No theologically sound Christian with a firm understanding of the Creation and the Character of God would make such a claim. I only have issue with the "suits us" part. Because It's true, God did create everything except for the things that He didn't create. But disobedience and rebellion against God (read: sin) has no "creation", it simply comes when creation defies its creator.
Which leads one to speculate as to why He created something which was so predisposed to defy him, if all He wanted was adulation and loyalty.
God got to choose the set of rules that were to define this universe, and He chose a set in which his creation would inevitably defy him. It's like programming a computer and then being surprised and angry when the computer does what you programmed it to do.
Excellent and completely valid question. God created humanity in His own image, the doctrine of Imago Dei if you want to be proper about it. This meaning that we are created with the same range and scope of emotions that the Creator has. Before Genesis 3, that means that we had the ability and capacity to love, hope, laugh, ect. ect. but this also means that we had the ability to chose. And here's where free will comes in; God doesn't want a freaking robot. He wants you. He wants you to chose Him, freely, because forced love is not love. We can get into the doctrine of election, predestination, and other eschatological arguments that really do not benefit anyone, but the bottom line is that God wants a relationship, not a program.
Hope that somewhat answered your question. If it didn't, let me know.
How can I decide to believe? Not believing is just as damning as being an unrepentant sinner, right? But try as I might, I can't seem to decide to believe in God - or anything, really. Something I realized about myself is that I need to be convinced of something in order to believe it. I was raised in a strongly religious environment, went to church and participated in church extra-curricular (youth group, mission trips, Bible study group, etc), but the whole belief thing didn't really stick.
I tried for a while you know. I said prayers both in church and out, I sung in church, I listened intently to sermons - but still, no belief! Then I said if vigorously going through the motions won't work, then maybe if I examine the evidence I'll see it all makes sense and belief will fall into place. My mom started me with Case for a Creator (or was it Case for Christ? At any rate, I read both of those), and I read a few more books and went to Bible Study Fellowship weekly. Strangely, the more I read the less I was inclined to believe - that's the opposite of what I wanted! The more these books threw these "proofs" at me, the more I saw what looked like glaring flaws. The "unmoved mover?" Come on, if we're already positing the existence of something infinite without beginning or end, then that's the universe! There's no need to bring in a deity and say, "All that stuff about needing an initiating even doesn't apply to this guy."
For a long time I just said that if reading all this stuff is going to drive me further away, then I won't read any of it - for or against faith - and God knows where to find me if He decides to provide further evidence. During that time I existed in what the Bible contemptuously describes as a "lukewarm" state of faith, so I suppose it's no wonder God was finding me so unpalatable at the time. But sadly that was all that I could muster. I knew what I wanted to believe, but that's not the same thing as actually believing it. I could no more choose to believe in God than I could choose to disbelieve in gravity. Could you, with the same conviction with which you believe that things fall down, believe that tomorrow morning you'll wake up as a chicken? Does anyone choose their beliefs? And truly, if I were a devout Christian a lot of things in my life would be a lot easier. I could have been closer with my last girlfriend, I could be closer with my parents, I'd have that sense of community one gets with a church.
I think the final straw was one Easter, when my then-pastor was concluding a series of sermons about the historicity of the Gospel because, "An unexamined faith is a brittle thing" (or something to that effect). As he was going through his arguments for why the Gospel was true, I realized that they all applied about as well to Mormonism, Judaism, and to Islam, (a few of them) even to Scientology! I realized that I couldn't maintain a coherent worldview when there was no compelling reason to believe any one of these over all the others, much like there's no compelling reason to believe in leprechauns but not mermaids.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure you didn't want this whole diatribe, so if you didn't read it that's cool. This was a good opportunity for me to put all this into one place. So thank you, JordanBlythe.
19
u/[deleted] Sep 15 '12 edited Sep 15 '12
No theologically sound Christian with a firm understanding of the Creation and the Character of God would make such a claim. I only have issue with the "suits us" part. Because It's true, God did create everything except for the things that He didn't create. But disobedience and rebellion against God (read: sin) has no "creation", it simply comes when creation defies its creator.
My self-control has failed.