by nicolaou 168 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
God made everything. He has every right to do as he pleases with his own creation. - Badfish
I agree, an omnipotent creator is free to be an evil monster.
But he can't be an evil monster AND be the god Jesus preached. Choose one.
Your worldview is internally inconsistent.
his ways are higher than ours
He kills infants. He approves of slavery, kidnap, rape and infanticide. His ways are most definitely NOT higher than mine.
Badfish: God made everything. He has every right to do as he pleases with his own creation. Just because you—who were made by God—do not understand your maker, it does not mean he does not exist. From our viewpoint, many things seem unjust. But we don’t know everything. He does. And his ways are higher than ours.
This concept frightens me. We describe god as good, and just, and loving. He not only displays these qualities, he personifies them. God is love. No one can be as good as god. His justice is true justice. And so on.
And then, we turn around and claim that his ways are inscrutable to us, and we do not have the understanding necessary to judge his actions. The things that seem unjust to us, only seem so because we don't comprehend god's ways.
In other words, god can do anything, and it is good. He can take any action, and it is done out of love. He can do things that we would roundly and utterly condemn a human for, and it would be a hallmark of justice. So when god drowns the world to no real benefit, it is the loving and just act of a good person. When he instantly strikes down a man for the simple act of trying to steady the ark of the covenant, it is a just act by a loving deity. When he orders his army to sack a city and cut down all of its inhabitants --save for the virgin girls that they can take as wives-- there is nothing wrong with this.
So words like good, kind, loving, and just mean something very different when we apply them to god. They do not represent the expectations we have of a human being. What action could god take that you would consider evil? Or hateful? Or unjust? None. Nothing this being does can be seen as a bad thing.
You expect to spend an eternity with an unpredictable and unstoppable being whose actions --no matter how horrifying-- must be praised. I certainly hope that no such being exists!
He can do things that we would roundly and utterly condemn a human for, and it would be a hallmark of justice.
@TonusOH,
Most people have lied, cheated, stolen, murdered babies, hated their neighbor, etc. In other words... broken every single one of the ten commandments. Justice REQUIRES we receive the same treatment in return..... an eye for an eye.
Everyone WILL eventually do or condone these things even though they TRY to avoid doing them.
Because of this, we are under a sentence of death. We are not God's children. He has absolutly zero obligation to any of us for anything good at all. Your next breath is a kindness from the Lord.
This moral reality is extremely unsettling and shocking to the core for an unsaved person..... which is why we run from God like Adam and Even did and mentally suppress many realities concerning morality and justice. This is a maladaptive survival mechanism. A mechanism, that ironically ensures that we forever perish.
The depravity of man is so total that it takes a divine act of the Holy Spirit himself in order to wake us up enough to even "convict us of sin". Without that, many people choose to waste their short life shaking their fist at God in a supreme display of ignorace and self-deception. And, that is as good as it gets. Then, since you have an immortal soul, you eventually get the justice that was soooo long demanded and spend eternity separated from ANYTHING that could be remotely characterized as good. God is good.
This reality is NECESSARY. It proves that freewill is very real.
But mercy and grace are also characteristics of God, not out of debt., but out of love. God became a man and resurrected himself just as he said he would so that we could see with our own eyes that he has absolute dominion over life and death. We don't have to take his word for it. He claims that he wants to apply the judicial value of his suffering and death to me, in my stead. He wants to be my scapegoat, he says.
I live every day knowing that if fire came out of heaven and incinerated me on my driveway, I would only be getting what I deserve. Anything north of that reality is a sweet, amazing, and absolutely incredible feeling.
It is hard to describe exactly how beautiful and fully alive such a reality is. It might be somewhat compared to a person who is on death row in a maximum security prison and receives word that for some inexplicable reason, the Governor has pardoned you.
For such a person, every detail of life has new meaning..... although the meaning has been there all along. You just never noticed it.
@Seabreeze: you say things like this - He has absolutly zero obligation to any of us for anything good at all
The question was not whether he has the obligation to us, but rather to himself and his own morality. In the original question, the person standing by has no legal obligation but is yet condemned for his moral action or inaction.
God in many scriptures not only condones or is inactive when evil happens, he often instigates and demands it or outright causes it. Basically to stick with the original illustration, he throws the baby on the train tracks and punishes you when you try to save it (eg. Uzzah) and when you don’t save it (James 4:17)
I live every day knowing that if fire came out of heaven and incinerated me on my driveway, I would only be getting what I deserve.
Dehumanising death cult.
The question was not whether he has the obligation to us, but rather to himself and his own morality.
God is perfectly consistent with his own character and morality. The wages of sin is death, but the gift God gives is everlasting life.
Both the wages and the gift are available.
Dehumanising death cult.
@Cofty - I agree. Death is the only solution. Our (sinful) humanity can't be fixed. Christianity is not a will-power fueled self-help program like many modern churches and the WT pretend it to be. You my man have captured its essence, though not a cult.
That's why rivers of blood flowed from the temple in JERUSALEM , to illustrate that only death can atone for our sin. After 1500 years, the Jews still didn't get it.
Sinful humanity can't be fixed, it must die. Jesus repeatedly made this clear:
"He that is not willing to lose all cannot be my disciple."
"He that loses his life for my sake will find it."
Baptism is a symbol of death - "buried with him in baptism" and raised to new life.
"You must be born again"
In this life, if we seek to save our life we will lose it, if we seek to lose our life in Jesus we will find it.
This is one of the many things that makes Christianity so unique. All other religions and ideologies are spelled "do". Only Christianity is spelled "d-o-n-e".
It is totally finished. All a person has to do no is die to himself..... easier said than done.
Iriddle80 it’s true that people were destroyed in the flood, not all Israelites made it to the promised land, and Jesus did say he would divine people into sheep and goats.
But the difference about the final reckoning is that all creation will be reconciled to God.
Phil 2:9-11
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
There’s nobody left outside.
1 Tim 4.10 says that Jesus is the saviour of everyone, “especially those who believe”. So Jesus saves everybody non-believers included.
@ SBF Universal Salvation was not taught by the apostles.
Jesus’ own words confirm that the time spent in heaven for the redeemed will last as long as that of the unredeemed in hell. Matthew 25:46 says, “Then they [the unsaved] will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” According to this verse, the punishment of the unsaved is just as eternal as the life of the righteous. Some believe that those in hell will eventually cease to exist, but the Lord Himself confirms that it will last forever. Matthew 25:41 and Mark 9:44 describe hell as “eternal fire” and “unquenchable fire.”
How does one avoid this unquenchable fire? Many people believe that all roads—all religions and beliefs—lead to heaven, or they consider that God is so full of love and mercy that He will allow all people into heaven. God is certainly full of love and mercy; it was these qualities that led Him to send His Son, Jesus Christ, to earth to die on the cross for us. Jesus Christ is the exclusive door that leads to an eternity in heaven. Acts 4:12 says, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” “There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). In John 14:6, Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” If we choose to reject God’s Son, we do not meet the requirements for salvation (John 3:16, 18, 36).
With verses such as these, it becomes clear that universalism and universal salvation are unbiblical beliefs. Universalism directly contradicts what Scripture teaches. While many people accuse Christians of being intolerant and “exclusive,” it is important to remember that these are the words of Christ Himself.
Christians did not develop these ideas on their own; Christians are simply stating what the Lord has already said. People choose to reject the message because they do not want to face up to their sin and admit that they need the Lord to save them. To say that those who reject God’s provision of salvation through His Son will be saved is to belittle the holiness and justice of God and negate the need of Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf.
God made everything. He has every right to do as he pleases with his own creation
I can imagine Josef Fritzl making a similar defence. There's an awful lot of word salad in this discussion but ultimately you either condemn someone for failing to save a life or you don't.
It's no defense to say that we can't understand the mind of god. We do understand that it's wrong to let a child die when it could have been prevented.
Argue all you like that it's not as simple as that but in so doing you lose the moral high ground.
Christians (and Muslims etc) regularly denounce atheists as having no moral code. Well you know what? We aren't the ones worshipping and defending the atrocities of a child killer.
You are.
Christians (and Muslims etc) regularly denounce atheists as having no moral code.
@ Nicholau,
Christians acknowlege that all of us muslims, atheists, buddists etc. have morality. We know it is wrong to steal, kill, lie etc.
Atheists just can't come up with a plausible explanation of how they got it. How do you get morality out of unguided explosions, copying mistakes and chemical accidents?
Like I've said many times, what difference should it make to a chemical mistake what another chemical mistake does or does not do?
But it does matter, even to atheists. This shows that atheists do not really believe their own storyline. People act more or less consistently outwardly in a manner consistent with their internal reality.
Their God-given morality gives them away, so that they are "without excuse".
