There’s a song that says something to the effect that he loves us the way we are but too much to leave us that way. Do you have an issue with that, too? No one said anything about deserving salvation. That is your false projection.
How do you interpret “for the joy set before him”? That joy is us, if, and only if, we have been adopted, undeservedly, into his family. (“Co-heirs” should sound familiar. Does it?)
Nope. I quite agree with that. I often say that hell is where we find our hearts desire and heaven is where we find God’s desire for us.
Ok. I could have got it wrong.
Hebrews 12:2? Well the first thing to do is to put it in context.
Hebrews 12 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. 4 In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
This asks us to compare our struggle with our own sin to what Christ endured because of our sins. And same way Christ could look forward to a mission accomplish so can we look forward to what our own victory against sin would bring… namely a closer relationship with God, sharing in His goodness to enrich our lives eternally.
Apparently you think this somehow speaks to what I have reacted to so I guess I should take another look at the discussion myself and see if I understand it better.
From your first post in this thread you have been arguing that our identity and truest self is found not in the choices we make as I claim but affections as you put it. It looks like a typical attack on the reality of free will, as if we cannot choose our affections and these determine our choices. I have heard identical arguments from others using other words such as “want” or “desire” instead of “affections.”
So then you turn this on Jesus to say that enlightened self interest is why Jesus suffered on the cross. And thus you claim that even God cannot do anything selfless and instead of dying for our sake Jesus was really dying for what he could get out of it. It is the most offensive treatment of the gospel I have ever heard. And to my objections you replied that “He sees us for what we will be and are becoming, and not for what we are.”
And I admit added 2+2 to get 4, thinking that you were basically saying that God elects and foreordains the salvation of people because of foreknowledge of what they would become. This very much sounded to me like a gospel of salvation by works of the future, which is certainly not an idea I had ever heard before, but is certainly one I would object to. I object to every theology which teaches foreordained salvation as a blatant justification for an attitude of entitlement – treating salvation as a something which you can own for yourself. And that is not something I would ever approve of.
Enlightened self-interest is not selfish. It sounds like this is all about what you approve of. It’s not.
God created the universe and us in it to increase his joy… and ours.
It most certainly is a “me me me” all the way kind of thinking. And no, not everybody thinks that way. There really is such a thing as doing things completely for the sake of others. And unlike you, I VERY much think that God thinks this way. There is no enlightened self-interest in the case of God because He already has everything including infinite joy. Therefore what God does is not about getting anything but about giving.
Well I am sorry but I am certainly not going to believe something just because you say so. So yes what I will believe very much depends upon what I approve of as consistent with what I read in the Bible.
God created the universe to support the process of life. God created life because He has so much to give, so much that He will create others to receive what He has to give.
Can you not own the fact that you are your father’s Father’s child? Or is that not what you mean by ‘own’?
Enlightened self-interest is not a way of thinking, it is a way of being. It is the innate understanding that by helping others you are fulfilling your design, so to speak. The thief, selfishly, ultimately hurts himself more than he hurts his victim, It is the opposite of that.
My take is more Christmassy. 
To be sure, enlightened self-interest is better than unenlightened self-interest. I simply disagree that this is the best we can do or that people/God cannot be entirely selfless.
I can accept that.
Merry Christmas to everyone.
I would say the “me” that defines myself is definitely outside myself as it is held in the minds of others, not in my own mind. I can try to shape the “me” in their minds but can only hope that at some point that me becomes almost indistinguishable from Jesus as to be a servant to mankind as thriving to be identical to Christ, e.g. the perfect child of God must be my aim in order to become part of God again.
Nowadays I understand the question of an individual afterlife as being a problem in the concept as it would mean the afterlife would involve me still being recognised for myself, e.g. something that is distinct from God, thus being a “special” or “individual” part of God.
That is awful!
What other people think about you is definitely not you. People can be very very stupid.
At the very least I would hope that can change this to what God thinks about you!
It is the whole point that I am already in existence in God’s mind way before I am born. You may find it awful to be defined by the people around you, but you better face up to reality. The question is how much weight you attribute to the person the defines you and how you think about them.
Your reaction makes me wonder if you feel lot of people hate you to feel that they think so bad about you and it worries me. you can not see yourself but only see your reflection / image through others. If you think they are so stupid - try to enlighten them,don’t write them off
It is not reality. It is a complete and utter lie. It is the lie of racism, misogyny and every other evil thing in the world and I will fight all them to my breath. THAT is who I am.
I don’t think so but I don’t care and I frankly never have. There is no truth in what sinful people think. There is no truth in either their praises (and I have had plenty of those to the point I hated such empty comments) or in their condemnation either. I am willing to guarantee that most celebrities understand this better than anyone.
It is not writing them off to ignore what they think and remain true to yourself.
I don’t believe it. Characters in a book are neither conscious nor alive. They are nothing but inanimate objects. Though if people participate in their own creation as I believe then it seems likely that they can also make themselves into such things by their own choice and perhaps they find that comfortable. But I do not call that life.
Body - man made from the substance of this world (dust)/material.
Spirit - image of God/breath from God and mankind became a living soul.
Sprit of man knows the things of man, while Spirit of God knows the things of God.
The works of the flesh are outline in the bible, as are the fruits of the Holy Spirit. 
So you are a unicorn and if we don’t all agree you are a unicorn it is just because of our misogyny and every other evil thing in the world because that is who you are.
Got any concept of how you do a reality check apart from checking out your own opinion and fighting it to you your last breath?
sorry but if you do not care what they think about what you think to be true you have written them off.
So if you do not believe in an omniscient God, what kind of God do you believe in? One that does not know you because you were a surprise to him? Or do you think he is an inanimate object in a book?
I believe in an omniscient God. I just don’t think that means the future is already written. Those are two completely separate and different things. It is a scientific fact that things can exist in a superposition of possibilities. To know the future is to know those possibilities only. This is the only thing which is logically coherent if you believe in a God who interacts with us. You cannot interact with the characters in a book which is already written.
And obviously you didn’t understand my comment about racism and misogyny. These are cases where other people think things about people of a different race or sex which isn’t true. We who know they are not true therefore condemn these things. But you apparently think it is all true. At least that is what you said. But perhaps you don’t see the logical consequences of your rather bizarre claims.
Guess it is incomprehensible to you to figure that God already knew 2million years ago what you will do in 2 days because he already know what happens to you tomorrow morning that will cause you to want to do something tomorrow evening that will have a consequence the following morning just because you think it makes him incapable of interacting with you today.
You must have a strange concept of time - and God - to think he could not do that any time. Are you sure you have a logically coherent view of a God that can interact with you in a timely manner? Do you think he could not have known that he was going to send Jesus either because if he knew the future already at the beginning he would have known that we f***ed up and should have given up there and than?
If you cannot accept your existence in a book who’s characters are already written based in the interaction that has already happened because you want to have reality according to your own wishes as in convincing God what to do according to your will you will fail reality. Guess you have to learn to trust God after all and that he saw that it was good already. In that lies our only hope.
But then you could say that it makes you only the character in a book you do not want to be part of because you do not like the author and how he interacts with his characters. Could it be that you want to be an author in your own right writing a better book?
You guess wrong. What you suggest is easily and perfectly comprehensible to me. I just read a book and I knew exactly what was going to happen before I even started reading. Even if the story covered 2 million years I could still have already known what was going to happen from the start. That is because it is just book and none of the characters in that book are alive or have any consciousness of anything. So for me that is sufficient evidence that we are not characters in a book which is already written. Instead we have every reason to believe that what is shown to us in quantum physics about things being in a superposition of possibilities is how things really are. But… I guess all this quantum physics stuff is incomprehensible to you.
I am a physicist, and what we have learned in physics about time and space is indeed VERY strange to most people. They have this mistaken idea that the universe is like a movie film with a stream of snapshots following one after the other. In such a view you can talk about what is happening on Titan right now by just looking at Titan the snapshot representing now. But this picture is incorrect. Right now on Titan is a period of time which is between 2 and 3 hours long. And the farther away it is the longer that period of time is. The universe is not a movie film where you can just look at a snapshot some time in the future and it is not a book where you can just turn to a later page. The objective physical evidence disagrees with such a picture of things completely with everyday measurable consequences.
God is all knowing and all powerful but the truth is that people have no comprehension of what this really means for they are like children who equate this all to magic imagining it means that they can have whatever they want. But that is just a dream where nothing has to make the slightest bit of sense because it isn’t real. And those people in the books and movies, it may be hard for a child to understand, but they aren’t real either.
No I choose life and measurable reality over the book and dream world that you are describing.
you contradict yourself. It is your denial of giving God the freedom to have already found out what is happening in your future as it would deny you of your free will and make you a puppet character. Just because someone would know how you react does not deny you of acting out of your free will. The whole point is that what for you is a sequence of time is instantaneous for the outside observer. One the one hand you seem to get it but then you also deny it.
Sounds more like “I reserve myself the option of free will that I reserve myself the magic of free will so I can have whatever I want” as otherwise I am not alive or conscious. I would think of that more down to the limitation of looking at a book and it’s character in 2 dimensions only 4th dimension, which is probably an analogy to the body and spirit dimension
The whole point is that antequated view of time has been conclusively proven to be incorrect. It is not a sequence of snapshots at all. To both see the future and to be able to do anything requires that the future not be written already. God has the freedom to do both because He sees not a future already finished but an open future of possibilities to choose from. And giving us free will means that He gives us the ability to choose possibilities also and that is what makes us different from the characters in books and movies. It is claiming that the future is already written which makes God powerless in the world and takes away all life and consciousness from us as well.
No it is the difference between looking at the universe as a dead inanimate object or as something alive with possibilities.
That is what happens when you become so obsessed with power and control. You leave no room for life and freedom of others. Everything becomes objects in a dead world. I do not believe in such a pathetic god. I believe in a God who chooses love and freedom over power and control and demonstrated this to us discarding knowledge and power to become a helpless human infant to grow up and walk among us that we might have more life and freedom ourselves.
The whole point is that whatever antiquated view time of time you’re worried about is irrelevant. God is independent of your view of time.
Both predestination and free will are taught in scripture and you can deny it until you are blue in the face, but it does not change the fact. And no, predestination does not make us robots.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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