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Truth Aficionado
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2003
Total Posts : 1544
| Posted 7/18/2005 12:29 PM (GMT -6) |   | |
We should keep the following in mind while reading the Bible:
The New Testament is concealed in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is revealed in the New Testament.
Contradictions if well understood and managed can spark off the fires of invention. Orthodoxy whether of the right or of the left is the graveyard of creativity. | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 7/18/2005 1:14 PM (GMT -6) | | Ok. Hmmm. Ok.
Very interesting. Staggering.
I just spent some time in serious prayer. I basically told God...
Look, I'm at a serious place here. I can't keep going on like this. I feel like I'm at a breaking point. We both know where this kinda stuff leads. And you know I can't do the damn 'mystery card" thing. Calvinism's not helping. OVT's not helping. Theologians are looking like rank idiots to me right about now. I NEED for you to do something here. Please help me.
And I honestly feel like I got the most satifying, fulfilling response that I think I've ever had to any question from anyone. Ever.
God is weird and wonderful.
That's it. No real brilliant flash of anything. No booming voice. Just that insight. God is weird and wonderful.
It felt interesting when I first started pondering it. But then, I looked up "weird" and "wonderful" on an online dictionary and thesaurus.
dictionary.reference.com/search?q=weird
thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=weird
dictionary.reference.com/search?q=wonderful
thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=wonderful
Y'all It SO fits. It just does. Both OT and NT. God is unspeakably weird in so many ways. When you think about Creation and Salvation History...one can't help but come to that idea. And at the same time, God is unspeakably wonderful in those same ways.
God revealing Godself through the myriad, often conflicting writings and oral traditions of semi-nomadic peoples beginning with a polytheistic man in some podunk place called Ur?
God redeeming all existence through a crucifixion of a passionate, driven Jewish prophet wannabe?
God creating all of existence...and focusing so much attention on our carbon-based lifeforms on ONE planet?
God is friggin WEIRD...and I think God knows that! But his God's complete weirdness, God's activity is such that pondering it too long inexorably leads one to a sense of awe at the whole thing.
God is weird and wonderful.
I don't know why. But this response really seals some things for me. Perhaps the only thing that can be said about creation and the evil within it is that God has run a weird ship of a Creation and someday will bring it to a wonderful climax, the likes of which no one's ever seen.
I'm so suprised, but for some reason...I can live with this response!
I think I know what's going on...not sure, but I suspect. I think I'd bought into the seminary-induced lie that God was the instantiation of perfect reason, logic, benevolence and balanced emotionality. Such that EVERYTHING God did, said, or thought had to have some magnificent perfect (stress that word) overall structure and purpose to it. Such a God could not essentially BE weird...but only APPEAR weird. Any bit of weirdness seen in God was only our lack of knowledge of the "factors." God as Greek logos/.
But this just does not cohere with human experience...or biblical testimony.
I'm think I'm starting to believe that God is weird. And God knows that. In the things God ordains and the things God allows, there's a fundamental element of it. But it makes God NO less glorious or loving or praiseworthy as God. God does things no sane human would think of doing. And God KNOWS that. God does things topsy turvy and upside down from what the common sense of sentient beings would dictate. And God KNOWS that. God wants us to trust and love him when there is ABSOLUTELY no logical reason to, experientially speaking. And God knows that!
God wants us to know God IN his weirdness...and find the WONDER that is there. And rest in that relationship. To find satisfaction in this Being and know that in his WEIRD way of declaring it (the work of Christ), God has shown us how he CRAZILY wants us (the veritable cosmic dust of the universe) to actually be one with God.
Somehow, this circumvents the theodicy question...but answers it at the same time for me! I can actually GO with this!
Why do I feel like I'm being "saved" all over again??
God is weird and wonderful.
Absolutely amazed right now,
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Truth Aficionado
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2003
Total Posts : 1544
| Posted 7/18/2005 1:31 PM (GMT -6) | |
MephEternal said...
I'm think I'm starting to believe that God is weird. And God knows that. In the things God ordains and the things God allows, there's a fundamental element of it. But it makes God NO less glorious or loving or praiseworthy as God. God does things no sane human would think of doing. And God KNOWS that. God does things topsy turvy and upside down from what the common sense of sentient beings would dictate. And God KNOWS that. God wants us to trust and love him when there is ABSOLUTELY no logical reason to, experientially speaking. And God knows that!
Bingo! "God wants us to trust and love him".
Was God "testing" Abraham because God needed to know or was God teaching Abraham to "trust" in Him?
So much depends on our lens  when it comes to our view of God.
God speaks down to us finite babes so we can understand. Similar, we might use baby talk when communicating with little kids and in the process look very weird to older more mature children.
I'm happy for ya Meph,
Mark
Contradictions if well understood and managed can spark off the fires of invention. Orthodoxy whether of the right or of the left is the graveyard of creativity. Post Edited (sparknheart) : 7/19/2005 9:29:18 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 7/18/2005 9:23 PM (GMT -6) | | Well, I've been told all my life that I'm weird. Now I know why! Too bad everyone else doesn't see they're also made in the image of God: weird!
Hey, Meph, that sounds pretty...what's the word I'm looking for (not powerful, not deep...)...um...it's true to life. That's what it is. True to life. Just like there isn't a reason on planet earth that God had to go corporeal with us, there ain't a reason on the planet why God does a lot of the things the way He does them. I'd bet that were we to ask Him (and we will one day) why He did this or that in such-a-such way, He'll respond simply with something like, "I'm different, man. I'm weird sometimes. I mean, I'm God, but I keep time to my own drum." I can relate to that.
Very cool, Meph. Very cool. And I'm definitely glad it helps to bring peace in your direction.
Starkman
My teacher used to say that whenever he read Scripture, he would always ask the question, "What does this have to say about the character of God?" Working off his thinking, as I read Scripture, I have come to ask, "What does this have to say about the heart and passion of God's desire for relationship for us? | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 7/19/2005 8:54 PM (GMT -6) | | It will be a serious study to consider the OT in light of a "post-conservatist" mindset; the need to determine what is and is not authentic or historical, the need to determine what are not attributed acts of God ("and God caused the sun to stop" or "And God caused the rain" in view of the typical, daily Ancient Near East use of religious language to describe cosmic events—in order to see more clearly a path that leads to seeing how God really is.
I think there's room for remembering that we also do not have ALL the information before us about God's acts in the OT. And I think we won't have a problem keeping in mind qualification for Meph's ending statement (in his last post), "yet sometimes arbitrary according to God's purposes..." so as not to end up with God being unstable in His whim.
I certainly would not operate in the way I see God operating often times in the OT, even taking into consideration that which I don't know about all that's going on. But I also cannot operate in the confident, strong and loving manner in which I see God act in the NT, where I do know a lot more about what's going on. That's one reason we cannot keep the NT out of the equation, because it at least tells us that God isn't whimsical, unpredictable and unstable. He's very sure of Himself, very contenplative of the future and very much in planning for it.
I once was talking to a friend about God, and he couldn't believe in the God of the Bible because of the Elijah/youth incident (God knocks off some youth because they were berating Elijah about his baldenss). Well, the NT comes along and demonstrates every reason in the world to believe in the God of the Bible, in view of the culmnation of God's patience with our sin and desire to have relationship so much that He is willing to go to the cross.
I'll say this. I don't think all the information in the world is going to make me think any less about God being weird. The cat is definitely weird, and wonderfully so. But that's just it: He's wonderful so...weird. His weirdness is evident in both his love and wrath, but it'll take some deeper study and contemplation to attempt to sort it all out.
One thing's for sure. I'm open. I'm very open, and I dig these conversations.
Starkman
My teacher used to say that whenever he read Scripture, he would always ask the question, "What does this have to say about the character of God?" Working off his thinking, as I read Scripture, I have come to ask, "What does this have to say about the heart and passion of God's desire for relationship for us? | | Back to Top | | |
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Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 7/19/2005 9:34 PM (GMT -6) | | I'm not sure this really ties in here, but I want to express how deeply disturbed I was today to hear the autopsy report about those three kids who suffocated to death in the trunk of a car in New Jersey. Seriously, I feel like I just don't know God at all when I hear how they died slowly, screaming unheard, for an estimated 36 hours in a hot and dark confinement. I wept, "Oh God! NO! This can't be!"
All theological theories aside, I just can't picture an all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing God who didn't help here. He KNEW where they were! All these people looking, presumably hundreds praying, and NOTHING! We talk, almost casually, all the time about a personal God who speaks to us. Why didn't he speak here? Or was just no one receptive to hear? No one?!! These are little kids, probably not much different than my own daughters!
Natural evil is more difficult for me to understand than moral evil, and this particular kind of natural evil is even more difficult for me to understand. It's not like the tsunami which swept in killed quickly before people could really react or pray for God's intervention. But 36 hours!! Little kids suffering and scared while I'M SURE people were engaged in prayer looking for them.
My picture of God must be off. This is "weird", but I think in a bad way. Post Edited (Corey) : 7/19/2005 9:58:39 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 7/19/2005 10:16 PM (GMT -6) | | Corey:
I'm not sure this really ties in here, but I want to express how deeply disturbed I was today to hear the autopsy report about those three kids who suffocated to death in the trunk of a car in New Jersey. Seriously, I feel like I just don't know God at all when I hear how they died slowly, screaming unheard, for an estimated 36 hours in a hot and dark confinement. I wept, "Oh God! NO! This can't be!"
All theological theories aside, I just can't picture an all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing God who didn't help here. He KNEW where they were! All these people looking, presumably hundreds praying, and NOTHING! We talk, almost casually, all the time about a personal God who speaks to us. Why didn't he speak here? Or was just no one receptive to hear? No one?!! These are little kids, probably not much different than my own daughters!
Natural evil is more difficult for me to understand than moral evil, and this particular kind of natural evil is even more difficult for me to understand. It's not like the tsunami which swept in killed quickly before people could really react or pray for God's intervention. But 36 hours!! Little kids suffering and scared while I'M SURE people were engaged in prayer looking for them.
My picture of God must be off. This is "weird", but I think in a bad way.
Yo. I completely understand where you're comin' from with this. Straight up. It is THIS type of stuff that blows away the simplicity of theodicy for me. Calvinism basically asserts that God mandates every scream and stifled breath for God's own glorious purposes...while the OVT asserts that God is so functionally weak, due to God's own self-limitations and "creational factors" that God can't do a damn thing about the screams and terrified stifled breath. Neither position, consistently thought out, do anything to really help the situation, existentially. It's all f'd up. All of it.
One thing that I end up saying now is this, whether calvinism OR ovt is true, the whole friggin thing is "weird." It just is. Three kids are dead when God had the power to make their deaths "unacceptable risks." Bottom line: it didn't happen. And God knows it didn't happen. We can say all we like that God didn't LIKE the fact that it didn't happen that they were spared...and wept as they were dying, but that's pretty cold comfort.
All I can believe is that this crazy a$$ reality that we are in we're gonna face indescribable pain and evil...and we have to trust God regardless. Whether it was ordained or whether it was an "acceptable risk" that went the wrong way, it's all screwed. We just have to trust that God's gonna make this thing alright in the end...and give us the power to make things right where we can.
We can rail against God all we like...but in the end, God does what God will do...and allows as "acceptable risk" what God will allow. And asks us to trust and love God anyways. And believe that things will be ok in the end as we trust God.
I don't see what else we can do. Do you?
"I've been converted three times. The first was to traditional Christianity; the second to honesty and the third was to the Love of God and man (humanity) The third was the real conversion. The first two were preliminary."
--Nels Ferre, a theologian speaking of his spiritual journey with the Triune God
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 7/19/2005 10:31 PM (GMT -6) | | Nother thing.
When you look at Job, the Psalms, or Jeremiah, those people ain't playing about their frustration with God. it's like...
Dammit, God. Now you are supposed to be the God that upholds and protects. Where the hell ARE you? What's going on? Don't you care? Don't you care at ALL? Can't you see all this pain? Why don't you DO something instead of just sittin' up there watching?
And God in typical "weird" fashion doesn't even really answer the QUESTIONS in Job...and leaves it up to the questioners to drudge up their own sense of hope more than anything else in the Psalms and Jeremiah.
Then you have stuff like the author of Hebrews referring to Christian persecution and death as "chastisement" of a loving father.
God sometimes answers questions we aren't asking, and ignores painful questions that we do ask...or reinterprets the unthinkable as something even more unthinkable.
We're stuck with this man. There's no running from it. We may as well acknowledge the true level of oddness that we Christians have signed on to following this God.
John 6
60On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?"
61Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, "Does this offend you? 62What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! 63The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit[e] and they are life. 64Yet there are some of you who do not believe." For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. 65He went on to say, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him."
66From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
67"You do not want to leave too, do you?" Jesus asked the Twelve.
68Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."
Bottom line, Corey: We have NO WHERE ELSE to turn for HOPE. As wierd as God gets, where ELSE is eternal life to be found? Who ELSE is the source of all happiness, joy, and peace? What is the alternative?
"I've been converted three times. The first was to traditional Christianity; the second to honesty and the third was to the Love of God and man (humanity) The third was the real conversion. The first two were preliminary."
--Nels Ferre, a theologian speaking of his spiritual journey with the Triune God
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trosie
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 550
| Posted 7/20/2005 8:10 AM (GMT -6) | | | This might not fit here but I want to share what came to my mind after reading some of the last postings. The movie "Bruce Almighty" came to mind because Bruce is fed up with how God is orchestrating the world. He is angry with God for how his life is going and how God is running things. He believes he can do it better than God hence is given the opportunity to run the world. In the end Bruce discovers that there are so many variables at play in answering prayers and orchestrating events. I'm not sure if this fits here but the point is that we cannot see and know what the Almighty does and therefore must trust in his love.
I believe that we must hold on to an unseen faith and have hope despite what we experience and see around us when things don't measure up. It broke my heart too, Corey, when I read about those three children in the trunk. Why didn't God answer the prayer requests of the people praying and hear the cries of the three children? It's times like these when we MUST step back and trust that God will work things out for the grieving parents. We can be confident that those screams have ended and the children are in heaven with Jesus now -- no more suffering.
I agree where else can we go! | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 7/23/2005 8:18 AM (GMT -6) | | MBD:
Sometimes I wrestle with ... Is it faith ? or have I resigned myself to "whatever will be, will be" .
It seems they look the same from the outside.
Acid test: Do you believe that God will IN THE END work all this stuff out?
When it comes right down to it, I think this is the main thing we wanna know. We wouldn't care a whit about the moral justifiability of things if that's all there was to it. We want to know that SAME THING that Israel did in multiple periods of it's existence:
Can God bring healing and restoration to people seemingly broken beyond repair?
Can God exchange beauty for ashes?
Can these dry BONES live????
We want to be assured of God's goodness not just in PRINCIPLE, but in PRACTICE!
For example...
Child brides and vampire names: Bizarre the norm in mass murder trial
In an unexceptional, wood-paneled courtroom on the fifth-floor of the downtown Superior Court here, the story of the city's worst mass murder is unfolding in chilling detail.
www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/04/22/wesson/
www.francesfarmersrevenge.com/stuff/serialkillers/wesson.htm
Incest. Rape. Unspeakable abuse. Child molestation. Murder. The youngest victim was 1 year old.
Like Israel, we ask...(when we are VERY honest with ourselves)...
Can these mutha-f#@kin' bones LIVE?? Is God TRULY mighty to SAVE?? Or are we wasting our godda*n time??? Are YOU the one we seek, "Messiah", or should we look for another???
What do YOU believe, might-be-don?
I believe that in the back of the din...with the still, small voice...the great, powerful, glorious God speaks, saying...
"No, you are NOT wasting your time. Don't you remember? Every tear shall be wiped away. Every desperate cry shall stilled. Death shall be no more. ALL things in heaven and earth will declare that I am Lord to my glory. All things are possible with Me. Do you believe this?"
This is what I believe. God IS mighty to save. And God WILL save. Because God is weird enough to love us and care that much...even though our lives are vapor and we are nothing BUT dust in the wind.
People can hate on my Christian universalism all they want, even if they can't knock it logically. But I DARE ANYBODY to give me a better alternative, all things considered!
Can you, Might-be-don?
What do you believe?
To all heresy-hunters and general lames...
"I'm connected nationwide, but from the South...
Respect game, and keep my name outcha mouth!"
--adapted from T.I. From P$C's "I'm a King"
Post Edited (MephEternal) : 7/23/2005 9:22:08 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 7/23/2005 10:30 AM (GMT -6) | | Laika:
How can you say people "can't knock it logically" when you run away from their arguments?
Dude...are you seriously telling me that THAT'S the only thing you could comment on, given what I'd written??
What?
To all heresy-hunters and general lames...
"I'm connected nationwide, but from the South...
Respect game, and keep my name outcha mouth!"
--adapted from T.I. From P$C's "I'm a King"
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Laika
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433
| Posted 7/23/2005 12:30 PM (GMT -6) | |
MephEternal said...Laika: How can you say people "can't knock it logically" when you run away from their arguments?Dude...are you seriously telling me that THAT'S the only thing you could comment on, given what I'd written?? What?
If past performance is an indication of future expectations, yes.
1. Everything you posted dealt with God doing it, unilaterally. That's determinism.
Where's our will involved?
If someone wants eternal separation from God, God's love requires that He give them that eternal separation. Otherwise God is forcing someone into a relationship they don't want and that's not love. Many people have chosen death over being in a relationship they did not want.
(The Jews at Masada, for example)
Freedom is the defining aspect of this world that God created. For God to have real relationships with people, they have to have the potential to accept that relationship or reject it, eternally.
2. You posit that the Lake of Fire is a schoolhouse with a door. But God's kingdom is based on FAITH.
Without Faith it's IMPOSSIBLE to please God.
Read Hebrews 11:
1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
2 For by it [faith] the men of old gained approval.
39 And all these, having gained approval through their faith,
Now how can anyone live a life of faith and belief when they're floating in the Lake of Fire and there is absolutely NO possibilty to practice faith, to believe in "things not seen"????
No chance for faith, no chance to gain approval.
Questions we ask here and now (and live accordingly) cannot be questioned in the Lake of Fire:
Does God exist?
Does God reward those who believe He exists and that who come to Him?
(and live according to their faith, their beliefs)
Hebrews 11:6And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.
You're floating in the Lake of Fire, you KNOW God exists, you KNOW He punishes the unbelievers, you KNOW you'll end up in the Lake of Fire, you're IN IT.
Where's the opportunity for faith, without which it is IMPOSSIBLE to please God?
Everything you would seek to do would be expedient, to get out of the Lake of Fire. The same selfish seeking after your own concerns that put you in the Lake of Fire to begin with.
How are the Lake of Fire dunkers going to be justified by FAITH?
 Post Edited (Laika) : 7/23/2005 4:42:37 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Empiressque
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 17
| Posted 7/24/2005 9:28 PM (GMT -6) | | Reading this thread was like watching a good movie....what a wild ride! And what an awesome ending.
Mephi said...
believe that in the back of the din...with the still, small voice...the great, powerful, glorious God speaks, saying...
"No, you are NOT wasting your time. Don't you remember? Every tear shall be wiped away. Every desperate cry shall stilled. Death shall be no more. ALL things in heaven and earth will declare that I am Lord to my glory. All things are possible with Me. Do you believe this?"
Wow! Beautiful stuff.
The problem of evil is what most plagues me with doubt, anger, despair...I think the despair is the worst. But in the end, I always come back to God because, not only is there no one else to turn to, but I've experienced the goodness of God in my life quite a bit, and I have to put my faith in that despite all that occurs in the world and even in my own life. Somehow what we experience here won't "compare" to what God has in store....even though that is beyond comprehension.
And I have to go back to my labor experience to talk about this. As I said, my labor and giving birth experience was so horrific...that pain, panic, loneliness I felt...I tell people it was as if I reached "enlightenment" on what it means to suffer. I thought I had suffered before in my life..I've had some terrible surgeries and illnesses and emotional pain, but this accute combination of the worst physical pain beyond any imagining (I recall thinking in the moment that if someone had been using a hatchet to systematically chop up my internal organs while I remained perfectly lucid and conscious it would feel preferable to what I was feeling), plus the mental fear and sheer panic, plus the intense loneliness/feeling isolated and cut off from everyone/unable to communicate (abandonment), and, finally, the belief I and my child would die...all of it together...I thought that nothing, nothing could be enough good enough or "worth it" to make up for the torture I felt in those 18 hours of labor. But, I can say that only now, in retrospect, having prayed through the experience and even dealing with symptoms of PTSS from it.... having my amazing daughter was worth it. In fact, the joy is so much deeper and lasts so much longer....it's not even worth comparing to the short lived suffering I endured...it seems like a mockery or a joke to even try to compare the 2 now...but I never could have believed that without having experienced this myself.
(That's not to say others don't experience worse suffering for longer...just that, in this case, such was my experience. )
I think our earthly lives, which will seem so unbelievably short lived in comparison to eternity, will be like a lot like that labor in retrospect. What will be "born" of our suffering will not be worth comparing to what God has in store for us.
And Universalism aallllllllll the way. Definitely.
Thanks for the honesty and promises here on this thread. Fantastic!!
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 7/25/2005 7:44 AM (GMT -6) | | Miss E: (emphasis mine)
And I have to go back to my labor experience to talk about this. As I said, my labor and giving birth experience was so horrific...that pain, panic, loneliness I felt...I tell people it was as if I reached "enlightenment" on what it means to suffer. I thought I had suffered before in my life..I've had some terrible surgeries and illnesses and emotional pain, but this accute combination of the worst physical pain beyond any imagining (I recall thinking in the moment that if someone had been using a hatchet to systematically chop up my internal organs while I remained perfectly lucid and conscious it would feel preferable to what I was feeling), plus the mental fear and sheer panic, plus the intense loneliness/feeling isolated and cut off from everyone/unable to communicate (abandonment), and, finally, the belief I and my child would die...all of it together...I thought that nothing, nothing could be enough good enough or "worth it" to make up for the torture I felt in those 18 hours of labor. But, I can say that only now, in retrospect, having prayed through the experience and even dealing with symptoms of PTSS from it.... having my amazing daughter was worth it. In fact, the joy is so much deeper and lasts so much longer....it's not even worth comparing to the short lived suffering I endured...it seems like a mockery or a joke to even try to compare the 2 now...but I never could have believed that without having experienced this myself.
(That's not to say others don't experience worse suffering for longer...just that, in this case, such was my experience. )
I think our earthly lives, which will seem so unbelievably short lived in comparison to eternity, will be like a lot like that labor in retrospect. What will be "born" of our suffering will not be worth comparing to what God has in store for us.
Yo. That was straight cool. I appreciate you using your personal painful experience to demonstate such a profound truth. Thanks!
**********************
Miss E:
And Universalism aallllllllll the way. Definitely.
Oh, yeah! You know how WE do it... 
To all heresy-hunters and general lames...
"I'm connected nationwide, but from the South...
Respect game, and keep my name outcha mouth!"
--adapted from T.I. From P$C's "I'm a King"
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 7/25/2005 7:57 AM (GMT -6) | | Laika,
1) I cannot BELIEVE that you still believe that I'm a determinist after all this time. I'm surprised as all get out. As much as I give props to process theology, presentism, divine temporality, and all that. Man, catch a clue. I'm NOT an adherent of EDF or double predestination.
2) Your gross oversimplification of my position (a schoolhouse with a door) is leadin' me to believe that you either do NOT understand my position very clearly...or...you DO understand my position but are intent on gross oversimplification for some reason. Either way, I ain't got time for it. So, let's just agree to disagree on it. I have spent a LOT of time riskin' carpel tunnel trying to explain all of my reasoning from the preservation of moral autonomy...to the importance of a more process understanding of the "self"...to the reality of a hellish post-mortem existence of conscious suffering...the to the "rock-bottom" experience. Use the search feature and check it all out...again. I don't think there's really anymore I can say about it except this:
I contend that the biblical God so wants all people to be saved and be in loving relationship with God that God will do everything in God's power to accomplish that. Further, I contend that there is a possible world that God COULD actualize where it is extremely, extremely probable that all people will end up choosing a love relationship with God. What this means is that God would actualize that possible world...and THAT is the world in which we currently live.
So...do you, man.
Later,
To all heresy-hunters and general lames...
"I'm connected nationwide, but from the South...
Respect game, and keep my name outcha mouth!"
--adapted from T.I. From P$C's "I'm a King"
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