how can a loving God and evil co-exist?

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Hacken Slash, I wholeheartedly agree with your last post. We've already made the connection with so much hatred and evil as a result of monotheistic religions over the centuries.

Why else has Christianity created so many waves over the years? Why hasn't it died out and become a "mythology" like that of the ancient Greeks or Babylonians if not for larger forces at work behind it?

I must answer this question:
"Why should anyone worship 'God' or 'Jesus' or 'Allah' besides not wanting to burn in hell?"

At age 10, your damn right I believed in God out of fear alone. But my perspective has changed as I've grown as a Christian. I want to serve God not to avoid damnation, not to gain eternal rewards, instead I want to serve Him in the meager means that I can to give back just a bit of the love He gave me when He added my sins to an already tremendously heavy burden. But it's not just a sense of I owe God, that's why I serve Him. It's mainly because I have the humility to know that God knows the answers to questions I don't. The topic of this thread being one of them. I want to learn from the greatest. I want to be a part of God's creation as He intended it. I like making things. I sympathize with God who wants to bring His creation back to perfection, but who let it stray from perfection in order that it might truly be perfect. Sound circular? To us it may, but to God it's not.

And get this. If you really want to know the answer to the question of this topic, you're only going to get it from God. God's going to be in Heaven folks, not Hell. It's like binary numbers, true and false. God and absence of God. And without God is chaos and no answers. Without God is true chaos, true suffering, true Hell. What we live in now is bad, but God is still in it to get us through if we seek Him. Hell will be infinitely worse because God won't be there.

But if you really want to know the answer, you don't have to temporarily abandon logic and reason, you just have to accept the limitations of your knowledge, you have to learn humility and have faith that there is someone up there who knows a hell of a lot more than you do. (Pun intended.) So do you spend an eternity without the answers and more evil, and more chaos, and eternal suffering? Or do you spend eternity with the answers and with the joy of knowing your faith lead you to the answers, and eternally away from the very evil you question? Your choice. Logically, the second choice makes sense.

 

I'm not going to put up new points or debate further until I've had more time to think.

Here is a query though:

Does creation warrant love and obedience? Do we 'owe' 'god' or our parents anything for bringing us to this world? None of us actually asked to come here anyway and we would not have known the difference if we had been aborted with a coat hanger and flushed down the toilet.

My relationship with my parents is purely a parastitical one: I feed off their money, they feed off their misplaced concepts of having a family. I don't have the slightest bit of love for them, although they do deserve some measure of respect and thanks.

'god', however, has done nothing but (assuming he exists and is omnipotent and directs every event in the world) caused me no small amount of anguish until the point where now I can hurt no longer.

If indeed, he created me (at this point I am ambivalent towards him since I do not consider the act of creation worthy of thanks) and then caused everything to be so screwed up, then it naturally figures that he owes me a whole lot of pain which I am obliged to repay.

Hence, 'god' created me? Even playing field.

'god' inflicts misery on me? I have a katana thirsting for his blood.

Why, then are any of us indebted to a creator and a tormentor, if he does exist? Where is his 'love'? Was Jesus really his son or just some deluded fraud that managed to convince a lot of people about his supernatural nature?

Of course, this comes down to 'faith' again but I simply don't consider that an adequate answer.

(Note: I am aware that there are worse things happening outside. Take this from a purely self-centered viewpoint just for the sake of illustration.)

The above was mostly directed at Grey Magistrate. As for Hacken Slash, I shall have to reread his arguments and address them later after I have had more time to think.

Hmm. Satan. That's something to aspire to though. I've just read Milton's Paradise Lost and I postively cheered when Satan won some measure of victory by corrupting Adam and Eve.

I would gleefully burn forever if it meant I could be in the presence of someone I have so much respect for (satan) for all eternity. Besides, I've done so much that if there truly is retribution, it's hell for me.

 

You are not indebted to anyone Shura. In answer to your query, you owe it to yourself. You are the one you must answer to, you are the one whom you shall judge. No-one else can do this. No-one else should. No-one else will.

 

I got a PM that essentially said, "what the hell are you talking about?" and I realize that I didn't really do a very good job getting across my point of view.

This is off topic perhaps so I'll keep it short. GM said atheists have the problem of people (paraphrasing) 'just being sacks of bones.' If we're just sacks of bones one could think we're just physical processes - just a bunch of chemical cause and effects. Where is the freedom in that one might wonder.

This idea is called redcutionism: taking complex statements and breaking them into simpler ones. In metaphysics/philosphy of the mind this might be something like: pain = 'c-fibres firing in the brain.'

There are two points I want to bring up: 1) being atheist =!= being reductionist, 2)theists have the same problems GM attributes to atheists.

In the interest of keeping it short, here is a link if you're interested in reductionsim/non-reductivism and the problems each pose:
http://mind-brain.com/mind/mind9.html

Non-reductive physicalism faces the problem of 'downward causation' which Jaegwon Kim best discusses (ironically, Kim may be the best place to start to find out what it is). The problem of downward causation at best leaves mental proprties as being epiphenomenal (Kim thinks, I don't). Which brings me to my second point:

2) The exact same problem of epiphenomenalism faces theists. Clasically, one can think of this as the mind/body problem. Descartes was confronted with this problem when he attempted to prove the existence of God starting with the cogito.

Basically, the problem facing both the theist and the non-theist is the same and is this: how do two separate substances interact? The non-physical soul with the physical body for the theist and non-physical mental properties with the physical body for atheists (and theists too). If they don't interact, both the theist and the atheist are left with the 'lack of freedom' concerns that GM presented.

The problem isn't unique to atheists. There are lots of purported solutions to the problem but each is a book in its own right.

As far as the beautiful woman analogy... I don't really know that it explains away the situation. Sticking with physical beauty, there does seem to be certain properties which are beautiful. These standards aren't made up by the woman, arbitrarily, she either posesses them or she does not. Please note that I don't think the good being independent of God is a problem for theists, indeed, I think they should embrace it. I simply don't think that believing in God provides the theist an independent basis for morality and denies one to the atheist.

Likewise, for an atheist moral properties could still be real properties; independent properties.

 

Manus, once again, you've successfully seduced me into a response! You're truly incorrigible!

You're right, Manus - "it is hard to have a meaningful argument based on false premises". But although no one can prove conclusively that what the Bible says is true, it IS possible to demonstrate that the manuscript has been consistent for millennia.

There are some 16,000 manuscript fragments of the Bible dating back thousands of years. (Compare this to, say, ten copies of Caesar's Gallic Wars, or sixty copies of the Iliad.) The way to confirm accuracy over time is to compare differently dated fragments, and compare the differences. The fragments are consistent unto themselves some 98% of the time - the differences are largely grammatical, and are marked with footnotes in any good Bible translation.

If you have a Bible handy, open to I John 5:7. This verse is doctrinally accurate, grammatically flawless, and absent from any Greek manuscript written before the sixteenth century. This "bonus verse" was slipped in by well-meaning monks to reinforce Erasmus' Trinitarianism. Similarly, the ending of Mark was tacked on sometime in the fourth century. These two huge, well-documented exceptions show just how careful translators have been to make sure that the Bible we have today is the same as when it was first written.

There are similar "bonus" books, like the Apocrophya, the Gospel of Thomas, the pseudo-Dionysius, and so forth, that might be doctrinally accurate in certain respects but do not pass the merciless tests of textual analysis. (The supposedly prophetic book of Enoch, for example, was actually written very late, so it doesn't get included in the canon. Sorry, Enoch.) Textual criticism didn't start with the German scholars, and not even with the Church councils committed to determining the canon - the ancient Hebrew scholars were meticulous to the point of obsession with making sure their manuscripts were accurate.

In the face of centuries of cold, rationalistic, contextual analysis of the texts in question, it takes a blind leap of faith to suppose that the "real" message has been misinterpreted. Regardless of whether the Bible is true or not, neither its central doctrines nor its central actors have changed.

If anything, Manus, your interpretation sounds very much like an ecelctic mix of Gnosticism, Kabbalism, and Chaldean dualism, especially given your analysis of "Lucifer" above "Elohim" (I put the names in quotes, because your use of the names is as close to the Biblical content as Blizzard's Diablo is to Revelation). It's creative but has no real historical foundation.

For example, your melding of Satan and God is unsupported by any Bible book. Job is the oldest existing manuscript, and this begins with Satan (literally, "the accuser") confronting God, and then acting personally to strike Job and his family. Perhaps the last written book, Revelation, also presents Satan as separate from God. The opening chapters of Genesis depict Satan as clearly separate from God. Similarly, your separation of Christ and Jesus is ridiculous in the face of the consistent interchangability and frequent combination of the two names - "Jesus" is His birthname, and "Christ" is a religious-political title meaning "The Annointed". It would be like reading a newspaper article and trying to distinguish between "President" and "Bush". It seems that you, like the Gnostics and dualists past, are starting with dualistic, spiritualized preconceptions and then looking to hijack Biblical analogues.

There are HUGE differences between Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, and Pentecostals. But they all agree on the same Bible manuscript, and interpretations differ on elements within the Scriptures, not on whether or not the words are the same today as when first written. Even Judaists, who do not accept the validity of the New Testament, can attest to the historical consistency and accuracy of their texts.

To conclude: we can argue as much as we want about whether or not the Bible is true. But it's silly to argue about whether or not the Bible really means what it says it means, or if its text is the same today as when it was first written. You don't need to be a Christian to acknowledge textual integrity.

 

OK, Laches, you have left me in the dust. I have never had but a simple understanding of things at best, and I find myself shamed by your depth. I still struggle, as part of you enraptured audience to try to make sense of it all (I think that pm was me ). Anyway, I'll reread again what you have said and try to order it to my thinking. It is not your fault that I am a dunce...(I flunked out of college because I spent all my time with...a girl!)

Manus, oh Manus my friend from downunder. How dare you bring Cosmogeny to this argument, sort of like bringing a knife to a gun fight! Christianity, through our Hebrew fathers, is able to effectively answer to the monkey wrench that you have dropped into our machine. We can trace the roots of our faith all the way back to creation. Sure, there are other cosmogenies, be it Babylonian, Chaldean, Sumerian, Greek or Indian. They are all shadows of truth, truth that was existing con-current and before them and influencing the mythology that they developed to explain the existence of the world we live in.

You have combined a mixture of etymology and cosmogeny in your post, but the point is that all of these cultures sought to answer the age old question..."Why are we here". Just because we have found proof of the mythologies that they espoused to answer the question, does not mean that all answers are mythological. I am aware of the Sumerian and Zoroasrian myths of creation...to my mind that does not diminish the Christian answer, rather support it. I am aware of the Chaldean mythology of a deluge...to my mind that only supports the Christian story of a great flood. From my standpoint, Cosmogeny does not weaken the Christian explanation, only support it.

I do challenge your interpretation of Hebrew philosophy...there are two distinct places of torment...Gehenna, the fiery pit that you have mentioned, and Sheoll...a more ethereal place where the soul is separated from Jehovah and thirsts for God. You do raise an interesting point about the origin of Elohim...it is truly a bisexual nomer. It is wrong to try to "genderfy" God, so many of God's attributes extend beyond gender. Regardless, it is important that we do not ignore our understanding of "God, the Father", as that is central to all Christian belief.

That whole "Jesus", "Chritos", "Logos" stuff arises from the difficulty of translating Aramaic (the language spoken by Jesus and his Apostles) to Greek, the language that everything was written in.

I have opened up HUGE avenues here, but we still need to address LNT's original question. I promise that I will be back soon to finish the Catechism class that I have started, and provide the Christian answer to the evil in our world.

Manus, you are great. You continue to amaze me with the depths of your thought. In fact, I thank all of you...GM, Big B, Laches, LNT, Morgoth, Shura, Joacqin, Chev, (sorry if I missed you) and others who I have already mentioned. I want you to know that I am personally going through a very difficult time in my life, and it has been very therapeutic to talk and spar with all of you.

 

The question:
The problem of Evil

The (attempted) answers:
Fyodor Dostevsky (1821-1881)
"Rebellion" (from The Brothers Karamazov)

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716)
"Theodicy"

J.L Mackie (1917-1983)
"Evil and Omnipotence"

Peter Van Inwagen (He still teaches in U. of Notre Dame)
"The magnitude, Duration and Distribution of Evil: A Theodicy"

i took philosophy last semester, "the problem of evil" was covered as part of the course. Too much to talk about. Van Inwagen had some insights but his article is too long for me to type them out. Very tired, quiz tomorrow, [insert any excuse here]. Good luck finding those articles.

 

GM, I see you are stalwart in your beliefs, but allow me to clarify your mistakes

The errors in translation are obvious, but meaningless in the face of the errors in interpretation, and it is this error that continues today.

The interpretation of the bible today is vastly different that it was two thousand years ago, I'm sure anyone would agree to this. Even as compared to 500 years ago it is changed dramatically, but the fact is that even the original New Testament was butchered by the church's founding fathers, so it matters not how consistent the texts are, as two thousand years are a blink of the eye in the times I talk of. Again, it is the way the meanings are misconstrued that make the difference.

The same applies to the Old Testament. It is similar to other older religions because it was borrowed mostly from them. The keys to the symbology contained therein does not accompany the bible, and this has led to the problems of misinterpretation.

What I speak of is the historical basis, it is the dogmatic interpretation of the bible, and the exclusion of all other evidence to the contrary, which is in error.

I did not seperate Jesus from the appellation Christ, by the way, but the figure Christos, as this refers to something else. Like many traditions of other religions existant at the time, the church used and slightly modified their own doctrines (and the church's doctrine as well for that matter)to encourage followers, and discourage deviation.

I could go into an in-depth account on all of this, but that would take volumes, and that evidence is available to those who wish to pursue it. Until then I wish you well in your faith, because I see even if the specific details have changed, your heart is still in the right place, and this is the most important thing.

I would not reccomend trusting any written source. Speak to those who remember such times and events and things will become clearer. Live the life necessary and you will attain such knowledge for yourself. Until then I see little purpose continuing this debate because you can just as likely say anything that I have said is as wrong as I say the others are, and will not accept something else as true as long as you don't want to. Hell, you could be the only person in the world who is actually right, anything is possible. Personal experience is the only way any of us can know for sure, and even then it is doubtful. If we truly understood any of this we wouldn't be here.

That is what I'm trying to say by the way. The cosmogeny of the bible (or my own for that matter, or any other philosophical doctrine, which is what a religion is) may be able to outline specifics, but in the end all we can do is follow our own heart, if that leads us astray, so be it, we will only realize what's going on after it's finished.

Edit: I thought I'd add something to try and give this responce the veil of Humility. I came to this conclusion from a position of neutral atheiism. I had a high interest in the supernatural, mythology, occultism, philosophy, archaic religions, spiritualism, and psi phenomenae, but had reserved my feelings on such. I was merely interested, I don't know, perhaps I wanted to become a wizard.

I have reached these conclusions through study and personal experience, and can testify to the fact that I have met with things that no sole composite of atheiism, organised religion, new-age frippery, nor that giant of religions, science, can properly explain. Thus I cannot agree with another on a view that only one of these is correct for I know that to be false. I have found a series sources which sort to utilize all of these things, and crossess all of the boundaries we have erected between them, for me these explanations suffice, and seem to contain knowledge which pre-dates the misconceptions of others, for the sole purpose of setting those others straight.

However, wherever I look for answers is meaningless to another, and everyone will find what it is they look for wherever they look. Thus again I say, do not look for comfort in something which gives you none. If you feel abandoned by your faith, then abandon it. But do not abandon yourself, for if you do so what will you have left? True faith supercedes belief, and to be selfless is not to be without self. Nor is to put your faith in another to lose your own faith, in your own self.

Edit: Arrgh! I've just made this even worse. This last bit was in responce to Late-Night Thinker's original statement, not as a part of any argument. What I'm trying to say is none of us can say for sure, to an absolute certainty, which interpretation of God, Evil, Fate, or Life is correct, or even if any of these things exist. All we can do is do as we think is best, what we feel is right. That is all, and to my mind, that is all that is truly required of anyone.

Edit: Well, I have read the first post again, and I feel it has still not been answered.

LNT, that path you speak of, the one which you feel is right but you fear the pain of, take it.

Anyone who has will tell you the same. Over-come your fears, abandon your vanity, there is something else to be experienced, to be lived, that is the gratest accomplishment to which any of us can aspire.

The pain may be great at first, but it pales in comparison to that which you get in return.

Take it. Do not doubt yourself any longer. It may take a life-time to discover what it is you will see as truth, but that is a life-time in which you have achieved your birth-right. A life-time which you shall not regret, save only that you did not live it sooner.

[ November 03, 2003, 07:26: Message edited by: Manus ]

 

Well, here's one *hugs LNT*

Is there such a thing as a Zen satanist?

I personally think that "evil" is what humans label anything that is alien and repulsive, things that go against their beliefs and views and the like...

Or words to that effect anyway.

 

When God gave us free will and the quest to use it, he himself had to step into total invisibility. Therefore we are by definition always disconnected, right? If we were connected we did not have to have faith. We would know there was a heaven and the free will would be limited to humans stuck in endless prayers for heaven and paradise. Free will would then no longer have any meaning. Therefore God has to stay hidden for all eternity not to taint our free will.

But to love someone or something perfectly, which we can never be allowed to see or hear in our mortal lives, and that we cannot graps anyway, is impossible to any rational mind. Per definition impossible to love perfectly. As with anything we cannot do it perfectly, if we do not have the complete overview. And only God has it. Thus we will have flaws.

So christianity as a religion has settled/promised us that with prayers and the love for christianity as a system of behaviour-guidelines, we will be granted a place in heaven. Jesus has suffered to give us this opportunity. Therefore do not feel sad if you are in doubt and disconnected. We all are. We all should be. That is the only way to have a free will, and thus choose.

I do not believe and never will, except if the earth gets down to one religion which all agree upon and charish. In other words. I would rather have the limited free will within the knowledge that a loving God exist, except for the horrible suffering world, we have today with the free will causing many religions to struggle and inflict vicious acts upon eachother. I am sorry if that is too much to ask. Hence I will stay disconnected even though I could plug in.

[ November 04, 2003, 00:19: Message edited by: Nobleman ]

 

How can there be a loving God and evil? Well, how can good be good without evil? Without the dark to compare the light to, there is no light. They co exist because they have to.

 

Shura, addressing your clear-cut questions is easier than wrestling with Manus' fog. I would've written earlier, but I was...uh...playing ToEE. Priorities, priorities!

You ask: "Does creation warrant love and obedience?". I know I am old-fashioned in this regard, so I don't expect agreement, but I think that creation warrants that the created act according to its identity and purpose. The same sculptor can carve an ugly ashtray and a beautiful fountain, but there is something "wrong" if we pretend the ashtray is fine art and use the fountain for cigarette butts. It sullies the creation's identity and purpose. Even the ashtray is better off used as an ashtray than set as modern-art fakery. So if you accept that man is created in the image of God - and that's a big if! - then that says a lot about man's identity and purpose. Part of that involves love and obedience, but that's because of man's exaltation, not slavery. Man is more than a conscious ashtray.

Your comments about the family follow that same point. A child is supposed to be "more" to his parents than, say, the family dog or the live-in maid. (Which is why your paragraph is so jarring.) The child is disciplined much more strictly than the dog (which only learns to sit, stay, and beg) or the maid (who can be given the pink slip if she slips up), and there is a love relationship which is qualitatively different from the relationship with the dog or maid (at least, it had better be!). Not because the parents are tyrants, but because the child is so much more valuable.

If the Bible is right about God Himself dying to adopt people into His family, then what we see is not tyranny but Heaven's greatest attestation to our intrinsic worth.

So creation (of anything) does not warrant love and obedience per se, but human nature does.

But this lovely illustration is smashed apart if we reconsider the variables. What about the father that beats his kid? What about the mother that aborts her baby? If it is more evil for a father to smash his kid than his ashtray, then how much more horrible is it for God to torment His creation! If you are right, Shura, and God is truly a divine sadist, then indeed He would be worthy of righteous hatred.

So ultimately the question is whether God is responsible for the world's evil. If your standard is that the existence of any evil anywhere is proof that God is evil (or criminally negligent), then there's no way to persuade you otherwise, since evil ain't gonna be eradicated this side of eternity. The Bible claims that God is good, humble, and sacrificial to the point of death, but maybe that's just propaganda.

Along those same lines, you ask "was Jesus really his son or just some deluded fraud that managed to convince a lot of people about his supernatural nature?". An excellent question. CS Lewis set up the old three-way puzzle - that based on what He said, Christ was either a lunatic, or a liar, or the Lord God of Heaven. (Our friend Manus would claim that He was really just a great prophet, but neither His enemies nor His friends would've accepted that interpretation, and where friends and enemies agree, one should take note.) I think, Shura, that you should consider reading the Gospels in the light that Christ may very well have been a liar. Suppose that God really is a divine sadist and the ultimate source of evil, and suppose that Jesus was right when He claimed to be the Son of God. Kinda puts the statements of Christ in a different light, no? Or read them in the light that Jesus was completely delusional - thinking He really was God when in fact he was just plain crazy. If you're going to conceive of God as an evil tyrant, then go all the way and see if you can interpret Christ in the same light.

But I suspect that a thorough reading would present us with the same problem - a God that is thoroughly good, and yet confronts evil not by wishing it away in the Garden of Gethsemane but by enduring and overcoming it through the cross. This is the way of neither the tidy philosopher nor the sadistic tyrant.

 

/begins to applaud in stunned silence...

 

Fog shmog! I want my monkey-man!

Yes, I have a hard time being precise. GM, I agree with you on almost all of which you have said. I take many of the teachings of Jesus to heart -as well as the teachings of others. I agree with the spirit of the message of the bible -as I agree with the spirit of the message of most religions. And I am aware that most christians are not fundamentalists, and do not believe that everyone else should be burnt for heresy, and that most atrocities committed in the name of a holy book are in no way found in said book. Perhaps I should try to think things through before I speak, or type, as what I say usually comes across in the wrong light. I too applaud your last post, one could not point to such figures as lord Jesus and make claims against their goodwill, whatever else is said.

I just can't accept there is a great lord of evil waiting to condemn us all to an eternity of pain. I am aware that this could be the case, even that it is logically best to assume it is, but my own understanding points otherwise.

Why would a Loving, Forgiving God (even assuming that such a supreme figure is apperceptive and personal) condemn those foolish members to an eternity of torment? Such a God would perhaps show such spirits the error of their ways, and tell them to try again. This is what I have come to believe, and I do not expect you to feel the same way, but that every life is but one step along a progression, in which between lifes we are aware of our full selves, and direct our future lives in such a way that we may learn best from them, and that others may also.

In this light, Evil is indeed what shows us the Good, as Valkyrie has said, and is a result from our necessary free-will within our seeming fate, but if this is what evil does, is not evil merely a tool for good?


I have more to say, but I would like to know where others stand on this so far.

 

Manus, the key point is that GOD does not condemn you to anything...YOU do by your own free will and the exercise thereof. I have heard it described that the "Day of Judgement" will consist of each one of us, as if watching a movie, will see the choices we have made...and the results that come from those choices. Without a word from God, we will see the exposition of the life that we've been given, and KNOW the fate that awaits us. God will watch in infinite sadness as yet another of his beloved creation, is condemned by their own deeds.

Bear in mind, as a Catholic, I believe in the existence of purgatory...a place of purging, cleansing, so that any sin, pride or self-obsession is gone before entry into Paradise. This doctrine, which I will debate gladly with any, severely alters the notion of judgement and punishment.

God is not angry or vindictive. God bears unimaginable pain that creation, made in his own likeness, fails to recognize and seek a return to the perfection and peace that God offers.

I never did finish the Catechism class that I was giving. Maybe I should, so there can be no longer any misconceptions over God and the free will of creation.

Please reply if you have any questions...

 

Hacken Slash, if you see a man throwing himself out from the tenth floor and you are standing down on the street, you have a huge matrass just to the right of you that you have plenty of time to shove in the spot that the man would land, would you not do that because the man chose himself out of his own free will? You have the power to save that man, wouldnt you? In your view it seems that your god wouldnt. He has the power according to you to put a matress under all of us but according to you all he does is to stand and watch and lament our foolish choices.

That doesnt seem very good, does it?

Edit:
Heck, if your view is correct then it would be like it was your child that threw himself from the roof. Would you be so disapointed and saddened by your childs decision to jump off the roof that you wold decline to save him or would you use the power you have to save him? According to you, god wouldnt save him.

 

*sighs* well guys, this must be why they call it 'faith'.

 

Before I jump back into the fray with my explanation of the Christian Theology of evil, I want to make a disclaimer first. Please do not get hung up on Creationism vs. Evolutionism, or varying degrees between those two. In the Biblical book of Genesis, we are given an explanation of what happened and the events are highly open to various degrees of interpretation. What is clear is the meaning and understanding that we are supposed to draw from these very symbolic scriptures. Also, I have tried to use gender inclusive language, but sometimes I fail. Try to overlook that and stick to the main points.

Back to the task at hand…the world from a Christian perspective. In this section I should also be providing an answer to the questions and hypothetical situation raised by Joacqin. When last we talked, we covered creation (that was many posts ago, so you may have to scroll back) and established God as creator, God as all-powerful, God as all-knowing, God as all-present and God as all-good. Let’s take a closer look at that creation. God created lots of stuff…galaxies, stars, planets, trees, rocks, plants, and animals to name just a few. I would like to focus on two creations in particular…Angels and Humans. Angels are beings of spirit, of no material being, whereas human are composed of both matter and spirit. It is that spirit within humans that was made “in the image of God”, there’s nothing anthropomorphic about it.

Something that we share in common with the angels is the gift of free-will. Both were created with free-will, it could not have been any other way…if God is all-good, as we assume, then he would be in violation of his own nature to not give free-will to his two sentient creations. Also, God being all good, created humans and angels to show his infinite goodness to, and desires that we exercise our free-will to accept his gifts.

Unfortunately, neither angels nor humans have always made the best use of free-will. At some point in time, a large group of the angels chose to disobey God, were condemned and now have become devils. They have great power, so they can sometimes appear to do miracles, but they typically rely upon humans to do the “dirty work”. There is no hope for these fallen angels, because being spiritual their understanding was perfect…they don’t have the weakness of flesh and blood and brain that can cause us to do things in error or that we regret. They knew fully the effect of the choice they were making, and made it with perfect understanding…they have been condemned and will remain so. As a result, they are very active to insure that as many humans join their ranks as possible. Thus was the First Fall. The obedient angels reside in Heaven with God, and can provide assistance to us directly, as in our Guardian Angel (each one of us has one), or one of the other “named” archangels, Michael, Gabriel and Raphael.

Next, we come to the Second Fall…the Fall of Man. Man, as created, was having a pretty good time of it…we had a great place to live, all of our needs met, we could freely commune with our Creator, our God. The only thing that they couldn’t do was to eat a certain fruit…there was plenty of other things to eat, so to follow that rule would simply take obedience. There was no sickness or death…but there were bad angels from the First Fall lurking, waiting for the opening to derail this world. They attacked first at the Woman, Eve, deceiving her into believing that the “forbidden fruit” was not bad at all, but good…not only was it tasty but it brought wisdom and knowledge. God had promised that if they ate the fruit, “on that day they would surely die”, and here she was very much alive and wiser. Eve screwed up by letting herself get fooled by the devil in form of a serpent, aka Satan, aka “the Prince of all Lies”. We’ve all been taken in by someone who was a very convincing liar, and the serpent was the best, and remains so in our world today. Even with her disobedience, the situation was probably not irreparable; there was still a last line for human obedience with Adam. Off they went to visit the man.

I need to post this now and finish later. Should only take one more time. Sorry Joacqin, I’ll get to your answer soon.

 

For my benefit there is no need to tell the whole story about the fall of angels and then of man, I have been brought up in a country predominantly christian. We were taught these things in school.
It is a nice read though.

 

Thanks Arabwel, I think I just needed a hug.