So James got the brunt of a theological discourse last night in the wake of the movie "Slumdog Millionaire". great movie, by the way, I highly recommend it.
Yeah, I'm still annoyed at God, but we're working on our relationship. It's understood that we're going to disagree sometimes, but we can still be friends.
I realized that all my education and life lessons haven't done anything to disturb the basic rock of my childhood faith, which admittedly was pretty basic.
God is my friend, and God loves me. That's it. That's all I've got.
There's a lot else that's come and gone and that I've wrestled with, but those to things, thankfully, remain. I think I can add one more:
God feels this way about everyone.
But as I'm not God, I don't know that one for sure. It's a hunch.
But as for the theological whirlwind that attacked James last night, the thoughts went like this:
The world is broken, so broken.
God created the world.
Q. 1 Did God create a broken world or did humanity break it?
Suppossing humanity broke the world (ala sin). did God create humanity sinful or did we rebel and do it ourselves?
Supposing God did NOT create humanity sinful, we rebelled, then how did we manage to rebel?
God created us with the ability to rebel and be sinful.
So why did God create us to be breakable and sinful?
Q. 2. Can God sin?
Supposing that no, God can not sin because sin is outside the mind of God; sin is the opposite of God's will, then did God sin anyway in the creation of something that God knew would rebel and sin in of itself? Did God create sin by creating the creation that would create it itself?
Q. 3. Are we rightly to be judged for being sinful, if we cannot help it?
Oooo, that last one's a doozy.
Thank goodness we're still friends.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Here's what I believe--take it or leave it.
In the Bible light and darkness are created and/or separated 2 times. I believe the 1st instance is a symbolic representation of the presentation of choice.
If you choose good, you will receive good consequences. Imagine if you always chose good. Eventually you would acquire the power of righteous consequences.
I don't think Groundhog Day was far off when Bill Murray said, "Perhaps God knows everything because He's just been around so long."
God's power is in his integrity. The elements trust and obey him because he will not lie. His word is his power, quite literally.
That being said, in order for his power to mean anything--he has to have had a choice. Otherwise, there is no power in righteousness. We have no direct control over our own consequences.
If we choose righteousness, we choose the consequences that come with that. If we choose wickedness, we will suffer those consequences. Like the laws of nature, God cannot keep us from suffering the natural consequences of our choices. He is empowered by these consequences.
Our ability to choose right from wrong is what makes us children of God. We inherit from God the right to choose. This choice introduces evil and sadness, but without this choice, we wouldn't have the joy of choosing righteousness either. We would simply exist without either joy or misery. And that's no life.
Righteousness cannot exist without wickedness. We do not choose blindly. We might choose blindly as small children, but as we approach adulthood, we find ourselves consciously choosing those things that will bring us happiness and that will bring joy to those we love. Or we choose to hurt ourselves and others. We cannot choose the good over the evil if the evil does not exist.
I don't know if I'm making any sense.
In a word, Choices=Good.
Post a Comment