Where is the theological evidence for God's benevolence?

Despite what MTV would have us believe, not ALL of us behave like orangutans!

Your welcome for my reply, I appreciate your opinion..."...Yep. We MUST play by God's rules because HE determines what IS real. He determined that gravity, the earth, love, sex, danger, hope, benevolence, sin, the entirety of the universe including human experience would be REAL. It sounds like you are downplaying the reality of sin by saying that it is only a bunch rules. You already play by 99% of God's rules without objection, why should you reject the idea of sin? And even much of what is called sin you would agree is "bad"..."I play by the 99% of God's rules, because I don't have a choice. I can't defy gravity, and if God chooses to send me to hell, I can't argue. But I am not questioning his absolute power, I am questioning how that translates to benevolence. If God didn't want there to be a Hell, there wouldn't be. If God didn't want there to be sin, there wouldn't be."...If you love your child and lay down some laws in your house in order to bring your child up right, you are a good parent. If your child in his/her teenage years defies you and rebels then it hurts you, right? And if your child, years later, repents and begs your forgiveness, it would be benevolent of you to forgive him/her and love him/her with all your heart, right..."But some of the rules that parents make are arbitrary. You will become a dentist, you will vote republican, you will go to a particular church. If I break my parents rules and I never repent because I think my lifestyle is just fie, my parents can be mad at me, but they can't sentence me to eternal torture."...Neither of these (being gay or being a Muslim)condemns you to hell..."Then maybe I have to get out of Colorado Springs because I have to ay that's a minority reading of scriptures based on the people I talk to... Can I get a quick show of hands from Christians in here, does being Gay or being a non-believer condemn you to hell?"...It is illogical....In fact God made it foolish so that those who believe their own logic to be supreme would not repent..."And what happens to those people who do not repent, exactly as God planned?"...God is the supreme everything. He is not merely the supreme logician and mathematician, but also the supreme playwright, artist, musician, moralist, lover, parent, and human..."Maybe, but a benign dictator is still a dictator.Citizzzen

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The message is ended, go in peace.

Hell NO! That's just silly!Sp check by PB This message has been edited by AdminPhat, 04-03-2005 01:13 PM

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

was more of a joke. i dunno, i guess i was the only who got it.personally, i think god is both good and evil, imbalanced a bit towards the good. i'm a firm believer in providence, for instance.

I dunno....really? I have observed that nobody plays by very many of Gods rules. I mean, we usually get the big ones partly right...like thou shalt not kill. But Jesus said that if you are angry with anyone, it is the same thing. Thus, I for one fail.
Basically, we are saved from Gods wrath by Gods grace. Our main responsibility is to believe, then go and do likewise. I mess up every day, and only through prayer am I reconciled. It depends on the final response to the voice in your head before you die/are judged. Moreover, it depends on how you respond from the FIRST time that you hear that still small voice. God never sends people to Hell. People end up there by listening to every other voice except God. Non believers are without excuse, because they still listen to something...and God reaches them as well. They may just not know it.This message has been edited by Phatboy, 04-03-2005 01:23 PM

i made a rather nice reply to wmscott in the sodom thread, before it got closed. he was supporting that age old position of "homosexuality is a choice, and you have to give it up in order to gain god's approval."so i listed off some commonly broken laws, including other abominations: http://EvC Forum: Sodom and Lot, historicity and plausibility of Genesis 19 -->EvC Forum: Sodom and Lot, historicity and plausibility of Genesis 19 i think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of christianity. i think the whole idea behind what jesus said was that god loves us, and understands when we make mistakes. he did make us, afterall. i think jesus was trying to shift the focus of judaism from adhering to the law, to thinking and believing the right way, and having your heart in the right place.i think that's all god really cares about, and we shouldn't spend our time worrying about if we've sinned or not, but get on with doing the things christ told us to do.

Really? Interesting...I agree that He was shifting our thinking concerning the law...but to believe the right way is to believe in Christ(and the fact that only Christ has perfectly completed the necessary way)
and having your heart in the right place is, in effect, having your heart in Christ.I know that you probably don't see it like I do. Do you believe that we can "get closer" to God by our own efforts? How close? Only through God can we get TO God. That is why God came to us.What do you think, Arach?

not exactly what i meant. i don't think christ was trying to draw worship himself. i think his message was closer to "be nice to each other, and be considerate and compassionate and you won't have to worry about the law" than "believe in me, i'll take you to heaven."granted, it would be hard to show that, because the nt is obviously very biased the other way. i don't know. i think we can get closer ourselves than organized religion and belief alone can take us. but in comparison to how far that actually is, it's insignificant. well, that's just kind of silly.

I don't think Jesus was really too concerned about us getting close to GOD. Instead, he was concerned with life and living.If you lived life right, if you have the right view and right intention, use right speech, right action and follow the right livelyhood with right effort, mindfulness and concentration, then you will draw close to GOD. But if you try to draw close to GOD you will only spiral away.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Well...to put it another way, I believe that it is not so much a matter of TRYING as it is a matter of TRUSTING and DOING.The key point in my belief is the issue of what we are believing in.
A) Our own righteousness
B) His righteousness manifesting through us as we live in communion with Him. I'll go with B.

I said: Only through God can we get TO God. That is why God came to us. What I mean is that only through communion with the Spirit can we get closer to God. As I said to jar, it is a matter of trusting Him as opposed to trying to be holy ourselves.

well, no, i just mean that it's a contradiction.the only way to get to god is go through god. well, if i were able to go through god, i wouldn't need to get through him in the first place.edit: and actually i think it's a matter of recognizing that god is loving and forgiving, and he isn't really keeping score. he just wants what's best for us. putting it in terms of reward and punishment is kind of childish, frankly. it's religion, not assertive discipline.i'm starting to think that christ was not actually a sacrifice to forgive sins, but a gesture from god to us. and i think his life was more important than his death. i base this on my inability to rectify christianity with the old testament, and the fact that people are both forgiven, and then called perfect well before christ.This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 04-04-2005 01:50 AM

OK...lets say that we went to a department store. You had an item that you needed to bring back for a refund. You were told that in order to get a refund, you would have to go through the store manager. Would you then say to the clerk that if you were able to get a refund from the clerk than you would not need to go through the manager? Yes. You would expect service as you were the customer.Jesus is the way to God, but Jesus is not just some philosopher that you take or leave as you see fit. Jesus represents God Himself and how you relate to Jesus is how you will relate to God. Jesus is not some mere messenger angel as the Jehovahs Witnesses falsely deduce...He came to His own (The Jews) but His own received Him not.
I know that you don't respect Paul much, but he talked about how the world tried to find the truth through its own wisdom...much as you may be doing with your scholarly approach to theology.(I am not gonna say that you are lacking...we got into THAT before!) All that I am saying is that IF Paul is right in the following scrip: then there is no way to really understand God nor draw any closer to Him through wisdom and scholastics alone. God is not some puzzle to be figured out. Could your inability to rectify christianity (or Christ) with the old testament be a similar sort of stumbling block as Paul described? What was the purpose of the gesture? So are you saying that christ was a mere token?This message has been edited by Phatboy, 04-04-2005 11:43 AM

Phatboy,just jumping into the conversation here, don't mean to be rude. why not? I'm sure if you read the Kuran you will get some wisdom out of it. So Mohamed is a philosopher that you take or leave as you fit. In the same way, you can read Kropotkin, Adam Smith, Andy Warhol, Marx, or Paul. These are all philosophers who we can take or leave as we see fit. I'm sure I could find wisdom in any and all of these people. Jesus is only different in that he didn't actually write anything. but I see no reason whatsoever why i shouldn't read "his" word and get something wise out of it, take what I like, and ignore the mumbo jumbo. In just the same way that YOU might read Sartre or Marx, take what you think is interesting out of it, and ignore the mumbo jumbo. Aaah... here is where you get to your point! We can understand Sartre, Adam Smith and Warhol because we can "get closer to them" i.e. understand them, using wisdom and rational thought. You are saying that God isn't quite as good at expressing himself as Andy Warhol. Andy was largely baffling, incoherent and irrelevant, but he made some fairly reasonalbe and interesting remarks that are understandable for a rational human being. But this doesn't apply to God, right? I'm not allowed to ignore the mumbo jumbo in the bible and just take what's useful for me. You want me to absorb the whole thing without interpretation? That's a pretty heretical viewpoint, by the way. what's a token? Am I a token? Are you a token?mick

I don't mean to suggest that you as a human with human traits and characteristics cannot peruse the spiritual literature and take what you see fit.What I am suggesting, (In the context of my belief) is that God made His character known to us in the form of Jesus Christ. Always a controversial topic. When absolute truth claims are presented it insults that inner trait of humans having to be right. In other words, blessed are those who don't need Jesus to appear before them and slap them upside the head before they believe in Him. How can we as humans believe without evidence? Belief is often a result of impartation and not empirical evidence. Many demand that I prove this impartation to them. I cannot, except through the life I live and the things I do and say.Often, Christian believers are a poor walking advertisment for God!We can blame human nature, but based on our own belief, He has given us the power to overcome our selfish and greedy traits. We just choose to hang on.This message has been edited by Phatboy, 04-05-2005 07:48 AM