Is God a hypocrite?

[steve7150]

Also didn't God pledge to not repeat this?


How do you know God made that pledge? Because Moses wrote that He did? The flood was many years prior to Moses. Where did he get his information? Was it a tradition handed down, that God had sent the flood?







If we question God's pledge not to cause another flood because "Moses wrote that" and because it occurred many years earlier then to be consistent shouldn't we question all of Genesis including the creation account? Also Jesus referenced Moses many times so by extension shouldn't we question Jesus judgment. If Jesus didn't know something he said so but he referenced Moses with authority.
Back to James statement that if we know to do good and don't do the good than it is sin, does that apply to God's lack of preventing evil.

[Paidion]

Isn't this statement self-contradicting? If you say that God could prevent a thing but He chooses not to do so because He wishes to honor human free will, have you not identified a "higher purpose" in God's mind that leads Him not to intervene when He otherwise might? You know that God can intervene to save people from disasters (unless you wish to add the miraculous deliverances and healings in scripture to the list of things in the Bible that you reject), and you know that He does not always intervene, as He could. That He could intervene in a given case, but doesn't, means one of two things:

1) He is purposeless in His decisions when to intervene and when not to; or

2) He is purposeful, and intervenes when it will suit His purpose, but not otherwise.

Yes, God's decision not to thrwart the free will of man could be considered to be a "higher purpose". That, however, is not what most people mean by "higher purpose". The ones I've encountered seem to refer to some hidden or non-revealed higher purpose which "must" be there, though they don't know what it is, and God doesn't reveal it. No one can deny that man's atrocities are usually not prevented by God, and I also acknowledge that sometimes God does intervene to prevent a wicked act. Why He sometimes does but usually doesn't is the great mystery which I have been unable to solve, and so far have not encountered anyone else who has solved it, and made his solution clear. I have long puzzled over the matter.

Your statement above acknowledges that He is purposeful—namely, He purposes to honor human free wll, but you will not allow that He might have any other purpose than this—like His desire, through Joseph's afflictions, to save the world from starvation, or through Christ's sufferings, to save the world from sin. I do not know why you are so intent on limiting God's range of possible purposes for His action, but the one you limit it to does not explain the irregularities. After all, He sometimes did intervene to thwart the free will of evil men—as when men took up stones to stone Christ, but were not successgul, because "His hour was not yet." Yet, He later did not intervene, as when Christ, "being delivered By the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God [was] taken by lawless hands...crucified, and put to death" (Acts 2:24).

Again I acknowledge that God sometimes does intervene, but usually doesn't.

Is it your opinion, then, that Jesus is the only one among God's children who can have the assurance that the cup of suffering handed to him was delivered to Him by His Father (John 18:11)?

First, I am not certain that it was the cup of "suffering" which the father gave Him, but am inclined to think it was the cup of endurance. I know God can bring good out of evil. It was the Roman soldiers at the instigation of the Pharisaic leaders which put Him to death. God didn't kill Him. Indeed, according to the writer to the Hebrews, God heard Christ's prayers and supplications which He offered with loud cries and tears!

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. (Heb 5:7 ESV)

It seemed odd to me when I first read this passage, that Jesus loud cries and prayers WERE HEARD. God was ABLE to save Him from death but He didn't do so. Normally if requests are HEARD, they are GRANTED. This used to be another puzzle for me, but now I think Jesus' prayers WERE granted. It wasn't granted to Him to escape death, but endurance was granted to Him.

But to answer your question, I acknowledge that there are many others of God's precious people who had to endure horrible deaths, e.g. the martyrs of the early church, some of whom REFUSED deliverence, counting it an honour to suffer for Christ's sake. The same with the Anabaptist martyrs of the middle ages. But it seems to me that the fact that God usually doesn't deliver people from suffering and death is a matter quite different from the claim that he actively causes suffering and death.

That God decides matters of His intervention on a case-by-case basis, and since He is purposeful in His decisions, it seems that there must be additional purposes that govern His actions, besides a commitment not to override free will in man. Since God sometimes does, and sometimes does not, override man's free will, there must be some additional "higher purpose," in each case, deciding when He will do this. What is gained for your system by denying this obvious fact?

I am not sure that I deny "this obvious fact". My problem is with the concept that whenever there is an occurence of a natural calamity, or an act of human atrocity, there's always someone to explain, "God must have had a higher purpose in allowing that." — Almost as if God sat down and calculated, "Let's see, I think I'll allow that pervert to rape that little girl in order to....(fill in whatever higher purpose you think feasible). This kind of thinking presumes that God could not have brought about the higher purpose in any way other than "allowing" the atrocity.

[steve]

First, I am not certain that it was the cup of "suffering" which the father gave Him, but am inclined to think it was the cup of endurance.

If so, then I find it amazing that Jesus prayed three times to be spared that cup.

I know God can bring good out of evil. It was the Roman soldiers at the instigation of the Pharisaic leaders which put Him to death. God didn't kill Him.

For anyone out there who still agrees with Jesus and Paul about the authority and inspiration of the Old Testament, I would point out that the Prophet Isaiah wrote of Christ, "It pleased the Lord to bruise Him" (Isa,53:10). If anyone cannot see how this may be something God accomplished through human agents, I am afraid communication will likely be impossible. Such inability to understand would seemingly have to be deliberate, since I doubt if anyone is unfamiliar with the phenomenon of one person doing something through the agency of other parties.

I am not sure that I deny "this obvious fact". My problem is with the concept that whenever there is an occurence of a natural calamity, or an act of human atrocity, there's always someone to explain, "God must have had a higher purpose in allowing that." — Almost as if God sat down and calculated, "Let's see, I think I'll allow that pervert to rape that little girl in order to....(fill in whatever higher purpose you think feasible). This kind of thinking presumes that God could not have brought about the higher purpose in any way other than "allowing" the atrocity.

If the hairs of your head are numbered, and not a sparrow dies without the Father, then it would seem that He is watching every person and is aware of every danger that befalls them—and long before it ever materializes, since the factors that lead to the dangerous situation are present prior to the actual occurrence of disaster. Since God knows, as He sees a calamity about to take place, that it is in His power to intervene or not, He certainly must make decisions about these things case-by-case. Thus, it is indeed as if God sat down and calculated, "Let's see, I think I'll allow that pervert to rape that little girl in order to....(fill in whatever higher purpose you think feasible). The only alternative is to suggest that God looks on human danger and calamity callously and apathetically, and for no particular good purpose, stands by while a crime is committed that He could effortlessly have prevented. If this is your position, then you truly have an evil god.

It is only those who believe that God is good and loving toward all who believe that the God who stands by and does not intervene to save the victim has a good and loving reason for His choice in the matter. Shallow thinkers cannot imagine that this could be so. Fortunately, the Bible was written by people who were not so shallow, and understood that God has at least as much benevolence and wisdom as we have, who will allow our children to suffer excruciating surgeries and have loving reasons for doing so.

The minimizing of this divine purpose (that we should be partakers of His holiness), and the maximizing of the significance of temporal suffering, in our thinking can only be an evidence that we misapprehend the magnitude of our disease of sin, and value short-term gratification more than eternal glory. Jesus, Peter, James and Paul (agreeing with all the Old Testament witnesses) had the opposite view of the matter.

[Paidion]

First, I am not certain that it was the cup of "suffering" which the father gave Him, but am inclined to think it was the cup of endurance.

If so, then I find it amazing that Jesus prayed three times to be spared that cup.

Thanks for pointing that out. My thought that it was endurance was just a thought of the moment that came into my mind without have considered the fact that Jesus wanted to be spared from drinking that cup. He would hardly have prayed to be spared from endurance.

For anyone out there who still agrees with Jesus and Paul about the authority and inspiration of the Old Testament, I would point out that the Prophet Isaiah wrote of Christ, "It pleased the Lord to bruise Him" (Isa,53:10).

Are you sure that Isaiah wrote this? Or did those who prepared the Masoretic text write it? The New Testament writers never translated Old Testament texts from the Masoretic Hebrew. They translated them either from the Septuagint or from the text type from which the Septuagint was translated. That's why you find the their quotes are identical to the Septugint in some cases, and very close to it in others, but quite different from translations of the Masoretic text. You can easily see this by comparing the NT quotes of the OT with the quotes from your own OT.

The Septuagint translators render your Isa 53:10 quote just the opposite meaning to "It pleased the Lord to bruise him".
Rather it reads, "The Lord also is pleased to purge (or "cleanse") him from his stroke (or "wound" or "stripe")."

[steve]

Leaving aside the question of whether the LXX reading of Isaiah 53:10 is to be preferred over the Hebrew MT, we must admit that Jesus saw the cup of suffering as being given to Him by His Father. If He was not mistaken about this, then perhaps the other scriptural writers who saw God as the sovereign dispenser of their fortunes and misfortunes were similarly not wrong.

[Paidion]

If the hairs of your head are numbered, and not a sparrow dies without the Father, then it would seem that He is watching every person and is aware of every danger that befalls them—and long before it ever materializes, since the factors that lead to the dangerous situation are present prior to the actual occurrence of disaster. Since God knows, as He sees a calamity about to take place, that it is in His power to intervene or not, He certainly must make decisions about these things case-by-case. Thus, it is indeed as if God sat down and calculated, "Let's see, I think I'll allow that pervert to rape that little girl in order to....(fill in whatever higher purpose you think feasible). The only alternative is to suggest that God looks on human danger and calamity callously and apathetically, and for no particular good purpose, stands by while a crime is committed that He could effortlessly have prevented. If this is your position, then you truly have an evil god.

Steve, I must admit that at first it was difficult for me to believe that you actually wrote the above paragraph , especially the words "Thus, it is indeed as if God sat down and calculated, "Let's see, I think I'll allow that pervert to rape that little girl in order to....(fill in whatever higher purpose you think feasible)." Can you suggest ANY higher purpose that could be fulfilled by God "allowing" this rape, when He "could effortlessly have prevented" it? I don't expect that you can. If God did have a higher purpose, don't you think it a bit odd that He has never revealed it? And why could God not have "effortlessly" achieved that higher purpose without causing (or "allowing") a little girl to suffer not only the pain of a rape, but likely a life-long emotional dysfunction and self-abhorrance. My wife knew an adult woman who was unable to function after a brutal rape, and took her own life.
That consequence surely wasn't the "higher purpose" which God had in mind.

These atrocities are taking place hourly, and God is not preventing the bulk of them from occurring. What in the world could those millions of higher purposes be? Do you have even a vague idea? Or do you just trustingly leave it as one of life's unsolved mysteries? I think it is your position that implies "an evil god", while mine allows for the possibility of a good One.

And your "only alternative" seems to apply equally well to your position as to mine, except that you can accept God's doing nothing about atrocities without any emotional disturbance by imagining that they serve a higher purpose. Obviously, I have to accept God doing nothing about them too, since they are constantly occurring, but I don't think your "only alternative" has exhausted the explanatory possibilities.

I have offered ONE explanation of God's non-intevention: that He doesn't wish to interfere with man's free will in order that all people may freely submit to Messiah's Lordship. A second possibility is that He will not disturb the natural functioning of physics except in rare instances. If God should prevent all evil forcefully, we would never know whether or not we could perform a task of any kind in the way we perform them now. The "laws" of nature, such as "the law of gravity" would operate sometimes, but not consistently. Whenever a good Christian accidentally slipped and fell off a ladder,(as my grand-uncle did and died) or fell off a bridge or cliff, God might prevent their fall by suspending gravitation or some other physical phenomenon which doesn't naturally take place. The consequent would be no consistency in life for mankind. We wouldn't know when natural laws would function and when they wouldn't. How could life be lived in such a world?

Anyway, it seems we will have to go on living with our differing views of God's character. As for me, I will continue to believe that "God is LOVE" (1 John 4:8,16) and that "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." (1 John 1:5) and that God is kind to ungrateful people and evil people. (Luke 6:35), and that through His Son, He teaches us to love and pray for our enemies and do good to them. I cannot see such a LOVE and kindness in a god who kills people and causes them injury and pain, and who causes or permits the torture and rape of little girls and women in order to fulfill some mysterious higher purpose which he never reveals and which never becomes known.

[steve]

As for me, I will continue to believe that "God is LOVE" (1 John 4:8,16) and that "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." (1 John 1:5) and that God is kind to ungrateful people and evil people. (Luke 6:35), and that through His Son, He teaches us to love and pray for our enemies and do good to them.

So will I, but I will also believe all the other things that God has said about Himself. I will not believe less than you do. I will simply believe the rest, which you reject without necessity. No contradiction exists, except in minds insufficiently committed to reasoning from all the data.

I cannot see such a LOVE and kindness in a god who kills people and causes them injury and pain, and who causes or permits the torture and rape of little girls and women in order to fulfill some mysterious higher purpose which he never reveals and which never becomes known.

In this we certainly differ, but not in the sense that you imagine. You try to, but cannot, escape the fact that we both believe that God allows torture and rape. The very fact that it occurs on His watch makes this indisputable. He can prevent it, but does not. We both agree.

We only disagree on why He does not intervene.

To you it is because He values natural laws more than He values people (since He will not let Himself interfere with them in order to save a life); and He values the free will of criminals above the free will of their victims (since the victim, if allowed her free will, would not be victimized). God lets men deprive her of her preference, but God is unwilling to deprive the pervert of His preference. This is the god of the theology you have espoused here.

To me it has nothing to do with God binding Himself by natural laws (if He did this consistently, there would never have been a special creation, an incarnation, a resurrection, nor any other miracles). You say God is loathe to interrupt the natural flow of cosmic laws, yet He has done so very many times, if Christianity is true. Interestingly, He violated natural law in the beginning of Polycarp's martyrdom, by preventing him from being consumed in flames—yet he allowed the saint to bleed to death the same day, when stabbed! God seems almost whimsical in His decisions as to when He will and when He will not suspend natural laws. They certainly are not, to Him, absolutes to bind Him against His purposes.

As for human free will, I agree that God gives men the freedom to choose a relationship with Him or not. This has very little to do with His allowing them to perform particular crimes, however. He could send His angels to deliver the victim from the evil intentions of the perpetrator without interfering one iota in the man's decision whether or not to have a relationship with God. In our dialogue, I have given so many scriptural examples of this from both testaments, which you simply ignore, that it is frustrating to have to repeat this obvious fact.

Your view can only be true if God values some things more than He values human welfare, which is not the case. I would have thought your belief in universal reconciliation would tell you as much! God's commitment to the good of all whom He has created means that He will not allow any harm to come to them that cannot ultimately work for their eternal good, as Paul wrote:

"The sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us." (Rom.8:18) and

"Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." (2 Cor.4:17)

I'm still a believer in Paul's theology (which is the same as the theology of Christ and all biblical witnesses). The fact that you or I cannot "imagine" how the millions of calamities occurring around the world could accomplish God's ends is irrelevant to whether or not God can imagine them.

The strength of your argument depends upon the assumption that God cannot understand His own secret counsels until you can understand them, which is why the position cannot rise above unscriptural sentimentality. You say you only go by what Jesus said, but this you do selectively. He said many of the things you disagree with, but you will not let His words determine your beliefs. Even the words of Jesus, like the rest of scripture are subject to your arbitrary editing.

[steve7150]

. If God did have a higher purpose, don't you think it a bit odd that He has never revealed it?










He did, "knowing good and evil they have become like us." A clear statement that we must experience evil. The why is never explained but the necessity of it seems to be revealed here.

[steve7150]

Back to James statement that if we know to do good and don't do the good than it is sin, does that apply to God's lack of preventing evil.

steve7150

Posts: 1973
Joined: Mon Aug 25, 2008 7:44 am










From our perspective stopping evil is a form of doing good and God can stop evil. Yet God very often doesn't stop evil so the only explanation i can think of is that stopping evil from an eternal perspective is not necessarily "doing good" otherwise according to James this would be a sin of omission. In the parable of the Wheat and Tares it is said that destroying the tares (evil) would destroy the wheat but with no explanation.

Any thoughts?

[Paidion]

So will I [continue to believe that God is LOVE, and is kind to evil and ungrateful people], but I will also believe all the other things that God has said about Himself. I will not believe less than you do. I will simply believe the rest, which you reject without necessity. No contradiction exists, except in minds insufficiently committed to reasoning from all the data.

That is a lot like saying that you have a friend, a good man, who provides for the needy through organizations such as World Vision, and also constantly helps neighbours in need. However, when he gets angry at people, he kills them. Just two sides of his personality. No contradiction here, "except in minds insufficiently committed to reasoning from all the data."

I know of course you will come back with your notion that God's character can be inconsistent since He is God, though for a mere human being this would be contradictory behaviour. John Stuart Mill addressed this kind of thinking. I don't think he was a Christian, but he demonstrated wisdom:

To say that God's goodness may be different in kind from man's goodness, what is it but saying, with a slight change of phraseology,
that God may possibly not be good?