Author:
Wade A. Tisthammer
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Date Posted: 06/20/05 10:53am
In reply to:
Me
's message, "Living In Denial" on 06/18/05 2:14pm
>Christians are living in denial.
>Christians are examples of the statement that Jack
>Nicholson
>made in the movie "A Few Good Men". "You can't handle
>the
>truth."
>A big emphasis in the born again church is that God so
>loved
>the world that He sacrificed His only Son to pay the
>price
>for mankinds sins. The truth is that mankind was and
>is
>born automatically with sin because of what the woman
>did
>FIRST in the garden and what the man did second.
>Having
>what they did put on us would be like everyone in the
>world
>being found guilty of what Timothy McVeigh did. He
>commited
>the crime but we'd been convicted of it. They
>commited
>the sin, we've had it put on us.
Not at all. I'm not sure if you noticed this, but nobody's perfect; and that includes being morally perfect. "All have sinned and fall short" as the old Bible verse goes. So we're not sinful merely because of what some legendary Adam and Eve did, we're sinful through our own actions. Some liberal theologians think the Adam and Eve story is symbolic for mankind in general (we could have had paradise, but we screwed it up by abusing our free will, and now we know firsthand what evil is etc.).
>The other thing is that there are so many people
>hurting in
>the world. We're told by the born again christian
>people
>that we don't know what God's reason for allowing it
>is.
There are a number of speculations, though I’m not sure the veracity of them.
>And most of the suffering is blamed on MAN. But they
>TRUTH
>is that God is allowing it and He CAN stop it.
I wouldn't be so quick to assume that, though it is an easy assumption to make. In some cases it is logically impossible for God to stop evil, and so there maybe similar metaphysical limitations when it comes to natural evil. Consider free will and moral evil as an example.
Necessary rules of metaphysics when giving creatures volition. If you have two options A and B, but revoke their free will when they choose B, so that they can only do A, then there never was any real choice for them to begin with (since they can only do A). The Power to choose their own destiny never existed. To truly exist among the creatures endowed with volition, it must be irrevocable.
So it is with mankind. If God revoked their free will every time they chose something not to his liking, then they never had free will to begin with; they never had the Power to choose good from evil, they never had the Power to choose their own destiny. For free will to truly exist among mortals, it must be irrevocable. So, here we are with irrevocable free will, because God gave the free will to mortals. The volition is irrevocable; the King cannot interfere with mankind’s volitional decisions (if he did, it wouldn't be free will).
Similarly, stopping natural evil may have more complications than we know. It is likely you didn't know about the problems of preventing moral evil, for instance.
The disputable point for what I said about moral evil is whether free will should have been given to us mortals in the first place. Is free will really worth all the evil we see? Consider a scenario I call "happy land":
A world were everybody is bed-ridden and continuously fed drugs so that they are in a state of extreme bliss all the time. One can’t exercise free will much in such a condition, but on the other hand there are no murders, rapes, thefts, or any other misdeeds that humanity would otherwise inflict upon itself. There is world peace and great contentment for all.
Which would you rather have? The world as it is, or happy land?
>No, he
>would not
>allow us to continue to suffer just because we didn't
>do
>wha he told us. HE would stop the suffering.
That doesn't logically follow in some cases, e.g. free will. For better or worse, humanity has been given the Power to choose our own destiny. If we chose to destroy ourselves, God couldn't stop us because of the inherent nature of free will.
>I'm only going to say one more thing.
>I am a born again christian.
>But I am not living in denial.
You're really a "born again" Christian? Despite your apparent attack on Christianity?
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