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Mephi2K
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 713
| Posted 9/23/2001 4:37 AM (GMT -6) |   | Doc,
I thought about this at work. Don't know why. You said this before:
When, in typical evangelical fashion, we ignore this infinite complexity and attribute everything to God, we end up with what I call "magical thinking" (the term was actually coined by some friends of mine). It’s one aspect of "the blueprint worldview" (I take credit for coining that term ) God is credited with finding us a parking spot, raising our stock in the stock market, or delaying a plane when its too our advantage (forget the 400 other people who miss their kids marriage or soccer games), etc. Yet, when we don’t find a parking spot, and the stock market falls, and we miss the plane because it wasn’t delayed, we don’t thereby blame God. But infidels, as Meph notes, DO. And they notice the gross inconsistency here. "Magical thinking" makes Christians look silly. (Tim Foley at Mars Hill Media (we have a link to his cite on our cite) appropirately calls it "goof ball theology").
In a world in which myriads of free decisions intersect in ways that no specific individual planned, we must give place for simple CHANCE. (This is how I’d define chance: the intersecting of causal chains that no one specifically intended).
Now, this...Joshua 10:1-14
Now Adoni-Zedek king of Jerusalem heard that Joshua had taken Ai and totally destroyed it, doing to Ai and its king as he had done to Jericho and its king, and that the people of Gibeon had made a treaty of peace with Israel and were living near them. He and his people were very much alarmed at this, because Gibeon was an important city, like one of the royal cities; it was larger than Ai, and all its men were good fighters.
So Adoni-Zedek king of Jerusalem appealed to Hoham king of Hebron, Piram king of Jarmuth, Japhia king of Lachish and Debir king of Eglon. "Come up and help me attack Gibeon," he said, "because it has made peace with Joshua and the Israelites." Then the five kings of the Amorites-- the kings of Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish and Eglon-- joined forces. They moved up with all their troops and took up positions against Gibeon and attacked it. The Gibeonites then sent word to Joshua in the camp at Gilgal: "Do not abandon your servants. Come up to us quickly and save us! Help us, because all the Amorite kings from the hill country have joined forces against us." So Joshua marched up from Gilgal with his entire army, including all the best fighting men.
The LORD said to Joshua, "Do not be afraid of them; I have given them into your hand. Not one of them will be able to withstand you." After an all-night march from Gilgal, Joshua took them by surprise. The LORD threw them into confusion before Israel, who defeated them in a great victory at Gibeon. Israel pursued them along the road going up to Beth Horon and cut them down all the way to Azekah and Makkedah. As they fled before Israel on the road down from Beth Horon to Azekah, the LORD hurled large hailstones down on them from the sky, and more of them died from the hailstones than were killed by the swords of the Israelites.
On the day the LORD gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel: "O sun, stand still over Gibeon, O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon." So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the LORD listened to a man. Surely the LORD was fighting for Israel!
Questions for Doc (and anyone else):
1) Do you believe that this actually happened, meaning do you believe that God manipulated nature such that there was no phenomenological appearance of a sundown for a number of hours?
2) If yes to above,
a) doesn't this reveal a LARGE amount of active providential power that God has to intervene in prayer OVER AND AGAINST any so-called powers of "chaos" with which God has to deal. (It doesn't say that Josh prayed for the hailstones. Seems God threw that twist in by Himself)
b) doesn't this cause considerable problem with your view?
b) wouldn't this be an instance of "magical thinking" applied? Just as one would scoff at one praying for the plane being late (which may adversely affect others), one would seem to be able to do the same here. The WHOLE EARTH would have felt the reprecussions of Joshua's prayer that day! Whoa.
I'm mentioning all this because, honestly, this is what I've always felt is the most screwy (almost plain weird) with the warfare worldview as you form it. In the Bible, God is seen as doing some pretty WAY OUT stuff unilaterally. Making the very sun "stand still" is only ONE of them. To me, to say that this God can be seriously thwarted by the measly actions of human beings is tantamount to lunacy to me. Always has been. Now, I can certain deal with God ALLOWING certain things to happen to us for certain reasons, but again, that's allowing. You talk about God genuinely NOT being able to counter some things directly because of all the givens. I don't know about anyone else but making the sun "stand still" IN ANY SENSE is about as much breaking of natural law as I can think of. Not to mention the Exodus plagues. And the fire from heaven (with Elijah) AT WILL exerted by God. To my logical mind, with God's power, as seen here, combined with any type of presentist omniscience God has, this God would hardly EVER be thwarted by any agent unless He wanted to ALLOW it. Just being honest, but it seems quite laughable to me to think of a God that can toy with celestial bodies at will...but not prevent me from having a car wreck when he wants to. Sorry. Perhaps you (or anyone else) can help me out.
Thoughts?
PS: Questions for people who DON'T believe the Joshua thing happened:
1) How do you discern between the miraculous stuff in the Bible that happened and that that didn't?
2) How can one believe in a being like a Creator God and find the Joshua thing UNbelievable?
Edited by - Mephi2K on 09/23/2001 09:44:32 AM | | Back to Top | | |
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