There is a big differece between letting someone die (closing His eyes) and making someone die
If you truly believe that God creates calamity and destruction I do not want to know Him
Fortunately that is not the God I know.
Richard
Job knew him. So did Corrie Ten Boom.
Everyone dies.
There you go again saying scripture and God are wrong.
Just how far are you going to take the scriptural view of God?
Scripture would claim that God made Hitler kill 6 million Jews, the same way that The Babylonians took over Israel under God’s control.
Scripture would claim that God is controlling Putin and making him invade the Ukraine.
You are also claiming that God controls every single illness, so that the recent Covid calamity was at the complete comtrol of God.
Are you going to tell the mother who has just buried her son that God killed him?
Are you going to tell the parent of a child who fell into a river and drowned that God pushed them?
Are you going to claim that all the hospitals in the world are working against God’s providence because they are trying to heal what God inflicted?
Where is free will? Are you under the complete control of God?
Do you know the difference between permission and control?
Do you know the difference between God not preventing and God making it happen?
IOW
Are you so convinced about your view of Scripture that you assign every evil deed to the purpose of God?
If you are accusing me of denying such a thing then I am guilty as charged!
Richard
PS I have never said that God is wrong!
God created a universe so that we could live here - also that we Would live here. God created a universe.
Oh, yeah, and God created an actual universe so immense that light itself may never reach all the way across it. Most of the universe is so far away that light from it will never get here.
Purpose? Genesis (when read as theology) makes it clear that we are the end-all and be-all. We are souls for God to love.
God is Love.
It was the film Contact that suggested that if we were the only living planet in the Univers it would be a waste of space
Unless we ever reach the dizzy advances of Star Trek (et al) I guess we will never know.
The definition of God would allow for Him to encompass anything so it is still academic speculation.
Richard
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Our “instinctive interests” are evolutionary mechanisms (Dawkins’ “selfish gene”) that, like illness and death, are encoded in our genome and transmitted by DNA replication. In that sense, the fact that “we are flawed” (i.e.: submitted to illness, death, and concupiscence) is clearly “a generationally inherited ting”, isn’t it?
So unless you are going to claim God controls the minutia of evolution, God has lost hcontrol of creation.
Ooh a virus. That’s brilliant. God planted a virus into the gennome! Something that wasn’t there originally and the only antiviruse is Christ.
Death existed long before the first human. Otherwise the earth would have got overcrowded millions of years ago… Assigning actual death to sin is just ludicrous.Spiritual death is the loss of innocence so that you are able to commit sins.
Richard
Only if you redefine “generationally inherited”. Every living thing pursues its instinctive interests. It is in the nature of life itself, and could not be otherwise.
All right, but every living being inherits “its instinctive interests” encoded in the genome, the same way as it inherits genetic flaws causing illness, aging clocks, and mortality timers. In this sense the fact that humans are submitted to illness, death, and concupiscence is biologically transmitted from generation to generation.
Does this mean that the divine life in the Holy Trinity is ruled by “instinctive interests” and “could not be otherwise”?
Even if I accept the genetic “inheritance” of instinctive interests, I do not accept the genetic inheritance of the guilt of one particular sin committed by an ancestor, a doctrine which dominated Western Christianity for centuries and which led to predestinarian extremes like Calvinism and Jansenism.
I’m certainly not saying that “the divine life in the Holy Trinity” is governed by instinctive interests, but none of us currently fully lives that divine life.
As I’ve said, the Eastern Church never accepted the “original sin” doctrine as proposed by St. Augustine, and they never experienced movements like Calvinism.
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I fully agree; in that we find common ground!
Now, I further claim:
It is God, who has created the world where life evolved ruled by mechanisms of “genetic inheritance” that transmit illness, death, and instinctive interests.
Nonetheless, when God made humankind, God called and ordered human beings to share eternal divine life.
And divine life excludes illness and death, and is not governed by instinctive interests, as you rightly claim:
So it is fitting to assume, that in the beginning, God endowed human beings with “original grace” to overrule the “flawed state” where the rest of creation was.
This said, you further rightly claim:
So, the obvious question is:
For which reason are we currently in the flawed state we are?
I would like to propose that we discuss this particular question and postpone for later other interesting aspects you refer to, like “the doctrine proposed by St. Augustine”, Calvinism, Jansenism, Eastern Church.
That assumes that we are actually in that state. By what are you diagnosing? The Bible?
If so then approx 80% of the world population would claim your diagnosis invalid.
And even though I am a Christian I would be one of them.
Richard
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“So unless you are going to claim God controls the minutia of evolution, God has lost control of creation.”
Does not follow. The allegation comforts people who wish to read Genesis as fact, when it is theology.
Consider the first three verses: verses 1 and 3 say, to a modern reader, "I AM invented time, space, matter, and energy (light) - when the age of science arises it will understand this as “the Big Bang.”
Verse 2 attaches the narrative to the extant view of how the world began, i.e. as vast and featureless water. Genesis addresses the reader with that extant understanding as a platform on which to show God as all-creating, almighty, purposeful, intentional, holy, and seeking the companionship of Children.
Days Two and Four place the rest of the visible universe beneath a blanket of the original waters, while Creation features Planet Earth orbiting the nearest star at a radius of ~ 93million miles.
Genesis portrays “kinds” as static, when in fact they are more like a movie, not single images.
God knows all; God’s intentions cannot be overcome. God’s control need not be direct, one nucleobase at a time. Consider whether life itself “learns on the job” and takes 3.8+ billion years to proceed from a first cell to the current, vast, astounding Tree of Life - - or whether this is actually God on a grand learning curve [[ which is what Intelligen Design does. Ahem. ]]
You need to get out more.
TV and the press in general concentrate on the negative.
With your your view point I cannot see how this world could possibly be out of (God’s) control
Richard
Oh, I am such a puppet on strings, and so is everyone else. 
There’s an outside chance (
), nay, pretty much a certainty, that you have seen me say there is a wonderful mystery in how God in his timefulness relates to us constrained by sequential time. It should maybe be terrifying to some.
Don’t forget to read your Bible – you have missed or have and are denying certain truths during the tenure of your lay preachership.
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Yes, that is what you are saying. I am glad you find it amusing.
Your views do not confront this at all. You are claiming omnipresence not omniscience. It is all about power and control.
I never do. I just understand it a little different to you. Whether either is correct is not something we can discern.
My preaching is in line with the churches I represent. I could not teach what you believe even if I wanted to. The closest belief system to yours is Calvinism and that has been deemed heretical. I preach freedom in Christ. There is no freedom if God is holding your reigns so tight and blinkering your vision to avoid confronting the cruelties of this world.
I preach that we are responsible for the building of the Kingdom. You seem to think that God has got it in hand and therefore does not need us.
I preach that we have a choice in what we do or say. You seem to think that it is all preordained.
I preach that if we do not act, it may not happen “How can people hear if the are not told…”
You claim that God tell what is needed and it doesn’t matter to the rest. Their fate is already sealed.
I preach that the future is not written in stone. You think that even the next rain shower is preordained.
I am preaching against Original Sin today. You would probably think that heretical.
But, I preach that we are responsible for our own actions instead of blaiming Adam, or even God.
I have no problem with what I preach, and neither do the churches I represent. I Preach the Gospel of Christ. I preach HIs saving act that means all are forgiven, instead of all our guilty.
I preach a Loving God who weeps over every minute suffering. You seem to think He dishes it out like a canteen dishes out lunch. Except there is only one menu. Like it or lump it.
Enough
Richard.
I acknowledge there is a mystery in the interface between God’s omnitemporality and our time-boundedness. I don’t know how it works but I know that it works. What kind of confronting do you think you are demanding?
And? Just because his omniscience is not mentioned does not mean I deny it! Good grief. Does my not mentioning all of his other attributes mean I don’t ‘claim them’?
What is all about power and control? What are you talking about? (Maybe you should be talking to @mitchellmckain – he talks a lot about power and control.)
You never do what? Never forget or never read your Bible? At your age, I will definitely disbelieve the former, and I can certainly believe the later based on some of the things you say!
So when was the last time you read John 17?
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