dermdoc said:
So you want a God that meets your criteria?
Then He is not God. You are.
This is an obvious false dichotomy between "unquestioning loyalty to God" and "wanting to be God". I would like to think that over the years on this board I have been clear that my personal beliefs and moral opinions are simply my own. I do not speak for anyone else nor have I claimed that they are morally superior to anyone else. My experience on this board is that the religious are the ones that claim the moral authority and pretend to speak for God. Besides, maybe we have a moral relativistic God. That doesn't break any laws of the universe, does it?
God has no obligation to my criteria. And I don't know if I have an obligation to God . . . maybe He should tell us. I imagine your God as a CEO of a huge company trying to implement a new company policy. And to implement the policy, he hires his son and sends him to a tiny isolated department of the company to spread the word of the new policy. And 2000 years later, 3/4 of the company thinks the policy is nuts and that it is not the will of the CEO and the remaining quarter has splintered into 10,000 sects of policy believers, many who actively fight with each other. Maybe the CEO could send the whole company an email.
If we have an obligation to God's criteria, then one of several things might be said about that obligation. . . either:
a) We are meant to follow God's criteria blindly and without question. We are God's slaves. Or . . .
b) We are only capable of understanding some of God's criteria, and the rest must be blindly trusted and followed with slave-like loyalty. Or . . . .
c) God wishes for us to understand and agree to that obligation and invites us to question, debate, investigate, and even to disagree.
A relationship is a two way a street. In the Christian notion of relationship between man and God, God holds 100% of the power. God's rules are absolute. The conditions are set in steel and absolute. There is no compromise. 'Love' is on God's terms only.
This is already a long post, so I'm going to lean into it. . .
The Christian God does not make sense to me. And it isn't from lack of trying or petulance or from a desire to be my own God. You claim I am obligated to this God, but as far as I can tell, all you've got is human beings telling me they speak for God.
* Christianity claims that God created the universe, watched it evolve as countless galaxies, stars, and planets are formed and destroyed and churned over for literally billions of years. Why?
* And after 10 billion years, God allows a planet to form for humans. And then life - and the start a 3.5 billion year process of biological evolution in which an unfathomable number of lifeforms are born, live, and die. An unfathomable number of animals are born, experience suffering, and die. How many animals capable of feeling sorry or pain watched their children killed by predators or die from tragedy or illness? For what?
* And then after 3.5 billion years of life, God decides to poof humans into existence or to guide their evolution. And for 250 million years, He watches us in our most tribal years scraping for survival, sleeping in the mud, fighting with sticks, and living in fear of predators, other tribes, and the mysterious.
* And then somewhere around 5000 years ago, God decides its time to intervene by speaking to a few select individuals and claiming certain tribes to be chosen and special. God lays waste to wicked cities, causes plaques and disasters, floods the world killing everyone except a few people, commanding his allies to destroy their neighbors and steal their virgins to be sex slaves, sending bears to eat children, the list goes on. These were the strategies God used for 3000 years to show us how much he loved us.
* And then 2000 years ago, he sends his son (who is also himself) to preach to us. But, he doesn't write anything down. No, he goes through life doing some nice things relying on his buddies to write down the message 30 years or more after his life. And then some more buddies plagiarize the first guy and write their own accounts.
* Oh, and the of course the entirety of God's interactions over the period of the Old Testament though Jesus with the entire planet is confined a place smaller than New Jersey. Roughly 0.015% of the landmass of the world. If this doesn't scream "small tribal religious custom", then I don't know what does.
* And God gives us a book, The Bible, to be our guide. But written by fallible men and assembled by committee. And it documents the adventures of God and his team thousands of years ago. Except, we have to understand it all as allegory or fable or understand it through the context of a historical and cultural language we don't really know. And, I've learned from this board, that we must all be experts in linguistics, Hebrew, Greek, ancient history, geography, philosophy, anthropology, and culture in order to correctly interpret and understand the message.
* And Jesus talks to us about Hell and eternal fire, and devils, and thirst and anguish, and everlasting destruction and torment and weeping and gnashing of teeth. Characters in the NT are literally tortured in Hell and then we are told 'nah, God doesn't really torture people'.
* And God gives us a church, run by men in robes and funny hats, sitting in massive opulent structures, on piles of wealth and land and titles like " Vicar of Christ" and "Supreme Pontiff". An organization that has aligned with dictators and tyrants, supported slave trading, religious crusades, brutal colonization, burning witches, and hanging heretics.
* And God tells us to murder people that don't listen to priests, witches, fortune tellers, adulterers, fornicators, non believers, gays, blasphemers, and false prophets. But not really. We aren't actually supposed to do those things. Sike. . . . we get to ignore parts of the Old Testament that we don't like.
* And God calls us to know Him and love Him and be saved through Him. But, 2000 years after the big reveal, 70% of the world doesn't believe He exists. And the accident of time and geography that we are each born into remains a near perfect predictor of who will accept the faith. The Truth is sooooo obvious that we have to be indoctrinated into as children to accept it. Maybe if his face appears on enough toast, we'll finally get the message.
I do not understand your God. This God does not make sense to me. The Christian God is a Rube Goldberg tinkering, poor communicating, evasive, elusive, confusing, possibly genocidal. . . possibly not, possible sociopath. . . . maybe not, enigma wrapped in a riddle.
And all of the lovely flowery language in the world about how God is He and essence of existence and source of all that is good and loving doesn't excuse the fact that we don't really understand who God is and we don't have any reliable accounts of God and we have no reliable ways of discussing these things with God.
For you to tell me that this God also wishes for me to submit, without question, unconditionally, and eternally strikes me as absurd. I can't help but think that Christians are either delusional about God or so massively wrong about just about every aspect of who God is. And maybe I'm wrong, I still don't understand this God. I imagine there actually being a Christian God, sitting up on a cloud in Heaven. . . . as you do. . . . thinking to Himself "WTF are these Christians doing? I never said any of this stuff. . . . They've all gone mad!".
And no, I will not sit in a quiet room and listen and wait to hear a voice. When Christians do this, they hear God. When Muslims do it, they hear Allah. When ancient pagans did it, they heard their gods. And when crazy people do it, they hear someone telling them to drown their children in a bathtub. Maybe listening to the voices in your own head isn't so reliable.
TLDR; No, I don't think God should conform to my criteria. If God wishes for me to use my free will to accept Him or reject Him, then I'll just wait for Him to provide the terms. Until then, I'll just keep doing my best.
