Do you believe in God? A deity, or higher power?

[knapplc]

 

Jesus' act of saving us all from our sins doesn't/didn't have the power to recreate that sinless, perfect & pure relationship we had with God when it was just Adam & Eve.

Yes it does. That's a big part of what Hebrews details - Jesus is our forerunner or our example and by His accomplishment we are now representationally (not a word?) and will later functionally have the same standing with the Father.

 

Demonstrably, it does not. And I can demonstrate that by asking you to look around and observe sinlessness, or lions laying with lambs, or any other example of perfection. When you can show me even ONE sin, that's your proof that the death & resurrection didn't fix anything.

 

Because if you're going to start adding steps (salvation by grace through faith) that Man has to take, then Jesus' job wasn't good enough.

[Landlord]

When you can show me even ONE sin, that's your proof that the death & resurrection didn't fix anything.

 

Or just that it hasn't culminated yet.

 

 

If you order something off of amazon, do you go check the front door 5 seconds later and upon not finding your package, conclude that you never ordered anything? I apologize that it's such a terrible analogy but you get my point, and I get yours re: the immediacy of it. I don't claim to know how to reconcile that. But I also don't claim to have even an infinitesimal understanding of how or why a hypothetical deity would operate.

 

If God exists and is love, then He defines love and doesn't owe it to you to fit within your parameters.

[TAKODA]

 

 

The basic question is, Does God have the power to eliminate "sin" and place every human ever in existence in heaven to live with Him eternally RIGHT NOW?

 

The eliminate sin part I can easily answer as He's already done that on the cross. The heaven pickup thing I don't really know how to approach.

 

 

Let's say we were in heaven, then. Would it be possible to want out? Because if not then you have no free will and you could come to the same conclusion that God doesn't love you, but if you did want out, you could come to the same conclusion that God isn't all-powerful and also the same reality where His creation uses it's freedom to rebel.

 

 

These are my poorly formed lunch time thoughts.

 

1) God did not "eliminate" sin. Sin is why you're not in heaven right now. If there was no sin, no gulf would exist between God & Man, and we'd be back in Eden/paradise/whatever where we're all walking around naked with God.

 

Unless we're saying God didn't/doesn't have the power to return things the way they were before. Jesus' act of saving us all from our sins doesn't/didn't have the power to recreate that sinless, perfect & pure relationship we had with God when it was just Adam & Eve. If that's the case, he did half a job, didn't he? Shouldn't he have done everything, put it all back to rights again, like God's very own Omega 13? And if he can't, we're back to the "not omnipotent" problem.

 

2) The "wanting out" question doesn't make much sense. What if you want out of heaven after you die now? Do you get out? Where do you go? Will you have free will in heaven when you die, or do you only get that here?

 

 

Being human, we cannot comprehend the the limits of GOD's powers (the why's, what for's, how come's, where's and the whens).

 

Isn't that the point?

 

We can't (humanly) comprehend something that is outside of our abilities!

[knapplc]

 

When you can show me even ONE sin, that's your proof that the death & resurrection didn't fix anything.

Or just that it hasn't culminated yet.

 

 

If you order something off of amazon, do you go check the front door 5 seconds later and upon not finding your package, conclude that you never ordered anything? I apologize that it's such a terrible analogy but you get my point, and I get yours re: the immediacy of it. I don't claim to know how to reconcile that. But I also don't claim to have even an infinitesimal understanding of how or why a hypothetical deity would operate.

 

If God exists and is love, then He defines love and doesn't owe it to you to fit within your parameters.

 

God does owe it to us to without fail or question be able to grasp his love. Problem is, there are millions upon millions of people who cannot, whether because they're not intelligent enough (the mentally handicapped), not born in the right place or time, not taught about Him at any point in their lives, never had the opportunity to know anything remotely about the Bible or his plan. That number is probably in the billions, actually. Yes, the person who created me owes me that much, just like the mother owes the baby she gave birth to love, nurturing and care.

 

And if she doesn't do that, she's an awful mother, right? Why should God be given a pass that we wouldn't give a human?

[Landlord]

 

 

When you can show me even ONE sin, that's your proof that the death & resurrection didn't fix anything.

Or just that it hasn't culminated yet.

 

 

If you order something off of amazon, do you go check the front door 5 seconds later and upon not finding your package, conclude that you never ordered anything? I apologize that it's such a terrible analogy but you get my point, and I get yours re: the immediacy of it. I don't claim to know how to reconcile that. But I also don't claim to have even an infinitesimal understanding of how or why a hypothetical deity would operate.

 

If God exists and is love, then He defines love and doesn't owe it to you to fit within your parameters.

 

God does owe it to us to without fail or question be able to grasp his love. Problem is, there are millions upon millions of people who cannot, whether because they're not intelligent enough (the mentally handicapped), not born in the right place or time, not taught about Him at any point in their lives, never had the opportunity to know anything remotely about the Bible or his plan. That number is probably in the billions, actually. Yes, the person who created me owes me that much, just like the mother owes the baby she gave birth to love, nurturing and care.

 

And if she doesn't do that, she's an awful mother, right? Why should God be given a pass that we wouldn't give a human?

 

 

 

What would you say to your four year old child that throws a fit demanding that you owe them candy at the grocery store?

[knapplc]

 

This seems like an attempt to evade or negate the question rather than any kind of substantive answer.

The basic question is, Does God have the power to eliminate "sin" and place every human ever in existence in heaven to live with Him eternally RIGHT NOW?

If he does do what you say in the underlined above...then he becomes a liar. So no, I don't think he would do that...because he made a promise to all inhabitants of the earth to provide a way for them to reach perfection/heaven again through his Son's sacrifice.

 

If he suddenly went back on his word/prophecy, wouldn't he be a liar?

 

Don't get mired down in the details. Step back a minute and think how absurd it is that such a prophecy even needs to exist in the first place.

 

God created us and had a choice where to put us. He didn't put us in Heaven with him in perfection and glory, he put us in Eden, with a tree in the middle with desirable fruit just waiting for us to run afoul of the rules.

 

But he never had to do that. Adam and Eve had no choice to live in Eden - God put them there. They had no choice to have the Tree of Knowledge there - God put that there. They had no choice to find the fruit of that tree undesirable - God made it desirable.

 

God chose to do all of those things, thus setting the stage for millions of generations of sin and suffering, and for literally billions upon billions of people to fall utterly away from eternal life in heaven. God created that whole scenario, and the fact is he never had to.

 

Now, we can choose to believe there's some omnipotent god-person out there who really loves us, but has condemned us to suffer for the crime of being alive, or we can choose to believe that this story is all made up, doesn't make sense in the first place, and that it's likely just one amongst literally thousands of creation/god myths out there.

[knapplc]

What would you say to your four year old child that throws a fit demanding that you owe them candy at the grocery store?

 

Heaven, security, eternal love of our god - this is candy?

 

Or is it an utter necessity for our very souls? Because I think a far better analogy would be, what would I say to a four-year-old child demanding food who hasn't eaten in three days? Because the answer to that question is, I would frikkin feed him.

[funhusker]

Sometimes my children don't get things they want, or are forced to do something they would rather not by myself or their mother. Their small world becomes chaos. They become mad, frustrated and confused. My wife and I don't do this to be mean, we do it to hopefully make them better adults (my children are 4, being an adult is an eternity away in their minds and they have no clue what it even entails). Our children respond, "I don't love you! Your MEAN!" We continue to love them even though they don't see or understand the reasons behind our actions or in some cases, inaction.

[TAKODA]

 

What would you say to your four year old child that throws a fit demanding that you owe them candy at the grocery store?

 

Heaven, security, eternal love of our god - this is candy?

 

Or is it an utter necessity for our very souls? Because I think a far better analogy would be, what would I say to a four-year-old child demanding food who hasn't eaten in three days? Because the answer to that question is, I would frikkin feed him.

 

 

Come on Knapp, seeing your child starving and reacting by feeding him/her is nothing like fulfilling your need to know! Like Landlord said, the timing of when and how you know is not based on your clock!

[Junior]

Sometimes my children don't get things they want, or are forced to do something they would rather not by myself or their mother. Their small world becomes chaos. They become mad, frustrated and confused. My wife and I don't do this to be mean, we do it to hopefully make them better adults (my children are 4, being an adult is an eternity away in their minds and they have no clue what it even entails). Our children respond, "I don't love you! Your MEAN!" We continue to love them even though they don't see or understand the reasons behind our actions or in some cases, inaction.

 

 

Sure. But is saying "you can't have 5 teddy bears" the same as saying "I'm going to watch you painfully die of cancer" or "Have fun starving to death"?

[funhusker]

 

Sometimes my children don't get things they want, or are forced to do something they would rather not by myself or their mother. Their small world becomes chaos. They become mad, frustrated and confused. My wife and I don't do this to be mean, we do it to hopefully make them better adults (my children are 4, being an adult is an eternity away in their minds and they have no clue what it even entails). Our children respond, "I don't love you! Your MEAN!" We continue to love them even though they don't see or understand the reasons behind our actions or in some cases, inaction.

 

 

Sure. But is saying "you can't have 5 teddy bears" the same as saying "I'm going to watch you painfully die of cancer" or "Have fun starving to death"?

 

Comparing "kid wanting teddy bear" to "cancer" is the same as comparing "my problems" to "God's problems"....

[knapplc]

 

 

What would you say to your four year old child that throws a fit demanding that you owe them candy at the grocery store?

 

Heaven, security, eternal love of our god - this is candy?

 

Or is it an utter necessity for our very souls? Because I think a far better analogy would be, what would I say to a four-year-old child demanding food who hasn't eaten in three days? Because the answer to that question is, I would frikkin feed him.

 

Come on Knapp, seeing your child starving and reacting by feeding him/her is nothing like fulfilling your need to know! Like Landlord said, the timing of when and how you know is not based on your clock!

 

It is EXACTLY like needing to know. Not knowing in your heart that Jesus was the Son of God and died on the cross to save you from your sins will condemn you to eternal hell.

 

Or did I get that part wrong?

 

You MUST HAVE this knowledge in your heart or you don't go to heaven. But it's so, so, so easy not to. Horrifyingly easy. So easy that literally billions upon billions of God's children will suffer in hell eternally because they either never had the chance to know this stuff or the story as presented wasn't compelling enough. Or maybe it's that it wasn't different enough to the literally thousands of other creation/god stories out there to turn their heads.

[Landlord]

Not knowing in your heart that Jesus was the Son of God and died on the cross to save you from your sins will condemn you to eternal hell.

 

 

 

For what it's worth, plenty of church fathers and theologians, including C.S. Lewis and Billy Graham, have held to the belief that while jesus is the only means of salvation, knowing him isn't a mandatory part of that.

 

Which doesn't even get into the beliefs in universalism, annihilationism, purgatory, etc.

[knapplc]

 

Don't get mired down in the details. Step back a minute and think how absurd it is that such a prophecy even needs to exist in the first place.

 

God created us and had a choice where to put us. He didn't put us in Heaven with him in perfection and glory, he put us in Eden, with a tree in the middle with desirable fruit just waiting for us to run afoul of the rules.

 

But he never had to do that. Adam and Eve had no choice to live in Eden - God put them there. They had no choice to have the Tree of Knowledge there - God put that there. They had no choice to find the fruit of that tree undesirable - God made it desirable.

 

God chose to do all of those things, thus setting the stage for millions of generations of sin and suffering, and for literally billions upon billions of people to fall utterly away from eternal life in heaven. God created that whole scenario, and the fact is he never had to.

 

Now, we can choose to believe there's some omnipotent god-person out there who really loves us, but has condemned us to suffer for the crime of being alive, or we can choose to believe that this story is all made up, doesn't make sense in the first place, and that it's likely just one amongst literally thousands of creation/god myths out there.

I think you have some studying to do knapp...you're not even past concepts that are pretty easy to grasp in basic religion courses.

 

I can't help you if you haven't made it past them...just do some googling.

 

You can accuse me of a lot of things. Being uninformed on the subject of Christianity and the Bible isn't one of them.

 

The failure to answer is an answer itself.

[knapplc]

 

Not knowing in your heart that Jesus was the Son of God and died on the cross to save you from your sins will condemn you to eternal hell.

 

For what it's worth, plenty of church fathers and theologians, including C.S. Lewis and Billy Graham, have held to the belief that while jesus is the only means of salvation, knowing him isn't a mandatory part of that.

 

Which doesn't even get into the beliefs in universalism, annihilationism, purgatory, etc.

 

God shouldn't have to rely on mobile goalposts.