07-09-2023, 11:00 PM
(07-09-2023, 10:39 PM)Matt_Crimson Wrote: But in my opinion, people only say this because they've never experienced what it's like to be truly "alive". We are all dying right now. The moment we are born we literally start the process of dying. I can't say for certain what it's like to truly be alive, and by "alive" I mean living within the eternal glory of God. But what I can say is I do want to find out. God is the greatest mystery of life, and to miss out on that experience is far scarier to me than anything else in this life. To be completely honest, I don't see the downside to experiencing eternity with God, until we actually do, we can only assume what it will be like. But it can be the greatest thing we've ever experienced. I know a lot of people would argue it won't be great, but that's not what I believe.
I think that's one of the great deceptions. That in order for God to be good we must not suffer, so he must in a sense serve our interests and not his own. If God were to do that, it would in effect make him not God. And what good is a god that simply bends to the will of man? I don't believe the allowance of suffering makes God evil because we are able to escape it through the salvation he has offered us.
Exactly.
My point being that our efforts to make ourselves happy/content are futile, even if temporary. It would serve us much better to turn to God and take him up on his offer of salvation and experience what it's like to truly be "alive".
I don't think the idea is that we must not suffer. it's that we were put into a state that was highly likely to become suffering, and not by our own volition. If we were once a part of nothingness, or as this clown suggests, oneness with all of existence, then we became a part of our current existence through the hand of god. He had to know that suffering was likely if not a foregone conclusion.
It's like me offering my pet snake a live mouse. Now, I normally only feed him pre-killed, and he eats them readily. But I also know that if I offer live food, his instincts will compel him to strike and wrap. I suppose he could leave the mouse alone, as in like "anything is possible" kinds of terms. Like me finding a suitcase with 5 million cash on the way to work possible. It could happen, but it won't, and nobody would prepare as if it will. So, here's me in the role of his benevolent overseer, plopping a hapless rodent in there at the mercy of chance, all while telling my kid that if the snake eats the live mouse, imma kill his scaly ass for it. Live prey is forbidden in my house, and that's a hard rule. The only rule. Does the damn snake know that? Does he understand the human thought process about eating an animal alive and the barbarism is requires? Hell no. He's a biological eating machine. Sees heat and strikes if he's healthy. This is similar to us allegedly not being able to understand god's thought process, as it is unknowable to us. If god put that tree there, and he truly knew Adam and Eve, which he most certainly did, he knew well and good what they would do.
It all just seems very trivial for an all-knowing being. Put a thing in place that poses a test that they will most certainly fail.
