Did god really condemn mankind? Is god a just god?

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VeggieTales
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Re: Did god really condemn mankind? Is god a just god?

Post by VeggieTales »

Greatest I am wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 2:50 pm
You seem to think, going against your own WORD, that you or I decide to believe or not.
Yes, I think we do determine whether or not to believe, this is Biblically supported, and I'll elaborate further down.
Greatest I am wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 2:50 pm What kind of uneducated believer are you?
...
Here is some education on your own ideology, that you seem not to know.
Pretentious of you to say, and snarky of you to suppose. Thanks.
Greatest I am wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 2:50 pm Are non-believers doomed by Divine Design?

Scriptures say that God decides if a person will be a believer or non-believer. Those scriptures are shown in this link.

Those quotes seems to really screw up the free will notion that Christians say God gives us.
Quote in the linked video:
"[God] has blinded [unbelievers'] eyes
and hardened their hearts,
so they can neither see with their eyes,
nor understand with their hearts,
nor turn—and I would heal them.”

You have to be more specific when saying "doomed by Divine Design," because I believe humanity is, but certainly not in the way you see it. Our divine design was exactly to have free will, as God does, as we are created in His image. Free will is, in some ways, indeed a condemnation as it allows us to mess up and have no one to blame but ourselves, not even God. You have the free will to choose to believe in God or not, and the quotation above is taken wholly out of critical context!

A few based-line notions:
1. God’s sovereignty in these matters is never pitted against human responsibility;

2. God’s judicial hardening is not presented as the capricious manipulation of an arbitrary potentate cursing morally neutral or even morally pure beings, but as a holy condemnation of a guilty people who are condemned to do and be what they themselves have chosen;

When it comes to the particular quote from the book of John the linked video presented, God is hardening the hearts of people who had already, by their own free will, chosen not to believe: "[e]ven after Jesus had performed so many signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him."
God’s sovereign hardening of the people in Isaiah’s day, his commissioning of Isaiah to apparently fruitless ministry, is a stage in God’s “strange work” (Is. 28:21-22) that brings God’s ultimate redemptive purposes to pass.

God has his ways and his prerogatives in divine hardening, and those prerogatives are just and right (Rom. 9:14-24).
Greatest I am wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 2:50 pm If the bible and Yahweh are to be believed, and as a non-believer, I, of course, cannot believe it, thanks to God, by God’s design and will against me, then why did God deny me belief or faith?
Again, no, God is not against you. It was your God-given free will that had you choose not to believe once you were presented with the choice. You've hardened your own heart, and if God were to harden it also, it could only be a reflection of the willful, self-hardening, and rejection of God by you (Rom. 1:26-28). For example, Pharaoh hardened his own heart (Ex. 8:15). God also hardened Pharaoh’s heart (Ex. 7:3) for God to display His wrath and power.
Greatest I am wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 2:50 pm Even more important to believers, might be to answer the question of; did God make you a believer in things that you can only hope exists and can never confirm?
Sure? I think that's the very definition of faith upon which religion is based.
Greatest I am wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 2:50 pm I have assumed that God’s work of creating both believers and non-believers is working. If that is so, and you believers must think it so, just as I as a non-believer cannot think it is working, --- and Jesus said that those with faith could do all he did and more, --- then there is not even one believer or person of faith that has ever existed.
Either the bible and Christianity is all a lie, or there must be some who can do what Jesus did.

What is your choice of those two options?
Again, I have a problem with your claiming that God "created" two distinct groups of believers and non-believers. He created people. People with the free will to choose whether or not to believe in Him, and the personal responsibility to deal with the consequences of their choice.

And again, again, you're misquoting and mis-contextualizing what Jesus said, namely: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father."

It's a very delusional way of looking at it for you to think that there must be some Jesus-equivalent(s) running around the world performing more incredible acts of divine healing than Jesus Himself did. But there are surely more people, or should I say a greater number of people in the world who can, corporately, exceed in power the things that Jesus did. Jesus uses the term "greater works" differently -- in terms of quantity, not quality. I can also offer, anecdotally, my experience traveling all around the world; most assuredly, I've seen or experienced many miracles unfold: miracles of salvation, miracles of supply, miracles of healing, and more. Likewise, contextually, Jesus is speaking to His first-century Apostles who did perform miracles comparable to that of Christ, like raising the dead.
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Greatest I am
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Re: Did god really condemn mankind? Is god a just god?

Post by Greatest I am »

cornivore wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 5:38 pm
Greatest I am wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 3:08 pm You seem to want to imbalance god by making him good without evil.
Funny, I'd wouldn't say that I'd like to imbalance anything, yet I wrote too much about it, so I think it's fair enough if that seemed unbalanced. To say the least I think balance would not condemn mankind, and to your point I think that mankind cannot balance good with evil (or non-violence with violence), just too much of a good thing with nothing (like a diet)...
Greatest I am wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 3:08 pm The tree of knowledge of all things is dualistic yet you would take the Yin away from the Yang in god.

You forget that Yin and Yang are not in opposition. They compliment each other.
Our knowledge of balance is still lacking. Is there even such a thing as a balanced diet? I don't know, but some are more balanced than others, as people don't need to supplement nutrition with pollution (or antinutrition), when equal parts of those could condemn mankind. For that matter I wouldn't say that evil compliments good either, just as pollution doesn't compliment purity. It may be a side-effect of a purification process, but I wouldn't call it complimentary, because maybe there's a better way to balance this for mankind, without creating such an imbalance in the process.
Good diets still produce pollution.

You say that human good and evil cannot be balanced.

Look at nature and evolution. Evolution forces us to do both good/cooperate and evil/compete.

They are not in balance or equal as we do a lot more good than evil. It still is the perfect system for nature and us.

The universe seems dualistic and we have to take what is given.

Regards
DL
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