Religious

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by thaskalos

God supposedly CREATED us, Overlay...and he chose to create us with many faults. What you and Boxcar perceive as great "sins" -- which deserve severe punishment -- are only transgressions, born from man's ignorance...both of life and of himself.

Man is not "sinful", as you say; he is IMPERFECT...simply because he is "human".

Are you telling me that a just and ever-loving God would create an imperfect being -- fraught with faults of every kind -- and then demand PERFECTION of him...otherwise he would banish him to "eternal damnation"?

THIS is your idea of a "Heavenly Father"?

If I were to believe in your version of Christianity, then I would have to accept that man is "sinful" and deserving of the worst type of punishment...when I see clearly that such is not the case.

Man is HUMAN...and that means he has FAULTS!

If God expects "perfection" from us...then he should have made us to be "Gods".

You are mistaking "faults" for "sins"...and that is unacceptable, IMO.

"Sins" may deserve punishment...but "faults" should be corrected...

A loving father would do no less for his children...IMO.

First of all a "loving father" does discipline his children:

Heb 12:6-13
6 For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines ,
And He scourges every son whom He receives. "

7 It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 8 But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. 9 Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? 10 For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness. 11 All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. 12 Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, 13 and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.
NASB

So, the question becomes: Who are the Lord's "sons"? Has God adopted everyone into this family? The entire human race? Are we back to the notion of the universal fatherhood of God? But scripture says, "He scourges every son whom HE RECEIVES." Much light is shed on that statement by this text:

John 1:12
12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name,
NASB

Once you start out with a bad premise question, there is no way on this little green planet you're going to get a truthful, rational, reasonable answer. How can everyone on the planet be God's child when everyone is in open rebellion against the Creator? Man doesn't come into this world with some kind of divine birthright -- or some kind of right of inheritance -- of sonship. You won't find this idea taught in scripture. If anyone wants God to his Father, then that person must have the faith of our spiritual father Abraham. The sons (and daughters) of Abraham are those who have his kind of faith.

Boxcar

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by thaskalos

It is because of comments like these that I fear this thread may never end.

There is a reason why some of us continue to ask the same questions of you over and over, Overlay...and that is because you and Boxcar have not provided reasonable answers for them.

You are trying to portray God as our "Heavenly Father"...even though the bible describes his behavior as being anything BUT "fatherly".

A good father does not openly discriminate against his "children"...by caring about the welfare of the few, while neglecting the many. Have you ever provided an answer for the question of why God picked the Jews as his "chosen" people...and why Jesus -- who repeatedly stated that his sole purpose on this earth was to 'save the lost sheep of Israel' -- would refer to outsiders as "dogs"? Is this an example of proper fatherhood?

Jesus never said that that about Israel. He said that he was sent to Israel first, which makes perfectly good sense since God predestined him to come through a particular nation (Israel) and to descend from a particular tribe within that nation (Judah) and then to even more narrowly descend from a particular family within that tribe (David). God has never entered into a universal covenant with the entire world. Okay? Let's try to keep this an honest discussion, otherwise we never will move on.

Secondly, drawing parallels between an earthly father and a divine one, does the best earthly father in the world love the children of other fathers as he does his own? Does the best human father on the planet strive to feed and clothe and school the children of other fathers? Let's begin here, shall we? If not, why not? If so, provide plenty of examples.

Then it must be asked: Do all the "children" in this world proceed from one father, spiritually speaking?

I'll stop here, so that we can focus rather narrowly on just one aspect to your concern.

Boxcar

[Greyfox]

Originally Posted by boxcar

How can everyone on the planet be God's child when everyone is in open rebellion against the Creator?
Boxcar

I'm confused here boxcar.

I thought:
1. God created everything in the Heavens and the Earth

2. Each act of creation supposedly reflects Gods divine nature and glory.

Those premises leave me to believe God created us all.
He is the father (mother?) of us all.
We are all his children, whether we rebel against him or not.
Each of us has a divine element within us, whether we rebel against him or not.
(That would include even a lost tribe in Brazil who have never heard of Jesus Christ or the Bible.)

My question is:

If you are saying that not everyone on the planet is God's child, how can he be the creator of everyone and not be their father?

Addendum:

I just read your post above.
To my comments I would add that if each of us is part of a divine act of creation we each have access to God as father "spiritually" speaking independent of faith.

[thaskalos]

Originally Posted by boxcar

Jesus never said that that about Israel. He said that he was sent to Israel first, which makes perfectly good sense since God predestined him to come through a particular nation (Israel) and to descend from a particular tribe within that nation (Judah) and then to even more narrowly descend from a particular family within that tribe (David). God has never entered into a universal covenant with the entire world. Okay? Let's try to keep this an honest discussion, otherwise we never will move on.

Boxcar

You ask for an honest discussion...and you preface it by lying.

Of course Jesus said that about Israel. When his disciples would ask him to perform a service for an "outsider", he would reply: "What has this to do with me? I have only come to save the lost sheep of Israel."

You haven't encountered this...and yet you profess to be a biblical scholar?

It is I who should be asking to keep our discussion honest...

[elysiantraveller]

Originally Posted by thaskalos

It is because of comments like these that I fear this thread may never end.

There is a reason why some of us continue to ask the same questions of you over and over, Overlay...and that is because you and Boxcar have not provided reasonable answers for them.

Why keep asking?

There isn't any meaningful discussion of metaphysics here... they just keep repeating the same answer...

The Bible is, because the Bible says it is...

You can't have a honest discussion with that... minds are too closed.

[thaskalos]

Originally Posted by elysiantraveller

Why keep asking?

There isn't any meaningful discussion of metaphysics here... they just keep repeating the same answer...

The Bible is, because the Bible says it is...

You can't have a honest discussion with that... minds are too closed.

Yup...you are 100% right.

This is just a waste of time...

[PaceAdvantage]

Originally Posted by elysiantraveller

Why keep asking?

There isn't any meaningful discussion of metaphysics here... they just keep repeating the same answer...

The Bible is, because the Bible says it is...

You can't have a honest discussion with that... minds are too closed.

I believe I said something like this a LONG time ago...but not in the same words...

[elysiantraveller]

Originally Posted by PaceAdvantage

I believe I said something like this a LONG time ago...but not in the same words...

I'm sure you did and I apologize... I must have missed it in the twenty-four hundred posts of circular reasoning...

[PaceAdvantage]

As this discussion has turned back towards why God created man as he did, and how man is a sinful creature (dating back to Adam), I am reminded of a passage in the Hitchens book I just read:

--------------

"However, the idea of a vicarious atonement, of the sort that so much troubled even C.S. Lewis, is a further refinement of the ancient superstition. Once again we have a father demonstrating love by subjecting a son to death by torture, but this time the father is not trying to impress god. He is god, and he is trying to impress humans. Ask yourself the question: how moral is the following? I am told of a human sacrifice that took place two thousand years ago, without my wishing it and in circumstances so ghastly that, had I been present and in possession of any influence, I would have been duty-bound to try and stop it. In consequence of this murder, my own manifold sins are forgiven me, and I may hope to enjoy everlasting life.

Let us just for now overlook all the contradictions between the tellers of the original story and assume that it is basically true. What are the further implications? They are not as reassuring as they look at first sight. For a start, and in order to gain the benefit of this wondrous offer, I have to accept that I am responsible for the flogging and mocking and crucifixion, in which I had no say and no part, and agree that every time I decline this responsibility, or that I sin in word or deed, I am intensifying the agony of it. Furthermore, I am required to believe that the agony was necessary in order to compensate for an earlier crime in which I also had no part, the sin of Adam. It is useless to object that Adam seems to have been created with insatiable discontent and curiosity and then forbidden to slake it: all this was settled long before even Jesus himself was born. Thus my own guilt in the matter is deemed "original" and inescapable. However, I am still granted free will with which to reject the offer of vicarious redemption. Should I exercise this choice, however, I face an eternity of torture much more awful than anything endured at Calvary, or anything threatened to those who first heard the Ten Commandments.

The tale is made no easier to follow by the necessary realization that Jesus both wished and needed to die and came to Jerusalem at Passover in order to do so, and that all who took part in his murder were unknowingly doing god's will, and fulfilling ancient prophecies. (Absent the gnostic version, this makes it hopelessly odd that Judas, who allegedly performed the strangely redundant act of identifying a very well-known preacher to those who had been hunting for him, should suffer such opprobrium. Without him, there could have been no "Good Friday," as the Christians naively call it even when they are not in a vengeful mood).

There is a charge (found in only one of the four Gospels) that the Jews who condemned Jesus asked for his blood to be "on their heads" for future generations. This is not a problem that concerns only the Jews, or those Catholics who are worried by the history of Christian anti-Semitism. Suppose that the Jewish Sanhedrin had in fact made such a call, as Maimonides thought they had, and should have. How could that call possibly be binding upon successor generations? Remember that the Vatican did not assert that it was some Jews who had killed Christ. It asserted that it was the Jews who had ordered his death, and that the Jewish people as a whole were the bearers of a collective responsibility. It seems bizarre that the church could not bring itself to drop the charge of generalized Jewish "deicide" until very recently. But the key to its reluctance is easy to find. If you once admit that the descendants of Jews are not implicated, it becomes very hard to argue that anyone else not there present was implicated, either. One rent in the fabric, as usual, threatens to tear the whole thing apart (or to make it into something simply man-made and woven, like the discredited Shroud of Turin). The collectivization of guilt, in short, is immoral in itself, as religion has been occasionally compelled to admit."

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by thaskalos

You ask for an honest discussion...and you preface it by lying.

Of course Jesus said that about Israel. When his disciples would ask him to perform a service for an "outsider", he would reply: "What has this to do with me? I have only come to save the lost sheep of Israel."

You haven't encountered this...and yet you profess to be a biblical scholar?

It is I who should be asking to keep our discussion honest...

We've had this discussion before. You are simply incredible. Once your mind is clamped shut on something, the jaws of life itself would not be able to extricate the error from it.

Mark 7:27
27 And He was saying to her, "Let the children be satisfied FIRST , for it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs."
NASB

Yes, as the Prophet of God, like virtually all the prophets before him, the Father sent his Son FIRST to the lost house of Israel. But it was always God's intentions, per that second strand to the Abrahamic Covenant, to include the Gentiles in His redemptive plans. Don't forget, Jesus came into this world under the Old Covenant. He came in under the Law of Moses. How in the world would the Gentiles be able to relate to that since they were largely ignorant of the holy scriptures? Answer this for me, please. How would the Gentiles be able to relate to all the covenant promises in the OT -- many of them made under the Old Covenant? It would be like Christ conducting his ministry up in the Arctic Circle among the Eskimos, and him expecting the igloo dwellers up there to understand the scriptures that were given to another people at the other end of the earth.

You know, Thask, sometimes it just takes a little thinking PLUS a genuine desire to understand of the scriptures to in order to solve thorny problemes and even ones like this that are barely worth the time to discuss! Again, I repeat: It was always God's intentions to bring an end to the temporary, exclusive covenant arrangement with Israel as a nation and to make a New Covenant that would be permanent and inclusive.

Rom 15:7-12
7 Wherefore, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God. 8 For I say that Christ has become a servant to the circumcision on behalf of the truth of God to confirm the promises given to the fathers

Let's stop right here in v. 8. Christ became a servant or in some translations a "minister" to the circumcision (in other words to the Jews) for what reason? Please try to catch this. Try really hard, please. "On behalf of the truth of God to confirm the promises given to the fathers." What promises? All the covenants that had been made in the OT with God's CHOSEN people, i.e. the nation of Israel! You really think that Christ would have been better off preaching the gospel down in the Congo somewhere to people who wouldn't have the first clue as to what he was all about, or what the Law of Moses was all about, or what all the various covenant promises were all about? Seriously? Okay, let's move on...

9 and for the Gentiles to glorify God for His mercy; as it is written,

Did you catch the little conjunction "and" at the beginning? He was sent FIRST to the Jews (because it made perfect logical sense) AND then FOR the Gentiles. So, he wasn't sent TO the Gentiles, per se. He was sent TO the House of Israel. But try to catch this, please: He was sent TO the Jews FOR the benefit of the Gentiles. Now let's continue on with this passage:

"Therefore I will give praise to Thee among the Gentiles,
And I will sing to Thy name."

10 And again he says,

"Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people."

11 And again,

"Praise the Lord all you Gentiles,
And let all the peoples praise Him."

12 And again Isaiah says,

"There shall come the root of Jesse,
And He who arises to rule over the Gentiles,
In Him shall the Gentiles hope."
NASB

All these verses above are taken from the OT! Paul is quoting from the OT scriptures, which means this was always God's intention to save his elect from the Gentile nations.

So, then, Jesus came TO the Jews first ultimately FOR the benefit of the Gentiles. And this was exactly God's plan from the beginning. Recall Acts 1 and Jesus' very explicit instructions before ascended into heaven?

Acts 1:6-9
6 And so when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, "Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?" 7 He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; 8 but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth. "
NASB

So, where was the hub to gospel preaching? It was in Jerusalem. Jerusalem, for a short season (until the prophecies in Matthew 24-25 were fulfilled during the transition period between Old and New Covenants) would, in a sense, be the capital of Christianity. From Jerusalem, believing Jews then would take the gospel to Judea, and then more believing Jews would take the gospel to their "enemies" to the north -- the Samaritans. And then both Jews and Samaritans would spread the gospel into Asia Minor.

Very clever of God wasn't it? He sends his Prophet Jesus to preach the gospel to Jews, who would largely reject Him, but then after his resurrection, many Jews come to believe on him, so God now has found a way to kill two birdies with one stone: Use his newly converted Jews to slowly but surely win over the Gentiles!

But somehow, I'm thinking that as you're reading this, you're thinking that if you had been God, you would have a much better way of spreading the gospel. Am I warm here?

And one more thing about that gentile woman who approached Christ: Two things should be noted at the end of their encounter. First, is that he praised her answer, and secondly He granted her wish. Now, I know that you being so much smarter and wiser than Christ would have handled her situation much differently and in a superior fashion....but you know...this woman got what she wanted PLUS. Jesus was also impressed with her and applauded her great faith! So, she really received a double blessing, didn't she -- even though you think Jesus was downright mean to her.

Boxcar

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by PaceAdvantage

As this discussion has turned back towards why God created man as he did, and how man is a sinful creature (dating back to Adam), I am reminded of a passage in the Hitchens book I just read:

--------------

"However, the idea of a vicarious atonement, of the sort that so much troubled even C.S. Lewis, is a further refinement of the ancient superstition. Once again we have a father demonstrating love by subjecting a son to death by torture, but this time the father is not trying to impress god. He is god, and he is trying to impress humans. Ask yourself the question: how moral is the following? I am told of a human sacrifice that took place two thousand years ago, without my wishing it and in circumstances so ghastly that, had I been present and in possession of any influence, I would have been duty-bound to try and stop it. In consequence of this murder, my own manifold sins are forgiven me, and I may hope to enjoy everlasting life.

Let us just for now overlook all the contradictions between the tellers of the original story and assume that it is basically true. What are the further implications? They are not as reassuring as they look at first sight. For a start, and in order to gain the benefit of this wondrous offer, I have to accept that I am responsible for the flogging and mocking and crucifixion, in which I had no say and no part, and agree that every time I decline this responsibility, or that I sin in word or deed, I am intensifying the agony of it. Furthermore, I am required to believe that the agony was necessary in order to compensate for an earlier crime in which I also had no part, the sin of Adam. It is useless to object that Adam seems to have been created with insatiable discontent and curiosity and then forbidden to slake it: all this was settled long before even Jesus himself was born. Thus my own guilt in the matter is deemed "original" and inescapable. However, I am still granted free will with which to reject the offer of vicarious redemption. Should I exercise this choice, however, I face an eternity of torture much more awful than anything endured at Calvary, or anything threatened to those who first heard the Ten Commandments.

The tale is made no easier to follow by the necessary realization that Jesus both wished and needed to die and came to Jerusalem at Passover in order to do so, and that all who took part in his murder were unknowingly doing god's will, and fulfilling ancient prophecies. (Absent the gnostic version, this makes it hopelessly odd that Judas, who allegedly performed the strangely redundant act of identifying a very well-known preacher to those who had been hunting for him, should suffer such opprobrium. Without him, there could have been no "Good Friday," as the Christians naively call it even when they are not in a vengeful mood).

There is a charge (found in only one of the four Gospels) that the Jews who condemned Jesus asked for his blood to be "on their heads" for future generations. This is not a problem that concerns only the Jews, or those Catholics who are worried by the history of Christian anti-Semitism. Suppose that the Jewish Sanhedrin had in fact made such a call, as Maimonides thought they had, and should have. How could that call possibly be binding upon successor generations? Remember that the Vatican did not assert that it was some Jews who had killed Christ. It asserted that it was the Jews who had ordered his death, and that the Jewish people as a whole were the bearers of a collective responsibility. It seems bizarre that the church could not bring itself to drop the charge of generalized Jewish "deicide" until very recently. But the key to its reluctance is easy to find. If you once admit that the descendants of Jews are not implicated, it becomes very hard to argue that anyone else not there present was implicated, either. One rent in the fabric, as usual, threatens to tear the whole thing apart (or to make it into something simply man-made and woven, like the discredited Shroud of Turin). The collectivization of guilt, in short, is immoral in itself, as religion has been occasionally compelled to admit."

I guess Hitch never bought into the maxim that our choices have consequences? This guy's "brilliance" is only eclipsed by his Total Depravity.
Apparently, he spent an inordinate amount of time walking in the very deep and dark valley of the shadow of death, which he mistook for his mind.

Boxcar

[PaceAdvantage]

Originally Posted by boxcar

I guess Hitch never bought into the maxim that our choices have consequences? This guy's "brilliance" is only eclipsed by his Total Depravity.
Apparently, he spent an inordinate amount of time walking in the very deep and dark valley of the shadow of death, which he mistook for his mind.

Boxcar

Why not actually comment on what is written...I know, it's not worthy of your valuable time, right Box?

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by PaceAdvantage

Why not actually comment on what is written...I know, it's not worthy of your valuable time, right Box?

Oh, I'll sum up my take on the great Hitchens' words: Apparently, it was never worth his short and valuable time upon this earth to find John 3:16 because he was far too occupied with finding all those alleged contradictions; for if he had found it and understood what the text is saying, he would never postulated that God was out to impress or win's mankind's favor by sending his Son into the world to pay the wages of sin on behalf of sinners.

One must wonder how "impressed" all the deceased mockers of the vicarious atonement are now of the only alternative way of paying their sin debt to God.

Boxcar

[PaceAdvantage]

Originally Posted by boxcar

Oh, I'll sum up my take on the great Hitchens' words: Apparently, it was never worth his short and valuable time upon this earth to find John 3:16 because he was far too occupied with finding all those alleged contradictions; for if he had found it and understood what the text is saying, he would never postulated that God was out to impress or win's mankind's favor by sending his Son into the world to pay the wages of sin on behalf of sinners.

One must wonder how "impressed" all the deceased mockers of the vicarious atonement are now of the only alternative way of paying their sin debt to God.

Boxcar

But God was trying to impress something upon humans, was he not?

A couple of definitions of the word IMPRESS that you might have missed:

- to produce a vivid impression of
- to affect especially forcibly or deeply

And what's your take on "Jewish deicide?"

And weren't the Jews who were calling for Christ to be executed just fulfilling prophecy, along with Judas?

And doesn't Hitchens raise an interesting point when he writes:

"this makes it hopelessly odd that Judas, who allegedly performed the strangely redundant act of identifying a very well-known preacher to those who had been hunting for him, should suffer such opprobrium. Without him, there could have been no "Good Friday," as the Christians naively call it even when they are not in a vengeful mood"

[hcap]

Originally Posted by Toxicar

Alright. So, moving right along the animal chain, we have seen elephants and now bulls. I can't wait until you introduce us to wooly mammoths.

You are an idiot. Need I remind you of the serpent, the whale or something you particularly should take note of----the Ass.

The reason I know you are not born again is that you brag about it over and over again. You pray in public trying to impress everyone with your "book learning"" totally divorced from the real sentiments of Christianity. If you knew what you claim to know you would be well aware the Buddhist story of the Ox/Bull is also a valid analogue to self development and spiritual growth as is the analogue of the "Flood"

You show very little to demonstrate you have done ANY work on yourself. Giggling about animals in another tradition as though that invalidates that tradition is........ASSinine.