1 - III or "Do you want a happy god or a vengeful god?"

Too many people approach the good vs evil problem as exactly that.......there is some sort of good force and some sort of evil force. Most of our actions lie somewhere in the middle. There's an angel on the right shoulder and a devil on the right. There is thus peoples' problem with Christianity - how can an omnipotent God of love allow the devil a more-or-less equal say in things?

What if, though, there was no evil force? What if instead of being like people in a tug-o-war, morality was more like temperature?
There is no such thing as cold - cold is merely the abscence of heat. By the same reasoning, there is no such thing as evil - evil is merely the abscence of good. God is good. Thus, the further we are from God, the further we are from good, the 'colder' our moral themometer, and the more inclined we are towards evil.
What's my point - how does this change things?

Although not a thing in itself, cold is a relative term that makes no sense by itself. For example, if, everywhere you went, and whatever you did, it was always 25 degrees Celsius, no-one would complain that it was too cold or too hot - because we wouldn't know what it was like to be any colder or hotter.
God is a good God - a God of love. Again, such things would make no sense in the absence of those that are not so good or lovely. For God to be a God of love, there must, somewhere, somehow, be something that does not love as much that it can be compared to. In the absence of sin, God is not good, and He is not love - simply because good and love are only good and love relative to evil and hate.

God wants humans to be good and He wants us to love. He must therefore present us with choice - yes, it boils back to that term that non-christians seem to disagree with more than anything; 'free will'. As it was said in 'Moulin Rogue' - the greatest joy I have ever known is just to love and be loved in return. It must therefore be the greatest pain when that which you have created to love and be loved in return instead turns away, arguing if you even exist, let alone that you are good and worthy of relationship. And it must cause God even more grief knowing that anytime He could show up with signs and wonders, but realising that doing so would merely cause temporal attraction which would soon evaporate, since those attracted would be so only for what said miracle did for them. Hah, not me, I hear you say, what proof is there that people wooed by miracles turn back and do it their own way? I'm glad you asked. You want proof? Then find a bible. Start reading at Genesis, stop at Malachi. I think you'll see your proof.

The people of Israel were held captive by the Egyptians. They were slaves. God came and performed ten miracles to cause the Egyptians to let them go. God then parted the Red Sea. He then daily gave them food from nowhere. He often showed up at other times - on Mount Sinai, or as punishment for their sin. So when they got to their promised land, you'd think they'd just walk on in and not worry about what enemy they found? Nah. They said 'it's impossible, we would be better off as slaves back in Egypt'. And all that's just in Exodus.

I find the book of Kings and Chronicles very interesting - they class all the kings of Israel, and later also Judah, as either a good king, or a bad king. And the prime sin of a bad king, that is always, always, mentioned first, is that they rebuilt the shrines to other gods. And a good king destroys those shrines. And then you get people who tend to think that no god would care about if we paid attention to them, just that we're a 'good person'. And the sayer of this phrase would always include themselves in the 'good person' definition. You want my retort to that? Just wait till the next post.....

1 - II or "Tell me who to smite, and they shall be smoten"

One of the things I was thinking of one day is what type of book the bible is - ie, where it would go under the Dewey Decimal system if there was no 'religious texts' section.......the 200s, as I recall. I think most people, assuming it is actually a non-fiction text, would probably class it as an historical document of some sort...along with books on war and the industrial revolution, etc.
But, really, the bible is a book about God - it is thus a biography. Just as most biographies are simply a collection of stories involving the subject, so the bible is too.
However, we can go further than that - the bible is, in fact, an autobiography. It is a book about God, written by God. Just as if, say, Stephen Hawking was writing his autobiography he'd need another person or that computer thing to help him, so God, because He:

1. is too omnipotent to interact with the human world in such a tangible way, and, more importantly
2. He likes humans to be involved with Him

got humans to be His scribes. A side point.

The main point is that God seems to enjoy (for a reason I am yet to determine) the admiration, the company, nay, even the potential of humans. The closest I can liken it to is the desire a child has for his lego people to start walking and talking - with the primary difference being that that child's desire ultimately boils down to a desire for control - a desire to be god. Which is essentially pride or, at least, selfish ambition. Whearas God's desire is purely for our benefit - that we were created to walk with God as a close and personal friend. Unforunately, sin destroyed that relationship - but that issue is raised later.

I think most people's problem with a personal God is that they see it as pride for someone to suggest that they know their Creator, and they see it as pointless for an omiscient Being to want to interact with His creation. Thus, their only conclusion is that God must be behind the scenes and pulling the strings - involving us poor unwilling pawns in some sort of sick game; a life size game of chess against the devil. Hence the philosophy of dualism, which seems extremely popular with free-thinking new age spirtulaists - their way, I guess, of balancing the beauty of nature with the ugliness of civilisation.

I find it extremely interesting that the genesis view of creation is one of the very few creation stories I have read or vaguely heard about that places the blame fair and square upon the shoulders of us. Sure - Adam and Eve are used as scapegoats; but I doubt many Christians, or indeed people in general who are honest with themselves see vast differences in the orginal two and themselves. Indeed, most people's objection is 'all they did was eat an apple'. A discerning reader would easily note that the serpent, while accountable, is certainly not the sole perpetrator. He merely suggests - he, as he will do from then on to the rest of us, tempts. Contrast this with, say, the equivalent scenario in the - I believe - Greek; Pandora's Box. Although Pandora herself blatantly succombs to temptation - softened to 'curiosity' - sin enters the world not via man's response to temptation but as a disease - which is offset by the 'friendly bacteria'; here named 'hope'. Thus, we can freely blame Pandora for releasing these horrors, and, fundamentally more important, blame the gods for creating such a terror in the first place. The greatest accusation that can be aimed at God in this respect is for allowing Lucifer to continue to exist after his fall from heaven - but would that really have solved everything? People often have a problem with 'God of love' vs 'problematic world' - I am thus forced to address the problem of evil in my next post.

1 - I or "It's the four elephants of the apocalypse!"

I find I don't have many orginal original ideas - I need someone else for inspiration. And here's the first, and the second is ready and waiting.

From where I buy most of my CD's - amazon.com. This was posted as a comment to 'The Screwtape Letters' by CS Lewis. And, maybe, it's just that I think it's such a great book, and was heavily insulted someone could give it just one star. But I (like to) think it's because they weren't so much criticising the book as the whole of Christianity in general. And, frankly, that is one of the things (count them) that I cannot just sit back and stay happy about.

Quote:

Try as I may, I find C.S.Lewis nearly impossible to read. Maybe that is because I have little interest in living a good Christian life -- as portrayed by a British professor of literature, writing at the time of the second world war.
His basis premise seems to be that God and the Devil have some "interest" in the way human beings are living their lives. Both are trying to influence that. I just can't for the life of me understand why a God would want to do that. I mean if God is all powerful why couldn't he just create the perfect man and be done with it, why would he have to go around trying to find ways to improve on his design? And what benefit does the devil get by getting the human to do evil and collecting the odd soul? The whole subject is patently ridiculous. And to try to cast an argument, which is dubious at best, using the technique of diabolic ventriloquism or photographic negative is mind boggling. At the end what are we supposed to get out of this -- pure knowledge? an understanding of Lewis' philosophy? or just a chuckle? If it is the chuckle, then I would divide the causes of such a chuckle into Joy, Fun, the Joke Proper, and Flippancy. And I would relegate Lewis to the flippant. "It is a thousand miles away from joy; it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it." (Page 51 Screwtape.)

End Quote.

I'd like to say first of all that there is no reason to think that because the book was written by a

1. British
2. Literary professor
3. During WWII

that it would be somehow irrelevant. Anyone whose read CS Lewis (besides Narnia, of course - I'm talking Mere Christianity, Surprised by Joy, et al) would know that he writes in very high level and fairly British, old-fashioned English (with an e on the end?). Similar to Mr JRR Tolkein - relatively good friends who enjoyed criticising each others work, as I recall. But writing in such a style doesn't make the theme, plot, ideas, characters, etc any less relevant. I believe there are references to old-fashioned, and British, things, but suggesting that this book is irrelevant on that basis means we have to dismiss nearly all history, especially ancient history, because most of it happened overseas, and a long time ago - and probably in another language.

Hmm.....this is going to be a long entry.

...that You have hidden these things from prophets and revealed them to little children...
It is almost ironic (in the pseudo Alanis Morrisette meaning of the word) that one who seems so intent to dismiss an involved God (something Lewis elsewhere expresses as an essential element to a Creator) would stumble, unknowingly, onto such a profound truth.
His basis premise seems to be that God and the Devil have some "interest" in the way human beings are living their lives. Both are trying to influence that. I just can't for the life of me understand why a God would want to do that.
I don't really understand that, either. But does that change the fact?
Amazing love, how can it be that You, my King, would die for me?
It often seems that people willing to dismiss any god who trys to relate to its creation on a personal level are perfectly happy with, say, karma, which basically says that there is some huge cosmic force which changes everything around you based on if you are 'good' or 'bad'. Or that instead they are unwilling participants in some sort of interstellar war, where it is the stars and planets which seem to have nothing better to do than alter the course of 1/12 of the planets inhabitants' love life in some random way on some random day. I would suggest that the problem is control - but I'm not here for that reason.

I'm rambling......the trouble is that my mind charges through all possibilities before arriving at a conclusion, and although I did that last night, it took a good deal of thinking to get there. Next time, I shall attempt to succinct myself.