Explaining God
I have found that most "logical" problems with Christianity stem from people simply not understanding God. I have seen atheists list points like...
How can I believe in a Christian God that is so cruel to kill millions of people?
How can anyone believe in a Christian God who will let children suffer and die?
How can I believe in a God who would send so many innocent and good people to hell?
I figured I would write an article explaining God and if anyone has any other questions about God, they can always email me with them and I will try to answer them.
One large problem we have I believe, is we tend to humanize God. Hollywood tends to always portray Him as a kind but frail old man. By humanizing God, we are bringing God down to our level. Which may be great for a good movie, but it is soooo wrong when it comes to truly understanding God. God is not a frail old kind-hearted man. God is not human. Yes he came to Earth as Jesus but even Jesus referred to the Heavenly Father.
Have you ever looked up into a clear night and saw the millions of stars up there? So many stars that they cannot even truly be counted. Each one of those is like another of our suns. Just really think about how vast the expansion of the universe is. The light from those stars takes millions of years to reach us. That's how far apart they are. God made that! God is so great and powerful that He could destroy us and create a new world easier than we can blink an eye.
My point to all of this, is that God is not some frail old man. God is.... GOD! He is not here to serve us. God made us to serve Him! To Praise and Worship Him!
Yet God is not some cold-hearted entity that doesn't care about us either. God is a loving God! He could very easily have made man to be his pawns. We would all just do what he wanted and nothing else. All day from the time we wake to the time we turn to our beds, we would be praising Him all day. But God didn't do that! God wanted us to live life! God wanted us to love, feel joy and happiness. To laugh! So God gave man free will. Without this "free will" we would be nothing more than pawns on a chess board to God. But he gave us free will and we can experience our own lives because of that.
However, there is a counter to Free Will. What would free will be if we don't have the choice to make bad choices either? God wanted us to experience life, but God does not want us to put "life" before Him! In a sense, even with God, there is balance. He would not give us Free Will and not give us the ability to make bad choices as well as good ones. Its simply not truly free will if you don't have the ability to make your own choices. So God gave to Adam and Eve one rule. "Do not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge". It was one freaking rule to follow. One! How much easier could God have made it? Here is paradise. You can do anything you want. Eat any food you want. Play any games you want to invent. Play with the animals. Do anything you want. Just don't eat the fruit on this one particular tree. How hard is that to follow? And they screwed it up.
But God is all powerful and all knowing. God knew if he gave us free will, that Adam and Eve would screw it up. He knew that at one point he would regret creating us and have to wipe all but one family out. God knew we would become inherently evil in our ways. But he could either give us free will, knowing that would happen, or He could make us pawns on a chess board. It would have been so much simpler for God to make us Chess Pieces, but He didn't care. He wanted us to experience life. Love and humor and joy. So he gave us Free Will anyway. And man did just as he knew we would. We screwed it up!
So God took Eden away and kicked Adam and Eve out of it. Why? Because He could not allow His paradise to be corrupted with sin. Man populated and filled the world with more sin. It became so corrupt and evil that God wiped it clean and started over with one family and God made a covenant with them that He would never drown the world again. No matter how evil we got, he would not do it again. So instead of wiping the evil out of the world, God chose to create a way for His people to be washed clean of that sin. He sent His Son, Jesus to Earth to die for us as a last sacrifice.
Once again, God opened the gates to heaven and he made it quite simple really. Follow His Son! Give your life to Jesus and accept Him as your Lord and Savior in your hearts, and you can be wiped clean of your sins and go to heaven. God is not making us jump through hoops, fight dragons to prove our worth or anything crazy. God only wants us to give ourselves to Jesus.
You see, there are a lot of people throughout time who have dedicated their lives to God. To Jesus. There are people who have suffered greatly for their faith in Jesus. They will be given a high place in Heaven. How wrong would it be to tell them that what they did doesn't matter because God will allow anyone into Heaven anyway and let heaven be corrupted by the sin man will bring into it? How wrong would that be? Imagine working hard your whole life to get to the point you have your own house designed. It is the most beautiful house you have ever dreamed of and you love it. Suddenly the government steps in and says since you have plenty of extra room, you are forced to let the drug addicts and criminals who have no place to live to move in and live there for free. You have to watch them track mud and grime through the house and not even care. They damage the walls and don't even think twice of it. Some are better than others but some are just rotten in the way they treat your stuff. They simply don't care. You are forced to watch your beautiful home slowly decay and fall apart because it was only fair to give these other people who weren't willing to follow the simple laws of the land or your home a place to live. Tell me that would not be absolutely wrong!
That is what many in the world expect God to do. He built heaven and made it a perfect sinless place for his faithful to live. He has one rule. He will not allow sin to corrupt his house. He made is very simple for us to be cleansed of our sin and be allowed into his house. Follow His Son Jesus. Accept Him as your Lord and Savior. Place God above all else in your life. It really isn't that difficult a thing to do.
God made it easy for us to erase the problems we made for ourselves. God has the doors open wide for us to enter his Heaven but we just have to do the simplest things. Have Faith in Him! Believe in Him. Follow His Son Jesus. We can do those things and go to heaven, or we can ignore those simple rules and end up burning in hell.
God loved us enough to put up with all of the corruption we would cause simply because He wanted us to experience life. So he gave us free will. When we failed as He knew we would, He gave us another way to reach heaven. But because he gave us free will, we have the choice whether to take that invitation or to decline it. And if we decline it, God has no choice but to let us go to Hell. God doesn't want us to go to Hell. God doesn't want us to do evil things. But God wants us to enjoy our lives and so he gave us free will and allowed us to choose where we end up.
Its not God being cruel to toss us in hell. It is us being too stupid and stubborn and choosing hell over heaven. God couldn't have really made it much simpler for us to be washed clean. We are just too stupid to do it.
Okay, great story, but why does God let children suffer and die? Why Does God allow mass killings in schools and such?
Part of that answer was already answered. Free will. In giving us free will, God gave us the power to make bad choices as well as good ones. To do evil as well as good. That was proven in the very beginning when Cain killed Abel. That's not what God wants. If everyone became Christians and followed the teachings of Jesus, we would have no war, no killings, no hatred, nothing bad. But because we do have free will, we can choose to pick up a gun and go into a public place where nobody is armed and able to fight back, and start killing people. It is such a sad thing that anyone would choose to do such a detestable act. And the more this world and country pushes God out of the laws, schools, public places, the more the devil has free reign to do what he wishes. The more we allow our kids to watch movies and play video games based on darkness and evil and push them away from God, the more of these things will happen.
On the bright side, our younger children are protected. Most Christians believe that when a child dies, the child goes straight to heaven because they are not yet of the age of understanding what sin is.
With you and I, we see from human eyes. We see children dying as a much more horrific thing than say a ninety year old criminal. Because we want to preserve good and youth and rid the world of evil and we believe old people have already lived a long life where the child is just getting started.
God doesn't see things that way. God sees this life on earth as just a holdover, a blip in the beginning to our eternal lives. A child dies and goes to heaven to spend eternity in happiness. An old criminal dies and goes to hell, his soul is lost in torment forever. Which is the greater loss to God? Our life on earth is not what is important to God. Our eternal lives is what really matters most. Every soul that is cast into the lake of fire will be considered a terrible loss to God. Every soul that reaches heaven is a wonderful gain to God.
Many think God is cruel for letting people choose to go to hell instead of following simple rules to go to heaven. But at the same time, we want children who will go to heaven, to grow old and have a chance to deny God and end up in hell when they die later and we want old criminals to die and end up in hell instead of keeping them alive and trying to save their souls. When you consider it from the eternal soul point of view, we are the ones who are cruel. Not God!
It sucks to see children suffering with diseases and such. I wish they didn't have to. The important thing to remember however is that those few years of suffering in this life, in the overall scheme of things, is a blip compared to the eternity in paradise we will have. Those who die as adults and are unsaved? They are the ones who should be mourned.
How can I believe in a Christian God that is so cruel to kill millions of people?
How can anyone believe in a Christian God who will let children suffer and die?
How can I believe in a God who would send so many innocent and good people to hell?
I figured I would write an article explaining God and if anyone has any other questions about God, they can always email me with them and I will try to answer them.
One large problem we have I believe, is we tend to humanize God. Hollywood tends to always portray Him as a kind but frail old man. By humanizing God, we are bringing God down to our level. Which may be great for a good movie, but it is soooo wrong when it comes to truly understanding God. God is not a frail old kind-hearted man. God is not human. Yes he came to Earth as Jesus but even Jesus referred to the Heavenly Father.
Have you ever looked up into a clear night and saw the millions of stars up there? So many stars that they cannot even truly be counted. Each one of those is like another of our suns. Just really think about how vast the expansion of the universe is. The light from those stars takes millions of years to reach us. That's how far apart they are. God made that! God is so great and powerful that He could destroy us and create a new world easier than we can blink an eye.
My point to all of this, is that God is not some frail old man. God is.... GOD! He is not here to serve us. God made us to serve Him! To Praise and Worship Him!
Yet God is not some cold-hearted entity that doesn't care about us either. God is a loving God! He could very easily have made man to be his pawns. We would all just do what he wanted and nothing else. All day from the time we wake to the time we turn to our beds, we would be praising Him all day. But God didn't do that! God wanted us to live life! God wanted us to love, feel joy and happiness. To laugh! So God gave man free will. Without this "free will" we would be nothing more than pawns on a chess board to God. But he gave us free will and we can experience our own lives because of that.
However, there is a counter to Free Will. What would free will be if we don't have the choice to make bad choices either? God wanted us to experience life, but God does not want us to put "life" before Him! In a sense, even with God, there is balance. He would not give us Free Will and not give us the ability to make bad choices as well as good ones. Its simply not truly free will if you don't have the ability to make your own choices. So God gave to Adam and Eve one rule. "Do not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge". It was one freaking rule to follow. One! How much easier could God have made it? Here is paradise. You can do anything you want. Eat any food you want. Play any games you want to invent. Play with the animals. Do anything you want. Just don't eat the fruit on this one particular tree. How hard is that to follow? And they screwed it up.
But God is all powerful and all knowing. God knew if he gave us free will, that Adam and Eve would screw it up. He knew that at one point he would regret creating us and have to wipe all but one family out. God knew we would become inherently evil in our ways. But he could either give us free will, knowing that would happen, or He could make us pawns on a chess board. It would have been so much simpler for God to make us Chess Pieces, but He didn't care. He wanted us to experience life. Love and humor and joy. So he gave us Free Will anyway. And man did just as he knew we would. We screwed it up!
So God took Eden away and kicked Adam and Eve out of it. Why? Because He could not allow His paradise to be corrupted with sin. Man populated and filled the world with more sin. It became so corrupt and evil that God wiped it clean and started over with one family and God made a covenant with them that He would never drown the world again. No matter how evil we got, he would not do it again. So instead of wiping the evil out of the world, God chose to create a way for His people to be washed clean of that sin. He sent His Son, Jesus to Earth to die for us as a last sacrifice.
Once again, God opened the gates to heaven and he made it quite simple really. Follow His Son! Give your life to Jesus and accept Him as your Lord and Savior in your hearts, and you can be wiped clean of your sins and go to heaven. God is not making us jump through hoops, fight dragons to prove our worth or anything crazy. God only wants us to give ourselves to Jesus.
You see, there are a lot of people throughout time who have dedicated their lives to God. To Jesus. There are people who have suffered greatly for their faith in Jesus. They will be given a high place in Heaven. How wrong would it be to tell them that what they did doesn't matter because God will allow anyone into Heaven anyway and let heaven be corrupted by the sin man will bring into it? How wrong would that be? Imagine working hard your whole life to get to the point you have your own house designed. It is the most beautiful house you have ever dreamed of and you love it. Suddenly the government steps in and says since you have plenty of extra room, you are forced to let the drug addicts and criminals who have no place to live to move in and live there for free. You have to watch them track mud and grime through the house and not even care. They damage the walls and don't even think twice of it. Some are better than others but some are just rotten in the way they treat your stuff. They simply don't care. You are forced to watch your beautiful home slowly decay and fall apart because it was only fair to give these other people who weren't willing to follow the simple laws of the land or your home a place to live. Tell me that would not be absolutely wrong!
That is what many in the world expect God to do. He built heaven and made it a perfect sinless place for his faithful to live. He has one rule. He will not allow sin to corrupt his house. He made is very simple for us to be cleansed of our sin and be allowed into his house. Follow His Son Jesus. Accept Him as your Lord and Savior. Place God above all else in your life. It really isn't that difficult a thing to do.
God made it easy for us to erase the problems we made for ourselves. God has the doors open wide for us to enter his Heaven but we just have to do the simplest things. Have Faith in Him! Believe in Him. Follow His Son Jesus. We can do those things and go to heaven, or we can ignore those simple rules and end up burning in hell.
God loved us enough to put up with all of the corruption we would cause simply because He wanted us to experience life. So he gave us free will. When we failed as He knew we would, He gave us another way to reach heaven. But because he gave us free will, we have the choice whether to take that invitation or to decline it. And if we decline it, God has no choice but to let us go to Hell. God doesn't want us to go to Hell. God doesn't want us to do evil things. But God wants us to enjoy our lives and so he gave us free will and allowed us to choose where we end up.
Its not God being cruel to toss us in hell. It is us being too stupid and stubborn and choosing hell over heaven. God couldn't have really made it much simpler for us to be washed clean. We are just too stupid to do it.
Okay, great story, but why does God let children suffer and die? Why Does God allow mass killings in schools and such?
Part of that answer was already answered. Free will. In giving us free will, God gave us the power to make bad choices as well as good ones. To do evil as well as good. That was proven in the very beginning when Cain killed Abel. That's not what God wants. If everyone became Christians and followed the teachings of Jesus, we would have no war, no killings, no hatred, nothing bad. But because we do have free will, we can choose to pick up a gun and go into a public place where nobody is armed and able to fight back, and start killing people. It is such a sad thing that anyone would choose to do such a detestable act. And the more this world and country pushes God out of the laws, schools, public places, the more the devil has free reign to do what he wishes. The more we allow our kids to watch movies and play video games based on darkness and evil and push them away from God, the more of these things will happen.
On the bright side, our younger children are protected. Most Christians believe that when a child dies, the child goes straight to heaven because they are not yet of the age of understanding what sin is.
With you and I, we see from human eyes. We see children dying as a much more horrific thing than say a ninety year old criminal. Because we want to preserve good and youth and rid the world of evil and we believe old people have already lived a long life where the child is just getting started.
God doesn't see things that way. God sees this life on earth as just a holdover, a blip in the beginning to our eternal lives. A child dies and goes to heaven to spend eternity in happiness. An old criminal dies and goes to hell, his soul is lost in torment forever. Which is the greater loss to God? Our life on earth is not what is important to God. Our eternal lives is what really matters most. Every soul that is cast into the lake of fire will be considered a terrible loss to God. Every soul that reaches heaven is a wonderful gain to God.
Many think God is cruel for letting people choose to go to hell instead of following simple rules to go to heaven. But at the same time, we want children who will go to heaven, to grow old and have a chance to deny God and end up in hell when they die later and we want old criminals to die and end up in hell instead of keeping them alive and trying to save their souls. When you consider it from the eternal soul point of view, we are the ones who are cruel. Not God!
It sucks to see children suffering with diseases and such. I wish they didn't have to. The important thing to remember however is that those few years of suffering in this life, in the overall scheme of things, is a blip compared to the eternity in paradise we will have. Those who die as adults and are unsaved? They are the ones who should be mourned.
