Just getting caught up in this thread and as an atheist myself I find your POV interesting. I personally don’t press the challenge you outline. I think that tends to come from people who were more fully immersed in Christianity than I ever was. From my scant acquaintance with Christian theology what seems most noteworthy is the detail with which some Christians claim to know the nature, limits, preferences and intentions of God.
Whatever God may be, I’m pretty sure whatever we can conceive of will be too limiting. But that doesn’t mean that reality must be God’s plaything. To impose the idea that God can or does just poof things into existence is just more distortion imposed by our own limitations. Whatever it is which gives rise to God belief, trying to paint His picture with our limited palette is a fool’s mission. The first thing anyone should say is we just don’t know, and then go ahead and venture your hopes and beliefs but keep in mind your own limitations. But then, that is the way it seems to an atheist. Without belief that the Bible is a message for us from whatever it is that God may be, one cannot be a Christian. So I’m not one. That doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes sense something more and deeper going on. But it is possible to live with a mystery, in fact it adds interest.
Ah. Well, they are justifiable biblically. The references cited do that – Piper bleeds scripture. Of course there are assumptions involved, Christian ones.
Yeah, that’s probably right. It’s one of those “I’m trying to score on you by demonstrating a contradiction in your view” maneuvers. But it’s a fairly pointy one, at that. I think folks who pull it out tend to either have an axe to grind or are looking to validate the superiority of their own perspective. If you play that game long enough you eventually realize it’s just that – a game, and the only wins you get aren’t because your position is True, but because you happened to be more skilled than your opponent.
I didn’t bring it up to score on @Daniel_Fisher. This whole thread started because @Scott_Coyne had a pain point (pun intended) with respect to EC where the problem of suffering is concerned. I’ve felt that pain, and in my case traced it to certain assumptions about God. I started to question if those assumptions were justified, and realized that perhaps they weren’t. Without those assumptions, things seemed to make more sense. I offered that perspective to Scott and the thread – not to argue, but merely to help those who might find it helpful. Daniel, on the other hand, seems to find that things work better for him with those assumptions, and I wanted to better understand his take.
I certainly agree that Christians want to talk a lot about the nature, limits, preferences, and intentions of God. And, yeah, we probably take it farther than we justifiably should sometimes. But saying that painting a picture of God is a fool’s mission or that we just don’t know is… well… another species of the same animal. It’s implicitly assuming that God won’t (or can’t) help us along with that picture. The central thesis of Christianity is precisely this: that Jesus Christ was the human revelation of God, and that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. We are limited in what we can know about God, certainly, but we claim there are things we can know. To reject that possibility a priori is itself to make a claim about God with no greater epistemological grounding.
I’m not looking to please him, leastwise not with flattery. Nor would I put him on a pedestal. But I’d always give him my honest feedback and listen well to any offered. I’m not eager to know God as men have decided he must be. There is definitely something more, but I’ll let him fill me in on his own schedule. Honestly though, I don’t think God is like a person. No where near that petty.
But you know I recognize your genuine concern for me and I don’t take it any other way. But I’ll leave it here unless you want to PM something more.
I think I’ve had a decent exposure to Piper’s perspective, but personally I haven’t found it helpful. God is happy in himself? God does everything for his own glory? I don’t know what all that means. I feel like I do when I see people doing something that they all are really enjoying, but I try it and get… nothing. Like drinking Scotch or something. Must be an acquired taste.
A happy Father and Son? I don’t see what you don’t see. Being the most valuable thing there is, a treasure in a field or a priceless pearl? He would be being dishonest and accepting of lies if he allowed anything else to be thought of as more valuable.
Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid.
If one thinks there is something more, I suppose one needs to have some conception of it if only to fit it in with the rest of his life. So a “fool’s mission” was probably a mite harsh. I admit I have my own way of thinking about it which is no more privileged than anyone else’s except that it makes more sense to me. But I appreciate that you were able to back off some assumptions and find a better accommodation when the old assumptions no longer fit. I would hope to be able to do the same.
I do appreciate that about Christianity. They take this difficult to pin down something more and make a prominent place for it in their way of life. I find that hopeful. When people like you and others here continue to affirm it with the transparency you’ve shown, I find it even more hopeful. However, I can’t help but note that your kind seems exceedingly rare. For everyone who holds their faith as you do, it seems there is a multitude who cling to certainty about minutia with little redeeming insight. Still I’m glad to see and acknowledge that the Christian way can and does work for some.
If I have to understand the Trinity in order to understand how God can be happy in Himself, then I’m screwed.
For something to be the “most valuable thing”, there must be other things less valuable than it. You don’t just “value” something. You are implicitly valuing it more than something else. God values himself more than… what?
That’s fine. Lamborghini is proud of not being all the other guys who aren’t Lamborghini. But when you’re talking about the self-existent foundation of being… proud of not being… what?
Look… Like I said, I get that people find this language meaningful and helpful. I’m happy for y’all… Really! But I’ve tried thinking in those terms, and it didn’t make anything better for me.
) to my comment above, not even any flak. Do your remarks apply?
And valuing and promoting its brand?