Christian Issue - Page 3

[zoebird]

You might really like Joseph Campbell's Hero with A Thousand Faces and how it discusses the Jesus story.

[Bluegoat]

Originally Posted by zoebird

You might really like Joseph Campbell's Hero with A Thousand Faces and how it discusses the Jesus story.

I liked The Hero With A Thousand Faces, but I got really turned off Cambell's approach to mythology when I saw him interviewed once. He compared the Christian creation myth, which he said was divisive and responsible for all kinds of bad things in Western culture, with an Eastern myth which he said was holistic. But he actually only told part of each story so that it better supported the point he wanted to prove. I found it really hard to take his work seriously after that.

[bluebirdiemama]

Originally Posted by 2xy

How is perfection capable of creating imperfection?

If everything was good at that point, then wasn't the serpent also good? Why would they have any reason to distrust what the serpent said, if everything was good? How can you know "good as it is contrasted with evil" if evil does not exist?

Once again, I fail to understand how a perfect being can create imperfect beings. If a being is perfect, then everything he or she creates should also be perfect.

Doesn't disobedience fall under the "evil" category?

Well, this thead kinda slipped my mind today because my babe is sick... so this may not be the most thoroughly thought out.
Best I can do on question #1 is that God is capable of anything. God, to me and most christians, is everything good, to the point that there is no good without him. In fact, to be without God is to have a lack of truth, love, goodness... etc etc. We can experience degrees of it without God but not in its true and unaltered freedom.

I haven't gotten a chance to read those verses that Shami put up yet, but, about the world before sin came in. The world itself was perfect. The physical world was perfect, because that is the way that God created it. However, if the world of ideas, or the world of thought were to be made perfect, then we would not have free will. CLARIFICATION: To be without God is to be imperfect, so if we are to separate ourselves from God mentally, then we make our thoughts/ideas imperfect. (And of course if God created our minds perfect then we would not be capable of separating ourselves mentally from him and thus not have free will).

And so the serpent questioned whether God made sense to say "don't eat from that tree". If you read the story, the serpent asked them "did God really say don't eat from that tree?" . he said "you will surely not die" (I don't have a bible in front of me).
ei, he said---" you aren't really going to listen to God are you?"


So the disobedience was evil. And it brought evil into the world (separation from God. That is the def of sin, anything that separates us from God. )
And that is how they will "come to know good contrasted with evil". becase they will bring evil into the world. (From what I said in previous post--- I meant, that the "knowlegde of good and evil" was really telling them directly that evil will enter the world as a result of eating. Since evil was not in the world, how can they have knowlegde of it, unless they ... obtain knowlegde, by experiencing. So God was saying 'you eat from this tree, you will know of good (already in the world) and evil (you will experience as a result of eating/disobeying)'

Whether to listen to God or th serpent was their choice. You can make the argument that they didn't know who God was, or that they thought the serpent was good. But I don't think either are good arguments since
1. They knew God created the world, and for them, non the less. That's obvious bcause He told them to help Him in His creation work (by naming the animals.) Bible says they walked with God...... and if God is truth then He doesn't hide who He is.
2. if they knew who God is then there is no mistake about someone (serpent) who calls Him a liar. or a misleader.


I hope this helps.

I know it's hard to imagine a god like the christian god, esp when you add in all these things that seem to contradict one another. When I started trying to figure out who he was claiming to be, my starting point was good vs evil. Once I could see that good and evil can not co-exist in the least, then I coul wrap my head around some of the other stuff...
So, I know it's all hypothetical for you , but maybe that a starting point for understanding?

[Shami]

Just had a thought, maybe it's not of much use but here it is anyway.

God has free will. He can do as He pleases.
We were made in God's image, therefore we have free will. His angels have free will, too. Thus, His top most angel deciding that he wanted to be God.
Once, was his name Lucifer? Once he was cast down to the earth, he became the god of this age. The bible says he roams around like a lion to devour us. In the garden he was a serpent, but through out the centuries he is devouring souls and eventually he is depicted as a dragon in Revelation. Yikes.

The fact that we have free will must make it all the more sweet to God that we choose Him and not other things.

About perfection:
He is making us like Him through a process. He dispenses Himself into us. His divine life begins to spread from our spirit, to our soul (mind, emotion, will) (1 Thes. 5:23), and eventually our body (transfiguration of our body). As we open to receive Him through an intimate relationship with Him, He adds Himself to us, and we become like Him in life and nature, but never in the Godhead to be worshipped. We have this sin nature in our flesh, which we will be done with when our body is transfigured. So free will is very important, in the sense that it ain't easy to choose God or God's way. Spiritual warfare is very real. There is a fight over us every day, maybe even every moment.

[Shami]

Adding a verse to my pp #39, but I wanted to put it here too.

Zechariah 12:1

"...Thus declares Jehovah, who stretches forth the heavens and lays the foundations of the earth and forms the spirit of man within him"

This is a striking verse to me, especially when combined with other verses on the human spirit, like John 4:24, 1 Cor 6:17, 1 Thes 5:23. This shows the importance of the human spirit in God's creation.
The heavens are for earth, the earth is for man, and man was created by God with a spirit that he may contact God, receive God, worship God, live God, fulfill God's purpose for God, and be one with God.

[2xy]

Thanks for helping me to understand what you believe and why you believe it.

[bluebirdiemama]

Originally Posted by 2xy

Thanks for helping me to understand what you believe and why you believe it.

If I sounded short in my last post I didn't mean to. Was trying to finish before my dd woke back up

[CherryBomb]

Originally Posted by 2xy

Once again, I fail to understand how a perfect being can create imperfect beings. If a being is perfect, then everything he or she creates should also be perfect.

Kind of goes back the whole "can God create a rock so heavy He can't lift it?" Why can't a perfect, all powerful being be capable of creating something imperfect? If God could not create imperfection, how could He be all powerful?

I don't think obedience requires full knowledge. If I tell my 2 year old not to run out in the street, she doesn't need to grasp the concept of death to know that she should to listen to me. She simply needs to trust me. If doesn't listen, she might not have full knowledge of the consequences, but absolutely knows that she disobeyed me.

God gave us inquisitive minds and we should use them, but Christ also makes many references to having faith like a child. People who are critical of Christianity tend to interpret that as Christ wanting us to be "stupid" and "ignorant," but I think what Christ was trying to impart is that we can't know it all, and that there are times when we need to simply trust that God knows what He's doing. It's pure hubris for us to demand that God give us full knowledge of eternity before we can accept Him, or before we're responsible for our decisions.