Replying to Avatar Jac

You are really tempting me to dig out my leather bound, Jesus text in red NIV Bible, but the point was to look at the dogma not from the perspective of a believer in the dogmatic box, but as a skeptic.

1. In no way are women portrayed in the Bible as equal. New and Old Testament, show me where god invited women to clergy.

2. So if man is free as god is free in his own image we can choose to abolish the influence of satan, or even to subdue the angel of darkness, but wow, that would be heaven on earth wouldn’t it? Joining the Jehovah Witness theology soon? You’ll still have to wait as that doesn’t happen in their book until after Jesus scoops up his cultists, sends those with unforgiven inequities to hell, and remanufactures the earth into heaven.

3. How in the world can the choices of a creation be disappointing to an omnipotent being? This would insinuate that god respects us, but frankly the guy can’t even bring himself to communicate with us directly. This doesn’t answer the question, why would an omnipotent being even allow Lucifer to exist? Even balanced good and evil theologies make no sense, the only higher power I can even start to believe exists from an intellectual standpoint is one that is pure evil. The tortured soul deity is the least plausible of all of them.

4. Ok, Jesus spends 30 years living in the flesh of man, or was it god? Anyway, 30 years and a crucifixion makes god sympathetic to the woes of a creation tortured generation after generation by Lucifer, a being the father allows to persist? Really? What kind of masochist believes that? Mock beat and kill him? Poor baby. I’ll do far worse if I ever get the chance, death won’t even be on the menu. Here, take the good news of the gospel and suffer some more. I, as god could fix all of it in a flash, but nah, Eve and Adam ate the apple so you’re all screwed until I decide it’s time to only torture a few of you, those who didn’t sufficiently kiss my ass, for eternity. No man, if you could choose to not suffer, or as an even more powerful analogy, prevent your children from suffering you would, but this god you believe in as god or Jesus is an asshole through and through. He watches suffering every day, has the power to stop it supposedly, and does nothing.

Thanks for taking the time to respond, I have no desire to disrupt or disturb your faith, but frankly if you step in the ring with me you have to expect a dialogue will ensue. Fair enough?
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MichaelJ 2y ago

I appreciate the responses! You needn't worry about disturbing my faith, but I do appreciate some dialogue. It definitely seems to me that your understanding of the faith is incomplete, so I'll respond to your points and questions further and perhaps we can have further productive discussion, though I certainly don't claim to know all the answers.

1. Regarding women and men being equal, why is it that being clergy is the criterion for equality? That is a rather arbitrary measuring stick to choose.

2. Man is free today to choose God and reject Satan's influence, and if everyone did that, that would indeed bring about the Kingdom of Heaven on earth; I totally agree with that assessment. The thing is, even though we could choose God, we still don't, so here we are.

3. It doesn't follow logically that, just because God is omnipotent, He would have no reason to be saddened at the choices of the free beings He created. If He wants us to act freely, and we do stupid stuff despite all His help towards the good, well, just making us be good would override our freedom and kind of defeat the whole point. Evil exists because God respects our freedom (and that of the angels, too, they were created as free, rational beings).

4. As I said above, if God wills us to be free beings, then that means He allows us to choose evil, and, of course, evil will bring about suffering. God could eliminate suffering, but that would also eliminate freedom. We're all on Nostr, so I'd imagine we all agree that freedom is pretty high on the hierarchy of values. Is allowing freedom worth it if the possibility of evil is a consequence?

I guess a question is, if you were God, what would you do differently? You want human beings to be free, but they abuse that freedom by cutting themselves off from your friendship and doing all manner of unspeakable evil to each other. Sure, you can repair all that evil, but that undoes the whole work of creating free beings in your own image in the first place; coerced love is no love at all.

As I said before, the thing God does is He suffers with us. If you can't fix a problem, sometimes the next best thing is just solidarity. Maybe that's not satisfying to you right now, but I'd challenge you to come up with anything better.

I believe that God wills the salvation and eternal happiness of every person, but He's not going to force it on us. The thing is, though, if we reject God in favor of our own devices, we tend to drag ourselves down even to the point of creating Hell on earth, and human history is more than sufficient proof of that.

It seems that you're really mad at God, or at least of some caricature of God. You're approaching it as a skeptic, and I'm answering as best I can by trying to at least provide a more complete picture of what the Church really professes. I don't expect to change you're mind, but I do hope we can come away understanding each other's positions better, at least.

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