Good one. Us humans are just stupid dogs. Run with that. You’re insistence on silly metaphors is draining. If my dog could talk and asked questions about life, and I created the dog, I’d talk to her.
Hey guys have you ever had worms. Cant talk to worms…
What if it was a piece of pizza
People who really “think” about it realize that God is a psycho. He created us all for sport - there can be no other explanation.
That’s why I’ve added Cthulhu mythos to my religious beliefs.
God is just and gracious. If He deals with the rebellion’s leader he has to deal with all the lesser rebels such as they are too.
Practically speaking, this can help to explain Revelation. Lewis spoke of pain as God’s megaphone to the lost. In light of that the tribulation / great tribulation may be viewed as His turning up the volume to “11” on a scale of 1 to 10. It will be Him shouting at those who have so closed their ears that nothing less can reach them.
It is important that He has said what will happen in the T/GT because that will be a witness to and against all those who ignore it so that they do not repent.
I’m somewhat persuaded that when the two witnesses will be killed, put on display for the whole world to see, that the very last people who will or could ever be saved will finally take notice, and they will hear the call to repent. When the witnesses, who will have been on display for three days, stand up alive again those people will not be surprised … everyone else will be. After that point the only question of the unsaved who have not taken the MotB seems to be do they personally survive long enough to stand in the separation of the proverbial sheep and the goats.
Make no mistake, what Paul once wrote of speculatively, asking (not stating) what if God actually did just tolerate vessels of wrath so He could fashion vessels of glory, will at that point no longer be a theoretical expediency.
When the witnesses rise from the dead, when the last who will ever or could ever turn to Christ will repent (the people having become so corrupt that they will only grow worse from that point if left to their own devices), then there will be no delay. There is no more reason to tolerate the steadfast rebels for the sake of those who could yet be redeemed.
Why doesn’t God just save the trouble and zap the the good people to Heaven and and people to hall and be done with it?
Better yet, why not just be really just and gracious and zap everybody to Heaven?
You just havent spent decades learning Hebrew bruh
What’s your focus on going to Heaven?
In my interpretation of Heaven and Hell, the life that you live on Earth entirely determines what sort of afterlife you’ll experience. Without your life on Earth, there will be nothing to reflect on affecting your afterlife experience.
He has a different plan for you. If you had a talking squirrel in your cupboard would you give it $5000000 if it killed a mouse
I think you have to really know all the languages if you’re going to truly understand religion.
True. But that makes it sound like sin and suffering is a necessary constraint, one that God made. Is God not bound to that constraint? If not, why make us bound to it
That is probably true, in the academic sense. But I prefer to spend my energy on philosophy and science. Seems to be much more enjoyable and less tied to magic
I don’t really believe in sin. However, we definitely can affect each other’s lives negatively and cause suffering. I think God wanted to allow us that choice.
Those are good too, but I only regained my faith by finding a way to allow magic to fit into my worldview.
Why can’t he put that knowledge in your head?
If you believe in heaven, do you believe we have that choice in heaven?
If I created all the money in the Universe? Sure, why not?
Only by my own eyes. I’ve experienced intense psychedelic experiences, very mystical almost “magical” , but far different than what western religion has described. I actually find “ultimate reality” to be more platonic and eternal in form, like a constant field of “shape static”
I said this earlier in the thread.
Your afterlife consists of the complete knowledge and emotional weight of how all the choices you made in your life affected those around you. If you made choices that benefited those around you; you will know exactly how you made their lives better and you will feel the joy that you brought to their lives. If your choices negatively affected those people, you will also know personally their pain and sorrow.
God can’t give you your life experiences. You choose those for yourself. Your afterlife is of your own making.
So what if you die at a young age and havent built a life experience?
