Open Theism Discussion Board

WARNING: Some of the contents of this post are going to be graphic. Quite graphic. If you are a sensitive person or have children that you are concerned about, you may not want to read this. PLEASE BE ADVISED...and don't say that you weren't warned!

Ok...

I just got in touch with something. Something huge.

I don't think I'm a "theistic bootlicker" anymore. (The old schoolers here will know what I'm talking about already) What this means is this: I used to be a person who genuinely could have went either way between classical theism and more open theism. I have found that I am no longer like that. In a major way.

First of all, let's give some context. Here is something we all, I believe, need to know about...MS-13.

The Most Dangerous Gang in America
They're a violent force in 33 states and counting. Inside the battle to police Mara Salvatrucha.
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7244879/site/newsweek/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-13

I had seen some graffiti like MS around, but I had just thought it was another gang. Anyways, I saw this show about them on the National Geographic Channel. blogs.nationalgeographic.com/channel/blog/2006/01/explorer_gangs.html

This gang is not as numerous as like the Crips, but they are MUCH more dangerous as they are really organizing themselves and making MAD loot. Anyways, they got to this one part where they talked about how our F'd up deportation program basically exported MS-13 to Central America and how it's exploded there and gotten even more violent. They detailed of the things that they did. If you screwed with them, they would basically dismember you alive. Sometimes, if you were male, they would cut of your genitals and feed them to their dogs. From what I'm understanding elsewhere, they would sometimes do it while the guy watched it happen. Now, I thought about that. Then, I flashed to stories that I'd heard about Rwanda. Then I flashed to stories that I'd heard about Cambodia. Then I flashed to stories I'd heard about the Holocaust. All the violence. And this very weird thought occurred to me.

If a person believes in theological determinism, they would HAVE to believe that, before the whole Creation was created, that God ORDAINED...

1) EXACTLY what male would be chosen by MS-13 to be killed.
2) EXACTLYwhat kind of blade (blunt or sharp) would be used to kill the guy
3) EXACTLY how much torture the guy would endure BEFORE he got his genitals chopped off.
4) EXACTLY WHAT ANGLE the blade would take when they chopped them off.
5) EXACTLY how the genitals would come off...down to each testicles.
6) EXACTLY how many dogs there would be to eat the genitals.
7) EXACTLY how the dogs would eat the genitals (slowly? ravenously? phallus first? testicles first?)

As all of these horrid thoughts filled my mind, I thought about what kind of mind it would have to be to think of such things seriously...let alone PLANNING these things to actually occur to someone. Then I spanned out. I thought about what kind of mind it would take to plan such things so meticulously for EACH and EVERY case of torture, dismemberment, and murder that has EVER OCCURRED in the world. Then I thought about these things being ordained and intended....BILLIONS OF YEARS before anything was created!

You know who came to mind?

The most evil being in existence.

But then I thought some more. I thought about a being that NOT ONLY ordained all this, but ALSO ordained that an eternal, torturous hell would be waiting for SOME of those people already tortured!

THEN I thought about this being "saving" some, just so they could be happy that they were "saved" and these other people were not!

THEN I thought about this being being so self-satisfied in Itself that, in some real way, absolutely NONE OF THIS mattered to It. It would have been just as well of if this Creation...and all of it's pain...NEVER EXISTED.

The evil of this being would transcend any notion of evil that I had ever had before.

My very soul shook at the notion of such a being. I laid awake in my bed a LOOONG time that night. Just up. Thinking about it. For me to believe that such a Being existed would utterly destroy any sense of religion in me. I realized that if there was such a being, if this being REALLY wanted me to honor and find JOY in it from the heart, I could not. More than that, I would NEVER, EVER, EVER trust such a being. It wouldn't matter WHAT this being told me or showed me. If this being would have the evil within itself to have such lack of consideration for it's Creation and inhabitants, why the HELL would I believe that this being actually would care for ME and keep promises at all?? Hell, such a being could wait till the end of this and throw us all in hell ANYWAYS. So why bother with it?

Here was a kicker. A totally NEW thought to me. Even IF Jesus and Jesus's limited atonement work really did happen under this schema...even if Jesus really DID raise from the dead..., it wouldn't mean a DAMN THING to me. Nothing. Why would it? How in the world could I trust Jesus to save me...when HE is, in a real way, the incarnation of the most evil being I have ever conceptualized in my life?

This is what I can't understand about John Piper and the like. Really! They are so concerned with God being seen as weak that I really don't think that they think through the implications of what it means to say that God ordains absolutely everything meticulously! That, for each and every rape that has ever occurred, God MASTERMINDED it, down to the last bruise and scrape, from eternity past. For such a being, how could they even think it possible to TRUST that this being is definitely going to fulfill his promises of eternal life and bliss for the "chosen"? Are they REALLY going on the notion that "God said so"? Well, God cannot lie, they would say. My response: Look, buddy. If God is a being that has the moral fiber to INTEND, from the foundations of Creation, for a 4 year old girl to be raped and given a veneral disease by a loved one...and plan out every milisecond of that occurance... you mean to tell me that you would TRUST such a being to do something good for you??? How inane and STUPID! If I were to bring you a mass murderer who intricately masterminded and carried out the death of 200 people...how just happened to save 20 people that he LIKED so that they could enjoy life and be in his good graces, would YOU want to deal with that person? Would YOU trust that person if he said he would do something for YOUR best interest? I cannot believe that Piper and all these other folk haven't thought about this!

Friggin think about it, yo!

Soo....

If I really, really believed in this being, I would become a functional atheist...and await my fate whatever that was. It would take some time, but I would become indifferent to this God. I would not care about this God. I would not think about this God. Why? Because being mad about it wouldn't help a damn thing. Moreover, I would just want to enjoy some good times while I had them. I'd feel like I was in the crack of "good graces" from the being...and I wouldn't want to spoil that by thinking about the being. What's so interesting is that it's not like I would disbelieve in God. I would just IGNORE God. I would think of God like I think of the wind during hurricane season. I wouldn't actively THINK about a lot at all. I would just try to enjoy the sunshine while I had it, take the hurricanes as they came...and await my fate.

After thinking about this, it dawned on me that I could never go back to being a theological determinist. That's ANY theological determinist belief, Islam included. For me to do so would be for me to give up the Faith...like FOR REAL. I would cease ministry and do something else with my life. I would enjoy good times as much as I could and await my fate, day-by-day.

Then something else got me. This MUST BE why some people would rather deal with a depowered, "hand-wringing" God than an all-controlling one. This MUST BE why Doc wrote on the board back in 2000 that if he found out the theological determinism was true, his moral wiring would resist that God and he'd rather be in hell. It all made sense. People would rather have a functionally finite God who can only heal and do things sporadically...but they can SOLIDLY TRUST and LOVE...than to have an all-controlling God whom they can't.

And honestly, for the first time, I see that I am one of those people.

This concerns me because I have always tried (TRIED, mind you) to go where the evidence leads me. That's how I came to be open to open view theism in the first place. Ask all the old heads around here. It was MUCH, MUCH discussion with Doc, Modes, Elektra and others before I came to be really embracing of it. And one of the reasons why I felt so good about it then was BECAUSE I hadn't let (at least to my conscious knowledge) let feelings get in the way. Looking at scripture from an openness perspective helped. But Doc's thesis and insights from process philosophy sealed the deal. Even with all this, I have been truly open to going back to theological determinism, if the evidence presented made it work. Yes, I've advocated for universalism and open view theism and all that. But deep inside, if universalism and open theism weren't true...if I found new reason to believe that classical theism were true, I would just prepared to say "Oh, well. Back to what I was before." and be done with it. Seriously. Up to now, I was not truly EMOTIONALLY commited to any form of process thought or open view theism. Now I realize that I am. I don't feel too cool about that. I mean I like the idea of their being a God who genuinely LOVES Creation. Who actually works continually to see GOOD THINGS happen. Who only uses BAD things because God HAS to do so...for even greater good purposes. Hell, if this means that God could only do a friggin miracle for anyone on the planet every 10 years...I would love and honor this God more than I would the Calvinist God. Hands down. I would be process theist wholesale before I would be a Christian theological determinist.

Does this mean that from now on, I'm going to color my reading of Scripture so I don't have to leave the Faith that I find so comforting? This is major to me. I really, REALLY want to be able to follow the evidence where it leads. (This is partly why I am NOT an inerrantist) But it's interesting that for me to be convinced of theological determinism IS for me to leave the Faith as a practical atheist! None of the experiences that I've had would God up to now would mean anything positive to me anymore. Will I just blind myself to certain things so I can maintain my belief? Will I really engage with theological determinists and their arguments? Will I really open myself up to the possibility of theological determinism being true?

I don't know what this means yet.

But something tells me it's serious.

Hmmm...yeah.

God graciously FINDS us meaningful when God doesn't need to do it and we, in ourselves, can't do it.

"Hmm. Why not? What the hell. Let's try it."
--God

Mephi, see, now that wasn't too hard was it? ;-)

especially the multiple skull

>nice touch!

MephEternal said...
Parts 1 and 2 were from the Old Coolboard days and earlier incarnations of this board.

I would really choose not to serve the Living God. I'm not talking DISbelieving in God. I'm talking about believing in God...and wanting nothing to do with God.

It's an extremely scary and difficult place for me to be. Seriously. I'm in a state of shock and terror right now.

If you wish, you can pray for me. cry

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 6/20/2006 12:47:32 PM (GMT-5)

Tell me if you sleep tonight.

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 6/20/2006 2:53:41 PM (GMT-5)

JET: In "The Pleasure of God", Piper exalts this very idea, arguing that man's final boast is defeated. Man cannot even boast that he rejected God because God says "No, I determined that you'd reject me".

But I wonder how God can be ultimately victorious in this scenario. If, in the end, any person could have any moral justification for rejecting God, then God doesn't win. Now, in the deterministic scenario, no person actually rejects God (because none are free). However, presumably God would know that there was a hypothetically free person who could reject God and would be morally justified in doing so. And this, it seems to me, would preclude any ultimate triumph by God.

(Piper doesn't address this.)

I had tried to deal with this as follows. If God's nature is the EPITOME of what is good (ie aesthetic satisfaction of beautiful experience via loving sociality), then all contingent representations of what goodness is based upon this unsurpassably intense beauty which IS God. So God wills ONLY those things that align with those contingent representations. In short, God wills what is good BECAUSE what is good in contingent reality are representations of the goodness that God is. Because I am NOT a voluntarist, I was willing to go this route and say that God is bound by God's dispositional nature.

The question arises though. WHAT does this look like? From here, I worked with more process categories, but PRIMARILY with the trinitarian work of Christ's ministry as a "window" into the heart of God. From there, I worked up a characterization of "love" This is what I currently have in my mind, now. So, anything that is incommensurate with THAT, I would say that is "not good"

Now here's something. I can get with the idea of double effect. And the idea that God can "sacrifice the rook for the queen", meaning God can use fallen structures and systems for the maximization of good and the minimization of evil. That's not a problem.

What I CANNOT get with is the idea that God eternally and meticulously ordained and orchestrated every instance of sin and evil that we see. Every millimeter of movement. Every millisecond of endurance. Every decibel of every scream. There is NO generalization of action or orchestration. No "Hey, I'm just going to allow that to happen however it does, and then I will use it as I can." I could feel better about that. But nope, none of that. With theological determinism, it's meticulous. It would be like a horror film writer that meticulously scripts absolutely every movement and moment of a serial killer decapitating a 8 year old child. THAT is what I'm finding to be horrific.

For someone to argue that every aspect of every evil act that has ever occurred is NECESSARY and that this is the BEST possible world because of those things...is at best, highly problematic to me. Can't get down with it.

This is what the fatalist does though, right?

Que cera ceraaaaaaa! What will be will beeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I will admit. It would be hard to get God off my mind. I've been living for God for the past 10 years. But I would try...hard.

God graciously FINDS us meaningful when God doesn't need to do it and we, in ourselves, can't do it.

"Hmm. Why not? What the hell. Let's try it."
--God

God graciously FINDS us meaningful when God doesn't need to do it and we, in ourselves, can't do it.

"Hmm. Why not? What the hell. Let's try it."
--God

MephEternal said...

WARNING: Some of the contents of this post are going to be graphic. Quite graphic. If you are a sensitive person or have children that you are concerned about<b>, you may not want to read this. PLEASE BE ADVISED...and don't say that you weren't warned!</B>

MephEternal said...
Meph: What I CANNOT get with is the idea that God eternally and meticulously ordained and orchestrated every instance of sin and evil that we see. Every millimeter of movement. Every millisecond of endurance. Every decibel of every scream. There is NO generalization of action or orchestration. No "Hey, I'm just going to allow that to happen however it does, and then I will use it as I can." I could feel better about that. But nope, none of that. With theological determinism, it's meticulous. It would be like a horror film writer that meticulously scripts absolutely every movement and moment of a serial killer decapitating a 8 year old child. THAT is what I'm finding to be horrific.

Corey: I know this view from the inside. Here's where I would play the mystery card, that somehow, there's some redeeming purpose for it that I simply can't fathom at the moment. In other words, I'd "P" the problem away.

I feel ya. I was there too. But what I didn't think about then (but have now) is the idea that you would REALLY have to believe that every little aspect of every episode of evil (and the ramifications) was really the best thing. I mean EVERY little aspect. Did you think about it like that? That like a rape at t=1 millisecond and every aspect of the action therein went just as God meticulously planned? As it did at t=2 ms...3ms...4ms...

Did you really conceptualize it like this? Once a person does, I find it hard to explain that there was such a redeeming purpose for EACH ASPECT of the act. I mean could you really have said someting like....

Ok. It was ABSOLUTELY necessary for God's redeeming purposes (which we can't understand), for that woman to be hit 30 times instead of just 29 or 31...and the hit HAD to be a strike at a 45 degree angle moving from northeast to southwest at about 5.34 mph. That's why God planned that.

As I'm thinking about it, I can honestly say I never thought like that. I thought about God orchestrating (or allowing) the ACT, but only in semi-general terms. NOT ordaining it meticulously. Even though I assented to this occuring, I never really thought about THESE kinds of implications. I think this is why this is hitting me so hard right now. Did you?

God graciously FINDS us meaningful when God doesn't need to do it and we, in ourselves, can't do it.

"Hmm. Why not? What the hell. Let's try it."
--God

Visons of a Trailer Park Dante

This book has the charming, bonehead sincerity of people who call in to Art Bell's late night radio show to report the bizarre thoughts racing through their heads as if it is the most urgent thing in the world. Basically a tour-de-force of sadistic fantasy, with a special emphasis on the emotional torments of pity, shame and regret, it seems to be a genuine record of a psyche in severe distress-- aimed at rural housewives suffering from Post-Natal Psychosis or overweight teen girls who might otherwise turn Goth and cut themselves.