I agree, based on my understanding of what I have read about the Christian God, that mankind can’t provide God with anything he doesn’t already have. I could speculate that there must be some reason he gives those, who live by his rules, the opportunity to spend eternity in Heaven with him. He already has angels to serve him. There must be something he finds pleasing in man to want to share eternity with us.

I don’t understand if God causes everything to happen, and knows everything that will happen, what is the point in giving man a free will? God gives mans Grace, but controls the circumstances which will result in our choosing to live by it, or not. If everything is predetermined than to me there is no such thing as free will. To me that would mean we aren’t free, we are slaves.

What is the point in creating our universe? I guess you could say it’s similar to our reading a good book, even when we know the outcome.

If there was life after death then that would give man the hope that no matter how bad his life was now, when we die it will be better. If the reward of Heaven is removed so is almost all of the motivation for a person to surrender their will to God. Of course if God is all powerful then man doesn’t have a will in the first place.

maybe we can find a few places we can find some agreement on?

Starting with creating the Universe. – if you were the only being of your type and lived in total darkness what would you do to keep yourself occupied for a while? create something complex to challenge your creative brain perhaps?

Then what? You don’t want your handiwork to fall apart once you’ve finished (so you set some ‘laws’ in place to make sure it ‘works’ and does not destroy itself or fall apart) and it is not all that exciting once you’ve done all the structural work so you need a ‘distraction’. What is more distracting to us than ‘life’? and we all feel a common need to live life with others – we hate being all alone. We can’t create something ‘equal’ to or superior to us so we create something ‘lesser’ but to keep our massive intellect occupied we make a heck of a lot of them – eventually – and give them a degree of independence to see what they can come up with.

Seem ‘reasonable’?

As for God ‘causing’ everything to happen and what then would be the point of free will?

God (you) determines in advance what the ‘rules’ of this Universe and everything that lives in it are, but that is not the same as causing EVERYTHING to happen. If he can give part of His creation (part of Himself) ‘freedom of choice’ but within pre-determined consequences of each choice there is then almost infinite complexity capable of being produced and observed for His (your) entertainment and distraction.

Chaos Theory shows very clearly that you need only a very simple (non-complex) starting ‘equation’ (say a human or small group of humans) that with frequent ‘iterations’ (doing something over and over – a ‘generation’ for eg) can provide a virtually infinite ( very complex) set of results or outcomes that can give unexpected or un-anticpated results compared to the starting position and the known ‘rules’ (consequences).

life often results in the unexpected – even though it is generally quite ‘controlled’ and limited. (Compared to God, say)

So we can be given various degrees of freedom while at the same time being very controlled while being also unable to observe our Creator.

As for life after death – i have some thoughts but they will have to wait for another day

Quickly though i would say that what we choose to do with our life ‘down here’ is very important, not only to ensure we do what is best for all on this planet but also for the life our spirit will have once we croak it.

i think it likely a very big mistake we make in assuming what we do here only lasts till the end of our bodily life and has no ‘follow-on’ effect for the being we are and are also a part of.

There is much more to this life than most give any credit to or can ‘identify’ with our intellect.

<B

i see a big problem in the fact that humans can only think as a man or woman could, and not as God does, while God is more than capable of thinking the way his creations do so as to try and suggest things to them in ways their limited brains can begin to understand and adapt more to.

The example you mention of Jesus’ suffering 33 years is a case in point. What is a matter of a mere 33 years to God?? to man it is more than a third of their entire living existence – but to God?? A merest speck in the fabric of eternity. To Jesus 33 years of human misery would be as pricking his finger on a rose thorn perhaps? He is on a vastly superior reference frame to us mere mortals.

See the diff?

and i am not so much saying God does not care about man – even down to a one to one level, as much as i am saying man can provide God with nothing that God did not previously have. God has no need of anything from mankind since he is responsible for all it (mankind) possesses.

Saying otherwise is to suggest that God can somehow be ‘improved’ by His own creations and i don’t think many of the true believers would dare raise that blasphemy or try to justify such a position.

God does not experiment – he already knows everything so he has no need – unlike us humans with our mice and mazes – we don’t yet know it all and use mice in experiments to hopefully learn something ‘new’.

We scientists may care about our pet mice’s best interests and establish some form of relationship with them and feel sorry if they get hurt or die and the relationship may possibly give us something we did not have previously since we did not create the mice, just the mazes.

It’s not quite the same with an infinitely powerful and omniscient God who created everything He can see – what can we possibly teach him or improve in Him??.

Should we accept grace form him in order to live a better life here and then in the hereafter?

That’s up to each of us to choose for ourselves.

What sort of mouse would you choose to be – the one who does good and gives the experimenter what he wants so as to get the goodies – or the one who just refuses to play ball and gets the autopsy/dissection??

isn’t it fortunate God does not act like an experimenter??

<B

Paul also preaches this confident faith to the Corinthians in 2 Cor 5, verses 5,6,7 and 9:

5Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

6Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. 7We live by faith, not by sight

9So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.

We as the lab mice might well see our creator as a benevolent being who cares for us, and has our best interest in his heart.

The process of salvation could be thought of as natural selection at work. Temptations are obstacles. The man/mice that can adequately resist temptation, are the best at following the creators rules, are the ones selected to live with the creator, for his amusement perhaps.

However all the above is not how God, or Jesus, is portrayed in the Bible, as least as well as I understand it.

Jesus, although God’s son, had to suffer living 33(?) years as a man. Why would he suffer so much to provide a gift to mankind, if God cared nothing about man?

It would seem to me that if nothing else mankind provides God with the satisfaction of knowing his experiment is working. As least as long as some of us do adequately follow his rules.

He entrusted his whole life to God.

And God entrusted the whole job of “getting the word out” to us. See 2 Cor. 5.

Man can have faith in God ( or not) but man may ‘lose’ his faith. If we put our trust in God He will strengthen our faith. Grace as you rightly said is a gift from Him to us. It is given by His choice not ours – we choose whether or not to have Faith in Him and to trust Him or not. Grace is not Faith or vice versa. God and Jesus are able to guard or protect our Faith in them as paul writes he believes that He( Jesus) is able to protect/guard against the ways of men that can tend to challenge our faith and lead us astray. (particularly when our bodies are under attack)

Under 1) i don’t see Paul as specifically suggesting what you mention – just that Paul has confidence his faith is under Christ’s protection – He Trusts in Christ against the way of his own body and heart to do evil or rebel against God.

Under 2) i would see Genesis as meaning God was pleased with what he saw as His handiwork – he is pleased with most of his Creation before He creates man so clearly man is by no means the only things that please God nor is it implied that he was most pleased by Him – in fact God as you and Genesis later point out got very pissed because of man’s evil nature and contraryness to His Will.

Michelle quite pointedly has made clear that there is nothing in man that is worthy of himself – nothing God finds worthy that He himself has not put their ( Grace causing us to follow Him and praise Him, sharing the Gospel or whatever we do in His Name – never in our own.

As to sacrificing His Son implying some degree of caring?

Jesus when he took on Human form was emptied of His Godliness (Phil 2:7) and became as mortal flesh but without the ‘sin’ imputed to us of being born of mankind – it was mankind that had Him Killed (for less than 3 days when He Bodily rose again – so no big loss for God there Huh?)

Jewish belief as expressed in Genesis means that after God made Adam perfect and he almost instantly rebelled and sinned against his Creator that first born blood had to be spilled as compensation – it took a few thousand years but was finally offered by God to Himself for the rest of Humanity to have a chance of being cleansed of their sins. Some can see this as great caring for us. Some might see that the suffering this life mostly results in – even to His Son – is something less than truly caring what happens to us.

We humans are so very good at caring for those who obey us and think the same as we do while not caring all that much for any who don’t.

The Bible suggests that God is like us in this regard and will condemn those who don’t agree with Him to eternal judgement and will only reward those who think like Him and obey Him.

Caring? He can end the Universe any time He wishes and build a new one – is it caring that He doesn’t do so in our lifetime? What could His Creation possibly give Him that He has not already got the entire quantity of?

Really?

It’s a little like a man building himself an android robot for company that has nothing but what the man has given it – is the man truly caring for the robot? or does He just get tired of being alone and needs a distraction?

Would he come to love the android for what ‘it’ has given him (that he gave to it first?)

it’s probably best if we don’t go too far down that particular road for our own sanity. What little we still may possess?

is it just me, or have we reversed ‘roles’ here??

<B

“am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.”

I don’t think of the faith that man has in God as something that God is guarding for his followers, during their time on earth. Grace is God’s gift to man. God is entrusting the preaching of his gospel to man. Are the words in the 12th verse viewing God’s final reward of heaven as something he (God) is guarding for mankind?

2) I can see that God does not need anything from man, however in Genesis 1:31 after God created the man and the earth it says “and behold, it was very good”. I read that as meaning that creating man pleased God. I think there are other references, which I can’t remember, where God is said to be pleased by the work of man.

Is God indifferent as to whether mankind follows his guidance? God got pissed enough at mankind’s disrespect for him to bring the Great Flood, and only save his faithful servant Noah. Since God sacrificed his only Son on the behalf of mankind, doesn’t that imply some degree of caring? Of course in my science based view of creation the forces of nature have no emotions, they just exist.