full well the consequences of their choice, to live without God, and, when offered the chance to change their mind and repent, will refuse. Those who do that will be, completely as a result of their own choice, in hell.

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mkr32208

Disssssseaaassssed minds......

mostlydead

journey-on, I think that's an interesting thought and rather appealing. But I also think it's reading a lot into the scripture. It also assumes that we're ugly lumps without god. This type of scripture, and there are many like them, are used by most christian belief systems to explain away and put some meaning or purpose into the difficult, crappy parts of our lives. It's the concept the WTS uses to justify all the 'refining' work god does within the organization. For my part, I believe we have the capability to be successful in learning to rise to challenges, learn from mistakes, or handle our grief without an external force influencing us. We have a choice whether to let those things destroy us or make us stronger in the long run. I have a hard time with the concept of a loving all powerful god who is so involved in our personal lives but who doesn't want to be held responsible for allowing the atrocities humans have had to endure. It seems extremely contradictory.

snowbird

Burn, thank you for that essay.

Did someone say diseased mind?

Let's see how The Message Bible renders Paul's words about diseased minds!

Romans 1:28 -32 Since they didn't bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run loose. And then all hell broke loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. They made life hell on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating. Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives. They ditch their parents when they get in the way. Stupid, slimy, cruel, cold-blooded. And it's not as if they don't know better. They know perfectly well they're spitting in God's face. And they don't care—worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best!

Any takers?

Sylvia

BurnTheShips

You gotta love that translation!

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The Potter: Do You STILL Want to Worship This?

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