 |
| Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > Questions about Christianity > The problem of Job | Forum Quick Jump
|
| 
Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 1/6/2004 5:55 AM (GMT -6) |   | Very sorry for the length. Sorry too to jump in before Greg responded. So I'll pay for breakfast later this month Greg. OK?
Heather: I guess the way I see it God either is in control or He isn't. You really can't have it both ways. And frankly, some of the things God chooses to give to people to control are quite questionable.
Tom: It’s certainly correct that God either controls a person’s choices or doesn’t control their choices. But saying God doesn’t control our choices doesn’t mean God doesn’t control anything at all. God can be “in control” of history, guiding it toward his desired outcome, without having to determine every person’s every decision. Think of chess. If you were to play a world-class champion like Kasparov, your being free to move in ways he doesn’t determine or control doesn’t mean he isn’t in control of the game. In fact, if he plays somebody like me he is in fact always in control of the game and nobody would doubt the outcome even though I’m free to move my pieces in ways he doesn’t control. Or take for example our own lives. You’re certainly in control of SOME things in your life aren’t you? You have the last say so in SOME things. But you don’t control other things. If your being in control of some things but not in control of other things makes sense, on what basis are you claiming that the same can’t be true of God? The idea that God can’t be in control of the course of history without determining ever choice we make just isn’t true.
It seems too that for us to judge whether or not God’s decision to grant us free will to do what he does not wish us to do is questionable or not would perhaps require us to know as much as God about the universe, but again, we do have an analogy in our own lives that can help us understand the sort of limit to God’s control that is necessary if he is to have loving personal relationships with us. I’ve pointed it out before. You have children you love. Is loving them and being loved by them (as well as seeing them become loving responsible persons) not for you the whole point of their existing? Could you have this sort of relationship with them if you controlled, or attempted to control, EVERY decision they made including their decision to love you? You would not. Now, when you recognize their right and responsibility to exercise the sort of freedom your goals for them require, you back off. They have to choose. And what they do with their freedom may in the end be horrendous on a scale as terrifying as Hitler. This does not, cannot, call into question YOUR decision to have children who possess that kind of freedom, nor are you in the least to blame for their choices, in spite of your knowing that they might end up using their freedom in destructive ways.
Heather: Does the term mad scientist come to mind? He wants to see what we do with this experimental earth and answer the question, can people still love Me if I give them free will?
Tom: I personally wouldn’t use “experiment” to describe what God’s up to. Experiments are performed by scientists who DON’T know the best way to go about obtaining a desired outcome. God knows the best way and chose it.
Back to you as a parent. Are you a mad scientist for giving birth to children in order to love them if they choose to become unloving, abusive, and hateful? It’s not so much that God wants to see if people will still love him if he gives them free will. It’s rather that he wants them to love him, period, and giving them free will is the only way (not an experimental way among others God’s not sure about) to get there. There’s no question of their being other ways we could have loved him apart from free will. This is it. It’s not whether we would love or not that he’s interested in. It’s our loving that he’s interested in. It’s not the experiment of choice, but the experience of love that God is interested in.
Heather: And I guess when free will goes bad, it means that it is a failed experiment.
Tom: Not if a) love is worth the risk and b) free will is the only way God can have love with us. Then it’s neither an experiment nor a failure when people choose to not love. Are you a failure as a parent if your children choose to become unloving and hateful people? Will your decision to have children for loving reasons be a “failed experiment” if they end up choosing to be hateful menaces to society? I don’t think so.
Heather: At some point will God not just take his free will and try again with another universe, another creation?
Tom: Who knows? But if God does, it will be because love is worth the risk there as much as it is here. Kind of like a parent who has one child who becomes abusive and hateful as he grows up but still decides to have more children. Love is worth the risk. You apply this to your relationship with your kids (and marriage). On what basis are you going to question or even condemn God’s decision to do the same?
Heather: What, given all the pain and hurt in this universe, makes us really feel that God is still there and involved?
Tom: All the love and joy in the universe…and the Cross.
Heather: At some point, won't he say, "Enough!"
Tom: God promised us that day would come.
Heather: How many deaths does it take? How much pain and hurt? What is his limit?
Tom: I don’t know. But God knows. Is the Cross enough of a display of love and wisdom to win your trust that God knows when enough is enough even if you don’t?
Heather: I was sorry to learn that on P.60, that you had tough times with your first step mom. And I can relate to memories coming back, that is currently something that I too am dealing with. Fortunately for you, you seeem to have a sense that God does love you. You are tremendously lucky to have that perspective.
Tom: Nothing lucky about it. Greg CHOSE that perspective. He didn’t trip into it and it wasn’t determined for him by his circumstances. He could have chosen a different perspective. You too can learn to choose your way into the joy of intimacy with and trust in God.
Heather: I really am thinking that it is wishful thinking to imagine that God cares for us. I think that it is a comfort in a chaotic universe.
Tom: It certainly is a comfort. But that is no reason for discounting it as wishful thinking. Is all comfort gained through wishful thinking? Doesn’t this reduce your faith in Christ now to the same sort of pointless fantasy that you say was the case for years when you tried other religions, etc.? How can believing that it’s all wishful thinking allow us to receive any comfort from our imaginations? Wouldn’t we have to really believe our fantasies were true, were NOT fantasies, in order to be comforted by them? Now that you admit that it’s ALL wishful thinking, what’s left? More importantly though, Heather, what of God’s decision to become a human being in this sick world, identify with its sin, and hang on the cross for us? Is this wishful thinking? Does it offer you no reason to believe God cares for you? If not, what’s your interest in Jesus?
Secondly, if the universe is as chaotic as you're suggesting, what makes your parents' abuse of your wrong?
Heather: We all struggle to find something that makes sense to us. And I guess our situations in part determine how we make sense of the universe.
Tom: In part, yes. But only “in part.” It’s that part of how we make sense of the universe that’s NOT determined by our situations that’s important.
Heather: As a child with two non-parents (parents who never acted like loving parents), and a lot of abuse, the only way I could make sense of my life is to believe that there must have been something so terribly flawed in me that my own parents could not love me the way parents should love. And then when I prayed vehemently to God to help in the situation, I finally concluded that maybe I was so flawed that even God did not want to help. Maybe God did not respond because at the time I prayed for His help I had never seen a Bible, and only heard of God on TV. So maybe you need to be saved to have God intervene on your behalf.
Tom: And is this still your view? Do you WANT to leave such perspectives behind? Do you have ANY hope at all that this is NOT the truth about your history and present situation?
Heather: It still seems to me that God gets off the hook a lot.
Tom: God is always off the hook. Does that bother us? Do we need God to be on the hook? Just asking.
Heather: People need to believe in a Good God, so they find excuses…
Tom: We DO need to believe in a good God. But admitting this gives us no right to conclude that only wishful thinking and excuses are behind belief in a good God. Needing to believe in a good God is no reason to assume God is NOT good. That’s just bad reasoning, Heather. I mean, if you needed a GOOD doctor to perform a kidney transplant for you, would your needing a good doctor be a reason for concluding that there are no good doctors?
Heather: But if God is going to create a world with so much hurt in it, maybe he should quit creating. I think we are just a failed experiment.
Tom: If a parent’s first-born turned out to be rebellious and abusive, would you be justified in advising the parent to stop having children?
Heather, as a victim of abuse (even though minor abuse), I invested a lot into defense mechanisms (ways of relating to others, ways of talking to myself, ways of interpreting my circumstances, strategies, etc.) to make sure similar things wouldn’t happen to me. My experience was that over time I became very invested in the little bit of comfort my defense mechanisms provided me. Later, the mere idea that there was MORE comfort, MORE joy, MORE freedom to be had in giving up these strategies I had constructed was itself painful! I was angry. Why? On top of being abused, I had been abusing myself in a sense in response to my history by developing coping strategies which themselves had become harmful because they made trusting others difficult if not impossible for me; so I had shut myself out of the comfort, joy, and release waiting for me in Christ. Deconstructing the strategies I had taken refuge in for so long became (and still is) a painful process, and I had made a business out of reducing pain to a minimum. I don’t know if any of this applies to you. I’m wondering if your confessions that “God doesn’t really care for me,” “God can’t really be trusted,” “We really are just on our own in this chaotic universe,” are in truth another coping mechanism designed to shield you from the pain of your past. I’m not a counselor—and should probably stop trying! It’s painful to trash the old coping strategies and opt for a new risk-filled way of relating and living. How badly do you wanna live?
Heather: I really need to get this question sorted out. How much can we really trust God? Is He still around to be trusted?
Tom: What does the cross tell you? If anybody ELSE sacrificed their life for you, what would you conclude about their feelings for you and their trustworthiness?
Tom | | Back to Top | | |
 |
wondering04
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2003
Total Posts : 45
| Posted 1/6/2004 3:10 PM (GMT -6) | | Dear Laika, it gladdens my heart to know that you find more joy and pleasure in your life than pain and hurt. I hope that there are lots of people who have that opportunity and I hope that this continues for you throughout the rest of your life! My life is not devoid of joy and pleasure, but the balance, I suspect is different in my life between joy and hurt.
Dear Tom, Thanks for responding! You apologize for being long, and I have to say, sorry, but to respond to your comments, my response will also have to be too long.
You do have a point about the degree of control God has. I realize that there is a grand cosmic view, that is greater than the more myopic view we are blessed with. I will grant that no matter what is dealt out, a master player can master a game. Unfortunately, to use your illustration of chess, in this game of life a lot of pawns are sacrificed to win.
You are also right that according to the rules of life we really do not have the right to judge a soverign God. He can pretty much do as he pleases and even told Job as much.
You refer to raising of children. You are right, ultimately they will make decisions about their lives that I may not agree with. Yes they are given choices in our house and yes it matters very much to me that they choose to love us. But while under our roof, my kids are given limited choices. My daughter can decide on clothes and colors, but I will not let her dress provocatively. My boys can have pick of reading material, after school activities and video games, but there are parameters that they must observe. If my kids choose to disobey the rules in our house, there are consequences that are acted out immediately, from grounding to restriction of privledges. If my kids would ever choose to do something illegal, I would not deal gently with it. I realize that my teens are still young, one will be 15 this Sunday, but for now, because we started discipline early, before the age of real rebellion, much of what we say is listened to. They may hate me at times, but ultimately they realize that what was done was done in loe.
For me the problem with God is that He scares me. I am not sure I can explain clearly what I mean, so please bear with me. One example could be Sodom and Gomorrah. Here was a whole city that step by step, decision by decision sunk into such a state of moral decay that ultimately God had to destroy it completely. The destruction took the city by surprise I am certain. What if God, as a good parent, had intervened more harshly earlier on, and even though that would have restricted some free will, might have stopped the moral decay?
With my father, one action one day would be ok, the next day the same action could have lead to being swatted so that you flew aross the room and landed against a wall. The same action, different responses. With my kids, if you let them take an inch, often they will push the limits. I have a choice, I can respond and stop a situation before it becomes full blown, or I can wait and have to mete out a different sort of punishment. If my boys get into a disagreement that seems to be escalating, I would rather call them to the living room and turn it into a heated debate with moderation by mom, than to wait until it becomes something way out of control. Why did God not intervene?
In terms of what God is up to, no one knows I suppose. Maybe experiment is the wrong term, but he is not getting the desired results with all of his creation, so something went terribly wrong. When my kids misbehave, the disciplines that are given are very individual, a sharp word will correct my oldest, but with my middle child he needs to be separated, and he needs to be spoken to after he gets his temper under control. God does not seem to discipline until way too late to ease a situation. Why wait until a morass occurs, why not intervene early? In my life, had God intervened and stopped my father, perhaps my responses would be different and I could have trusted God earlier on.
You are right the Cross is an incredible display of love, but it also seems so cruel. To allow such pain to happen to one's own son is shocking. Yet, in reading the Bible I also see that there is an overall plan of redemption that began in Gen. 3:15. I guess the love that the Cross speaks to you has not yet penetrated my defenses. And I keep wondering if intervention could have made a kinder gentler way of reconcilliation.
Tom, I really wish choice were involved in intimacy with God. I know I can choose to pretend that I have this, or I can choose to act as if I have it, but that is not really my experience.
You ask my interest in Jesus. That did not come easy for me. Yes I explored alternative religions and it took two years and several readings of the Bible from cover to cover before I could say the sinner's prayer. I spent a long time speaking with a pastor before even exploring salvation as an alternative. My husband is Catholic, so I pew sat for many years as well. Now I split my time between a Bible study that is full of knowledge and Mass as my husband retains his Catholic upbringing. And I choose to at least have us as a family attend church together.
I am seeking a relationship with God and Jesus, but there are many barriers that I have put up for my protection and I suppose that that is part of the problem in the void that I feel regarding God. One of which is that no one ever has found the inner part of my being, that is so protected that I doubt I could even get there if I wanted to. Trust does not come easy either. If you asked me to paint a picture of my relationship with God, you would have to imagine me in a room large as two or three football fields, God on one side, and me like a cornered animal near the door ready to escape. Perhaps it is an improvement that we are in the same room, at one point I would have nothing to do with God and prided myself that I never spoke His name. I have a sort of push me pull you relationship with God. I want Him close, but fear the closeness as well. It will take a long time before this is resolved I suppose, and God does not make it any easier for me.
Actually, in terms of feeling flawed, according to Paul and the other apostles we are all flawed. No one is perfect except Christ. But yes, I received a lot of therapy as a young adult which is why I am alive today to ask these questions. Without therapy I would have succeeded in killing myself.
I suspect that you have been a Christian for a good long time and are very set in your views and faith. I am coming up to my second year anniversary, so do not have that much experience with God.Pew sitting for ten years does not count in this equation, because I sat there fuming at having to be somewhere I hated. I am still not willing to give up the hope that my "why" questions will be answered, and my relationship with God would be much easier if God was a bit more responsive.
Needing to believe in a good God is crucial to human's spiritual health. I never said that there was no good in God, just that many of his actions are very questionable. My father was the sort that said "Jump" and you had to ask "How high?" Seems that is the way God wants us to be. I still sort of view God as an abusive Father, not a loving Father. And I am just waiting for him to snap and turn against me. I need to know that this God is stable and trustworthy. Probably I drive God as crazy as He drives me. I don't know how to get past this impasse.
Heather | | Back to Top | | |
|
Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 1/7/2004 2:14 AM (GMT -6) | | Looks like we’re locked into a couple of long replies! Sorry! 
Heather, I so appreciate your heart, your honesty, and your willingness to lay it all out there. While I think this site can help you struggle through the theological issues, I’m sure there’s a lot that can’t be opened up here. I do believe in community and in that our healing is worked out in personal relationships involving eye-contact, touching, caring, praying, etc. I hope you are able to unpack this all in a safe environment to keep the process going. God loves you infinitely and cares for you passionately. Intimacy with him is what you and I were created for.
Heather: I will grant that no matter what is dealt out, a master player can master a game. Unfortunately, to use your illustration of chess, in this game of life a lot of pawns are sacrificed to win.
Tom: It is unfortunate that any piece is sacrificed. But think about a couple more things using the chess analogy. First, having to sacrifice pieces only becomes a reason to mistrust God if the end for which the piece was sacrificed is NOT worth the cost. Now, we face great risks in bringing kids into the world; great risks indeed. Yet we welcome them to the world because we deem love worth the risk. So did God. Secondly, if life is like a chess match, God is on YOUR side, playing WITH you against evil. That’s important to remember! If life amounted to playing against God then a) God wouldn’t be hanging on a cross for any of us, and b) we’d have no hope of winning. But God lives in you, Heather, playing with and through you to achieve the greatest good. He’s on your side. Lastly, when evil strikes us we can trust that 1) God did everything he could to avoid it, and 2) God is redemptively present in our suffering to bring good out of it, able to respond in the game to guarantee that his ultimate goal for you (an eternal intimate relationship) IS achieved. It would be wrong for me to boil down your history and pain to some brief clichés about God, but at one important level it is helpful to think through the issues.
Heather: You are also right that according to the rules of life we really do not have the right to judge a soverign God. He can pretty much do as he pleases and even told Job as much.
Tom : He can do as he pleases, but I don’t mean by this what some people mean when they say things like “God unconditionally determined your abuse for his own good reason, like he unconditionally determines some for hell for his own pleasure. Hey, he’s God and can do what he wants.” What I mean is recognizing God’s sovereign right to do what it is he has done: He considered creating a world out of love and for love worth the risk involved in granting us the freedom necessary to choose that love. Interestingly, those who wave the “God can do whatever he wants” banner seem often unable or unwilling to grant that God can do just this: create the world out of love and for love with the risks such love involves. But since such risks make perfect sense to us as parents, we can hardly judge God for thinking HIS love worth the risk. But if somebody wanted to use the “God is God, he can do what he wants” to defend the view that God is both loving and good AND was pleased to unconditionally determine your parents to abuse you, or determine the vast majority of humans to hell, then I’d object. I have no framework for understanding such behavior as “good” and “loving.” If God was evil and hateful, how would his actions toward you or those determined for hell be any different? They wouldn’t.
Heather: For me the problem with God is that He scares me. I am not sure I can explain clearly what I mean, so please bear with me. One example could be Sodom and Gomorrah. Here was a whole city that step by step, decision by decision sunk into such a state of moral decay that ultimately God had to destroy it completely. The destruction took the city by surprise I am certain. What if God, as a good parent, had intervened more harshly earlier on, and even though that would have restricted some free will, might have stopped the moral decay?... Why did God not intervene?
Tom: There are a couple of good threads on Sodom and Gomorrah where we talked about this. I would just encourage you to consider that a God who was willing to hang on a cross for us is the sort of person who would only do to Sodom and Gomorrah what he did after doing all he could to prevent it. Such judgment, when God executes it, is the last straw, the last option. We simply aren’t told all that God did to reach out to these cities. We aren’t given the details. The question is, if God looks like Jesus on the cross (“If you’ve seen me you’ve seen the Father!”), then we have good grounds for concluding that their judgment was decided upon by God only after exhausting every possible avenue to redeem the situation.
Heather: In terms of what God is up to, no one knows I suppose. Maybe experiment is the wrong term, but he is not getting the desired results with all of his creation, so something went terribly wrong.
Tom: This is important. We cannot go on in life as believers in God without having a clear notion of what God is up to. Sure, we won’t understand all the in’s and out’s of how God’s purpose gets worked out (or not) through the complexities of a world filled with people who are morally free, BUT (and this is important) we CAN know what God is “up to,” why God created us, what God desires for the world and for us. If we can’t know what God is up to it’s impossible for us to choose to “be about” what he’s about, which is what we’re commanded to do. I think this is the most important question you can answer, Heather. It’ll set the direction you take on other issues. What was God “up to,” what was his purpose, what was God after in creating this world in the first place? You gotta answer it! My feeling is that God declares what he’s up to ultimately, clearly, and in language we can all understand in the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus, John wrote, “exegetes” (“explains,” “unpacks,” or “reveals”) the Father. What was Jesus “up to” during his life? What sort of attitude did Jesus take toward evil, toward suffering, toward the repentant? What was Jesus like Heather? What was Jesus about while he was here? There’s your answer to what God is like and what God is up to. There may be a lot of mystery elsewhere in the theological world, but there’s no mystery here: If you’ve seen me, Jesus said, you’ve seen the Father.
Heather: You are right the Cross is an incredible display of love, but it also seems so cruel. To allow such pain to happen to one's own son is shocking. Yet, in reading the Bible I also see that there is an overall plan of redemption that began in Gen. 3:15. I guess the love that the Cross speaks to you has not yet penetrated my defenses. And I keep wondering if intervention could have made a kinder gentler way of reconcilliation.
Tom: The cross IS cruel. It IS shocking. But we universally applaud those who choose to give up their lives for those they love. But that’s what you’ve got. Of course, God didn’t pin an unwilling Jesus down and drive the stakes through his hands and feet. Father, Son, and Spirit together chose the cross. Cruel, yes, but our cruelty toward him. Shocking yes. Shocking that we’d treat him that way. And shocking that he’d let us treat him that way.
Heather: Tom, I really wish choice were involved in intimacy with God. I know I can choose to pretend that I have this, or I can choose to act as if I have it, but that is not really my experience.
Tom: I love what Greg said recently on another thread: “Reality is the only commodity God deals in.” No need to pretend. Never do it. God loves your honesty. If you long for intimacy with God, then that’s music to his ears! I’m sure you do, but why not spend some time right now telling HIM what you just told me? Scream it out. Cry it out. Flush it out! "Abba! Father!" You go girl!
Tom  | | Back to Top | | |
|
wondering04
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2003
Total Posts : 45
| Posted 1/8/2004 1:45 AM (GMT -6) | | Dear Tom, Again thanks for responding! I am grateful for this site because some of these doubts and questions that I am having would not fly very well person to person in a church setting. Sometimes when you express doubts you get these looks like you are backsliding, or you get the party line - all the words that sound so good but do not help with sorting out the root source of the problem. And unfortunately some of the statements which are said that mean well only dig one's hole deeper becuause you realize that you cannot live up to the ideals others spout off as truths.
Right now church wise I attend a Bible based church's Bible study to get filled with a better interpretation of the word, and my husband, being Catholic insists that we attend mass together as a family. But I was saved through the Bible based church.
My good news is that I managed to order three of Dr. Boyd's books from my local bookstore. I am finding that his approach to the problems I am seeking answers to is refreshing. At least some of his ideas make sense. I am still in the midst of Letters from a Skeptic, but now have God of the Possible, God at War, and Satan and the Problem of Evil. Someone from this site had recommended the last book to me, but it was vol. 2 of the series, and I hate reading books out of order I ordered the first book as well. Since it seems that you are familiar with Dr. Boyd's works, which would you recommend I tackle after Letters from a Skpetic?
I am going to ask a few more questions from Letters From a Skeptic in this response, and then later, after all kids are on the school bus, I will send you the long reply that your last reply deserves (she says smiling). I just need to be able to think uninterrupted. Tonight is my Girl Scout troop's awards ceremony so I have to write one today, and I also help out in city school doing a Girl Scout program for kids who otherwise would not be able to participate in scouts. The girls are so sweet. So know that I will get to your response sometime today.
Here goes the questions.
Boyd used one of the phrases that sounds like chalk squeeking on a blackboard to me. The idea that God cried with our pain. This is in reference to his mom's death on page 62. He said that God was suffering with you. And Boyd seems to think that God can reconcile the pain and bring about healing by suffering with us. sigh. Would be a nice fantasy, but how do we know? And what good does weeping with us do? In my case, selfishly speaking, God stopping my father would hae provided the most comfort. And I only had a sense of isolation. There was no adult I could count on, no friends (in an abusive home friendships with peers is thwarted), and I felt that I was just abandoned. I could not reach out to others because I was told that I would be killed if I spoke up, and I had no reason not to believe that, they had already tried a few times. Doesn't God care? Could he not have reached down to at least give a sense of comfort and being less alone? Of course I wasn't saved then, so maybe God only takes care of those whom He saves or whom He really cares about.
Then he talks on P. 65 of the main purpose of prayer, "..is simply to be with Someone you love; to talk, to listen, or simply 'commune' with your Creator." I always thought communication was a two way street. I used to try and pray to God as a child and concluded that the wall next to my bed was more responsive, it was solid, soothed bruises, and was there (I concluded this at the age of 8). Even today I have a sneaking suspicion that praying to the wall is more responsive.
I have no problem with the historical aspects of the Gospels and when I first started dealing with God, I ended up being able to deal with God as creator. No problem with that, my problem comes with exactly how much God wants a personal relationship with us. I suspect that He has His favorites, Joshua son of Nun, David, Moses, Solomon, etc. But for the others, forget it.
pp 101, when Dr. Boyd tells his father that he wants to get the intellectual issues cleared up so that God would have free will in his father's heart. Would that intellectual stuff being cleared would allow God access to one's heart. I sometimes think that the 19 inches or so from the head to the heart is the longest distance. Makes me wonder about hardening of hearts. God sure did a lot of that in the OT, hardening Pharoah's heart and others as well so that He got the results He wanted to prove his sovereingty. Is it possible that even today God hardens hearts, and maybe those of us who have a difficult time with God have a difficult time because for whatever his purpose, God has hardened our hearts?
P. 119, loved his father's question about why does God put people in a position where they have to TRY and believe in Him. Toying with mankind, etc.
not sure the answer on p. 125 helps much, "God is obvious enough so that those who want to see Him can see Him, but hidden enough so that those who don't want to see Him can avoid Him."
That leaves out a whole class of people, those who want to see Him, but He refuses to respond to their desires. Is this not like God playing games with us. I do see Boyd's point that if God did things plainly, like lots of miracles that their value would be diminished, that people would either treat God as a shopping list, or that they would ultimately rationalize that the miracles were really accidents, and they could become dependent on miracles. But right now it seems that God is expecting way too much. To trust in a God that has been remarkably absent in one's life is asking the impossible.
Well, got to go and wake up my daughter for school, the sons are already gone. I will touch base later if that is ok.
Heather | | Back to Top | | |
|
wondering04
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2003
Total Posts : 45
| Posted 1/8/2004 3:25 AM (GMT -6) | | Dear Laika, thanks! I will spend some time listening on this site.
Heather | | Back to Top | | |
|
wondering04
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2003
Total Posts : 45
| Posted 1/9/2004 2:00 AM (GMT -6) | |
TOM: Heather, I so appreciate your heart, your honesty, and your willingness to lay it all out there. While I think this site can help you struggle through the theological issues, I’m sure there’s a lot that can’t be opened up here.
HEATHER: I do realize that. But at the same time the reverse is true. Most people I deal with tend to be rather condemning if you don't spout the party line. Doubts and things are not looked upon favorably, and people tend to think that your salvation is called in question if you express doubts. Or they spout the right words that they feel will be helpful, but often these, while true and Biblical, are not helpful. What is refreshing here is that doubts are met with comments that make sense, and at the same time help to sort out the morass of confusion.
I think that with many Christians, and often the ones who have been saved long, they forget how hard they had to struggle with the same issues. Or they think that because an issue was easy for them to grasp that it SHOULD be easy for everyone.
My pastor is a good person, and is not condemning, but even he sometimes feels that you should just adapt the right phraseology and not question some things. After awhile you learn what doubts are "safe" to express and what doubts only open up cans of worms. Here at least, the can of worms doubts seem safer to express.
TOM: I do believe in community and in that our healing is worked out in personal relationships involving eye-contact, touching, caring, praying, etc. I hope you are able to unpack this all in a safe environment to keep the process going. God loves you infinitely and cares for you passionately. Intimacy with him is what you and I were created for.
HEATHER: I suppose so, but as I tend not to be too open with people, much of that does not occur. As far as God's feelings for me, I know the word says these things about God, but hasn't been my experience yet.
Tom: It is unfortunate that any piece is sacrificed. But think about a couple more things using the chess analogy. First, having to sacrifice pieces only becomes a reason to mistrust God if the end for which the piece was sacrificed is NOT worth the cost.
HEATHER: Say that with a straight face to the sacrificed piece.
TOM: Secondly, if life is like a chess match, God is on YOUR side, playing WITH you against evil. That’s important to remember! If life amounted to playing against God then a) God wouldn’t be hanging on a cross for any of us, and b) we’d have no hope of winning.
HEATHER: Being perverse I want to flippantly say, he sure is a poor strategican in my life! But I do have to admit that the cross is one thing that makes me realize that at least in terms of salvation He was on my side. And I guess right now my vision is rather myopic. But then when you are hurting, I guess that is normal. You don't think of your back until you pull your back out. Right now my past is prominent because it is being pulled out. It is not normally so.
Believe it or not, my constant prayer is that somehow God can get through the walls that I have put up against Him and help me to sort out this stuff. I seldom pray for things, and I do count blessings. I have a good husband and three kids. In retrospect, I am grateful that He did not answer one of my 8 year old prayers, the one that He would kill me. I am, now that I have been working on forgiving my parents glad that He did not answer the prayer of killing my father. That just leaves the one unanswered prayer that I am NOT grateful for, "Please have my father stop what he is doing and love me." Perhaps that was a wrong prayer, but how could I have asked any other kind? Is it a wonder that I questioned God's care and concern about me.
People often say, you would not be here today if God did not intervene in your life. And like Monday moring quarterbacks, they can point out just where God was, and how He intervened, but believe me, in the midst of the situation there was no sense of God being there. And the confusing thing to me is that if something good happens God is there, if something bad happens that a loving God should have intervened with it is an excuse for God that they give.
Kind of like crunching the facts to fit the required outcome.
TOM: But God lives in you, Heather, playing with and through you to achieve the greatest good. He’s on your side. Lastly, when evil strikes us we can trust that 1) God did everything he could to avoid it, and 2) God is redemptively present in our suffering to bring good out of it, able to respond in the game to guarantee that his ultimate goal for you (an eternal intimate relationship) IS achieved.
heather: I can only hope that you are right in this, I don't see it right now. I would love to know what God did to avoid the situation. If he can bring good out of it, that is probably the only one I can sort of maybe think can occur. But even so, he could have saved himself a lot of work by doing more to avoid things.
Tom : What I mean is recognizing God’s sovereign right to do what it is he has done: He considered creating a world out of love and for love worth the risk involved in granting us the freedom necessary to choose that love.
HEATHER: I guess so, she says provisionally. I just think that we botched it from day one. Might have been better if he scrapped the whole set of people and started over from scrratch. I love working puzzles, and having challenges, and I can't shake that thought that this is some sort of cosmic puzzle challenge, and we are just fodder for the game. Nothing else really makes sense. The game is how can I rearrange humans and human experiences so that I get love freely given to me. The difficulty level comes in with satan and sin to add spice to the game. But I really don't get a sense that God cares that much for the sacrificed pawns.
Even the parable of the 99 sheep, and God goes after the one. What does he do with the 99, aren't they also prey to the wolves, so who does God care for the most, the sinner (abuser) over the victims?
TOM: But if somebody wanted to use the “God is God, he can do what he wants” to defend the view that God is both loving and good AND was pleased to unconditionally determine your parents to abuse you, or determine the vast majority of humans to hell, then I’d object. I have no framework for understanding such behavior as “good” and “loving.” If God was evil and hateful, how would his actions toward you or those determined for hell be any different? They wouldn’t.
HEATHER: In essence, from my point of view, God does not treat those determined for hell any different from me. I don't think that makes GOd evil and hateful, but it is puzzling.
Tom: There are a couple of good threads on Sodom and Gomorrah where we talked about this. I would just encourage you to consider that a God who was willing to hang on a cross for us is the sort of person who would only do to Sodom and Gomorrah what he did after doing all he could to prevent it. Such judgment, when God executes it, is the last straw, the last option. We simply aren’t told all that God did to reach out to these cities. We aren’t given the details.
HEATHER: Ok, I'll give you the fact that we aren't given the details. And I do know, though that God does get angry, vexed with people, etc. He seemed repentent after the flood and promised not to destroy the earth with a flood again, but he never said anything about fire and brimstone. So I guess that was ok for Sodom and Gomorrah, at least it wasn't a flood and He did not go back on His word. I suspect that S & G was pretty far gone, and maybe it was a better thing given its depraved state. Even Lot, whom God saved, offered the townspeople his daughters for their sexual perversity. Lovely of God to save Lot after that offering of his daughters. Lot was also hanging out in the gate, trying to be part of the leadership of the city. And I know that Abraham argued God down to 10 righteous men, and there were none.
TOM: The question is, if God looks like Jesus on the cross (“If you’ve seen me you’ve seen the Father!”), then we have good grounds for concluding that their judgment was decided upon by God only after exhausting every possible avenue to redeem the situation.
HEATHER; Maybe, but if children are brought up right, most can be corrected and channelled into more positive behavior. What happened with S&G?
Tom: ...what I think this is the most important question you can answer, Heather. It’ll set the direction you take on other issues. What was God “up to,” what was his purpose, what was God after in creating this world in the first place? You gotta answer it! My feeling is that God declares what he’s up to ultimately, clearly, and in language we can all understand in the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus, John wrote, “exegetes” (“explains,” “unpacks,” or “reveals”) the Father. What was Jesus “up to” during his life? What sort of attitude did Jesus take toward evil, toward suffering, toward the repentant? What was Jesus like Heather? What was Jesus about while he was here? There’s your answer to what God is like and what God is up to. There may be a lot of mystery elsewhere in the theological world, but there’s no mystery here: If you’ve seen me, Jesus said, you’ve seen the Father.
HEATHER: I know that that also seems to be Boyd's contention as well. That would be a nice understanding of the Father, if it were true. But it does refute a lot of God's actions in the OT. Perhaps it is selective. God's gentleness with people I mean. I am still puzzling this out.
Tom: The cross IS cruel. It IS shocking. But we universally applaud those who choose to give up their lives for those they love. But that’s what you’ve got. Of course, God didn’t pin an unwilling Jesus down and drive the stakes through his hands and feet. Father, Son, and Spirit together chose the cross. Cruel, yes, but our cruelty toward him. Shocking yes. Shocking that we’d treat him that way. And shocking that he’d let us treat him that way.
HEATHER: Yes
Tom: I love what Greg said recently on another thread: “Reality is the only commodity God deals in.” No need to pretend. Never do it. God loves your honesty. If you long for intimacy with God, then that’s music to his ears! I’m sure you do, but why not spend some time right now telling HIM what you just told me? Scream it out. Cry it out. Flush it out! "Abba! Father!" You go girl!
HEATHER; it is part of my prayer towards God. Hasn't been answered much in the two years I am trying. I guess the hope is that one day it will be, but I am not holding my breath.
Heather | | Back to Top | | |
|
John Earp
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1715
| Posted 1/9/2004 12:59 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by wondering04
My good news is that I managed to order three of Dr. Boyd's books from my local bookstore. I am finding that his approach to the problems I am seeking answers to is refreshing. At least some of his ideas make sense. I am still in the midst of Letters from a Skeptic, but now have God of the Possible, God at War, and Satan and the Problem of Evil. Someone from this site had recommended the last book to me, but it was vol. 2 of the series, and I hate reading books out of order I ordered the first book as well. Since it seems that you are familiar with Dr. Boyd's works, which would you recommend I tackle after Letters from a Skpetic?
Jumping in...
I would recommend God of the Possible after you finish Letters. Then I would actually recommend S&TPOE before God at War. This is in fact the order that I read them in, though my reasons for recommending this order are:
1. Letters seemed to me to be more fit for a popular audience as opposed to a more sophisticated readership.
2. GOTP is fairly short and pretty much straightforward in its points, though more difficult and more in depth on its subject than Letters.
3. I found S&TPOE more difficult and complex than GOTP.
4. When I finally got around to God at War last year, I found it to be more difficult and less interesting than S&TPOE. Mind you, they're all superb, it's just my opinion based on my experience that it isn't necessary to read God at War before diving into S&TPOE. They are on a similar theme, but one does not need to have read GAW before S&TPOE.
It could also simply be that I got quite burned out on all the books on spiritual warfare in the 1980s, and so theodicy was a much more interesting and intriguing subject to me after I read GOTP (which literally ROCKED my world when I first came across it in 1999).
My 2c
"The Discovery of new truth will modify old views and opinions, and there is perhaps no end to this process with finite minds in any world." Charles G. Finney, Systematic Theology.
revivaltheology.net
| | Back to Top | | |
|
wondering04
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2003
Total Posts : 45
| Posted 1/9/2004 5:26 PM (GMT -6) | | Dear John, I finished the Letters, and actually picked up God of the Possible for the next book to read. Want to find out more about this theology of Boyd's.
Laika, no, I never thought about forgiving God. Doesn't seem right somehow, a mere mortal even thinking like that. Besides I don't think I have that great of a relationship to do much talking with God. I figure to tread lightly, not get noticed, and slink around in the corners. Perhaps I am here by accident for all I know. Why risk?
Heather | | Back to Top | | |
|
Matthew Timothy Short
Huh?
Date Joined Apr 2002
Total Posts : 635
| Posted 1/10/2004 6:39 AM (GMT -6) | | -By John Piper
First, many assume that feelings are not right or wrong, they are neutral. So to say that anger (whether at God or anybody else) is "not right" is like saying sneezing is not right. You just don't apply the labels right and wrong to sneezing. It just happens to you. That is the way many people think about feelings: they just happen to you. Therefore, they are not moral or immoral; they are neutral. So for me to say that it is never right to be angry with God is to put the feeling of anger in a category where it doesn't belong, the category of morality.
This kind of thinking about feelings is one of the reasons there is so much shallow Christianity. We think the only things that have moral significance in the world are acts of volition. And we think feelings like desire and delight and frustration and anger are not acts of volition, but waves that break on the shore of our souls with no moral significance. Small wonder that many people do not earnestly seek to be transformed at the level of feelings, but only of "choices." That makes for a very superficial saint (at best).
This assumption is contrary to what the Bible teaches. In the Bible, many feelings are treated as morally good and many as morally bad. What makes them good or bad is how they relate to God. If they show that God is true and valuable, they are good, and if they suggest that God is false or foolish or evil, they are bad. For example, delight in the Lord is not neutral, it is commanded (Psalm 37:4). Therefore it is good. But to "take pleasure in wickedness" is wrong (2 Thessalonians 2:12), because it signifies that sin is more desirable than God, which is not true.
It's the same with anger. Anger at sin is good (Mark 3:5), but anger at goodness is sin. That is why it is never right to be angry with God. He is always and only good, no matter how strange and painful his ways with us. Anger toward God signifies that he is bad or weak or cruel or foolish. None of those is true, and all of them dishonor him. Therefore it is never right to be angry with God. When Jonah and Job were angry with God, Jonah was rebuked by God (Jonah 4:9) and Job repented in dust and ashes (Job 42:6).
The second assumption that may cause people to stumble over the statement that it is never right to be angry with God is the assumption that God really does things that ought to make us angry. But, as painful as his providence can be, we should trust that he is good, not get angry with him. That would be like getting angry with the surgeon who cuts us. It might be right if the surgeon slips and makes a mistake. But God never slips.
So I say it again: It is never right to be angry with God. But if you sin in this way, don't compound it by hypocrisy. Tell him the truth and repent.
Imagination projects unreal images out of the mind and seeks to attach reality to them. Faith creates nothing; it simply reckons upon that which is already there. | | Back to Top | | |
|
wondering04
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2003
Total Posts : 45
| Posted 1/10/2004 12:00 PM (GMT -6) | | Dear Tim, pardon my ignorance but who is John Piper? I do not know lots of Christian literature because I am still rather new at this, so I am not familiar with the man. I wonder though, at the anger that is expressed in the Psalms, guess God got pretty angry at David and others too.
In Bible study this Friday the person teaching was talking about not limiting God's power by our limited imagining of what He could do and couldn't do. In light of the theology of Boyd, is there a possibility that maybe God could do what we intellectually think is impossible, namely allow free will, but at the same time know the outcome of that free will? I still think that humans are rather shallow creatures.
I haven't read enough of the God of the Possible yet, but was surprised to hear Boyd mention that some think of him as a heretic. Is that still happening, and who might that be?
I still haven't found an acceptible answer to my question of how much can we trust God? And I still don't understand how he could point out someone to satan. I want a God that protects us here and now.
The idea of limits on God is not that comforting, but I must read more to check this out.
My other question is that can one retain one's salvation even though there are lots of doubts that keep coming up? And this faith stuff, if you do not have faith, you displease God, if you displease God are you out of the kingdom? If God can change his mind on some things, can he not change his mind on others, like a person's salvation?
Heard a sermon the other day on Moses, when he interceded for the Israelites after God offered him the chance to be a new nation, and to scrap all the murmurers (sorry about spelling), Moses told God that He would not want to do that because then the Egyptians would say God brought them out of Egypt to kill them in the wilderness. This pastor said that God put Moses in that position so that he would be there to intercede. That God knew Moses would intercede.
What scares me is that there are so many, many interpretations of the Bible that it is hard to know which one is absolutely correct. Even in the Bible study I heard, the person teaching mentioned reading something from the Amplified which differed greatly from the NKJV that I tend to read. She used the one that fit her theory the best, even though it was dramatically different from the others. How do we know? sigh
Heather
Heather | | Back to Top | | |
|
Matthew Timothy Short
Huh?
Date Joined Apr 2002
Total Posts : 635
| Posted 1/10/2004 12:32 PM (GMT -6) | | Check this out Heather, while I work on some of your many questions, the best I can . . .
Satan Considering the Saints
by C. H. SPURGEON,
"And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job."— Job 1:8;
HOW VERY UNCERTAIN are all terrestrial things! How foolish would that believer be who should lay up his treasure anywhere, except in heaven! Job's prosperity promised as much stability as anything can do beneath the moon. The man had round about him a large household of, doubtless, devoted and attached servants. He had accumulated wealth of a kind, which does not suddenly depreciate in value. He had oxen, and asses, and cattle. He had not to go to markets, and fairs, and trade with his goods to procure food and clothing, for he carried on the processes of agriculture on a very large scale round about his own homestead, and probably grew within his own territory everything that his establishment required. His children were numerous enough to promise a long line of descendants. His prosperity wanted nothing for its consolidation. It had come to its flood tide: where was the cause, which could make it ebb?
Up there, beyond the clouds, where no human eye could see, there was a scene enacted which augured no good to Job's prosperity. The spirit of evil stood face to face with the infinite Spirit of all good. An extraordinary conversation took place between these two beings. When called to account for his doings, the evil one boasted that he had gone to and fro throughout the earth, insinuating that he had met with no hindrance to his will, and found no one to oppose his freely moving and acting at his own pleasure. He had marched everywhere like a king in his own dominions, unhindered and unchallenged. When the great God reminded him that there was at least one place among men where he had no foothold, and where his power was unrecognized, namely, in the heart of Job; that there was one man who stood like an impregnable castle, garrisoned by integrity, and held with perfect loyalty as the possession of the King of Heaven; the evil one defied Jehovah to try the faithfulness of Job, told him that the patriarch's integrity was due to his prosperity, that he served God and eschewed evil from sinister motives, because he found his conduct profitable to himself. The God of heaven took up the challenge of the evil one, and gave him permission to take away all the mercies which he affirmed to be the props of Job's integrity, and to pull down all the outworks and buttresses and see whether the tower would not stand in its own inherent strength without them. In consequence of this, all Job's wealth went in one black day and not even a child was left to whisper comfort. A second interview between the Lord and his fallen angel took place. Job was again the subject of conversation; and the Great One defied by Satan, permitted him even to touch him in his bone and in his flesh, till the prince became worse than a pauper, and he who was rich and happy was poor and wretched, filled with disease from head to foot, and fain to scrape himself with a miserable potsherd, to gain a poor relief from his pain.
Let us see in this the mutability of all terrestrial things. He hath founded it upon the floods," is David's description of this world; and, if it be founded on the floods, can you wonder that it changes oft? Put not your trust in anything beneath the stars: remember that "Change" is written on the forefront of nature. Say not therefore, "My mountain standeth firm: it shall never be moved;" the glance of Jehovah's eye can shake thy mountain into dust, the touch of his foot can make it like Sinai, to melt like wax, and to be altogether on a smoke. "Set your affection on things above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God," and let your heart and your treasure be where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal." The words of Bernard may here instruct us: "That is the true and chief joy which is not conceived from the creature, but received from the Creator, which (being once possessed thereof) none can take from thee: compared with which all other pleasure is torment, all joy is grief, sweet things are bitter, all glory is baseness, and all delectable things are despicable."
Continued at,
http://www.blueletterbible.org/tmp_dir/c/1073776485-3275.html
Imagination projects unreal images out of the mind and seeks to attach reality to them. Faith creates nothing; it simply reckons upon that which is already there. | | Back to Top | | |
|
PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/10/2004 12:50 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
|
Matthew Timothy Short
Huh?
Date Joined Apr 2002
Total Posts : 635
| Posted 1/10/2004 1:39 PM (GMT -6) | | I am not all together sure who John Piper is, I just thought this portion of an article by him was relevant to the conversation.
I have not experienced it to be intellectually impossible for God to know the outcome of my choices; it sounds very reasonable to me, and I would agree that I am shallow.
Actually, I believe John Piper disagrees with Greg Boyd on some of his thoughts about God, but then again, so do I.
If you are truly searching for an acceptable answer about how much you can trust God, I have the confidence you will find it, because I have in my own searching.
The idea of limits on God's knowledge, understanding, and wisdom is no comfort at all to me either.
Doubts are a part of the journey, but do not confuse it with the destination; the one assured to those who put their faith in Christ alone and not themselves.
God will guide you into what is absolutely correct, not to worry my dear, not to worry.
Easton's Bible Dictionary
Faith: Faith is in general the persuasion of the mind that a certain statement is true (Phl 1:27; 2Th 2:13). Its primary idea is trust. A thing is true, and therefore worthy of trust. It admits of many degrees up to full assurance of faith, in accordance with the evidence on which it rests.
Faith is the result of teaching (Rom 10:14-17). Knowledge is an essential element in all faith, and is sometimes spoken of as an equivalent to faith (Jhn 10:38; 1Jo 2:3). Yet the two are distinguished in this respect, that faith includes in it assent, which is an act of the will in addition to the act of the understanding. Assent to the truth is of the essence of faith, and the ultimate ground on which our assent to any revealed truth rests is the veracity of God.
Historical faith is the apprehension of and assent to certain statements, which are regarded as mere facts of history.
Temporary faith is that state of mind, which is awakened in men (e.g., Felix) by the exhibition of the truth and by the influence of religious sympathy, or by what is sometimes styled the common operation of the Holy Spirit.
Saving faith is so called because it has eternal life inseparably connected with it. It cannot be better defined than in the words of the Assembly's Shorter Catechism: "Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel."
The object of saving faith is the whole revealed Word of God. Faith accepts and believes it as the very truth most sure. But the special act of faith which unites to Christ has as its object the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ (Jhn 7:38; Act 16:31). This is the specific act of faith by which a sinner is justified before God (Rom 3:22,25; Gal 2:16; Phl 3:9; Jhn 3:16-36; Act 10:43; 16:31). In this act of faith the believer appropriates and rests on Christ alone as Mediator in all his offices.
This assent to or belief in the truth received upon the divine testimony has always associated with it a deep sense of sin, a distinct view of Christ, a consenting will, and a loving heart, together with a reliance on, a trusting in, or resting in Christ. It is that state of mind in which a poor sinner, conscious of his sin, flees from his guilty self to Christ his Saviour, and rolls over the burden of all his sins on him. It consists chiefly, not in the assent given to the testimony of God in his Word, but in embracing with fiducial reliance and trusts the one and only Saviour whom God reveals. This trust and reliance is of the essence of faith. By faith the believer directly and immediately appropriates Christ as his own. Faith in its direct act makes Christ ours. It is not a work that God graciously accepts instead of perfect obedience, but is only the hand by which we take hold of the person and work of our Redeemer as the only ground of our salvation.
Saving faith is a moral act, as it proceeds from a renewed will, and a renewed will is necessary to believing assent to the truth of God (1Cr 2:14; 2Cr 4:4). Faith, therefore, has its seat in the moral part of our nature fully as much as in the intellectual. The mind must first be enlightened by divine teaching (Jhn 6:44; Act 13:48; 2Cr 4:6; Eph 1:17,18) before it can discern the things of the Spirit.
Faith is necessary to our salvation (Mar 16:16), not because there is any merit in it, but simply because it is the sinner's taking the place assigned him by God, his falling in with what God is doing.
The warrant or ground of faith is the divine testimony, not the reasonableness of what God says, but the simple fact that he says it. Faith rests immediately on, "Thus saith the Lord." But in order to this faith the veracity, sincerity, and truth of God must be owned and appreciated, together with his unchangeableness. God's word encourages and emboldens the sinner personally to transact with Christ as God's gift, to close with him, embrace him, give himself to Christ, and take Christ as his. That word comes with power, for it is the word of God who has revealed himself in his works, and especially in the cross. God is to be believed for his word's sake, but also for his name's sake.
Faith in Christ secures for the believer freedom from condemnation, or justification before God; a participation in the life that is in Christ, the divine life (Jhn 14:19; Rom 6:4-10; Eph 4:15,16, etc.); "peace with God" (Rom 5:1); and sanctification (Act 26:18; Gal 5:6; Act 15:9).
All who thus believe in Christ will certainly be saved (Jhn 6:37,40; 10:27,28; Rom 8:1).
The faith=the gospel (Act 6:7; Rom 1:5; Gal 1:23; 1Ti 3:9; Jud 1:3).
Imagination projects unreal images out of the mind and seeks to attach reality to them. Faith creates nothing; it simply reckons upon that which is already there. | | Back to Top | | |
|
Laika
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433
| Posted 1/10/2004 5:32 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by Tim
I am not all together sure who John Piper is, I just thought this portion of an article by him was relevant to the conversation.
I beg to differ with Mr. Piper, er, his parrot. 
Some people don't have a good image of what a father is, hence presenting God as a divine bully isn't going to help them out.
Here's some people who got mad at God and argued with Him: Note, each of these people had a relationship with God, hence their boldness within this friendship
Abraham argued with God
Genesis 18:23-25 and got Him down from 50 to 10 righteous people.
"Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?" borders on sarcasm, imho.
I want that kind of honest relationship with God.
Jacob wrestles with God and prevails
Genesis 32:24 Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.
25 When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob's thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him.
26 Then he said, "Let me go, for the dawn is breaking." But he said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."
27 So he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob."
28 He said, "Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed."
I have "striven" with God concerning some issues, is that wrong? Why?
Moses complains to God:
Exodus 4:10 Then Moses said to the LORD, "Please, Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither recently nor in time past, nor since You have spoken to Your servant; for I am slow of speech and slow of tongue."
11 The LORD said to him, "Who has made man's mouth? Or who makes him mute or deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?
12 "Now then go, and I, even I, will be with your mouth, and teach you what you are to say."
Moses argues with God
13 But he said, "Please, Lord, now send the message by whomever You will."
14 Then the anger of the LORD burned against Moses, and He said, "Is there not your brother Aaron the Levite? I know that he speaks fluently. And moreover, behold, he is coming out to meet you; when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart.
15 "You are to speak to him and put the words in his mouth; and I, even I, will be with your mouth and his mouth, and I will teach you what you are to do.
16 "Moreover, he shall speak for you to the people; and he will be as a mouth for you and you will be as God to him.
I want that kind of close relationship with God.
Moses argues with God concerning Him destroying Israel:
Numbers 14:11 The LORD said to Moses, "How long will this people spurn Me? And how long will they not believe in Me, despite all the signs which I have performed in their midst?
12 "I will smite them with pestilence and dispossess them, and I will make you into a nation greater and mightier than they."
13 But Moses said to the LORD, "Then the Egyptians will hear of it, for by Your strength You brought up this people from their midst,
14 and they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land. They have heard that You, O LORD, are in the midst of this people, for You, O LORD, are seen eye to eye, while Your cloud stands over them; and You go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night.
15 "Now if You slay this people as one man, then the nations who have heard of Your fame will say,
16 'Because the LORD could not bring this people into the land which He promised them by oath, therefore He slaughtered them in the wilderness.'
17 "But now, I pray, let the power of the Lord be great, just as You have declared,
18 'The LORD is slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression; but He will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generations.'
19 "Pardon, I pray, the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of Your lovingkindness, just as You also have forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now."
20 So the LORD said, "I have pardoned them according to your word;
I want such a close relationship with God I can get mad and argue with God concerning others.
Jesus was God incarnate, the image of the invisible God. What kind of relationships did He have on earth?
Jesus and Martha
Luke 10:38 Now as they were traveling along, He entered a village; and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home.
39 She had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord's feet, listening to His word.
40 But Martha was distracted with all her preparations; and she came up to Him and said, "Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Then tell her to help me."
41 But the Lord answered and said to her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things;
42 but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her."
Martha comes and complains to Jesus. How did He treat her? He consoles her and gently corrects her. Does it sound like they had a relationship? Sounds more comforting than a bully, doesn't it?
Again, look at John 11, Lazarus is sick, Mary and Martha send for Jesus who tarries two more days before He leaves for their village. In the meantime, Lazarus dies! When Jesus gets there Martha complains:
John 11:21 Martha then said to Jesus, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.
22 "Even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You."
She shows faith as well, but she complained first. She could do that, she had a relationship with Jesus.
As someone who grew up with a good relationship with my earthly father, I could argue, I could complain, I could get mad, it didn't destroy my relationship with my dad. My relationship with my heavenly Father is the same way. There is nothing wrong with being real and honest in your relationship with God. And if you're really mad and honestly mad, He understands.
inside you the time moves and she don't fade
the ghost in you she don't fade | | Back to Top | | |
|
Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 1/10/2004 11:27 PM (GMT -6) | | Heather-
I’ve gotten behind a bit and there are too many things to speak to. You’re hard to keep up with! I’ll try to hit the hightlights. I’ll let Greg jump in and address your questions from Letters.
Heather: I have no problem with the historical aspects of the Gospels and when I first started dealing with God, I ended up being able to deal with God as creator. No problem with that, my problem comes with exactly how much God wants a personal relationship with us. I suspect that He has His favorites, Joshua son of Nun, David, Moses, Solomon, etc. But for the others, forget it.
Tom: What about Jesus, Heather? Was he one of God’s favorites? Did he not suffer the most? Jesus, the ultimate innocent person, suffered ultimately. If, as you seem to think, God’s favorites are those God protects from suffering, then what are you going to do with Jesus?
quote:
Tom: It is unfortunate that any piece is sacrificed. But think about a couple more things using the chess analogy. First, having to sacrifice pieces only becomes a reason to mistrust God if the end for which the piece was sacrificed is NOT worth the cost.
Heather: Say that with a straight face to the sacrificed piece.
In limited respects, I have said it, though never with a straight face. Why should a straight face be required?
But more importantly, in many ways we say it to one another often. What does the President of the United States say to the mother of a son who gave his life for the nation on a one-way mission, knowing he’d die but doing it because his sacrifice was necessary to the freedom of thousands more? What of all those everybody knew would certainly die on the beaches of Normandy? Was defeating Hitler not worth it? We universally affirm it was. Yes, Heather, it’s hard to say it to the sacrificed piece. But we say it, and we continue to say it when we have a part in such circumstances because we understand there often are situations when such sacrifices are the right thing to do.
So much for OUR sacrificing a piece when necessary. What we can’t understand are all the complexities of the larger war raging between GOD and SATAN and when God’s doing all he can given the covenants and agreements he established for creation still is not enough to save the life of a pawn, or prevent the suffering of little girl, or prevent a young boy from being taken advantage of. My point is, though we don’t understand the specific complexities surrounding our specific suffering, we DO have examples from our own experience which do give us a way of making sense of such things.
But what is of ultimate importance in coming to terms with all this is, I think, the Cross. There is God looking into the face of every sacrificed pawn and saying, “I’m making the ultimate sacrifice of my own; one that embraces all others and guarantees an eternity of loving relationship and joy for whosoever will.” God decided to not just play the game and watch from the safety of heaven; he became a piece, a pawn, and WAS sacrificed.
One more thing that's really important. When we describe innocent suffering as "sacrificing the pawn" we DON'T mean that there's a specific goal that requires, say, you're suffering abuse. Quite the contrary. SOME suffering IS related to some specific good and is allowed, like the suffering of the soldier who gives his life for the good of defeating Hitler and securing freedom. I'd use "sacrificing the pawn" to describe that. But it's not such a good analogy for understanding your or my abuse as children because there we don't believe there is some specific purpose or goal which requires our suffering abuse. Instead, we believe in general that such suffering happens because of the overall purpose for which God created. Not sure I'm making the point well, but it's important. Some suffering might be allowed as the sacrificing of a pawn to gain some specific good in the game here and now. We understand this and make such choices ourselves. But some suffering is not allowed by God in this sense. It is fought all-out by him. If he fails to prevent it, it's not because God has some good goal in the here and now that requires his allowing such evil, it's because God's overall purpose for creating (loving relationships) required the sort of freedom we possess and the sort of limits on God's power that rendered THIS specific evil unpreventable.
quote:
TOM: Secondly, if life is like a chess match, God is on YOUR side, playing WITH you against evil. That’s important to remember! If life amounted to playing against God then a) God wouldn’t be hanging on a cross for any of us, and b) we’d have no hope of winning.
Heather: Being perverse I want to flippantly say, he sure is a poor strategican in my life! But I do have to admit that the cross is one thing that makes me realize that at least in terms of salvation He was on my side.
Great! What you want to try to do over time, Heather, is enlarge the scope of the Cross’s influence, what it explains and touches. Not having God’s perspective, I can understand how you’d feel God exercised such poor strategy in your life. In my view, the Cross tells me that God is the ultimate master of strategy and that this includes all suffering in the sense that my abuse as a child occurred in light of God’s doing all he could, strategizing within the limits of the game, to prevent my abuse. So when abuse happen, the Cross (the greatest abuse of a person there ever was), tells me a) God was against what happened to me and did what he could to prevent it, and b) God is present now to work with me in responding to it the way he responded to it.
Heather: That just leaves the one unanswered prayer that I am NOT grateful for, "Please have my father stop what he is doing and love me." Perhaps that was a wrong prayer, but how could I have asked any other kind? Is it a wonder that I questioned God's care and concern about me.
Tom: It’s no wonder, no. And your prayer to be rescued from your father’s abuse was not the wrong prayer. Hopefully, in time, you can come to view your suffering as other than having resulted because God was perfectly able to rescue you but just did not want to rescue you. One can say God wanted to rescue me and did all he could to rescue me given the rules of engagement established by God at creation. Sure, one can still question God’s character for creating a world in which such evil was POSSIBLE just because such possibilities were required by the sort of LOVE God wanted us to choose and enjoy. But we can succeed at questioning God’s character on this score no more than we can succeed at questioning the character of a parent who decides to have children to love knowing they might end up choosing to become hateful and abusive.
quote:
Tom: But God lives in you, Heather, playing with and through you to achieve the greatest good. He’s on your side. Lastly, when evil strikes us we can trust that 1) God did everything he could to avoid it, and 2) God is redemptively present in our suffering to bring good out of it, able to respond in the game to guarantee that his ultimate goal for you (an eternal intimate relationship) IS achieved.
Heather: I can only hope that you are right in this, I don't see it right now. I would love to know what God did to avoid the situation. If he can bring good out of it, that is probably the only one I can sort of maybe think can occur. But even so, he could have saved himself a lot of work by doing more to avoid things.
I totally understand our desire to want to know all God did to prevent our abuse or assuming that God could have done more but didn’t. But that would require us to understand far more about the universe than is possible for us. But we DO have the Cross. We CAN understand THAT. And that can be enough.
You are assuming that where God does ALL God can do to prevent evil, evil is in fact prevented, so that where evil does exist it exists because God did not do all he could have done to prevent it. THIS is an assumption I challenge you to give up, Heather. It makes perfect sense to say God can do all he is able to do to prevent some evil and not succeed at preventing it IF God also established specific rules of engagement, agreements, covenants, etc., by which he would govern and which themselves permit the possibility of evil in that they permit us the freedom to say “no” to God. This is a slam on God’s character (I would think) IF the goal for which God established these rules of engagement is not worth the risk of evil occurring. So what’s the goal? Love is the goal. What’s the risk? Sin is the risk. If you feel that risk is too great, then you judge God’s decision to create the world under these circumstances to be a poor one (along with judging the decision of every parent to have children to be a poor one). If you judge God’s decision to create the world under these circumstances to be a good one, then you have all the explanation of suffering you need. That doesn’t make life easy. It doesn’t remove the pain of our abuse. But it does make it possible to love and trust God.
Heather: I guess so, she says provisionally. I just think that we botched it from day one. Might have been better if he scrapped the whole set of people and started over from scrratch. I love working puzzles, and having challenges, and I can't shake that thought that this is some sort of cosmic puzzle challenge, and we are just fodder for the game.
Tom: We did botch it. But the Cross sets us free and sets us right. True, God could have scrapped it completely. In fact, he pretty much did this with the flood. But had God wiped everything out and started over again he would face the same risks and possibilities again. Love would still require freedom. And think about it, if God destroys a person every time they decide to use their freedom in ways he doesn’t like, did God really given them freedom in the first place? I don’t think so.
Heather: In essence, from my point of view, God does not treat those determined for hell any different from me.
Tom: Well, you already admitted to trusting the God of the Cross for salvation and to being grateful for this. If this is no different to you than God having determined you for hell, then what are you grateful for? Why DID you believe if the benefits of belief are no different to you than going to hell?
Heather: Maybe, but if children are brought up right, most can be corrected and channelled into more positive behavior. What happened with S&G?
Tom: They chose not to bring their children up right.
Heather: I still haven't found an acceptible answer to my question of how much can we trust God?...I want a God that protects us here and now.
Tom: Then you’ll have to live without God ‘cause there ain’t no “here and now” guarantee for such protection, period. It ain’t out there. There is no such God. There IS a loving, capable, trustworthy God, for sure. It’s just that he doesn’t at all encourage us to trust him for the sort of guaranteed protection you’re asking for. We can trust that WHEN crap happens to us (and it WILL) that this God did everything he could to prevent it (given the totality of his reasons for creating [which we KNOW—love], the rules of engagement [which we don’t fully understand though we know libertarian freedom is part of it], and how all this specifically intersects at each specific occurrence of evil). He even paid the price for all the crap he's not able to prevent by letting it all hit him square in the face on the Cross.
Heather: The idea of limits on God is not that comforting, but I must read more to check this out.
and
Tim: The idea of limits on God's knowledge, understanding, and wisdom is no comfort at all to me either.
Tom: Nor to me. But since I as an open theist don’t believe there are limits on God’s knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, I don’t suffer from a lack of comfort. If you think the open view argues there are limits on God’s knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, then you misunderstand the open view. As for Heather not finding comfort in the idea of “limits on God,” I believe she was referring to my comment that God freely chose to limit the exercise of his POWER to allow us freedom to determine ourselves with respect to God. I find this choice comforting, for it tells me God operates out of love and not sheer power. John wrote, “God is love,” not “God is power.” I find this comforting. I’ve been around leaders for whom power is their mode of operation and I am not comforted. But the choice to limit power to create room for love is, though awesome and sobering, deeply refreshing and comforting.
Tom
PS: Heather, I understand that John Piper is a very fine man. He’s a minister with the Baptist General Convention (as is Greg Boyd) and pastors a church in Minneapolis. He is also the author of many fine books and a recognized speaker. He is a theological determinist, which means he believes that everything that happens in the world is unconditionally predetermined by God. God alone determines the choices of those who accept Christ and go to heaven as equally as the choices of those who don’t accept Christ and go to hell—as equally as your parents’ choice to abuse you, as equally as all your choices, and on and on. God alone, and unconditionally, determines it all. You can understand then the detest he feels for open theism, which argues God does NOT determine everything, that God doesn’t always get his way, that God wants everybody to make heaven, etc. There’s no doubt that Piper believes open theism is heresy. I’m not sure if he openly affirms that open theists are heretics. The war is still raging within Evangelicalism. There are some, like Piper, who want to banish open theists from the ranks of Evangelicalism and who will never stop trying. | | Back to Top | | |
|
Matthew Timothy Short
Huh?
Date Joined Apr 2002
Total Posts : 635
| Posted 1/11/2004 2:15 AM (GMT -6) | | Thank you Laika,
For adding to the conversation about anger with God, it's appreciated, I do not disagree with what I believe is Piper's actual point nor yours, "Go figure", said the supposed parrot  and Oh, I would not agree with Piper's deterministic leanings as Tom has presented them either.
Timmy want a 'Cracker'
| | Back to Top | | |
|
wondering04
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2003
Total Posts : 45
| Posted 1/11/2004 6:34 AM (GMT -6) | | Dear Friends, I was surprised to see so many responses, and I have a lot to reply to in them, so I will start slow. My daughter had a sleep over last night, (probably it should be named a wake over because kids do not want to sleep). We just got back from church and dropping off my daughter's friend. So, I will start responding bit by bit.
Spurgeon's devotional about Job is a bit disquieting. I do realize that with life all is change and temporary. I also know that we are not guaranteed to have a pain free existence. Some arguments that have been pointed out is that we can't appreciate light without dark, joy without saddness, etc. I do know that there is a lot of evil in the world and that we will encounter it. I also know that there is one Psalm where the psalmist complains that the evil seem to prosper with the good. And I guess if you keep the world view that this life is fleeting, and that we are really just waiting for our sojourn in the kingdom of God, then maybe that is ok. And really, if God wants to give Job a test that is great, the problem for me comes in when the kids were offed by satan. To me that is above and beyond what should be permissible.
In my studies and conversations with people about Job, I have received a lot of input that I will share. One person said that because Adam and Eve gave power over to satan that he is the lord of this earth, and as such could do what he wanted. They then said that since no one on earth is sin-free that satan was within his rights to tell God to stop protecting Job, because Job had sinned. Another person told me that the kids were sinning, having the parties, and that they must have been doing something bad or Job would not be doing the sacrificing for them and their possible sins.
One thing that I keep noticing is that there are millions of excuses for why God did not intervene, people can invent things. But didn't God create the angels as well? Didn't he create satan? Is He not in charge of His universe? I let my kids have free will, but I can also, by using compliments and how I present things pretty much guarantee that my kids will make choices that are in their best interests. And I can limit the number of mistakes that they make, so that they learn from their mistakes, but still have freedom of choice in a protected environment.
Sometimes I think God has thrown us into a hostile environment, and that he doesn't help us that much in the midst of it. My oldest son has a ball python (it is his claim to maturity, and by my estimation better than the ear piercing and other things some of his peers do to boost their maturity), and we have to feed it mice weekly. It is of great interest to my son to watch the mice be eaten, and sometimes I think we are like mice in satan's realm, and that God is just watching us be eaten or even like in Job's case putting us in satan's cage so he can rattle us around.
Pot on Wheel, that was an interesting thread on Job that you shared. I keep reading every lesson that I can on Job, it would be great to be able to reconcile the first two chapters of the book, would explain a lot. If a serial killer moved into my neighborhood, I most certainly would not go up to him and say, have you considered my daughter? she is sweet and innocent, and loves me a lot. No matter what you do to her, she will still love me. I guess I see what God did with satan similar to that. All God would have had to do was to tell satan to take a hike.
Oh, and one other explaination that someone gave was that this allowed God to show people that the ones making comments on Job's situation and how these comments were out of line. In fact, that is the one good lesson from Job I think, that we have to be careful when we make pronouncements about a person's situation, that we do not do it judgementally. I suspect the best thing that was done was when the friends just sat around and gave their presence, and no comments. But to make that illustration, frankly I would rather have had a parable, instead of the loss of lives.
And yes, God was able to point out how incredibly complex the universe was and how we cannot conceive of all that goes on. And I guess it is good to be made aware of how much goes on in the powers and principalities level, but it isn't too comforting for me ultimately. What is and was going on in those levels that are impacting my life?
I have to go for a bit and let kids have the computer for homework, so I will respond more to Laika and Tom when I get back on the machine.
I am sorry that I keep bringing up lots of things. I guess maybe it is because I started dealing with this stuff so late that I want to get as much as possible understood, sort of to catch up.
Heather | | Back to Top | | |
|
Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 1/11/2004 7:55 AM (GMT -6) | | Heather-
Don't listen to anyone but me! Just me! That'll make things a lot simpler for ya.
| | Back to Top | | |
|
wondering04
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2003
Total Posts : 45
| Posted 1/11/2004 12:03 PM (GMT -6) | | Hi friends, Well my kids are doing a snow dance, hoping for those glorious words on the radio tomorrow, snow day. They are already planning their day, but I suspect that they may just have to settle for a two hour delay. But who knows. What they really want to do tomorrow is go skiing.
Sorry my responses are so long and frequent. Right now I am sorting this stuff out very seriously. I suppose it is because I am new to this and waited so long to try and come to terms with this stuff that it has become a primary focus. For the past two years I have sort of tried to really study this and begin to get a handle on things, sort of catch up with many who have spent years and years in this pursuit.
I am going to continue to reply until I get tossed off the computer by the kids again. They are on a homework break, most is done, but they need a bit of a break as we all do.
LAIKA: Some people don't have a good image of what a father is, hence presenting God as a divine bully isn't going to help them out.
HEATHER; That is so so true! For me, I tend to shy away from God, as I had the antithesis of a father for a father.
Your list of people who argued with God, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and David, they all argued with God. But they had one thing on their side, they were beloved of God. Are we all that beloved? If you are a favorite of your father you might get treated differently from those who are not the favorite of God.
LAIKA: Jesus was God incarnate, the image of the invisible God. What kind of relationships did He have on earth?
HEATHER: You are right, Jesus did have a gentle relationship with the people around Him. He was not condemning except to those who were hypocrites and put unnecessary burdens on the people, or pretended to a righteousness that they did not really have.
LAIKA: As someone who grew up with a good relationship with my earthly father, I could argue, I could complain, I could get mad, it didn't destroy my relationship with my dad. My relationship with my heavenly Father is the same way. There is nothing wrong with being real and honest in your relationship with God. And if you're really mad and honestly mad, He understands.
HEATHER: You are so right. It must be awesome to have that kind of relationship with God and with a human father. If you never had it, it is a lot harder to presume with God. For me, once my father came home it was non-stop terror until he left, you never felt safe for one second because you never knew when the next explosion would come, or for that matter if you would be alive the next day. He was a brutal alcoholic and married to an alcoholic wife, so in that home the rules were never constant and you never knew what would set them off. God was not part of the household, I don't think I set foot into a church until maybe the fourth grade, and then it was a Christian Science church, so there was not a human God in that church - God was a definition, and even in the Christian Science church my father brought his own particular brand of terror. It took years after he died before I could pick up a bible without breaking out into a cold sweat. I had to read that book out loud and if I paused too long at a comma or too short at a semicolon, I had something thrown at me. It was sheer terror to look at the words on the page.
I guess, miracle speaking, that the mere fact that I can read and study the Bible today is a major miracle. It took a long time to lose the associations with my father and the Bible.
TOM: I’ve gotten behind a bit and there are too many things to speak to. You’re hard to keep up with! I’ll try to hit the hightlights. I’ll let Greg jump in and address your questions from Letters.
HEATHER: Again, I am so sorry that I have so many things that I have brought up, guess you now know why I picked the name WONDERING, because my mind is very inquisitive and I wonder so many things. I will keep asking questions, but please know that if you do not respond that is ok as well. There are just so many questions and not enough answers.
Tom: What about Jesus, Heather? Was he one of God’s favorites? Did he not suffer the most? Jesus, the ultimate innocent person, suffered ultimately. If, as you seem to think, God’s favorites are those God protects from suffering, then what are you going to do with Jesus?
HEATHER; Exactly, just my point, maybe it is better to slink around and not be noticed. If he can do this to his favorites, why seek to become a favorite? But also Jesus was God and Jesus chose this (why I don't know, but I am grateful that He did choose). No, I don't think He protects his favorites from suffering, and I know that there is suffering in this world. I just think that with a bit of intervention, suffering could be modified some and people would still have free will.
In God of the Possible, P 34 Boyd says, " Since freedom is always restricted in certain ways, there's no reason to assume that God would have to control or foreknow all the future decisions people would make in order to prophesy that the Jews would be in captivity for a particular period of time. This is simply a matter of the Lord defining the parameters within which human freedom will occur."
And I guess my point is that I wonder what God's parameters are? Would it not have been better to have put a few parameters around Hitler, or others who hurt people so much?
TOM: In limited respects, I have said it, though never with a straight face. Why should a straight face be required?
HEATHER: I am sorry that I said this the wrong way, I really meant to say that from the pawn's point of view the sacrifice stinks. It may work well in a grand plan, but the individual sacrificed may have a different perspective.
TOM: So much for OUR sacrificing a piece when necessary. What we can’t understand are all the complexities of the larger war raging between GOD and SATAN and when God’s doing all he can given the covenants and agreements he established for creation still is not enough to save the life of a pawn, or prevent the suffering of little girl, or prevent a young boy from being taken advantage of.
HEATHER: this is unfortunately true.
TOM: But what is of ultimate importance in coming to terms with all this is, I think, the Cross. There is God looking into the face of every sacrificed pawn and saying, “I’m making the ultimate sacrifice of my own; one that embraces all others and guarantees an eternity of loving relationship and joy for whosoever will.” God decided to not just play the game and watch from the safety of heaven; he became a piece, a pawn, and WAS sacrificed.
HEATHER; I have to think on this, I realize that from an eternal point of view the sacrifice is vastly important. But I think that it only works if you find Christ, what if I had followed my inclination and not ever opened up a bible after I left that house? What if I never found God because I was driven away from him, not wanting anything to do with so-called Christians because of the abuse I received? It seems that there are a lot of loose variables in this equation by God.
TOM: Quite the SOME suffering IS related to some specific good and is allowed, like the suffering of the soldier who gives his life for the good of defeating Hitler and securing freedom. I'd use "sacrificing the pawn" to describe that. But it's not such a good analogy for understanding your or my abuse as children because there we don't believe there is some specific purpose or goal which requires our suffering abuse. Instead, we believe in general that such suffering happens because of the overall purpose for which God created. Not sure I'm making the point well, but it's important. Some suffering might be allowed as the sacrificing of a pawn to gain some specific good in the game here and now. We understand this and make such choices ourselves. But some suffering is not allowed by God in this sense. It is fought all-out by him. If he fails to prevent it, it's not because God has some good goal in the here and now that requires his allowing such evil, it's because God's overall purpose for creating (loving relationships) required the sort of freedom we possess and the sort of limits on God's power that rendered THIS specific evil unpreventable.
HEATHER: Where's the all-powerful God when you need Him the most? sigh. I realize that that is the big problem that God had no control over what happened. So why can I trust Him now? What freedoms does he need to protect now? My faith is so shaky that I don't want to take the risk of trusting God that much. I don't want to be let down by Him again, and I most certainly feel that the best way to survive is to maintain internal control and be careful of who you trust and over what. So I guess in a sense I compartmentalize my relationship with God and Jesus, letting them in certain areas but protecting vulnerable ones.
TOM: Great! What you want to try to do over time, Heather, is enlarge the scope of the Cross’s influence, what it explains and touches. Not having God’s perspective, I can understand how you’d feel God exercised such poor strategy in your life. In my view, the Cross tells me that God is the ultimate master of strategy and that this includes all suffering in the sense that my abuse as a child occurred in light of God’s doing all he could, strategizing within the limits of the game, to prevent my abuse. So when abuse happen, the Cross (the greatest abuse of a person there ever was), tells me a) God was against what happened to me and did what he could to prevent it, and b) God is present now to work with me in responding to it the way he responded to it.
HEATHER: I am not there yet. I am not certain how the cross does much to help me sort out the past. I do not like the idea of anyone having to deal with pain and suffering and shame that comes from that, Jesus included. But I think that perhaps I am still to closed off to feel much comfort from that.
Tom: It’s no wonder, no. And your prayer to be rescued from your father’s abuse was not the wrong prayer. Hopefully, in time, you can come to view your suffering as other than having resulted because God was perfectly able to rescue you but just did not want to rescue you. One can say God wanted to rescue me and did all he could to rescue me given the rules of engagement established by God at creation. Sure, one can still question God’s character for creating a world in which such evil was POSSIBLE just because such possibilities were required by the sort of LOVE God wanted us to choose and enjoy. But we can succeed at questioning God’s character on this score no more than we can succeed at questioning the character of a parent who decides to have children to love knowing they might end up choosing to become hateful and abusive.
HEATHER: I guess time will tell. My kids like critters, and I let them have them as long as they research how to take care of them and take the responsibility of their care and treatment. As it is, sometimes I think unfortunately, our critters live longer than most because I make the kids aware of the committment they have in keeping critters. Sometimes I feel that maybe this universe is almost too much for God to take care of all of his critters, and because they are improperly cared for, they are getting hurt unnecessarily. And I am sorry if it sounds crass to think of God this way, but there is so much hurt and pain, and from my point of view, not enough intervention.
TOM: IF God also established specific rules of engagement, agreements, covenants, etc., by which he would govern and which themselves permit the possibility of evil in that they permit us the freedom to say “no” to God. This is a slam on God’s character (I would think) IF the goal for which God established these rules of engagement is not worth the risk of evil occurring. So what’s the goal? Love is the goal. What’s the risk? Sin is the risk. If you feel that risk is too great, then you judge God’s decision to create the world under these circumstances to be a poor one (along with judging the decision of every parent to have children to be a poor one). If you judge God’s decision to create the world under these circumstances to be a good one, then you have all the explanation of suffering you need. That doesn’t make life easy. It doesn’t remove the pain of our abuse. But it does make it possible to love and trust God.
HEATHER: I don't think it is that black and white. There is sin and there is SIN. Some rebellion is one thing, but what I am seeing is rampant rebellion and tons of hurt.
Tom: We did botch it. But the Cross sets us free and sets us right. True, God could have scrapped it completely. In fact, he pretty much did this with the flood. But had God wiped everything out and started over again he would face the same risks and possibilities again. Love would still require freedom. And think about it, if God destroys a person every time they decide to use their freedom in ways he doesn’t like, did God really given them freedom in the first place? I don’t think so.
HEATHER; I'll give you that!
Tom: Well, you already admitted to trusting the God of the Cross for salvation and to being grateful for this. If this is no different to you than God having determined you for hell, then what are you grateful for? Why DID you believe if the benefits of belief are no different to you than going to hell?
HEATHER: You are right, the cross is a difference.
Heather: Maybe, but if children are brought up right, most can be corrected and channelled into more positive behavior. What happened with S&G?
Tom: They chose not to bring their children up right.
HEATHER: I was refering to God being the father of all the people in S&G, not just the parents of the kids in S&G
Tom: Then you’ll have to live without God ‘cause there ain’t no “here and now” guarantee for such protection, period. It ain’t out there. There is no such God. There IS a loving, capable, trustworthy God, for sure. It’s just that he doesn’t at all encourage us to trust him for the sort of guaranteed protection you’re asking for. We can trust that WHEN crap happens to us (and it WILL) that this God did everything he could to prevent it (given the totality of his reasons for creating [which we KNOW—love], the rules of engagement [which we don’t fully understand though we know libertarian freedom is part of it], and how all this specifically intersects at each specific occurrence of evil). He even paid the price for all the crap he's not able to prevent by letting it all hit him square in the face on the Cross.
HEATHER; Not at this point yet, either, maybe I will fail Christianity 101 when it comes to trust, faith, and hope.
Who knows, maybe these discussions will help to sort things out, I sure hope so, and I still continue to read the Bible and pray. But with limited expectations.
Heather
| | Back to Top | | |
|
JET
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2002
Total Posts : 397
| Posted 1/11/2004 12:52 PM (GMT -6) | | Heather said:
quote:
I keep reading every lesson that I can on Job, it would be great to be able to reconcile the first two chapters of the book, would explain a lot. If a serial killer moved into my neighborhood, I most certainly would not go up to him and say, have you considered my daughter? she is sweet and innocent, and loves me a lot. No matter what you do to her, she will still love me. I guess I see what God did with satan similar to that. All God would have had to do was to tell satan to take a hike.
JET: If my understanding is correct, most biblical scholars understand the book of Job to be an epic poem (as pointed out by Iconoclast earlier on this thread and by Doc and Al on other threads). Of course the prologue serves a purpose. But it doesn’t necessarily mean God literally operates the way described in the prologue.
quote:
. . . But to make that illustration, frankly I would rather have had a parable, instead of the loss of lives.
I agree with TGB that tragic loss of lives may sometimes occur as the result of "sacrificing the pawn" and sometimes as the result of God's overall purposes in creating a world in which love is possible. However, in the case of Job, I believe you have a "parable". There are many possible meaings of the parable (taken as a whole). Whatever the meaning or purpose of the prologue, I see no reason to belive that the parable is intended to teach that God literally "ruins people without reason" (Job 2:3) on a "dare" from satan in the flippant manner suggested by the prologue.
Thanks,
JET | | Back to Top | | |
|
GregBoyd
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818
| Posted 1/11/2004 1:39 PM (GMT -6) | | On being honest with God....
Its interesting, but Job said A LOT of VERY nasty things about God throughout this book (basically called him SATAN -- the adversary...). And God certainly puts him in his place when he shows up at the end, showing how he was arrogant and presumptuous and simplistic in his theology. Job repents of his theology. Yet, God is angry with him as he is with Job's friends (ch.42). In fact, God says that Job spoke "right" or "straight" (hebrew = koon).
The point seems to be that while Job's friends theologized in a self-serving way, indicting Job to protect themselves, Job theologized -- however inaccurately -- from the HEART. He spoke what was true to him. He had an honest relationship with God --- and God loves that, EVEN WHEN he has to correct the theology around it.
This is a God who wants a true, honest, vulnerable, authentic relationship with us.... one that arises from THE HEART.
Greg
"The responsibility is with the chooser -- God is blameless." Plato, Republic, 10. | | Back to Top | | |
| 52 posts in this thread.
Viewing Page : 1 2 3 |
| Forum Information | Currently it is Monday, November 09, 2026 11:47 AM (GMT -6)
There are a total of 97,718 posts in 6,040 threads.
In the last 3 days there were 0 new threads and 0 reply posts. View Active Threads
|
Forum powered by dotNetBB v2.42EC SP3
dotNetBB © 2000-2026 |
|
|