Are there any substitutes for having inner peace?

I have read the first five pages of this thread and I may have missed anything that came later, but to that point I am left without a clear idea of what you mean by "peace with God" or what exactly brings it about. Since you seem to equate it with "inner peace" I guess you are referring to an EXPERIENCE, or a "sense of peace?"Maybe you will clarify your view if I give my understanding of what true Christian peace with God is: Objectively it is the condition of having been forgiven your sins and reconciled with God. Subjectively, then, it is the state of mind of *knowing* that you are forgiven and no longer under God's wrath.According to the Bible, all are under God's wrath until we seek His forgiveness through the sacrifice of Christ: And it is our justification by faith, or being forgiven our sins or cleansed of all unrighteousness, and made righteous through Christ, that is peace with God:

I think this is a semantic glitch of some sort. Whatever purpose is given to the created beings by a creator being is objective, it's "what we were made for." It would be something built into the created beings, something that would seek fulfillment because of that, despite all other purposes the created being could invent. It would be the very nature of the created beings. I think this is what is meant by objective purpose or formal purpose. You treat the purpose given by a creator as extraneous or arbitrary, something the creator just "made up" for you and imposed on you, but in fact his purpose would be part of the very created thing he would create, not at all subjective but the very definition of objective. {Leaving the hypothetical for the Christian context for a moment, If we are made in the image of God, some part of us is always seeking God. It's part of us, it's not imposed on us. It's complex because of the Fall, which buried this part of us that seeks God and brought out our own desire to be little gods lording it over life, which I add merely to explain why we often don't experience this yearning after God, or we misapply it in the wrong directions.}

I didn't say I knew what the purpose is, except when it comes to the Christian definition of God, which I avoided until the end. The purpose of ANY creator is not arbitrary to the created thing or being, it's what the thing or being "was made for" -- "built into" the created thing or being. That's what MAKES it objective. It's a definitional thing.A created being would have a felt tendency in the direction of that purpose -- and I think this is amply borne out in the case of human beings by the fact that the religious impulse has been pretty much universal -- up until modern atheism anyway -- that is, the impulse to set up objects of worship and propitiation. (A case could be made that this is no less true of modern atheists but for the sake of avoiding confusion I'll just stick to "pretty much universal up UNTIL modern atheism.") This is a hopelessly muddled statement. As long as such a basic thing as what "subjective" and "objective" mean can't be agreed upon, discussions about such things are hopeless.If the creator's purpose is not an objective purpose for the created thing then nothing makes any sense at all.This is simply the definition of "objective," but apparently few here really believe there is such a thing as an objective purpose at all ever under any circumstances. Everything is "subjective" it seems. I believe this shows a lack of grasp of the concept, but in any case discussion is simply hopeless because of it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Maybe this will help. Maybe it's a semantic problem with different uses of the word "purpose." "Purpose" in the sense of desire, the desire to accomplish a "purpose," is subjective, but the purpose of an object or created thing, what it was made for, is objective.Your wanting to build a house is your subjective purpose or desire. But the actual building of the house is objective -- what the work of building aims to accomplish, what-it-is-for.The hammer has an objective purpose, what-it-is-for, whether or not an alien can figure out what that objective purpose is and decides to use it for some other subjective purpose of its own, like build an altar to it to worship it perhaps.One's wanting a tool to drive nails with, that works better than a rock, would be a subjective purpose or desire, but the finished created tool's purpose, what-it-is-made-for, is objective.God's wanting to create a being in his own image could maybe be said to be God's subjective purpose, but the purpose of the being he creates in his image is objective, built into the created being -- what-it-was-made-for.

Yes, that says it. It's about point of view.It's from the point of view of the hammer that it has an objective purpose. From the point of view of the creator of the hammer, the purpose to create it could be called subjective. Also it might be used for somebody's subjective purpose, from that person's point of view.Same with God's creation of human beings in his own image. That would be his subjective purpose, but from our point of view, created with this image of God in us, it's our objective purpose.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The building example was the most difficult to express, so naturally you picked it out of the five or six examples I gave. But it still holds up. Instead of a created object, in this example we have work that is being done for an objective purpose.You can always find subjective motives where "purpose" is about somebody's motives or desires. I was distinguishing between those and the object of those motives, the created thing. The point is that the purpose itself, the object of the desire, the created object, the hammer, or the human being in the case of a Creator God, or in this case the building project itself, the work itself -- from ITS point of view as it were -- we know it can't have a point of view, you put yourself in its position to get the point -- THAT has an objective purpose, which I defined as "what it was made for."So, what the building project is being done for -- that is its objective purpose, the objective purpose of the activity -- to get this house built. The subjective purposes of those engaged in the building are another meaning of "purpose."I think this distinction holds up and makes the point. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.