The "Horrific God" Charge

Originally posted by jaywill

God the Father is a 20. Jesus the Christ the Person of the Son is a 20. God the Holy Spirit is a 20. Michael the Archangel is a 10? satan the devil is a 1

I agree that the Triune God should be ranked 20 or beyond.

Satan is a [b]negative 20. He could only be the antithesis of all that God is. Satan could only set himself up to be ...[text shortened]... s mind.

They count God and Christ as the enemy. Much else is just shrouded in darkness.[/b]

You create a scale of morality starting at 1 for absolute worst and going up to twenty for
absolute best and then start talking about morality above twenty and below 1.

This renders your scale totally meaningless.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Creating life does not give the right to end it.

If you 'create' give birth to a child, you do not have the right to subsequently kill that child.

God as described in the bible is an abomination.

And certainly not worthy of worship.

Creating life does not give the right to end it.

Any God who has the authority to cause one to live FOREVER should have the authority also to take life away.

And to what HIGHER referee shall we go to adjust God ?
If there is a higher authority we can appeal to in order to adjust a disfunctional God, where do we go when that higher referee also does not meet our approval ?

If you go to God 2.0 to correct God 1.0 where will you go when you find fault with God 2.0? You will have to appeal to a higher authority - God 3.0. then if you find fault with God 3.0 you have to hunt through the universes to find an even more perfect referee to adjust and teach something to God 3.0.

Is there an infinite regress of better and better Gods ? Or does the moral "buck" stop somewhere ultimately? Does it stop with YOU ? You don't act like it does. You've left a trail of people who could vouch for us that you really did not act as if morality reached its peak with you. They might say "he's not quite that good.".

I believe the cosmic buck stops with God. I believe the is PERFECT and the cosmic moral buck just stops there.

The good news is that this God has made provision for my being reconciled to Himself in case I fall out with His will. And such provision was made before I was even born. It was made before the universe was made.

In His love and foreknowledge God ordained a grand scheme of reconciliation and redemption should His free willed creations fall under His perfect and righteous condemnation.

I cannot view such a God who made such provision as horrific. And especially so if He came as a man to experience the utmost suffering along with us, indeed far surpassing whatever suffering we could endure.

My God died for me. As far as it is possible for man to understand, this God of man became man and laid down His life for man. There is no greater love. And such a God I cannot regard as a horrific monster.

Maybe someday when I come into His full presence He will say "You were right about that horrific judgment of the Canaanites. But I was right also."

If you 'create' give birth to a child, you do not have the right to subsequently kill that child.

God as described in the bible is an abomination.

And certainly not worthy of worship.

A God who has the power to grant one to live ETERNALLY and FOREVER, must surely have the authority to temporarily take away life, should He will that it need to be done.

Did you thank God for the way your liver operated today ?
Maybe you are just too spoiled and unthankful to your Creator on general principle.

You are arguing against the One who gave you the ability to argue at all. How can you prevail ?

Originally posted by jaywill

Yes, I did branch off a bit here and there. As I said, I do not agree that God is "horrific" , but I can see why the biblegod may seem horrific to some.

I can see also. As a Christian who has studied the entire Bible I think I have to admit that some things are difficult issues.

I am tackling here what I admit is a very tho ...[text shortened]... t 20. I would put myself around the bottom. Maybe I would be a 3 or a 2 or a 1.

So you do base you faith on personal experience. Thanks for telling me that.
It seems there is a lot for me to read to catch up in this thread, so I will just do that (read) for now. Perhaps I will have some queries later.

Originally posted by bbarr
That's possible. If you take it as axiomatic that Jesus was morally perfect, and that Jesus was God, then everything else just follows. Nothing that he does could possibly be in error. But that's not what I mean by 'morality'. In my view, morality is not "whatever Jesus says". I think that's a childish view.

I gather that, you have some other standard than what Jesus said, where your
standard comes from remains to be seen as far as I'm concern. Unless you are
still working it out, than you really don't have a standard you'll have a work in
progress which means it is still in a state of flux.
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
I gather that, you have some other standard than what Jesus said, where your
standard comes from remains to be seen as far as I'm concern. Unless you are
still working it out, than you really don't have a standard you'll have a work in
progress which means it is still in a state of flux.
Kelly

"...a state of flux."

That seems about right to me.
After all the only thing that remains the same is change.

So too is the nature of "God"

Originally posted by googlefudge
You create a scale of morality starting at 1 for absolute worst and going up to twenty for
absolute best and then start talking about morality above twenty and below 1.

This renders your scale totally meaningless.

You create a scale of morality starting at 1 for absolute worst and going up to twenty for
absolute best and then start talking about morality above twenty and below 1.

This renders your scale totally meaningless.

Not really. It is not rigorous statistical precesion, just a parable of approximation, of comparison. A point is still made and I think it is still valid.

I was not aiming at mathematical exactitude. But if you still think the concept is useless to you, that's OK. Maybe some others still get the point.

Originally posted by jaywill

You create a scale of morality starting at 1 for absolute worst and going up to twenty for
absolute best and then start talking about morality above twenty and below 1.

This renders your scale totally meaningless.

Not really. It is not rigorous statistical precesion, just a parable of approximation, of comparison. A point is sti ...[text shortened]... u still think the concept is useless to you, that's OK. Maybe some others still get the point.

It's like your wife saying on a scale of 1 to 10 how do I look and you answer 11 (remember
to actually look up before you do this).

Which is fine in that circumstance, but if your debating an issue with people, even casually,
and you say, ok I am going to make a point by asking people to rate something on this scale
I have invented, and then after they do so you change all, the rules when you do it yourself,
you render your scale, and point, meaningless.


In this insistence I didn't 'join in' with putting things on your scale because I don't think you
can rate morality in such a fashion, now apparently you don't either, which begs the question why
you did it in the first place?

You would have done better to simply ask do you rate your morals as being better than JC's.

Originally posted by karoly aczel
So you do base you faith on personal experience. Thanks for telling me that.
It seems there is a lot for me to read to catch up in this thread, so I will just do that (read) for now. Perhaps I will have some queries later.

So you do base you faith on personal experience. Thanks for telling me that.
It seems there is a lot for me to read to catch up in this thread, so I will just do that (read) for now. Perhaps I will have some queries later.

I think the order with Jesus Christ is FACT then FAITH then EXPERIENCE.

His word is absolutely worthy of trust.

Originally posted by jaywill

So you do base you faith on personal experience. Thanks for telling me that.
It seems there is a lot for me to read to catch up in this thread, so I will just do that (read) for now. Perhaps I will have some queries later.

I think the order with Jesus Christ is FACT then FAITH then EXPERIENCE.

His word is absolutely worthy of trust.

What about JC is fact?
His existence?
His divinity?
His teaching's?
His performing of miracles?


I am not convinced you can prove any of them as fact.
A guy called JC probably existed, but this isn't in any way certain.

Originally posted by googlefudge
I am not convinced you can prove any of them as fact.
A guy called JC probably existed, but this isn't in any way certain.

That doesn't bother people who work backwards. In reality he started with experience, gained faith, then later decided there were facts. But his acceptance of the facts is based on faith 🙂

Originally posted by googlefudge
It's like your wife saying on a scale of 1 to 10 how do I look and you answer 11 (remember
to actually look up before you do this).

Which is fine in that circumstance, but if your debating an issue with people, even casually,
and you say, ok I am going to make a point by asking people to rate something on this scale
I have invented, and then aft ...[text shortened]... u would have done better to simply ask do you rate your morals as being better than JC's.

In this insistence I didn't 'join in' with putting things on your scale because I don't think you
can rate morality in such a fashion, now apparently you don't either, which begs the question why you did it in the first place?

You would have done better to simply ask do you rate your morals as being better than JC's.

As analogies go it was also imperfect. But I still intend to use it.

You see, if I say I am at a level 15 but Jesus is at level 10 I should be able to explain how I could teach Jesus to bring Him up at least to my own level.

But beyond that level I would not know what to teach Him because it is beyond me. Then I simply ask - "Is it possible that you might not fully understand then someone who was on a higher plane than yourself ?"

Now if Jesus Christ is on a level of say, 20, and I am down at something considerably lower (which I regard as realistic), it is possible that in some areas I may not understand the goodness of something known to Him to have been done by God.

Originally posted by jaywill

In this insistence I didn't 'join in' with putting things on your scale because I don't think you
can rate morality in such a fashion, now apparently you don't either, which begs the question why you did it in the first place?

You would have done better to simply ask do you rate your morals as being better than JC's.

As a ...[text shortened]... not [b]understand the goodness of something known to Him to have been done by God.[/b]

If you don't, or can't, understand it how can you possibly claim to know it's good?

To claim to know an action is good you have to be able to understand why it is so.

Originally posted by googlefudge
What about JC is fact?
His existence?
His divinity?
His teaching's?
His performing of miracles?


I am not convinced you can prove any of them as fact.
A guy called JC probably existed, but this isn't in any way certain.

What about JC is fact?
His existence?

I don't think people WOULD concoct a character like Christ even if they were able to do so.

Any supposed motive you might propose for people imagining such a Person and putting fictitious words in His mouth, I could demonstrate is nonsense - all things considered. Conspiracy theories are not realistic. We are on the right track to believe that Jesus Christ existed.

His divinity?

I don't claim to be able to prove this. I think you are on the right track to believe it.

His teaching's?

I have to pay attention to someone who says He will be killed and rise from the dead, for three years, and actually does so.

What else He has to say, I think I should pay attention to closely if He said and did that death and resurrection matter.

His performing of miracles?

If the NT just recorded some miraculous acts of Jesus, maybe it would not be that believable. But the think is that with Jesus Christ the power of some of His deeds matches the power of His words.

It is realistic that such words of power to the world were matched with acts of power.

However, if the Bible JUST recorded that "Here's a person who walked on water, healed the sick, raised the dead, feed thousands with a small supply of food ...etc, but taught nothing about it." maybe I might dismiss this as pure legend or myth.

As it stands astounding words were accompanied by astounding display of authority and power. I have to pay attention.

"And some of them wanted to seize Him, but no one laid hands on Him. The attendants therefore came to the chief priests and Pharisees, and these said to them, Why did you not bring Him?

The attendants answered, Never has a man spoken as this man has." (John 7:44-46)

I am not convinced you can prove any of them as fact.
A guy called JC probably existed, but this isn't in any way certain.

I might not be able to prove them as fact with mathematical certitude.

I know who came into my life that night when I called on the name of Jesus addressing Him as "Lord". I know that the chain reaction of things which unfolded in my life did not have their source in me.

I also cannot prove that universe is not more than 15 minutes old or that the entire earth is not standing perfectly still. I mean absolute proof has no one of this.

Such scientific proof that the earth is actually not standing perfectly still would require that we know maybe everything, which of course we do not.

I think I have adaquate evidence that I am absolutely on the right track to believe that God became a man and is my Lord and Savior Jesus. He has sent me to tell you that you too can trust in Him.


Some people expect the Christian to bludgeon or coerce them to believe in Christ.

"You haven't yet forced me to believe !!"

A Chinese proverb says " A person convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. "

Originally posted by googlefudge
If you don't, or can't, understand it how can you possibly claim to know it's good?

To claim to know an action is good you have to be able to understand why it is so.

If you don't, or can't, understand it how can you possibly claim to know it's good?

To claim to know an action is good you have to be able to understand why it is so.

Let's go back to the battle against Jericho in the book of Joshua. Let's just consider its brutality. Never mind the 7 + 7 = 14 opportunities allowed the dwellers to escape as they circled the walls of the fortress.

(Oops. I think my math in the past post may have had an error )

Let's just consider the questionable "goodness" of the judgment executed upon this Jericho. The balance of other easy to understand merciful, good, and gracious acts of God throughout the 65 other Bible books leave me with a trust.

I think the track record is good enough that I have confidence that God is actiing rightly in the Jericho matter as well.

I do not expect that EVERYTHING recorded as being done by God in the Bible will meet my approval. I expect that some things I will not understand, at least until I am more conformed to the image of His Son.


But ...

My apologies for miscalculating and saying the people had over 90 opportunities to escape Jericho. Seven circlings on seven days plus seven circlings on the last day would be 14 merciful invitations for escapees to flee through the gates to safety.

While the army is on the south side, escapees could exit on the north side.
While the army is marching around on the east side, escapees could flee out to the west side, etc.

Originally posted by googlefudge
It's like your wife saying on a scale of 1 to 10 how do I look and you answer 11 (remember
to actually look up before you do this).

Which is fine in that circumstance, but if your debating an issue with people, even casually,
and you say, ok I am going to make a point by asking people to rate something on this scale
I have invented, and then aft ...[text shortened]... u would have done better to simply ask do you rate your morals as being better than JC's.

It's like your wife saying on a scale of 1 to 10 how do I look and you answer 11 (remember to actually look up before you do this).

I was not completely consistent. You are right about that.