Knowing of God’s wisdom, and greatness and power are intriguing and attractive for me. The greatest draw however, the thing that makes it impossible for me to turn away from or to reject or to rebel against my Creator is His absolute devotion to my well-being. Sure He’s incredibly amazing. He brought the material universe out of literally nothing in less than the blink of an eye. Sure He brings good out of impossibly bad situations for those who love Him and who have been called according to His purpose. But savouring the truth and scope of His love for me, for us, for humanity makes me turn toward Him in a way that is like being drawn toward a powerful magnet. I can no longer resist.
People like Hugo look at my cancer and see sadness. Or they look at the tragedy in Somalia and direct their anger toward Christians. Their anger is never directed toward themselves for not preventing the tragedy; only at Christians because - um - because - well, it feels good to be angry at Christians. People like Hitchens have built a career on being angry at Christians. What atheists don't know is that we, humans are responsible for virtually all the tragedies and suffering while our Creator determines the results or the outcome. Nevertheless, sceptics and atheists see God, if at all, as small, uninterested, angry, weak and irrelevant to their lives.
Nothing could be further from the truth. They are caught up in a lie. They are caught up in the worst kind of lie; a lie that is not only going to kill and destroy them, but a lie that seems to them as the greatest truth they’ve ever “discovered.”
How can anyone fail to be enraptured and captured by the love of someone who is perfect in wisdom and power and glory, who is perfect in honesty, sincerity and caring, who is not only thinking of you, but walking with you and loving you with perfect love through every second of every day?
How could I not adore someone who wants to spend eternity with me, not because of who I am but because of who He is?
I know that as a parent, my children’s behaviour changes the degree of love and devotion that I feel for them. Oh sure, I know that “love never fails,” and I'll remain committed to them for the restof my life, but I’ve got to tell you, some days I’m so annoyed that I wonder if I even possess the ability to love.
This is not the case with our Creator. He can’t NOT love me. Circumstances do not, as sceptics believe, determine the degree of God’s love. Instead, the more difficult the circumstance, that greater the amount of love that God pours into those who follow Jesus. He takes every thing that we call bad, or in Hugo’s case, “sad” and uses it for good. Each and every command is for our good. There is not a heartache, a tragedy, suffering or sickness in which God’s mercy and grace and love is not amply evidenced to those who love and honour and worship their Creator.
“All good things and every perfect gift is from above, coming down to us from the Creator of heavenly lights in whom there is not shifting or changing like shadows.”
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You are a liar; that's the saddest part... :(
ReplyDeleteI think the saddest part is that either you've given up on trying to be a nice ,or you really do need God in order to be good.
ReplyDeleteNo I have honestly been as nice as usual.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the tone seems aggressive when I am correcting mistakes and lies that you make...
In other words it's not even proportionate to the mocking and misrepresentation of my ideas, or ideas of atheists in general, that you make. You never promised to be nice so I was not expecting otherwise.
Oh right. You said you were no longer going to speak on-line in a manner that you wouldn't speak to someone on the street.
ReplyDeleteShut the fuck up!" Mmm hmm.
And then you try to say that your wrong behaviours are my fault. That's mature.
That is a very good point! Saying shut the fuck up is not the nicest thing to say. It is however not out of anger, or to be seen as an insult, so I am sorry that it came across like that. I did reply very quickly to your comments for the past week!
ReplyDeleteNote that it IS something I would say in person if we were in the same context, having the same type of conversation. What's hard to gauge is that it would be in a friendly setting and I would have a big smile on my face, hence the 'with all due respect' right before that indicates that a figure of speech is coming up. That's how I am when I am having a fun discussion with exchanges of strong ideas, and that's how I am when I write here on this blog... Obviously, when writing online it comes across as a very different thing unfortunately...
What I wonder though, well not really, is: When you say that for atheists 'it feels good to be angry at Christian' you probably just say that as a funny joke as well?
Hum, no... that's what I thought...
You see... That's the difference here. I think there are a few things you forget, or simply don't know. Perhaps it's a good occasion to quickly mention them:
- I am not angry.
- I love life, enjoy it, and see a lot of good in it although there is a lot of bad caused by us humans.
- I find it sad that you view the world as fundamentally flawed. The teachings of the Bible can be useful by pointing to "dark" things but you take these parts a bit too literally...
- Writing on this blog is mainly an entertainment for me; something fun to do, that I always do with a positive approach and with a smile on my face
- You are the one who misinterpret my beliefs and reactions
- I am on the other hand, very understanding of your beliefs and see the good it yields
- You are the one who claims I am evil and so is anybody else who "rejects" Jesus
- I understand that people have different backgrounds and thus different ideas but generally good intentions
- You are the one who is a fundamentalists, who is dogmatic and inflexible
- I constantly try to adapt my views, while remaining inflexible on well know facts
And so on... bottom line is this:
I am acting nice here, really. I am being honest, direct and truthful. Again, the problem is that I don't fit your worldview. I don't persecute you and I do anything I can not to insult you. By doing so, I go contrary to what you expect. It does not fit. That's where I stop understanding though. I don't know if, at this point, you do it on purpose or not. I don't know if you simply don't understand these facts, or if you don't believe them, but you clearly act as if it was all a bunch of lies. By doing so, you are the liar... be it on purpose or not.
You try to not be inflexible except on well known facts?
ReplyDeleteHow about "adultery is always wrong."
There are 10's maybe 100's of millions of people who would disagree with you. What makes you right and them wrong? Or in atheist world perhaps both communities can be right?
I agree that 'adultery is always wrong', but that's my opinion, that's not a fact... don't you see the difference?
ReplyDeleteI would go a step farther; there is not such thing as a 'morality fact'. In other words, even 'murder is wrong' is not a fact. It does not make sense to label that as a fact.
Nice trolling by the way; you know what it means right? You reply to a small portion of what I said only to make me reply and you will probably dismiss that reply as quickly as you dismissed what you were originally replying to. You will then keep lying more about what atheists say or think, and so on...
ReplyDeleteFascinating!
"Adultery is always wrong," is not just an opinion. It's a truth statement.
ReplyDeleteWhat right do you have to tell anyone that what they are doing is wrong? How dare you offend those who believe that adultery is nature's way of preserving one's genetic profile!
"Adultery is always wrong," is not just an opinion. It's a truth statement.
ReplyDeleteNo, it is not a truth statement.
Stating that something is wrong, no matter what it is, is, by definition, subjective.
If it's subjective, than it's not objective, by definition.
If it's not objective, then it cannot be a fact, by definition.
The only fact, as I had stated before, is that some people, like you and I, agree that "Adultery is always wrong". That is a fact.
The fact is not that adultery is wrong however. The only thing that is a fact is the fact that we agree.
So, you don't agree with my 10 questions after all?
What right do you have to tell anyone that what they are doing is wrong? How dare you offend those who believe that adultery is nature's way of preserving one's genetic profile!
Yes, keep mocking my ideas, I am sure Jesus' Spirit would like it... if he were real.
Personally I don't mind it though because your comment shows that you don't understand my position... AGAIN :-)
Want me to explain? No? Ok, that's what I thought...
I want you to explain why my cancer is sad.
ReplyDeleteIt's sad for many different reasons.
ReplyDeleteThe first one, the most obvious one in my opinion, is that a cancer that comes back usually tend to be worse than the first time around, since it means that it was never fully cured. This thus mean that there are more chances for you to die. I hope I am wrong but I thought it could be the case. You dying would obviously be very sad since you have people around you who love you, care about you and who would miss you deeply. How could I not be sad for your wife and kids? Sure, they believe you will be in a better place, but no matter what we believe, people are still entitled to sadness when they lose a loved one. It's just normal human nature...
The second reason is related to suffering because yes I think it's very sad that someone might suffer because of a disease. It does not make the suffering completely useless and meaningless, and it does not mean that there is nothing to learn from it. You can try to dumb it down if you want but it's not as simple as you had represented it here.
The third reason is personal. The day you wrote your post, I was coming back from an exam and I had an exceptionally good result (we know our grade right when we are done because it's an adaptive computerized test). Your post was one of the very first thing I read after coming back and it made me sad to think that on the same day we had such different types of news.
“stating that something is wrong, no matter what it is, is, by definition, subjective.”
ReplyDeleteReally? So discriminating against homosexuals is a subjective position to take. Discrimination might actually be ok for those who believe it’s ok?
Saying that murdering an infant in a drunken rage is wrong is subjective? There is no objective position (wrong regardless of what we think) regarding such things?
Killing six million Jews may be the right thing to do if enough people agree that it’s the right thing to do?
That is how right or wrong is decided in atheist-world. Not so?
“stating that something is wrong, no matter what it is, is, by definition, subjective.”
ReplyDeleteReally? So discriminating against homosexuals is a subjective position to take. Discrimination might actually be ok for those who believe it’s ok?
Yes, it's subjective.
Yes some people might think it's ok.
No, I will never agree with them, that's my own subjective opinion, and thankfully, most people in our society nowadays agree with me.
Saying that murdering an infant in a drunken rage is wrong is subjective?
Yes, subjective.
There is no objective position (wrong regardless of what we think) regarding such things?
No it's not objective, it is entirely based on what we think, so it is subjective.
Without minds posing a judgement, something cannot be 'right' or 'wrong', so all judgement are subjective by definition.
Killing six million Jews may be the right thing to do if enough people agree that it’s the right thing to do?
No, I think it's wrong and will always think that it's wrong no matter how people think it's right.
That's why it's subjective...
That is how right or wrong is decided in atheist-world. Not so?
Ya that's pretty much how it's decided for everybody; it's how everybody decide what's right or wrong.
Self-labelled Christian like yourself with direct access to divine power claim that an absolute standard for morality can be found in God, yet nobody agree 100% of the time, morality evolved over the years, and, oh surprise, God happens to agree with you most of the time.
No wait, sorry, you agree with God, my mistake... ;-)
Important point to specify though: I consider my morality system to be based on objective principles but context dependent.
The first two principles are empathy and life. Empathy is the aptitude that humans have to understand the feelings of others and how they would react themselves should they face a similar situation. This yields the famous "golden rule" as a basic principle: Don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you.
Then, the second principle is life, which is use as a base measure. Any action that harms life, is, a priori, wrong. But again, because it's context dependent, my morality system never falls in absolute and need to evaluate each situation before up with a definite answer on what is moral or not.
Wow, that's scary. As any atheist knows, Might equals Right.
ReplyDeleteWow, that's scary. As any atheist knows, Might equals Right.
ReplyDeleteWhat's scary?
How is that related to subjective versus objective?
I don't understand what you mean at all.
Actually, the only thing I get is that I was wrong to believe that we agree on what 'objective' means when I asked you my 10 questions, we obviously don't agree.