So the question was: Would you accept the offer of a relationship from God if He answered all your questions about why things are the way they are, and then demonstrated His love for you in the greatest possible way?
You answer was: no.
The reasons were: (i) I don't accept that God is real, and even if He was real, (ii) He'd have a lot to answer for, and even if He had an answer for these, (iii) His plan to have relationship with me (death of Christ) doesn't make sense, even if it's real.
Am I correct in my summary?
Since I read your post, I've been wondering what intellectual (or other) barriers would make one reject such an offer, and what would overcome such barriers and lead someone to accept such an offer. Any thoughts?
I have to be honest - for me the answer is experience. A child accepts a parent on the basis of the parental love they've experienced. And I would be surprised if someone entered a friendship or relationship on the basis of a snazzy presentation.
If God is full of knowledge and love, then people should be able to experience this. The Gospels record that large crowds followed Jesus. Accepting these accounts as valid and accurate for the moment, what do you think would make Him so appealing?
The Gospels go on to record Jesus as commissioning His disciples to take they're experience of Him and share it with others, i.e. preach and PRACTICE the gospel of God's love, and channel His power to meet people's temporal and eternal needs.
I think if more disciples (read: disciplined learners and followers) of Christ were to do more of this, we would have less debates and more acceptance. As it is, there is a lot said and done in the name of Christ that, unsurprisingly, turns people off. Agree?
Don't get me wrong. I think we all have an individual responsibility to accept or reject God - it seems to me there is too much in nature not to be humble enough to acknowledge the prospect that God exists, and consider how we might respond.
And given choice, there will inevitably be those who choose to reject. The Gospels record that even in the face of all the evidence Christ produced, some people chose to reject Him and His message. Doesn't this sounds more like a heart than a head thing?
But I think that disciples of Christ have a responsibility to demonstrate God's love and power in every interaction, so that when others ask themselves: do I really want to be like that person: the answer is yes! That's how people come to know God and Christ.
"Doesn't this sounds more like a heart than a head thing?"
I beg to disagree here, Kofi.
The * head * of those people rejected Him, because their heart was closed and they couldn't understand Him. He wasn't talking in the language of the head, He was talking in the language of the heart.
Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity the fact isChristianity and its roots inJudaism has always been an evidence based religion so God and Jesus have always talked to the head and the Heart and after all He made thenm both see John 3.16 for a challenge to you.And then choose you this day whom you will serve.There are consequences to believing anything but none more so than this.The God of the Bible loves you, no other God does.Evolution does not giveatoss either way,you live, you dieand its all as if you had never been born and there is no difference and what you think of as personality does not exist for there is inescapably no basis for believing that or it being important ever apart from God.With God it is ad ifferent,entirely different story.Ask God honestly into your hheart or ask Him honestly if He exists.Those that seek with all their hearts will find Him.
Gabriela M. Scherer says: Kofi "Doesn't this sounds more like a heart than a head thing?" I beg to disagree here, Kofi. The * head * of those people rejected Him, because their heart was closed and they couldn't understand Him. He wasn't talking in the language of the head, He was talking in the language of the heart.
Highlander says: Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity the fact isChristianity and its roots inJudaism has always been an evidence based religion so God and Jesus have always talked to the head and the Heart and after all He made thenm both see John 3.16 for a challenge to you.And then choose you this day whom you will serve.There are consequences to believing anything but none more so than this.The God of the Bible loves you, no other God does.Evolution does not giveatoss either way,you live, you dieand its all as if you had never been born and there is no difference and what you think of as personality does not exist for there is inescapably no basis for believing that or it being important ever apart from God.With God it is ad ifferent,entirely different story.Ask God honestly into your hheart or ask Him honestly if He exists.Those that seek with all their hearts will find Him.
Hi Highlander,i must say your paragraph certainly rang a bell with my own beliefs.I'm not a christian in the sense that my central focus of worship is not Jesus and i believe that jesus is not God,but maybe 2nd in command.I am an evolutionist however,and believe that the heavenly father created all these wonderful scientific and biological laws/processes for a reason.Rather like me setting up an automatic cleaning programme on my computer.I think it's possible that the evolutionary process,along with many other influences,may take the world towards utopia and is all part of the Fathers plan.Just a stray theory i have.Not sure if it's true.What do you think?
THis discussion is rooted in the Christian definition of what God is. There are other definitions. The question rests on understanding what "reality" actually is. If we think that "reality" is only what is instantly visible to our senses, then we may miss underlying truths. Can you "see" a magnetic field? No, but you can see the results of its organising information. We are collectively trained in limited viewpoints - both the scientific materialist ones and the traditional religious ones. Both have aspects of truth. To bring them together you have to take a wider approach. Read Erwin Laszlo, Lynne Mctaggart and Jon Freeman. Read Bruce Lipton and Candace Pert. There is more happening than most people are aware of, and it is exciting.
Could you put those books into our Library please? You only mention authors and not book titles (or are the names associated with seminal works that we are all supposed to be aware of?)
Please see: [God's Amplified Book Inventory] in discussions list - for the link.
Again it's taken me a while to reply. It's been a manic week.
Yes, you summed up what I said well enough.
You said: "Since I read your post, I've been wondering what intellectual (or other) barriers would make one reject such an offer"
Why do you see these as barriers? Reasoning isn't a barrier. It's a way (and the best way, to my mind) of thinking. The converse of this is, why are you so eager to run to the relationship with a god that probably doesn't exist? Why is there nothing making you say, "Hang on, this is a bit iffy". You are accepting that God exists and that a relationship with that God is worthwhile. Why?
You said: "A child accepts a parent on the basis of the parental love they've experienced."
The child's parents can be shown to exist. For one thing, the child itself is evidence that at least two other people exist. Also, children can be fooled. They accept things at face value. They're gullible (without the negative connotation). They don't look into why their parents love them or even whether that love is real. As adults we can de more discerning. We investigate the causes and reasons for things. We can try to establish whether something is real or not. If I were to say that I have a nuclear fusion power generator in my basement, would you accept my word or would you ask for more, indeed any, evidence that I'm telling the truth? If you asked and I then said, "Ah, but it's an invisible generator that only I can use", would that reassure you or would you be thinking that I'm making it up? I hope that you ask for verification of my claim to have experience of a nuclear fusion power generator, and, when I couldn't produce any, to be sceptical about its existence. Why should I treat your claim to have experienced God any differently?
You said: "And I would be surprised if someone entered a friendship or relationship on the basis of a snazzy presentation."
Never heard of a chat-up line? Perhaps the Bible is a long-winded (and somewhat boring) chat-up line that God is using to get you into bed (metaphorically thinking, I hope). The point is that people do go for slick presentation. Without it there'd be no advertising and marketing industry. And the world would also be a happier place...
You said: "If God is full of knowledge and love, then people should be able to experience this."
But this is just wishful thinking, a comforting fantasy. It's the same as little boys dreaming of being heroes and little girls dreaming of being princesses (two sweeping generalisations, of course). People like to feel loved and wanted and comforted (not Ray Comfort-ed, of course. That would be just creepy) but this doesn't need a fictional god. If the biblical God myth were true, then He made a race solely for the purpose of loving and worshipping Him. Have you never asked why He would do this? To then back it up with threats kind of undermines the whole `love me' thing. Anyway, it's a weird sort of thing to do. If God is "full of knowledge and love", why does He need to be worshipped?
You said: "The Gospels record..."
You should probably know that I don't accept the Bible as evidence of anything except the existence of the Bible. If we were to accept that the Bible was truly the word of God, I would want to know how God, allegedly all-knowing, could get some of the things in the Bible so spectacularly wrong. Also, why couldn't he have put something in that would have shown without a doubt that someone other than contemporary humans wrote it? The aforementioned nuclear fusion and instructions on how to do it would have useful right about now (see, these posts aren't just thrown together you know... :D). Why only write about stuff that the people of the time would have known and understood (or not as it turns out)?
You said: "As it is, there is a lot said and done in the name of Christ that, unsurprisingly, turns people off. Agree?"
Hard to disagree. But then, if people went around teaching all that Christ said, that wouldn't be a good thing either as he had some pretty strange ideas at times...
You said: "it seems to me there is too much in nature not to be humble enough to acknowledge the prospect that God exists"
Even if being humble is the proper response to nature, acknowledging God doesn't follow on from this. Why not instead acknowledge that nature is a wonderful thing and we are part of it?
You said: "The Gospels record that even in the face of all the evidence Christ produced"
And that would be what evidence precisely? Remembering that the Bible isn't evidence...
You said: "But I think that disciples of Christ have a responsibility to demonstrate God's love and power in every interaction, so that when others ask themselves: do I really want to be like that person: the answer is yes! That's how people come to know God and Christ."
Why not just be a nice, kind person? Why bring a god into it?
You said: "But I think that disciples of Christ have a responsibility to demonstrate God's love and power in every interaction, so that when others ask themselves: do I really want to be like that person: the answer is yes! That's how people come to know God and Christ."
Sam: Why not just be a nice, kind person? Why bring a god into it?
David: Let me jump on the bandwagon by focusing on your last question: Do you think people who commit acts of unspeakable cruelty consider themselves anything but nice and kind (and therefore just)? Is religion BY ITSELF the antidote to knowing right from wrong? Hardly! But I don't often hear people who consider themselves "religious" claim that. Yet I hear time and time again that empathy, rationality, and subjecting everything to one's internal moral compass are enough to make people decent. Can someone please tell me what makes one's feelings, internal compass, or ability to ration (without straying into rationalization) so more reliable than traditions of thousands of years? Really, who is the believer, here?
"Can someone please tell me what makes one's feelings, internal compass, or ability to ration (without straying into rationalization) so more reliable than traditions of thousands of years?"
God.
(but they just don't like to give it the name 'God' and call it 'internal compass', but God doesn't mind being called an 'internal compass' if that helps them :)
"Can someone please tell me what makes one's feelings, internal compass, or ability to ration (without straying into rationalization) so more reliable than traditions of thousands of years?"
God.
And then suggested that God was just another name for internal compas.
Gabriela, I would suggest you are stretching the definition of God here. I presume you are referring to "A being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions." This is different from my definition of an internal moral compas.
I have difficulty accepting this definition of a God, as it reduces the mystery of the cosmos to a "thing" (i.e. a being). It suggests that the majesty of the universe needs a creator (what happens if, as science seems to be suggesting - our universe may be just one of a multiverse of universes - just as it earlier showed that the Earth was just one of a number of planets, our sun was just one of untold trillions of stars, our galaxy was just one of untold trillions of galaxies, our universe may just be one of trillions of universes). I perfer to wonder at the mytery of a larger reality than someone who is just a perfected human being writ larger.
yes exactly why accept a god which is not real- you should not however the God who reveals himself to us in creation and in life is real, only when you chose to accept him will you be able to experience how real he is in your daily life and experiences, the fact that you are asking these questions is only evidence that your heart is searching for the answer, that is a natural human desire as we have been made in the image of God, only when you try to suppress this feeling will you convince yourself otherwise and enter a delusion of your own making. God wants to have a loving relationship with you, why else do you think he sent his son to die for us all?
My definition of God agrees with your 'internal compass' and with an infinite of universes, no problem, the compass will still mysteriously be there and guide you.
"as it reduces the mystery of the cosmos to a "thing"
Now... come on, how shall I understand this? Did it not all come from a very very very reduced 'thing' ? Why would it reduce the mystery? I think the mystery is even greater. Can you imagine? What if all the universes came from that 'internal compass' thing that knows everything and guides everything? Wouldn't that be a great mystery?
You said: "Do you think people who commit acts of unspeakable cruelty consider themselves anything but nice and kind (and therefore just)?"
I think that you can consider yourself just without considering yourself as nice and kind. There are people who do things that they think are just but that they know aren't good actions. To take a fictional example, Jack Bauer from '24'. I know that he is an exaggerated character but I suspect that there are those like him who are ends-justify-the-means sorts of people.
You said: "Is religion BY ITSELF the antidote to knowing right from wrong?"
No, not necessarily. Did I claim that it was?
You said: "Yet I hear time and time again that empathy, rationality, and subjecting everything to one's internal moral compass are enough to make people decent."
Good.
You said: "Can someone please tell me what makes one's feelings, internal compass, or ability to ration (without straying into rationalization) so more reliable than traditions of thousands of years?"
Tradition is a bad reason to do anything. "But we've always done it like that", people say. This ignores the possibility that there is a better way of doing things and that circumstances change. The traditional way may have once been a good way to do it, but that may no longer be true and it may even be that it's no longer necessary to do that thing at all. Traditions are fixed. They're inflexible. They don't take individual circumstances into account. A more humanistic approach through empathy and rationality is flexible. It takes into account the circumstances at the time and the principle that you don't impact negatively on other people's lives. To use an example that hasn't cropped up for, oh must be days now, contrast the traditional religious views on homosexuality with modern humanistic rational views.
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