Do you believe; and why?

[fredtoast]

(05-14-2019, 12:21 PM)Matt_Crimson Wrote: I believe God is good for a few reasons.


1) God always gives people time to turn to him. 

Gods punishments usually come with a warning. He warned Adam and Eve at the beginning of creation about not eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil when he could have just put the tree there and not told them anything about it and then punished them for eating from it because he thought it'd be fun to do. He warned the people in Noah's time about the flood when he could have just flooded the earth and laughed in enjoyment. He warned the Egyptians and their Pharaoh multiple times and sent plagues with the most deadliest plague being last when he could have just killed them all off with the first plague. 

God has a tendency to warn us about destruction before he sends us destruction. In fact, the bible even ends with a warning to the people living in modern times that Jesus will return and destruction will come with him, yet we ignore it just like all those who came before us.

Why is this important? Because it tells us that God doesn't have the evil intention of wanting to destroy us. Rather, God wants to live in peace with us, but it is our own disobedience that leads to our destruction and not that God has the evil intention of actually wanting our destruction. Satan however does want our destruction and further leads us into it with Adam and Eve being the prime example of this. If Satan cared about Adam and Eve he wouldn't have told them to eat from the tree, yet he did. 


2) God punishes us because of our disobedience, not because of some evil desire to watch us suffer or for his own enjoyment.


As I mentioned above, God didn't have to warn any of us about the destruction he sent/is going to send, yet he did/does. Why? Because he cares about us. If God didn't care, the earth would've been thrown into the sun by now, yet we're all still here rotating around it endlessly. Nowhere does God ever punish someone because he just felt like doing it out of some pleasure. Satan however doesn't care about us. He didn't care that telling Adam and Eve to eat the fruit was going to cause them to experience God's wrath. If he did, he would have never persuaded them to do so knowing what it would cause, yet he did. And what's more disturbing is that Satan did this KNOWING that in the end he is NOT going to win. So in other words, not only did Satan tell us to rebel against God, he basically told us to fight a war that he knows will only lead to our eternal destruction.

3) God offers us salvation


Just as God didn't have to give us warnings for coming destruction, he also didn't have to offer us salvation. Yet he did. This is because God again cares about us and actually doesn't want to destroy us. If he didn't care about us he wouldn't have offered us salvation. What has Satan ever offered anyone that is good?

This makes no sense to me.

God orders you to worship him.  If you don't worship him he sends you to hell.  And you think that makes him good?

I think if he was good he would not order you to worship him in the first place.  And even if he did want you to worship him it would not be under the threat of eternal damnation.  There is no need for "salvation" if there is no threat of damnation in the first place.