Joshua Harris leaves Christianity?

WoolC · August 3, 2019

9 hours ago, Faith-manor said:

As for again the concept of Satan or man bringing evil or moral decay or however it is put into the world.

Here is the issue I take with that. IF god created all things, and Satan and Adam are created things, then they did not create themselves nor did they have any say or any "will" when it comes to whether or not they were created with the ability to sin/make such choices that would bring evil to the whole world, and to every human ever. The concept of disobedience, usurping of power, badness, death, everything is god's concept and creation first by default of the fact that he made creatures with the design to cause such things to occur. There is zero way, if god created all matter, all life, they are his designs, then the design for decay, the design for evil, the design for horror, the concept of gene mutation that would lead to pain and death are necessarily built into the design. Again, this is a Judaic concept about god.

And if the bible is god's book for defining his attributes, then it can't be escaped that he literally says

Isaiah 45:7 King James Version (KJV)

⁷I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.

As much as theology doesn't want to lay the problem of evil or decay or suffering or however it is defined at god's feet and desire to shove it off on Satan or Adam, it still rests with the design and by default the designed because they didn't make this plan, and god actually accepts responsibility for it.

Now its a whole different discussion if indeed there is more than one god, and that god or gods has the ability to create and was the one who brought evil into the world in contravention of the good design or something. There are religious groups who have thought of Satan as a god, potentially maybe not quite as powerful or something, maybe as powerful. Depends on the group. And in psalms the name El Elyon, the most high god, Psalm 82: 1-2 God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment: "How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? indicates the possibility of a pantheon of gods of which El Elyon is the highest in the hierarchy.

Genesis 1:1 "in the beginning god". The Hebrew as well as the Aramaic is Elohim which is the plural form of god thus it actually means "gods". This seems to muddy the waters of the concept of only one god.

Please know that I’m not trying to debate or change anyone’s belief about this, I respect what you have concluded on these issues and I know it has been a long journey for you. I do think it would be helpful to respond with some ways of thinking about this that aren’t as well know in Western Christianity, just because I have really enjoyed hearing the perspective of others on these issues. The following is a quote (rather long, I’m sorry!) from Fr Thomas Hopko that clearly states that Christians can not get off the hook for God creating everything, knowing that angels and men would choose evil. I readily concede that point.

“Which leads us then to another very, very, central dogma, this is a dogma of the Orthodox Christian Church. And that is, that God created heaven and earth and all things visible and invisible knowing that all these things would be this way. That there would be hurricanes and tsunamis, and earthquakes and tragedies and injustices and persecutions and prison camps. God did all that! Yeah, God did it! If you are a Christian you can’t get off the hook. You believe in God— God did it. He did it.

But you could even go to the next step and you could maybe even speculate, on the basis of scripture and the divine revelation that is ultimately fulfilled in Jesus hanging on the cross, is that God creates everything that can possibly be created. I think that that, in my opinion, could even be a Christian doctrine. If anything could possibly exist, God creates it. Everything he creates is good, he doesn’t create evil. But he certainly creates creatures that he knew would be evil. Take for example, the Christian teaching about the noetic realm, the angels. It is certainly the Christian teaching that God created the “cosmos noetos” (Gr. “Κόσμος Νοητός”)—the bodiless powers, billions and billions of spiritual beings without bodies, pure intellects, that he knew would rebel. That some of those angels, the symbolic number is a third of them, they plunge and become demons. They become devils. They pollute the universe. They are infecting everything, they are trying to destroy everything. Why did God do that? Well he did it because he creates everything that can exist, even those that would be evil.

You can almost say, according to the Sermon on the Mountain, God doesn’t just love those who love him. He loves everybody. He loves the unjust as well as the just. He creates people that he knows will be unjust and maybe burn forever in hell. He creates them anyway and gives them that choice, that freedom, how to act and interact with him. And if he did not do that he would not be just. God does not say, if you are good I’ll like you and I’ll take care of you and I’ll keep from earthquakes. That’s just ridiculous. There aren’t any such persons. We are all sinners, we are all in need of salvation.”

An important thing to realize about this point of the unjust perhaps burning forever is the Orthodox view of heaven and hell. The idea there is that at the final judgement we will all behold the consuming fire that is God. For those that love God this will be the fulfillment of our longings, union with God. For those that hate God, this will be a tortuous burning, because of the spurning of God’s love. So it is in our perception, not God’s action toward the individual that we will experience heaven or hell.

Obviously, this framework will not hold together for everyone and it does eventually come down to belief. I just haven’t seen this view articulated throughout the thread so I wanted to chime in. Also, a caveat, while I love Orthodox theology and have learned so much from it, I am not in fact Orthodox. If any Orthodox reading see anything inaccurate in my post, please do correct me. I try to use quotes when I can to avoid any misunderstanding.

Regarding Psalm 82 and “Elohim” this is the teaching of the intratestament Jews and the early church. Though it is not believed that these spiritual beings have the power to create ex nihilo, they do have dominion. It is still believed in Orthodoxy and some Protestant scholars are writing about this and recovering this view. Dr. Michael Heiser’s book The Unseen Realm covers the divine council, the fall and the dominion of the Elohim and there is a fascinating podcast here if anyone is interested in learning more.

https://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/areopagus/the_gods_of_the_nations#40548

Edited August 3, 2019 by WoolC

August 3, 2019

2 minutes ago, maize said:

I don't see things this way at all.

But I think that is because my entire perspective on mortality is that this is one small bit of time in eternity and that there are things we can learn from every experience, even the really hard ones.

Well, I am aware of that perspective; it is the same perspective my mother has. When my baby died, my mother expressed some pleasure at the thought that she never knew sin and the sufferings of life. I personally don’t have enough of a sense of reality of the rest of a non-corporeal existence to feel that sort of makes up for whatever hardship one goes through in the corporeal life. My goal, for instance, when I endeavored to have kids was to raise them, to have this other person in our family. It wasn’t to, I don’t know, populate Heaven or give a soul a temporary vessel for occupation of Earth for some bit of time, maybe fleeting, maybe lengthy.

Didn’t Andrea Yates drown her children because she wanted to send them directly to Heaven before they could decide to reject God? (I might be mixing that story up with a different sociopath.) Don’t we all do what we can to increase the odds that our children will thrive and survive and grow up and into advanced age; isn’t that what we all hope for? Why would any of us bother keeping our children alive and averting harm as much as possible - car seats, vaccines, cabinet locks, seat belts, football helmets, crossing guards, smoke detectors - if this life is just a temporary detour on our way to the non-corporeal existence?

And also, petitionary prayer. Why do we pray for the cancer to be in remission or the surgery to be a success or even for very grave situations that are unlikely to improve if alleviating sufferings in this life and the hope of extending life are not important?

maize · August 3, 2019

3 minutes ago, Quill said:

Well, I am aware of that perspective; it is the same perspective my mother has. When my baby died, my mother expressed some pleasure at the thought that she never knew sin and the sufferings of life. I personally don’t have enough of a sense of reality of the rest of a non-corporeal existence to feel that sort of makes up for whatever hardship one goes through in the corporeal life. My goal, for instance, when I endeavored to have kids was to raise them, to have this other person in our family. It wasn’t to, I don’t know, populate Heaven or give a soul a temporary vessel for occupation of Earth for some bit of time, maybe fleeting, maybe lengthy.

Didn’t Andrea Yates drown her children because she wanted to send them directly to Heaven before they could decide to reject God? (I might be mixing that story up with a different sociopath.) Don’t we all do what we can to increase the odds that our children will thrive and survive and grow up and into advanced age; isn’t that what we all hope for? Why would any of us bother keeping our children alive and averting harm as much as possible - car seats, vaccines, cabinet locks, seat belts, football helmets, crossing guards, smoke detectors - if this life is just a temporary detour on our way to the non-corporeal existence?

And also, petitionary prayer. Why do we pray for the cancer to be in remission or the surgery to be a success or even for very grave situations that are unlikely to improve if alleviating sufferings in this life and the hope of extending life are not important?

To me it isn't so much that eternity makes up for the hardships of mortality.

It is more that hardship is a critical part of mortality, a reason we chose to be here at all. I very much believe that I chose to come to earth, to have a mortal body, partly so that I could experience pain and grief.

The exercise of faith for me lies both in praying for help and healing and also in accepting that sometimes the answer to prayer isn't what I want in the moment, in trusting there is good to be found through hardship.

DawnM · August 3, 2019

And more are leaving to claim atheism.

https://soteriology101.com/2018/10/25/derek-webb-a-reformed-atheist/?fbclid=IwAR3rvoQb80xRk2CXPOZPIgDyKo8os26tXAackwKX5C4SkzKgxMvgCGGScwQ

BooksandBoys · August 3, 2019

13 hours ago, StellaM said:

Same.

Not lately, but previously. I didn't even have the mustard seed; just nothing. That's why I think it must be a brain thing. And it's why I don't worry about a possible Hell. If there is a God whose child I am, and that God is omnipotent and the source of Love, He knows how hard I tried, and how impossible it is for me and my brain. If He damns me for that, well, I guess I'll be in good company.

Faith is not a matter of willpower.

I agree. I was raised in the Christian faith (evangelical, right smack in the generation of Harris’ book). I was not harmed by Christians (in general). It wasn’t until I realized I did not believe that my entire social circle rejected me. That was when the harm happened, not before my faith was gone. After. I’m still in pain at the utter rejection by people who watched me grow up, claimed they loved me. But that’s their choice.

And I tried to believe. Heck, I still do at times. I’m an atheist who occasionally prays. But there’s nothing there that my brain can perceive, and I’m ok with that most of the time. I’d rather the death of my baby nephew be random than be because god needed him in heaven or to save him from earthly suffering. I’d rather me raising three kids on the autism spectrum (etc) with a husband who is also on the spectrum to be random genetic chance than because some god thought I could handle it (if this is handling it, that god needs a better definition).

I’ve never once been an angry nonbeliever. I’m quiet about my atheism because I don’t want to influence others (I did plenty of that when I was a Christian and I didn’t like it then either). And, yes, I’ve read the Bible. All of it, multiple times. I have huge swaths of it memorized. Sacred music is my soul food. I attend services for the hymns; I listen to hymns at home. I sing them. But there’s no belief, and there hasn’t been for over 15 years. And that’s ok, because apparently, that’s how my brain works.

August 3, 2019

2 hours ago, maize said:

To me it isn't so much that eternity makes up for the hardships of mortality.

It is more that hardship is a critical part of mortality, a reason we chose to be here at all. I very much believe that I chose to come to earth, to have a mortal body, partly so that I could experience pain and grief.

The exercise of faith for me lies both in praying for help and healing and also in accepting that sometimes the answer to prayer isn't what I want in the moment, in trusting there is good to be found through hardship.

Ok. I’m glad that works for you. (Sounds snarky, but I truly mean it. I think cognitive dissonance is lousy and I would rather not be the way I am.)

I do think what you’re claiming is a minority view, at least among the people of faith I have known.

Faith-manor · August 3, 2019

WoolC, thank you for sharing. I was somewhat aware that the Orthodox have a slightly different view of this issue than other christians.

For the record, not everything about christianity is something I've turned my back on. I see a lot of wisdom in the words of Christ, and I attend and serve at a local UMC with dh so he can be nurtured, and we share and work together as part of making our interfaith marriage work. Most would be likely to describe me as a Red Letter Christian, though I am a deist who applies Red Letter principles to my perspective on sharing planet earth with everyone else.

I find the discussion of the ancient Aramaic and Hebrew surrounding the translation of these passages to be really interesting.

Faith-manor · August 3, 2019

12 minutes ago, BooksandBoys said:

I’ve never once been an angry nonbeliever. I’m quiet about my atheism because I don’t want to influence others (I did plenty of that when I was a Christian and I didn’t like it then either). And, yes, I’ve read the Bible. All of it, multiple times. I have huge swaths of it memorized. Sacred music is my soul food. I attend services for the hymns; I listen to hymns at home. I sing them. But there’s no belief, and there hasn’t been for over 15 years. And that’s ok, because apparently, that’s how my brain works.

Me too. As a matter of fact, I still love sacred music so much, that I serve as the director of church music at our UMC. I enjoy giving them the music that blesses them, and makes life worth facing on Monday. I don't begrudge anyone the faith that gets them through life so long as they aren't hurting anyone else.

For Christmas Eve service, not only did we sing traditional carols, but my son played Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring on classical guitar while I accompanied him, a cellist performed What Child is This with me, I brought in a special vocalist to sing Breath of Heaven, and our mixed vocal quartet performed O Holy Night. All of it to candle light with our pipe organist providing lots of Bach for preludes and postludes. It was exquisite, and I loved every minute of it.

I am half tempted to start a thread on "sacred music that means the most to you" and then have people pick their top five pieces and post them. It would be interesting to see how many like traditional, classical, contemporary, christian rock, alternative, etc., and it would extra interesting to hear what those from non christian backgrounds find uplifting within their musical religious context.

maize · August 3, 2019

38 minutes ago, Faith-manor said:

Me too. As a matter of fact, I still love sacred music so much, that I serve as the director of church music at our UMC. I enjoy giving them the music that blesses them, and makes life worth facing on Monday. I don't begrudge anyone the faith that gets them through life so long as they aren't hurting anyone else.

For Christmas Eve service, not only did we sing traditional carols, but my son played Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring on classical guitar while I accompanied him, a cellist performed What Child is This with me, I brought in a special vocalist to sing Breath of Heaven, and our mixed vocal quartet performed O Holy Night. All of it to candle light with our pipe organist providing lots of Bach for preludes and postludes. It was exquisite, and I loved every minute of it.

I am half tempted to start a thread on "sacred music that means the most to you" and then have people pick their top five pieces and post them. It would be interesting to see how many like traditional, classical, contemporary, christian rock, alternative, etc., and it would extra interesting to hear what those from non christian backgrounds find uplifting within their musical religious context.

Please start a sacred music thread, I have some favorites and would love to hear about others!

EmseB · August 3, 2019

2 hours ago, Quill said:

Well, I am aware of that perspective; it is the same perspective my mother has. When my baby died, my mother expressed some pleasure at the thought that she never knew sin and the sufferings of life. I personally don’t have enough of a sense of reality of the rest of a non-corporeal existence to feel that sort of makes up for whatever hardship one goes through in the corporeal life. My goal, for instance, when I endeavored to have kids was to raise them, to have this other person in our family. It wasn’t to, I don’t know, populate Heaven or give a soul a temporary vessel for occupation of Earth for some bit of time, maybe fleeting, maybe lengthy.

Didn’t Andrea Yates drown her children because she wanted to send them directly to Heaven before they could decide to reject God? (I might be mixing that story up with a different sociopath.) Don’t we all do what we can to increase the odds that our children will thrive and survive and grow up and into advanced age; isn’t that what we all hope for? Why would any of us bother keeping our children alive and averting harm as much as possible - car seats, vaccines, cabinet locks, seat belts, football helmets, crossing guards, smoke detectors - if this life is just a temporary detour on our way to the non-corporeal existence?

And also, petitionary prayer. Why do we pray for the cancer to be in remission or the surgery to be a success or even for very grave situations that are unlikely to improve if alleviating sufferings in this life and the hope of extending life are not important?

Obviously I can't answer all of your questions. My take on this post and your post previous to this is that I don't necessarily need faith that all will be made right in eternity or that God works all things for good when things are mildly uncomfortable (like a kid having a cold). But I need that assurance when big things go wrong (like the loss of a pregnancy or my DH being in the ICU). I can't see what my faith is for if not the big things because the small discomforts aren't particularly about having faith when the suffering is minimal (for me). I don't feel like I can say to God that I'm okay with dealing with these small things that bother me, but if Big Thing happens, You must be wrong or non-existent. And just to clarify, I have actually prayed that before, in my early 20s when my fiancee was sent to war ("if he dies, I'm not believing in You anymore because this is my whole life in front of me"). I don't think that way anymore, and found my deeper faith far more comforting when, 20yrs later, DH was on death's door in the hospital. But I do understand the sentiment or ideas behind that loss of faith, I think. I may be characterizing what you're saying wrongly or too simplisticly. In my case it was an "if he dies, You are ruining my hopes for my life and causing me a huge amount of grieving and I won't speak to you any more. I will only believe in You if this bad thing doesn't happen to me."

I still do struggle with praying for big and small things knowing that God's will may not be what I'm asking for. I think that's part of being human and I am a human that tends toward the cynical side, so I do have to fight against that cynicism. Again and again I turn to the promise that He works all things for good, and the senslessness of evil, death, and suffering is in his purposes as sanctfying for me while on earth and something that will be made right in the life to come. I don't think I always live up to the ideal of what I'm saying here. Sometimes, as difficult as it is, I think praying for relief of suffering and working toward that end is better than praying for healing.

As for safety and keeping kids healthy, I do think (despite big sufferings) life here is good. I don't feel like it doesn't matter or I might die unexpectedly so why bother. I feel the opposite, like if it was all random and meaningless, why would I want to suffer at all, much less in huge ways? But I also don't think that because I do those things or because I have kids or want my babies after some infertility that I'm guaranteed to get to see them grow up...I guess I feel acutely aware that they are not really mine, they are their own people and that tragedy can befall them and me. I am pregnant right now and much more than with my first baby where I was kind of happy-go-lucky, I feel a sense that life is temporary and death is cruel and terrifying, and this mortal life is so fragile. Sometimes I think with our fragility and weakness it's amazing any of us live past toddlerhood, and I'm only being partially facetious when I say that. I tend to think of every minute as a gift that I haven't really done anything to deserve because death is so...close(?) to all of us in some way. But I also think, ultimately, mortality and fragility isn't the Way Things Are Supposed To Be. Jesus conquered death for us, but right now, eternity is a hard perspective to grasp.

Again, I'm responding to some ideas you've expressed, not with the intention of only being argumentative or gainsay, but these are things I've struggled with and had to reconcile with my faith and my creator. Obviously we've landed in different places so I don't intend to be dismissive, just to share.

TechWife · August 3, 2019

3 hours ago, livetoread said:

For those who believe in a Fall that changed something about the world/humans, and who are not YEC/YLC (I understand that view), what exactly do you think happened?

We’ve got a world already designed for suffering and death which was going on for millions of years before humans evolve. Humans slowly evolve and they have to be greedy and selfish as well as cooperative and empathic in order to survive as social creatures. Compete and cooperate - the balance we still struggle with today. There was no time when we weren’t “sinning” so to speak. So what exactly was the Fall that we are so responsible for? We are incapable of ever being perfectly good and compassionate and that has always been the case because we were made that way. We can’t free will our way out of that. If there was a creator, it gave us those greedy, selfish instincts that are so necessary for us to survive in a world created to reward greed and selfishness as well as compassion. Much easier to be fully compassionate in a world that doesn’t require it for survival.

Good questions.

This is a little choppy. Perhaps it's just reflective of my brain, which is also choppy on it's understanding of creation.

My position is that I am a creationist, but I have no idea how God did that creation and I think he very well may have chosen to do it through evolution because it may have pleased Him to do so. What little I know about evolution makes sense to me, given the physical evidence that we have today. The old earth creationist viewpoint doesn't make sense to me, why would God want to confuse people? I'm not at all sure about 24/7 creation, because "a day" in that passage doesn't mean a 24 hour day. In fact, the 24 hour day wasn't in use until ancient times (roughly 5000 BC - 500 AD). The time in which Genesis was written does fall within ancient times, but creation itself predates ancient times. However, I acknowledge that God is all powerful and He created the universe exactly the way He wanted to, and that is ultimately the answer to the "question of origin," and not any methodology He did or did not use.

Hebrew for "day" in Genesis 1 - not necessarily one 24 hour day:

Hebrew word: yowm (tranliteration, Hebrew alphabet not available, I don't have it installed on my computer)

Definition of yowm: day, time, year

day (as opposed to night)
day (24 hour period)
1. as defined by evening and morning in Genesis 1
2. as a division of time 1b
a working day, a day's journey
days, lifetime (pl.)
time, period (general)
year
temporal references
1. today
2. yesterday
3. tomorrow

Source: https://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/hebrew/nas/yowm.html

The Bible says in Genesis that in the beginning the earth was "formless and void." Gen 1:2

God gathered the waters into one place and dry land appeared. One body of water, one piece of land. Genesis 1:9-10. We obviously don't have one body of water and one piece of land today.

The word "day" is used prior to the creation of the stars, including the sun. Light and darkness were created on the first day, when God separated them (Gen. 1:3-5). The stars were created on the fourth day (Gen. 1: 14-18). Use of the 24 hour day depends on the position of the sun and the rest of the stars. Therefore, what occurred prior to the fourth day could not have been three 24 hour days. In fact, due to the definitions of the word "Day" what followed were probably not 24 hour days either. I say this because I don't think God's inspired word would switch between two meanings of the the same word to describe this (and it is the same word). That doesn't make sense to me because God was ordering the earth here, not confusing it.

Adam & Eve were the first man and woman. Evil existed before them, manifested by Satan/Lucifer's fall (Ezekiel 28).

I don't know that suffering existed before the fall. Death may not have required suffering. Not all suffering is evil. Some is, I think, but not all. It's all both hard and hard to understand, as this thread demonstrates.

The garden of Eden contained both the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. They were not forbidden to eat from the tree of life (Genesis 2: 16-17). After they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, causing their spiritual death, God sent them out of the garden because he didn't want them to eat from the tree of life after they had eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, because then they would "live forever" (Gen. 3:22-23). That tells me that physical death was normal before the garden and outside of the garden. God had placed them in the garden where they were protected from the knowledge of good and evil, but they were no longer protected from the knowledge of good and evil. God didn't want them to live forever with this knowledge, so He made sure that they could no longer eat from the tree of life and live forever.

I think that the passage where it talks about the potential of them eating from the tree of life after the fall is one of the most overlooked passages for 24/7 creationists.

Faith-manor · August 3, 2019

45 minutes ago, maize said:

Please start a sacred music thread, I have some favorites and would love to hear about others!

It's out there Maize, so I expect you to contribute!

August 3, 2019

25 minutes ago, EmseB said:

Obviously I can't answer all of your questions. My take on this post and your post previous to this is that I don't necessarily need faith that all will be made right in eternity or that God works all things for good when things are mildly uncomfortable (like a kid having a cold). But I need that assurance when big things go wrong (like the loss of a pregnancy or my DH being in the ICU). I can't see what my faith is for if not the big things because the small discomforts aren't particularly about having faith when the suffering is minimal (for me). I don't feel like I can say to God that I'm okay with dealing with these small things that bother me, but if Big Thing happens, You must be wrong or non-existent. And just to clarify, I have actually prayed that before, in my early 20s when my fiancee was sent to war ("if he dies, I'm not believing in You anymore because this is my whole life in front of me"). I don't think that way anymore, and found my deeper faith far more comforting when, 20yrs later, DH was on death's door in the hospital. But I do understand the sentiment or ideas behind that loss of faith, I think. I may be characterizing what you're saying wrongly or too simplisticly. In my case it was an "if he dies, You are ruining my hopes for my life and causing me a huge amount of grieving and I won't speak to you any more. I will only believe in You if this bad thing doesn't happen to me."

I still do struggle with praying for big and small things knowing that God's will may not be what I'm asking for. I think that's part of being human and I am a human that tends toward the cynical side, so I do have to fight against that cynicism. Again and again I turn to the promise that He works all things for good, and the senslessness of evil, death, and suffering is in his purposes as sanctfying for me while on earth and something that will be made right in the life to come. I don't think I always live up to the ideal of what I'm saying here. Sometimes, as difficult as it is, I think praying for relief of suffering and working toward that end is better than praying for healing.

As for safety and keeping kids healthy, I do think (despite big sufferings) life here is good. I don't feel like it doesn't matter or I might die unexpectedly so why bother. I feel the opposite, like if it was all random and meaningless, why would I want to suffer at all, much less in huge ways? But I also don't think that because I do those things or because I have kids or want my babies after some infertility that I'm guaranteed to get to see them grow up...I guess I feel acutely aware that they are not really mine, they are their own people and that tragedy can befall them and me. I am pregnant right now and much more than with my first baby where I was kind of happy-go-lucky, I feel a sense that life is temporary and death is cruel and terrifying, and this mortal life is so fragile. Sometimes I think with our fragility and weakness it's amazing any of us live past toddlerhood, and I'm only being partially facetious when I say that. I tend to think of every minute as a gift that I haven't really done anything to deserve because death is so...close(?) to all of us in some way. But I also think, ultimately, mortality and fragility isn't the Way Things Are Supposed To Be. Jesus conquered death for us, but right now, eternity is a hard perspective to grasp.

Again, I'm responding to some ideas you've expressed, not with the intention of only being argumentative or gainsay, but these are things I've struggled with and had to reconcile with my faith and my creator. Obviously we've landed in different places so I don't intend to be dismissive, just to share.

So, trying to break down the bolded thoughts:

Firstly, right; in my case it wasn’t stark like that, like, “God, if my baby is healthy, we’re good, but if not, it’s over between us.” It was a long, slow crumbling of belief, not a pivotal moment. I read a dozen books meant to address this problem. I discussed it probably a hundred times on internet message boards or in PM conversations with others. I vascillated over several years between sort of throwing myself back into the faith and feeling like an imposter in my life, since everyone knows me as a Christian and I often thought I have no right to wear than mantel.

Prayer was a serious sticking point for me when I was pregnant with my youngest child, following a full-term stillbirth and an early miscarriage. How could I pray for this new life when the last two ended so badly? Shouldn’t we really be praying only one thing: Thy will be done? But if so, I was not willing to pray that because, frankly, I don’t mean it. I prayed that before and evidently, God’s will was for those two babies to die, one late term, one early. (Or else, not God’s will but still something He chose not to intervene in. Which, to me, is the same thing.) I could not pray over the safe arrival of my youngest. I just could not. This was when a lot of my beliefs started to crumble, though as I said, I did throw myself back in numerous times and I still retain some Christian features in my life now.

To me, the tragedies in life are easier to accept if they are just the random stuff that’s lousy than if God is playing out the whole puppet show and decides at this point to make or allow XYZ horrible things to happen which could have been averted. I find I can accept that senseless tragedy happens if there either is no god or there isn’t a god who intervenes. What I cannot accept is that there is a God who loves us and has all power, yet for “mysterious reasons” does nothing to prevent tragedy.

In less than a year after my baby died, a friend of mine had a baby 3 weeks early. It was a close thing for a few minutes there because the baby almost had a fatal cord accident. My friend gleefully reported to me that, “God had me go into labor early because if I had not gone in right then, my baby would have died!” I am not exaggerating when I tell you I physically felt her words like a knife stabbed in my heart. Seriously, my eyes are watering right now just recalling it. If that is actually true - God causes Person A to do XYZ, averting tragedy, while yet “mysteriously” allowing or causing Person B to unwittingly not take a particular action, resulting in tragedy - well, truly I cannot worship a God like that. I don’t even *like* a God like that. If a parent did this with two of his or her children, we would call that parent a nutjob, a narcissist, a terrible human.

On your point about sometimes thinking it’s amazing any of us live at all, I agree. I think that often.

August 3, 2019

54 minutes ago, TechWife said:

Good questions.

This is a little choppy. Perhaps it's just reflective of my brain, which is also choppy on it's understanding of creation.

My position is that I am a creationist, but I have no idea how God did that creation and I think he very well may have chosen to do it through evolution because it may have pleased Him to do so. What little I know about evolution makes sense to me, given the physical evidence that we have today. The old earth creationist viewpoint doesn't make sense to me, why would God want to confuse people? I'm not at all sure about 24/7 creation, because "a day" in that passage doesn't mean a 24 hour day. In fact, the 24 hour day wasn't in use until ancient times (roughly 5000 BC - 500 AD). The time in which Genesis was written does fall within ancient times, but creation itself predates ancient times. However, I acknowledge that God is all powerful and He created the universe exactly the way He wanted to, and that is ultimately the answer to the "question of origin," and not any methodology He did or did not use.

Hebrew for "day" in Genesis 1 - not necessarily one 24 hour day:

Hebrew word: yowm (tranliteration, Hebrew alphabet not available, I don't have it installed on my computer)

Definition of yowm: day, time, year

day (as opposed to night)

day (24 hour period)
as defined by evening and morning in Genesis 1

as a division of time 1b

a working day, a day's journey

days, lifetime (pl.)

time, period (general)

year

temporal references
today

yesterday

tomorrow

Source: https://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/hebrew/nas/yowm.html

The Bible says in Genesis that in the beginning the earth was "formless and void." Gen 1:2

God gathered the waters into one place and dry land appeared. One body of water, one piece of land. Genesis 1:9-10. We obviously don't have one body of water and one piece of land today.

The word "day" is used prior to the creation of the stars, including the sun. Light and darkness were created on the first day, when God separated them (Gen. 1:3-5). The stars were created on the fourth day (Gen. 1: 14-18). Use of the 24 hour day depends on the position of the sun and the rest of the stars. Therefore, what occurred prior to the fourth day could not have been three 24 hour days. In fact, due to the definitions of the word "Day" what followed were probably not 24 hour days either. I say this because I don't think God's inspired word would switch between two meanings of the the same word to describe this (and it is the same word). That doesn't make sense to me because God was ordering the earth here, not confusing it.

Adam & Eve were the first man and woman. Evil existed before them, manifested by Satan/Lucifer's fall (Ezekiel 28).

I don't know that suffering existed before the fall. Death may not have required suffering. Not all suffering is evil. Some is, I think, but not all. It's all both hard and hard to understand, as this thread demonstrates.

The garden of Eden contained both the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. They were not forbidden to eat from the tree of life (Genesis 2: 16-17). After they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, causing their spiritual death, God sent them out of the garden because he didn't want them to eat from the tree of life after they had eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, because then they would "live forever" (Gen. 3:22-23). That tells me that physical death was normal before the garden and outside of the garden. God had placed them in the garden where they were protected from the knowledge of good and evil, but they were no longer protected from the knowledge of good and evil. God didn't want them to live forever with this knowledge, so He made sure that they could no longer eat from the tree of life and live forever.

I think that the passage where it talks about the potential of them eating from the tree of life after the fall is one of the most overlooked passages for 24/7 creationists.

Not that it matters, but just for debate purposes: I have heard before, in a YEC apologetics sermon, that interpreting “Day” as eons or some long period of time doesn’t make sense for a couple reasons. For one thing, vegetation was created on Day 3 but the sun, moon, stars and seasons didn’t arrive until Day 4. Which is probably fine if we’re only talking about twenty-four hours without photosynthesis, but gets tricky if we’re talking about some long epoch in which plants didn’t have the sun (or moon, which some plants require). Also, there were not yet birds, moths, bees, butterflies to pollinate, nor bears and deer who move seeds around by eating berries...

I agree with your last line about how people ignore that Tree of Life bit, but personally, it reads very ancient myth to me because God (or gods, since it is written in the plural) is “worried” that now Adam and Eve have knowledge of good and evil, it’s best to remove the possibility they might also become immortal. Not sure why god/gods didn’t see that coming; what if they had done it in the other order? A clever Satan would have been more cunning to talk them into eating the immortality fruit first, and then screwing up all of humanity forever with the good and evil fruit.

Actually, numerous earliest stories in the OT shows god/gods “worried” that people might gain an outcome he didn’t foresee. Tower of Babble, for example.

Faith-manor · August 3, 2019

4 minutes ago, Quill said:

Not that it matters, but just for debate purposes: I have heard before, in a YEC apologetics sermon, that interpreting “Day” as eons or some long period of time doesn’t make sense for a couple reasons. For one thing, vegetation was created on Day 3 but the sun, moon, stars and seasons didn’t arrive until Day 4. Which is probably fine if we’re only talking about twenty-four hours without photosynthesis, but gets tricky if we’re talking about some long epoch in which plants didn’t have the sun (or moon, which some plants require). Also, there were not yet birds, moths, bees, butterflies to pollinate, nor bears and deer who move seeds around by eating berries...

I agree with your last line about how people ignore that Tree of Life bit, but personally, it reads very ancient myth to me because God (or gods, since it is written in the plural) is “worried” that now Adam and Eve have knowledge of good and evil, it’s best to remove the possibility they might also become immortal. Not sure why god/gods didn’t see that coming; what if they had done it in the other order? A clever Satan would have been more cunning to talk them into eating the immortality fruit first, and then screwing up all of humanity forever with the good and evil fruit.

Actually, numerous earliest stories in the OT shows god/gods “worried” that people might gain an outcome he didn’t foresee. Tower of Babble, for example.

Agreed.

Without the sun, the temps would have been too low to sustain plant life even if it was only for 24 hours. While it says "let there be light", light doesn't necessarily mean life sustaining temperature. Instant freeze. So unless one believes in some sort of suspended animation kind of thing, or some other methodology for warming the earth that isn't explained, then it's pretty hard to take as more than a story of how ancient Israelites thought about the natural world and how it came to be. I've listened to all the arguments for young earth, middle earth, old earth based on interpretation of the biblical creation story, and well, the text just doesn't hold up unless one adds a lot of not in the bible supposition about how it could have happened, thus accepting conjecture to support the theories. I think the value in the text is in shedding light on how ancient peoples thought and related to their material world, how they thought and related to god as they perceived him or them, but not as a documentary of what actually was.

TravelingChris · August 3, 2019

1 hour ago, Faith-manor said:

Agreed.

Without the sun, the temps would have been too low to sustain plant life even if it was only for 24 hours. While it says "let there be light", light doesn't necessarily mean life sustaining temperature. Instant freeze. So unless one believes in some sort of suspended animation kind of thing, or some other methodology for warming the earth that isn't explained, then it's pretty hard to take as more than a story of how ancient Israelites thought about the natural world and how it came to be. I've listened to all the arguments for young earth, middle earth, old earth based on interpretation of the biblical creation story, and well, the text just doesn't hold up unless one adds a lot of not in the bible supposition about how it could have happened, thus accepting conjecture to support the theories. I think the value in the text is in shedding light on how ancient peoples thought and related to their material world, how they thought and related to god as they perceived him or them, but not as a documentary of what actually was.

I heard a person very knowledgable about middle Eastern writings explain Genesis creation story of days in such a way- days 1, 2, and 3 are general stories and days 4, 5, and 6 are deeper explanations of days 1.2 and 3. It made sense to me.

But I am super comfortable in not understanding stuff because I see just how much there is to learn in every subject. We are in the midst of an information explosion and still we know so little. Since I believe in a Creator God, and creation is so extremely complex, I just do not see how we are really supposed to understand everything. And I have made peace with the fact that humans don't understand much. More so in my health issues but it actually has turned out to be true for everything. We don't know.

TechWife · August 3, 2019

2 hours ago, Quill said:

...

I agree with your last line about how people ignore that Tree of Life bit, but personally, it reads very ancient myth to me because God (or gods, since it is written in the plural) is “worried” that now Adam and Eve have knowledge of good and evil, it’s best to remove the possibility they might also become immortal. Not sure why god/gods didn’t see that coming; what if they had done it in the other order? A clever Satan would have been more cunning to talk them into eating the immortality fruit first, and then screwing up all of humanity forever with the good and evil fruit.

I think God intended them to eat from the tree of life all along, He told them they could eat from any tree other than the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They likely ate from it before the serpent/Satan came along. He would have preferred for them to live forever. It was the combination of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life that was problematic. The tree of life would have to be regular nourishment, in my reading, to be effective over time.

Satan did screw up humanity for all time by convincing them to disobey God. It was the disobedience of them not following God's instructions, not that particular fruit, that separated them (and us) from God and required Christ's reconciliation. By their disobedience, spiritual death and sin entered humanity. Physical death entered as a consequence of not being able to eat from the tree of life any longer.

Frances · August 3, 2019

7 hours ago, WoolC said:

An important thing to realize about this point of the unjust perhaps burning forever is the Orthodox view of heaven and hell. The idea there is that at the final judgement we will all behold the consuming fire that is God. For those that love God this will be the fulfillment of our longings, union with God. For those that hate God, this will be a tortuous burning, because of the spurning of God’s love. So it is in our perception, not God’s action toward the individual that we will experience heaven or hell.

There are only two options, loving God or hating God? I’m not sure whether or not God exists, but I certainly don’t hate God or anyone else. The only thing I am certain of is that if there is a God, there is not only one true way to know God.

I found your post very interesting, as I really enjoy hearing about the various beliefs of others and the teachings of different faiths and denominations. And while at times I still miss belonging to a church community (mainly Methodist as an adult) and the folk music of the Catholic Church of my youth, these types of conversations always make me feel more secure in my decision to leave Christianity.

EmseB · August 3, 2019

2 hours ago, Quill said:

So, trying to break down the bolded thoughts:

Firstly, right; in my case it wasn’t stark like that, like, “God, if my baby is healthy, we’re good, but if not, it’s over between us.” It was a long, slow crumbling of belief, not a pivotal moment. I read a dozen books meant to address this problem. I discussed it probably a hundred times on internet message boards or in PM conversations with others. I vascillated over several years between sort of throwing myself back into the faith and feeling like an imposter in my life, since everyone knows me as a Christian and I often thought I have no right to wear than mantel.

Prayer was a serious sticking point for me when I was pregnant with my youngest child, following a full-term stillbirth and an early miscarriage. How could I pray for this new life when the last two ended so badly? Shouldn’t we really be praying only one thing: Thy will be done? But if so, I was not willing to pray that because, frankly, I don’t mean it. I prayed that before and evidently, God’s will was for those two babies to die, one late term, one early. (Or else, not God’s will but still something He chose not to intervene in. Which, to me, is the same thing.) I could not pray over the safe arrival of my youngest. I just could not. This was when a lot of my beliefs started to crumble, though as I said, I did throw myself back in numerous times and I still retain some Christian features in my life now.

To me, the tragedies in life are easier to accept if they are just the random stuff that’s lousy than if God is playing out the whole puppet show and decides at this point to make or allow XYZ horrible things to happen which could have been averted. I find I can accept that senseless tragedy happens if there either is no god or there isn’t a god who intervenes. What I cannot accept is that there is a God who loves us and has all power, yet for “mysterious reasons” does nothing to prevent tragedy.

In less than a year after my baby died, a friend of mine had a baby 3 weeks early. It was a close thing for a few minutes there because the baby almost had a fatal cord accident. My friend gleefully reported to me that, “God had me go into labor early because if I had not gone in right then, my baby would have died!” I am not exaggerating when I tell you I physically felt her words like a knife stabbed in my heart. Seriously, my eyes are watering right now just recalling it. If that is actually true - God causes Person A to do XYZ, averting tragedy, while yet “mysteriously” allowing or causing Person B to unwittingly not take a particular action, resulting in tragedy - well, truly I cannot worship a God like that. I don’t even *like* a God like that. If a parent did this with two of his or her children, we would call that parent a nutjob, a narcissist, a terrible human.

On your point about sometimes thinking it’s amazing any of us live at all, I agree. I think that often.

I guess part of it is that I see on a very small scale that my kids do go through hard times that I don't alleviate precisely because they need to grow or mature in certain ways. I don't cushion them from all disappointments or hardship that I could possibly avoid for them. But I don't consider how I parent them to be narcissistic or doing things to cause them pain or even that I like to see them in pain or that I like having to enact parenting consequences or let them experience natural consequences. I imagine that this kind of metaphor seems trivial in the face of the grief we can experience as adults with adult losses, but it's what comes to mind when things happen that I feel like are unjust. Especially when my kids absolutely do not understand why I would feel badly about certain circumstances/consequences for them but not prevent them if I could.

I also belive that what your friend said is entirely heartless and I don't think of things in exactly those terms because I don't think God works exactly like that, despite the above analogy. I think a lot of people in American evangelical churches think this way, but I think it's not logical and falls apart pretty quickly with a little questioning. There's no way to know on a human scale if outcomes would have been worse or better based on if a specific action was taken. My husband's illness could have been entirely avoided with more competent medical professionals, but also discovering the issue and him getting as sick he got seems to have no rhyme or reason. Why do some people get his illness and get a good doctor? Why do some people make it to the hospital five minutes sooner? I don't think I can say definitively, oh, God made my husband sick because of X. I'm just not that confident in knowing God's reasoning or how or why my life goes a certain way. I really don't think it's all that linear and I certainly wouldn't tell anyone that God caused X to spare me from Y. If that's the way your friend thinks then why not alleviate it all including the prematurity? I can't know that. All I know for certain is from Romans, that it is all for good, but we can't know the why or how in this side of eternity. God's reasons are not my capability or my responsibility to know.

I also take comfort that despite the tragedy or grief, God has already redeemed it. How I feel now is suffering for a little while. Not that it doesn't suck but that it has been conquered and taken care of through Christ. The fullness of this has only been taught to me in my current faith tradition, in my non-denom evangelical church the work of Christ was focused on a very individualist idea that He died for my sins, but the idea of redeeming suffering and death wasn't emphasized as much.

Part of all of this is that I can't get around the idea of God who created everything for a variety of reasons... and a sovereign, omnipotent God is the only thing that makes sense to me in that context, and since studying a myriad of belief systems, reformed Christian tradition/doctrine is what made the most logical sense to me in a world where suffering and evil exists.

So I guess a lot of what I think comes from trying to reason my way out of the existence of God, and I couldn't. So kind of the opposite of how you said you tried to reason your way to belief after loss.

August 3, 2019

14 minutes ago, TechWife said:

I think God intended them to eat from the tree of life all along, He told them they could eat from any tree other than the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They likely ate from it before the serpent/Satan came along. He would have preferred for them to live forever. It was the combination of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life that was problematic. The tree of life would have to be regular nourishment, in my reading, to be effective over time.

Satan did screw up humanity for all time by convincing them to disobey God. It was the disobedience of them not following God's instructions, not that particular fruit, that separated them (and us) from God and required Christ's reconciliation. By their disobedience, spiritual death and sin entered humanity. Physical death entered as a consequence of not being able to eat from the tree of life any longer.

Honestly, though, it seems so fairy-tale silly to me. Because it seems like God is so naive. Even mortal, non-omniscient parents can be fairly certain that, faced with temptation, their kid is going eventually to give in. Like in the Marshmallow test of fame. Some kids cannot sit there with the marshmallow and instructions to just wait for some short time to ellapse and they will get two marshmallows. And that’s just for a couple of minutes. I mean, if we take the Genesis account for factual account, for how long did God expect Adam and Eve to withstand temptation? And how could He make a stupid mistake like having a tree of immortality in there, which could have, theorectically been sampled before the sampling of the forbidden tree? It’s like God didn’t see this obvious bad scenario. And even when they do eat from the forbidden tree, the only thing He can figure out to do is banish them from the Garden and put a sword-weilding angel there. Why not just curse the Tree of Life and have it whither away? Or, obviously, why make one in the first place?

Eh, anyway...

maize · August 3, 2019

2 hours ago, Faith-manor said:

Agreed.

Without the sun, the temps would have been too low to sustain plant life even if it was only for 24 hours. While it says "let there be light", light doesn't necessarily mean life sustaining temperature. Instant freeze. So unless one believes in some sort of suspended animation kind of thing, or some other methodology for warming the earth that isn't explained, then it's pretty hard to take as more than a story of how ancient Israelites thought about the natural world and how it came to be. I've listened to all the arguments for young earth, middle earth, old earth based on interpretation of the biblical creation story, and well, the text just doesn't hold up unless one adds a lot of not in the bible supposition about how it could have happened, thus accepting conjecture to support the theories. I think the value in the text is in shedding light on how ancient peoples thought and related to their material world, how they thought and related to god as they perceived him or them, but not as a documentary of what actually was.

So I'm not particularly attached to literal interpretations of Genesis (and LDS scripture adds a couple of alternative versions of the creation story) but I do occasionally speculate and my theory about sun/moon/stars coming after light is that they were there but maybe in the early eons of earth's existence the atmosphere was extremely cloudy so they weren't really there to be seen in the sky.

August 3, 2019

11 minutes ago, EmseB said:

guess part of it is that I see on a very small scale that my kids do go through hard times that I don't alleviate precisely because they need to grow or mature in certain ways. I don't cushion them from all disappointments or hardship that I could possibly avoid for them. But I don't consider how I parent them to be narcissistic or doing things to cause them pain or even that I like to see them in pain or that I like having to enact parenting consequences or let them experience natural consequences. I imagine that this kind of metaphor seems trivial in the face of the grief we can experience as adults with adult losses, but it's what comes to mind when things happen that I feel like are unjust. Especially when my kids absolutely do not understand why I would feel badly about certain circumstances/consequences for them but not prevent them if I could.

Right, but not to where you would permit their death or severe injury if you can prevent it. So - yeah, my son had a cavity in his tooth and was very nervous about getting Novacane. But he has to get the filling repaired and avoiding necessary dental work is not going to improve the situation, so he has to do the emotionally strong thing and face getting the dental work. So I make him go through some pain because it is necessary for the larger purpose of protecting his long-term health. Of course a good parent does not cushion kids from all hardship and suffering because sometimes, the suffering has to happen to mature. But a good parent absolutely protects children from death and dismemberment to the extent possible. I mean, if someohow my mother had had magical powers and could have averted my daughter’s death, she would have. I am positive she would not view whatever personal growth I might have had by losing my daughter a good trade for her life. Neither do I.

EmseB · August 3, 2019

5 minutes ago, Quill said:

Right, but not to where you would permit their death or severe injury if you can prevent it. So - yeah, my son had a cavity in his tooth and was very nervous about getting Novacane. But he has to get the filling repaired and avoiding necessary dental work is not going to improve the situation, so he has to do the emotionally strong thing and face getting the dental work. So I make him go through some pain because it is necessary for the larger purpose of protecting his long-term health. Of course a good parent does not cushion kids from all hardship and suffering because sometimes, the suffering has to happen to mature. But a good parent absolutely protects children from death and dismemberment to the extent possible. I mean, if someohow my mother had had magical powers and could have averted my daughter’s death, she would have. I am positive she would not view whatever personal growth I might have had by losing my daughter a good trade for her life. Neither do I.

I guess that's where the metaphor falls apart because I'm not dealing with life or death or eternal souls in the fullness of time and seeing the big things like the loss of a child from that grand perspective. That's what I meant by small scale...I can see how it works on my small individual level with my kids, I can imagine it being somewhat similar on a cosmic scale, but not exactly because I can't see things on that cosmic scale. I don't think God works on the same scale as human parenting or that what He is allowing or not allowing are the same things we should or could allow for our own kids. I can only have hope from here that I will see those whom I have grieved for again, in a much better place or existence and know that God did suffer on my behalf and gave up everything, knowing that it would be agonizing, but with the full scope of eternity in mind.

Also, there are consequences I do spare my kids from and would if I could. By the same token also have no way of knowing what suffering God *has* prevented in my life by intervening in certain ways. I see and feel the tragedies I've experienced, but I don't know where God's restraining hand has been at work (also for good in my life) to prevent other suffering. Why one tragedy and not the other, I don't know.

I also don't feel like grief or anger or questioning God are wrong responses to tragedy or suffering.

I appreciate this dialogue, and I'm not ignoring if I don't respond more today, but I have to take a break for real life goings on.

maize · August 3, 2019

26 minutes ago, Quill said:

Right, but not to where you would permit their death or severe injury if you can prevent it. So - yeah, my son had a cavity in his tooth and was very nervous about getting Novacane. But he has to get the filling repaired and avoiding necessary dental work is not going to improve the situation, so he has to do the emotionally strong thing and face getting the dental work. So I make him go through some pain because it is necessary for the larger purpose of protecting his long-term health. Of course a good parent does not cushion kids from all hardship and suffering because sometimes, the suffering has to happen to mature. But a good parent absolutely protects children from death and dismemberment to the extent possible. I mean, if someohow my mother had had magical powers and could have averted my daughter’s death, she would have. I am positive she would not view whatever personal growth I might have had by losing my daughter a good trade for her life. Neither do I.

And yet, maybe from God's perspective of an eternal scale, even the most horrible things that mortality can bring are relatively small, are part of our experience and growth.

I am not in any way trying to minimize your pain. It is not one I have personal specific experience with but I promise you my life is not and has not been without significant pain and grief.

I am also not asking you to see things as I do. I find comfort in seeing a greater purpose for our mortal pain. I realize that idea does not bring comfort to everyone.

EmseB · August 3, 2019

9 minutes ago, StellaM said:

It feels.....almost abusive ?

I would not allow my child to put their hand in the fire because it might help them grow in wisdom. I'd make sure they did not put their hand in the fire, and do my best to explain why it's harmful and dangerous to do so. If they did put their hand in the fire anyway, it's because I was negligent, and did not supervise closely enough, or put up a fire guard, and the fault lies entirely with me as a parent. I would not blame them for being tempted by fire.

Beyond that, I would not allow someone else to light a fire with the foreknowledge that they were doing so in order to harm my child. And if they did, I would do everything in my power to put it out and keep my child safe.

This is what loving, non-omniscient, non-powerful mortal parents do for their children, but at the same time, our Ur Father preordains our children will put their hands in the fire, he blames them and calls it sin when they do, and if someone lights a fire to harm them he allows that harm to occur, and does not put that fire out ? And then asks that our children worship him, and trust him ?

~

Quill, I absolutely understand that you are not just pouting because God wasn't nice to you. I absolutely understand that your love for your sweet girl - for another, not yourself - drives you in your questioning and doubt.

And I also understand that not all suffering has redemptive power, even in mortal human terms. People do not always grow stronger through trauma. It's a lovely story, but it's not the truth.

I don't know if this is in response to what I was trying to say, but I want to clarify before I go that this is absolutely not what I was trying to convey and I'm sorry if that is what my words meant to you or especially to Quill.

Obviously despite my own suffering I don't view God as a human with slightly more power and a sadistic streak for causing us pain, but I guess I didn't know how to have this discussion well without sounding callous. I'm sorry.

Lady Florida. · August 3, 2019

3 hours ago, Faith-manor said:

it's pretty hard to take as more than a story of how ancient Israelites thought about the natural world and how it came to be.

Once I actually read the bible I was unable to see it all as anything more than the above. That, plus some instructions for living a good life. The whole deity part just fell away for me when I read the bible. I grew up in a Catholic household where reading the bible wasn't encouraged. I was well into adulthood and a mother before I ever read it (after I converted to UMC).

59 minutes ago, Frances said:

There are only two options, loving God or hating God? I’m not sure whether or not God exists,

I neither love nor hate something that I don't think is real. I don't love or hate fairies or leprechauns or ghosts or gods.

36 minutes ago, Quill said:

Honestly, though, it seems so fairy-tale silly to me. Because it seems like God is so naive. Even mortal, non-omniscient parents can be fairly certain that, faced with temptation, their kid is going eventually to give in. Like in the Marshmallow test of fame. Some kids cannot sit there with the marshmallow and instructions to just wait for some short time to ellapse and they will get two marshmallows. And that’s just for a couple of minutes. I mean, if we take the Genesis account for factual account, for how long did God expect Adam and Eve to withstand temptation? And how could He make a stupid mistake like having a tree of immortality in there, which could have, theorectically been sampled before the sampling of the forbidden tree? It’s like God didn’t see this obvious bad scenario. And even when they do eat from the forbidden tree, the only thing He can figure out to do is banish them from the Garden and put a sword-weilding angel there. Why not just curse the Tree of Life and have it whither away? Or, obviously, why make one in the first place?

I find the idea God is a loving father to be really strange. He is anything but a good, loving father. In fact, throughout the Old Testament I see an angry, vindictive, insecure, jealous being. That's not setting a good example for your children.

The whole garden scene was a set up for failure from the start and good parents don't do that. First off, I had always heard that before the Fall, Adam and Eve were naive and childlike. If that was true then they didn't understand right from wrong. You don't punish a child for doing what he doesn't know is wrong. You teach him that it's wrong and why it's wrong. And even if they did know, again to punish your children (and their children, children's children, etc.) forever for one mistake is again not an example of good parenting.

I often hear atheists say they wish they could still believe or they tried to keep believing or they want to try again. I must be odd then, because I never felt sad about letting go. Once logic would no longer allow me to believe I simply stopped believing. I haven't tried again since nor am I sorry I don't believe in a deity. I don't "wish I could believe". I don't miss anything about it, including church and hymns.

Lady Florida. · August 3, 2019

9 minutes ago, StellaM said:

This article is super blamey. It's basically a variation on 'non believers are just spoiled children having a tantrum because God didn't give them what they wanted'. Someone in the comments even says 'He wanted his faith handed to him on a plate, not to work for it.'

It's a real ugly attitude towards others, imo.

Right. Believers often think atheists are mad at God. You can't be mad at something unless you believe it's real. As an adult I can't be mad at Santa and as an atheist I can't be mad at God. Some (note the qualifier) believers have a hard time understanding this.

DawnM · August 3, 2019

38 minutes ago, StellaM said:

This article is super blamey. It's basically a variation on 'non believers are just spoiled children having a tantrum because God didn't give them what they wanted'. Someone in the comments even says 'He wanted his faith handed to him on a plate, not to work for it.'

It's a real ugly attitude towards others, imo.

I started watching the video but didn't finish it. But the fact still stands, a man who was once a firm believer has now renounced his faith. That was the point.

WoolC · August 3, 2019

12 minutes ago, CuriousMomof3 said:

But atheists don't hate God. They simply don't believe he exists. They feel about God the same way I feel about Santa. It's a nice story. There is some meaning there. I can learn from it. But I don't believe in him. And if there really is a Santa, and he's mad at me because last year I didn't leave him any cookies, then that makes him a pretty vengeful guy who doesn't deserve cookies anyway.

I had an Episcopal priest tell me once, that the only sin that could truly separate one from God, or condemn them to Hell (he called it unforgivable sin) was to know (not just be told, but really truly know) of God's existence, and of God's will, and to turn your back on it, and that in his (the priest's opinion) that meant that atheists or people of other faiths were not capable of unforgivable sin, because they didn't know. He said he wasn't sure that anyone was capable of unforgivable sin, because sin comes from our failure to hear the will of God, or to hold the truth of his existence in our heart, and that is a forgivable, perhaps inevitable part of the human existence.

I'm not sure I believe exactly that, but it makes a lot more sense to me than many other versions of God that I have heard about.

I wasn’t able to quote everyone who questioned this on my iPad, I’ll try to clarify what I can. Again, correct me if I’m wrong any Orthodox readers, but I don’t think that the Orthodox understanding is that atheists are assumed to hate God. There are some within Orthodoxy that believe that how your heart responds when you do encounter God is what matters. There is a belief that in this life, the Church prepares the heart to receive God as light and not fire. Hate might not be the best word choice on my part here either. There is an idea that we are either responsive to God’s grace and His purifying of our hearts or we are hardening our hearts against Him and demanding heaven on our own terms apart from Him. If the atheist experience is simply unbelief that doesn’t imply an intentional hardening and it doesn’t imply that an atheist in this life would necessarily refuse God’s love in the resurrection.

At the end of The Last Battle in the Chronicles of Narnia, dwarves that are impure in heart are sitting in Paradise, but they think they’re in the dark, eating rotten food and the flowers surrounding them smell like dung. They are blind to the beauty around them and they’re in misery. There were others that upon entering Paradise, recognized Aslan and the beauty around them, even though they had not known Aslan previously and had rendered service to the pagan god Tash in their lives. I think this serves as a pretty good illustration of what I was trying to communicate before.

August 3, 2019

1 hour ago, EmseB said:

I don't know if this is in response to what I was trying to say, but I want to clarify before I go that this is absolutely not what I was trying to convey and I'm sorry if that is what my words meant to you or especially to Quill.

Obviously despite my own suffering I don't view God as a human with slightly more power and a sadistic streak for causing us pain, but I guess I didn't know how to have this discussion well without sounding callous. I'm sorry.

I have no issue with anything you have written to me in this thread, Emse. I disagree with the conclusions you are drawing and find myself thinking the opposite, but I don’t feel you have been ungracious anywhere on this thread.

DawnM · August 3, 2019

32 minutes ago, StellaM said:

Yes. I think this happens on a regular basis though, which was my point in the very first post on this thread - to some extent, it's just an artefact of growth. People change, their outlook changes, their world views change. It's only notable for reasons which aren't to do with that process - we're only talking about JH because he wrote a book that was huge. Joe Blow down the road goes through the same thing, we just don't hear about it.

I think also because he worked in a church and was prominent in some Christian circles. When someone who has lead you to faith or helped you grow in your faith leaves the faith, is a larger "blow" than Joe Blow (ha, sorry, no pun intended.)

Just like the link I posted, many loved the Christian music produced by this man, so in many ways, it is a bigger deal.

Lady Florida. · August 3, 2019

10 minutes ago, Quill said:

I have no issue with anything you have written to me in this thread, Emse. I disagree with the conclusions you are drawing and find myself thinking the opposite, but I don’t feel you have been ungracious anywhere on this thread.

I agree. I don't think anything you said was in reply to any of my posts but I always appreciate your input and always find it respectful @EmseB

3 minutes ago, DawnM said:

I think also because he worked in a church and was prominent in some Christian circles. When someone who has lead you to faith or helped you grow in your faith leaves the faith, is a larger "blow" than Joe Blow (ha, sorry, no pun intended.)

Just like the link I posted, many loved the Christian music produced by this man, so in many ways, it is a bigger deal.

Yep. It's the same with politicians. It's news when politician is caught cheating on his wife but it's BIG NEWS when a politician who shouts from the rooftops about family values is caught cheating on his wife. We notice those people more than we notice others who commit the same offenses.

August 3, 2019

1 hour ago, CuriousMomof3 said:

I am so so sorry you experienced that. My middle son is biologically the child of my cousin and her husband who were killed in a car accident. Between their death and our adopting him he lived with a relative who gradually declined due to Alzheimers. Add in the genetic illness I mentioned above, and his life has been far harder than any 9 year old deserves. The comment that stabs me in the heart are people who tell me that "God meant for him to be in your family". Do they actually think that there's a God who kills off children's parents and loved ones? Do they see the hand of God in the car accident?

I should add that I do believe in God, at least for now. But not one who picks and chooses in that way.

I bet it does! (Stab you in the heart.)

At one point after my baby’s death, I remember thinking I so much wanted a big family with six or seven kids. I was afraid, in a superstitious way, though, to pray for that because I am guardian for my nieces and nephews should their parents die. I had this irrational fear that if Iprayed for a big family, God might think a tragic accident for my sister was a way for me to have the big family I said I wanted. (I’m typing that and thinking it sounds super-nutty, but I was so gun-shy over what might be “God’s will” that I started thinking of every horrible thing that could lead to what I was asking for.)

happypamama · August 3, 2019

11 minutes ago, Quill said:

I bet it does! (Stab you in the heart.)

At one point after my baby’s death, I remember thinking I so much wanted a big family with six or seven kids. I was afraid, in a superstitious way, though, to pray for that because I am guardian for my nieces and nephews should their parents die. I had this irrational fear that if Iprayed for a big family, God might think a tragic accident for my sister was a way for me to have the big family I said I wanted. (I’m typing that and thinking it sounds super-nutty, but I was so gun-shy over what might be “God’s will” that I started thinking of every horrible thing that could lead to what I was asking for.)

I totally understand this. It does not sound nutty at all to me.

After my husband got hurt badly while I was pregnant with N, I commented that he was way more fragile than any newborn I'd ever had. I also found it extremely hard to leave him overnight at the hospital, even in good hands, and said that I didn't know how people were able to leave their babies in the NICU. I *know* that didn't cause everything that happened, but sometimes it's very easy to think that I jinxed myself.

BooksandBoys · August 4, 2019

6 hours ago, StellaM said:

Quill, I absolutely understand that you are not just pouting because God wasn't nice to you. I absolutely understand that your love for your sweet girl - for another, not yourself - drives you in your questioning and doubt.

And I also understand that not all suffering has redemptive power, even in mortal human terms. People do not always grow stronger through trauma. It's a lovely story, but it's not the truth.

Agreed.

Quill, I think of your baby girl often, even though I’ve never met you or her. Your love for her shines through every time you write about her.

When my toddler nearly died, when, for an eternity of a minute or two I thought he was dead, there was no thought of prayer, only anguish. And later, when I knew he would live, there was still no thought of prayer, only gratitude. But people called me on the telephone to ask me if I believed in god again. As though my child surviving, a year after my brother had lost his baby, was some gift from a god. If it was a gift from a god that my son lived, then what was my nephew living for only a year?

I’ve been an accidental atheist for 15 years, but I had never been angry at Christianity until 5 years ago when people expected me to believe again simply because I still had a living son.

Edited to add: I’m no longer angry at anyone. That was a short-lived reaction. But I’m still confused by it all.

Edited August 4, 2019 by BooksandBoys

Faith-manor · August 4, 2019

13 hours ago, DawnM said:

I think also because he worked in a church and was prominent in some Christian circles. When someone who has lead you to faith or helped you grow in your faith leaves the faith, is a larger "blow" than Joe Blow (ha, sorry, no pun intended.)

Just like the link I posted, many loved the Christian music produced by this man, so in many ways, it is a bigger deal.

That is the crux of the matter. Deconversions/Deconstructions among prominent members of a belief system sometimes rock the world of others who adhere to the same or similar beliefs.

It wasn't easy for people connected to Moody Theological Seminary when Bart Ehrman deconverted. it was a bit of a scandal in that community, and heart breaking for many of them. There is a lot of pain that can be involved when leaders have a change in worldview. Compassion needs to be extended both directions so people can heal.

A huge amount of marriages don't survive these things either, and especially so if there is a lot of outside pressure and turmoil. Dh and I have managed so far and that's partly due to how much privacy we've been able to maintain in the matter. For Joshua and Shannon, privacy isn't going to happen, not when one is prominent enough in the community to have to make public statements about their faith issues. This didn't just happen overnight, and trying to go through it without having the SGM community up in their business was not likely easy, probably rather impossible actually. SGM churches due to their take on "church discipline" tend to be unbelievably snoopy - at least as reported by many folks who have left them - and up in each other's faces, quite judgmental. It is the problem with setting oneself up as a very public figure for your belief system or political system or celebrity status. You choose to live in the public eye and that has its rewards, but it also has some pretty big downsides and this is one of them. For Joshua, he's had to go through the painful process of trying to figure out what to do with his books, and that means dealing with publishers, distributors and retailers, etc. That's not something that normally converts or de-converts have to navigate. The same for the musician, there is published work out there so how does that get handled, and for those that loved the music and found encouragement and blessing, how does that work out for them?

Ultimately, the Harris's kids pay the biggest price. The marriage isn't going to make it, and they are living that bad dream in the public eye. They will have to figure out as adults what they believe, and if that is different from their parents, another layer of difficulty added. I feel so sad for them.

Aura · August 4, 2019

This is a great thread! I just wanted to chime in with a couple things:

1. Someone commented about it being rare for a person to reject their faith just because they realized it no longer made sense to them. I don't think it's really accurate to say it's rare. Several people have already posted, and now I'm adding my voice, that we did not have some traumatic experience that precipitated the change. It really was a simply a change in belief solely because we didn't agree with what we had been taught.

I have also learned not to be so dogmatic about belief. I was 100% certain of my faith 15 years ago. I just wanted to "dig deeper" to have a better relationship with God. But when I dug deeper, that 100% fell off a cliff. Now I know better than to say that anything is certain, and I also have a lot more grace towards people who believe differently.

My default view of Joshua Harris's statements is that he just grew and his beliefs changed drastically, and with his larger worldview (IMO) he realized how narrow-minded and hurtful he had been to certain groups of people, and so he owed them an apology. Of course, I know better than to say that I'm sure of that 😉 .

2. After I asked a lot of the same questions being thrown around in this thread, I finally settled on reincarnation and for the most part, the way Edgar Cayce presented Creation. I don't agree with everything he taught, but it helped re-frame how I thought about things. It is a totally different way of looking at things than evangelical Christianity. I think it has more things in common with LDS and Greek Orthodox, but it doesn't line up with those either.

(I admit, it took a long while for me to finally say I believed in reincarnation because coming from my Christian background, that belief was literally laughed at.)

3. At this point, I believe that we have freewill within a framework. We do have freewill in making the choices that are presented to us in our life, but our life path was set in motion before we were born, so there are certain aspects that we don't have freewill over. I don't believe in total freewill, because to me, that would be chaos. Everything works under prescribed rules, and life is no different. You can exercise your freewill and choose to run, walk, jump, sit, lie down, etc. But you still have to contend with gravity. That's how I view freewill.

And as a side note, other people have the freewill to act against you as well. They can put objects in your path or try to tie you down. But there is nothing--no rope, no chain--that they can use that will ultimately override your freewill. It can however, make it extremely difficult.

So anyway, I just wanted to throw those out there, just as other points of view in this discussion.

DawnM · August 4, 2019

14 hours ago, Lady Florida. said:

I agree. I don't think anything you said was in reply to any of my posts but I always appreciate your input and always find it respectful @EmseB

Yep. It's the same with politicians. It's news when politician is caught cheating on his wife but it's BIG NEWS when a politician who shouts from the rooftops about family values is caught cheating on his wife. We notice those people more than we notice others who commit the same offenses.

And we SHOULD notice them more. They have chosen to be in the spotlight and have their lives on display.

And I will add, I find that sometimes Christian prominent folks are most adamant against the thing they struggle with the most. I could name a few but I need to get out the door and don't have time to look them up at the moment. Jerry Falwell always comes to mind, but I don't really know the names of all the others.

Edited August 4, 2019 by DawnM

Faith-manor · August 4, 2019

6 hours ago, DawnM said:

And we SHOULD notice them more. They have chosen to be in the spotlight and have their lives on display.

And I will add, I find that sometimes Christian prominent folks are most adamant against the thing they struggle with the most. I could name a few but I need to get out the door and don't have time to look them up at the moment. Jerry Falwell always comes to mind, but I don't really know the names of all the others.

And I agree with that. One should be cautious about throwing one's hat in the ring as expert leadership, making a names for oneself for doing it because one uses that celebrity status to influence others. That should not be a responsibility taken lightly. Most of the time, I think it is often taken VERY lightly. In the case of the Harris's, I think they are feeling this keenly at least taking into account the wording of Josh's apology.

umsami · August 4, 2019

Kind of on topic, kind of off topic...but I ran across this article on religion and the future of religion on the BBC. It's long. Some bits of it, I glossed over to be honest (computer/AI gods)... but I still found it interesting.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190801-tomorrows-gods-what-is-the-future-of-religion

The Well-Trained Mind Extended Guide

Joshua Harris leaves Christianity?

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