Questions for Christians

[X-Christian]

I have a couple of questions for Christians.
1 - if god is all knowing then he knew before time began who would accept him or could even possibly have ever heard of him. There's too many religions on this planet as of right now that doesn't even know the name jesus even exist. This is not including the billions people that has died believing in the god of their time based off of the geographical location they were born in. Just liked Christians. Since jesus said that he is the only way to god and since god is all knowing then he knew before time began who he was sending to hell to be burned. Sounds like an evil dictator. Personally, id rather had not been born then to be born by God but predestined for hell. And any response that disagrees and says he still gives me the choice totally takes away the claim that he's all knowing.
2nd question is why didn't gods curse for Satan to slither on his belly and only eat dust in the garden didn't stick? We obviously see Satan walking around in the book of job. He was standing with Jesus when he offered him the kingdom after jesus's baptism and he's all over revelation walking around. What happened to God's curse? Apparently god isn't as powerful as Christians say?

[Bust Nak]

If free will is broken at point X, then how could one choose to have it repaired at a point after X?

Please, what do you think a free will IS?? It is the ability to make a choice. Period. I can choose between going right or going left and if it is not forced then I am free but if it is forced so I can only go in one direction it is not a free choice. FREE MEANS FREE FROM COERCION TO DO SOMETHING OR THE CONSTRAINT TO NOT DO SOMETHING. So why could not one decision be free and the next one coerced?

It seems pretty obvious that one decision could be free and the next one coerced in this world to me, but you were suggesting that we have no free will on this Earth, so how can we choose to have our freewill repaired in all our choices in this world are from coercion?

The word uninformed is wrong. If we were informed about nothing then no choice is offered. We were informed of the choice, the meaning of the options, and the natural consequences for choosing each option. We were as fully informed as we could be without coercing our decision.

As well, we did not have a desire to trust GOD until we were told the only way to choose HIM without proof was by faith, that is, by our hope HE was telling us the truth because we wanted what HE claimed to be true more than any other thing.

How can you say we are adequately informed and have to believe by faith at the same time? Seems to be conflicting concepts. Surely the more informed I am, the less faith I need; the least informed I am, the more faith I need.

Lets say you have to choose between two doors, and I tell you behind door A is a prize and the door B nothing. If you have zero idea if I am telling you the truth or not. You are in no better situation than someone who just have to choose blindly. On the other hand if you were given enough reasons to believe that I am telling the truth, then of course you would choose door A. It's a tug of war between information and faith.

Not so bad...

Their choice was certainly finalized though: as elect, that is, they accepted GOD as their Divine saviour and as sinful by rebelling against the judgement. What is not finalized is their salvation from their addiction to the enslaving quality of evil and the legal consequences of choosing evil. Salvation is a multi-part process which ends by the sinner being heaven ready, holy and purified, and by death. Part of that process, the rebirth into the spirit, is the renewing of our free will so that every desire will come freely from ourselves not from GOD nor by our addiction forcing it. Then we spend quite a bit of time being trained in our free will to always choose righteousness and to never choose evil again. Being holy is the chosen 'state' of never choosing evil again.

If salvation is not finalized, could an elected fail? Or did you meant not finalized as in it's just a matter of time, an elected would always be ready eventually?

[Monta]

I have a couple of questions for Christians.
1 - if god is all knowing then he knew before time began who would accept him or ...

2nd question is why didn't gods curse for Satan to slither on his belly and only eat dust in the garden didn't stick? We obviously see Satan walking around in the book of job. He was standing with Jesus when he offered him the kingdom after jesus's baptism and he's all over revelation walking around. What happened to God's curse? Apparently god isn't as powerful as Christians say?

God would have known that when you are 2yo you are still quite innocent and have to be taught b/n right and wrong. He would have known that if we nurture the soil the good seeds will have good environment to grow and that we would have no problem in 'accepting Him' which is basically - 'by their fruits'.

He would have known that you can't have babies at 2yo because he made it so.

Any perversion of truth is 'satan'. 'Satan' was smart (as all liars are) and said to Jesus without accusing him - 'if thou be..'. It is just another side to a coin, the opposite side.

[Kenisaw]

I have a couple of questions for Christians.
1 - if god is all knowing then he knew before time began who would accept him or ...

2nd question is why didn't gods curse for Satan to slither on his belly and only eat dust in the garden didn't stick? We obviously see Satan walking around in the book of job. He was standing with Jesus when he offered him the kingdom after jesus's baptism and he's all over revelation walking around. What happened to God's curse? Apparently god isn't as powerful as Christians say?

God would have known that when you are 2yo you are still quite innocent and have to be taught b/n right and wrong. He would have known that if we nurture the soil the good seeds will have good environment to grow and that we would have no problem in 'accepting Him' which is basically - 'by their fruits'.

He would have known that you can't have babies at 2yo because he made it so.

Any perversion of truth is 'satan'. 'Satan' was smart (as all liars are) and said to Jesus without accusing him - 'if thou be..'. It is just another side to a coin, the opposite side.

If god knows all that then we can't possibly have free will. And god lied about that. Good to know, thanks for the heads up...

[Monta]

[Replying to Kenisaw]

"
If god knows all that then we can't possibly have free will. And god lied about that. Good to know, thanks for the heads up..."

Don't thank me, I did not say that.

[ttruscott]

And PLEASE quit quoting scriptures to atheists. We laugh when we see someone respond to us with a scripture.

You use the scripture to create your analysis of the stories and to formulate the questions...that opens the door to the scripture as also containing the answer. IF that is too much for you then deal with the fact that the scripture can be used properly and successfully to ascertain and define what Christians think.

Since your topic is caled Questions for Christians then it is disingenuous to contend they cannot use the scriptures. It is unduly restrictive, because you don't like the answers.

[ttruscott]

[Replying to post 3 by ttruscott]

If Adam sinned, us as well, because of free will then did God take away our Free Will in Heaven? If we have free will in heaven then we will be able to sin. And to argue that we won't want to sin in heaven means that God took away the desire of anything I have and stripped me of my free will.

GOD will not take away our free will or we are mere puppets who cannot love, choose to be holy or chose to enter a true marriage. When someone sins, their minds become enslaved by the addictive nature of evil so that their free will, the ability to make decisions from only ourselves with no coercions, is lost to that addiction. Every decision they make is tainted by a desire to prove their individuality and non-subordination or subservience by a rebellion. This evil desire inevitable grows within the individual until the whole of the persons being and decision making is warped totally by its enticing power.

WE have the ability to choose sin in heaven as our free will is restored by our rebirth. We do not want to sin with such a commitment to holiness that we will never chose to sin any more, not because we have lost the desire for pleasure or profit but because we have been taught the inevitable cost suffering of every indulgence in the pleasure and profit of sin, a cost we are not willing to pay anymore.

You might have grabbed a hot tart out of the oven and stuffed it into your mouth as a child but you learned the virtue of waiting and letting it cool. This is analogous to what we learned as sinners because both of the lessons, the physical and the moral, is that you will not repeat the bad choice that causes suffering. Can you still do it? Of course. Will you do it again and accept the consequences? Never again, once was enough. This the meaning of all of HIS legitimate children being trained in righteousness, (not by destroying thier ability to choose nor by cauterising their desires), by painful discipline until we are at peace with GOD, Heb 12:5-11.

It is scripture that teaches us how your premise is mistaken.

[ttruscott]

[rant deleted and ignored]

So when a Christian tells me to just have faith in something all they are telling me to do is to believe in something that doesn't have any evidence to it and they want me to believe it just because they said so and want me to think the way they think.

Ahh, the beginner's mistake of confusing evidence with proof. Christians live by faith not PROOF!

The evidence our faith is based upon is:
1. The fact of the Bible and the meaning it has for each individual Christian, especially the life of Jesus, the Christ.

2. The fact of the indwelling Holy Spirit which we cannot share but know is true.

3. The fact of the witness of millions that what Christians experience is shared, especially the fact that we understand we live in a two reality system of both a spiritual and a physical reality and that the one reality system of materialism only is a delusion.

4. The fact of our characters being dramatically changed by our conversion experiences that turns our lives into the opposite direction.

None of this can be proven (except maybe the dramatic change of character) but it all can be a rock supporting our faith, our unproven hope that this is the truth. I for one don't care what you believe as I think your choices were finalized aeons ago but since I do see that you're making a mistake about Christian thinking, I like to give you a chance to clear that up anyway. The evidence we accept as meaningful is obviously not meaningful to you at this time but your estimation that it is not acceptable doesn't make it not evidence.

[ttruscott]

Free means the ability to choose without coercion between two opposites. IF we cannot choose we are not free, therefore a free will has the ability to choose evil at any time.

If you know this, then why have you insisted time and time again, that God appearing to us directly to convince us of his existence here on Earth, or giving us proof back when we were still spirits, would violate our freewill? We can still chose whether to worship him without coercion, it would just be completely obvious which is the better option out of two opposites.

You are talking about earth so I can safely say that I never ever said what you wrote, neither once nor time and time again BECAUSE I do not believe humans have a free will !!! and that I have written over and over.

No free will at all? I thought you said certain knowledge kills freewill, and no freewill means no love and that's why God couldn't just proof his words are true. You think there is freewill in heaven even when we have certain knowledge that disobeying God is a bad idea. I am saying that's contradictory.

Freeness of will, the ability to make an uncoerced decision does not break or become extinguished by knowledge, sigh, except for that one decision. I'm sorry I felt that this was so obvious I saw no need to mention it and no one has ever talked to me about it before so I was unprepared.

If I offer you the choice between and apple and an orange for you to choose one but tell you that the apple is poisoned, are you free to choose the apple? Yes, you might think I am lying. BUT if I prove the apple is poisoned by feeding a bit to little bird who instantly dies, are you still free? Not really, you are coerced by your knowledge and your desire for self preservation to not choose the apple. If I then offer you a banana or an orange, how is your ability to chose between them freely coerced by the knowledge the apple was poisoned?

Knowledge of the proof of one option coerces your choice so it's not by a free will choice any more but such knowledge doesn't destroy your ability to make all or any future free will decisions. How can it?

There is only one thing that completely disrupts our ability to make a true free will decision and that is if our minds are under the control of some other force and the easiest force to come over us was the addictive power of evil which each one became spell bound to by choosing their first sin.

Why couldn't God convince us of his perfection in pre-existence?

The choice facing us at that time was to accept or reject HIS claim to be our creator GOD and to accept or reject HIS offer of marriage. Upon thinking it over some might have felt like they did not believe HIM to be our creator GOD nor did they really want to marry HIM but if HE then, before they finalized their decision, showed forth HIS undeniable divinity and power, how could they go with their desires and not be coerced, even intimidated, into choosing HIM as GOD and spouse? IF HE proved hell was real, who would reject HIM at all?

But once our choices are finished and final, what effect does the proof have on our ability to make any other choice by our free will? The free will ABILITY of the angels was not destroyed by the proof of HIS Divinity. And neither was the freewill ABILITY of those who were destined to become humans destroyed by the proof of HIS divinity as their free will ABILITY was destroyed by their choosing sin their first time, before they saw the proof.

So stick to pre-existence. Why didn't God gave us proof about the consequence of our choices so we would not ever settle on the choice of evil, while still having the option to choose evil when we were still spirits?

Answered: the consequences are seeing HIS Glory and realizing the proof of heaven or hell. And such a proof would destroy that nature of this one choice to accept HIM as our GOD without being forced by the proof to do so but because we wanted to live HIS way in heaven with HIM.

I might be mistaken, I am pretty sure you said having proof destroys freewill. I am sure enough that I am willing to dig through your history to find a quote, if you deny you said it.

I did not know you would take what I said so literally to an absurd conclusion. YES proof of the goodness or badness of the options destroys the ability make the one choice between those options freely by forcing us to choose the one that is good to avoid the badness of the other, but only between those options, not any other... Knowledge of the proof of an option does not destroy the ability to make future choices freely between other options (which can't be proven ahead of time either). NO proof lets us choose which option sounds the best to us for our future happiness.

This doesn't mean we get to make the choice lightly; the options still result in good or bad effects.

You seem to be thinking of free will is like a stick, once broken always broken but the only thing I know of that can destroy free will forever is to choose to become eternally enslaved by evil in which case the proof you were wrong about YHWH has no effect anyway as Romans 1 insists.

If free will is broken at point X, then how could one choose to have it repaired at a point after X?

Because it is not a stick. The inability to make one choice freely because the options have been proven does not destroy the ability make any future decision between other options. The only power that does that to us is the addictive power of evil that comes over us when we choose our first sin and which adds a coercive taint to all our future decisions until we are cured.

[ttruscott]

I believe that free will only existed because of Satan's presence which was always here. Without evil in the world, there would be no need for free will as one can't choose something that doesn't exist. Therefore how can one choose evil in heaven? Free will is not being stripped. It just doesn't exist in heaven because there is no evil.

Evil is an abstraction that describes the moral value of a decision to rebel against HIM. Evil exists in a person who has chosen rebellion to GOD's self or plans so the person's mind is warped, changed in its nature to want to rebel again, and then again and more and more until the person is totally rebellious (evil) and is the embodiment of evil rebellion meaning their every decision can only be a rebellious one.

Before any rebellion was chosen there was no evil but there was the free will ability to choose to acquiesce to or to rebel against GOD. Then someone, Satan, rebelled first (hence his leadership role), doing the first rebellious / evil act and creating the first bit of embodied evil in His mind, the desire to repeat the drug like feeling of power he had experienced when he said, "No!" [The comparison to what we see in two year olds is obvious.] A clean heaven is no different except all those who were inclined the first time to rebel are now cured of seeing the possible consequences as profitable, knowing them to be completely horrendously full of suffering.

Our heavenly created reality will be cleansed of all sin, all evil, all rebellion, but we will still have the ability to choose to rebel and re-create evil in ourselves but by HIS training us up in a perfect righteousness, (Heb 12:5-11) we never will.

[ttruscott]

It seems pretty obvious that one decision could be free and the next one coerced in this world to me, but you were suggesting that we have no free will on this Earth, so how can we choose to have our freewill repaired in all our choices in this world are from coercion?

Ahhh, that is part of the salvation Christ offers by faith in Him. Salvation from sin means both our salvation from the legal consequences of our sin (judgement) and freedom from the coercive effects of it upon our choices.

The word uninformed is wrong. If we were informed about nothing then no choice is offered. We were informed of the choice, the meaning of the options, and the natural consequences for choosing each option. We were as fully informed as we could be without coercing our decision.

How can you say we are adequately informed and have to believe by faith at the same time? Seems to be conflicting concepts. Surely the more informed I am, the less faith I need; the least informed I am, the more faith I need.

Heb 11:1 tells us that faith is an unproven hope. We know about something and we like the sound of it all so we can still hope it will happen even if there is no proof.

Without being dogmatic since I don't really know I'd suggest that faith is driven by desire for what is presented, not that the presentation answered all our questions. We liked the sound of heaven with HIM so much we accepted HIM as our GOD without proof, hoping HE was telling us the truth.

If salvation is not finalized, could an elected fail? Or did you meant not finalized as in it's just a matter of time, an elected would always be ready eventually?[/b]

No one became elect or condemned unless their decision was finalized. There can be no going back. After all the decisions about HIS deity and our marriage to HIM were finalized we all saw the proof of HIS deity and HIS power when HE created the physical universe before our eyes and every knee did bow and every voice sang HIS praises (Rom 1:20 and Job 38:(1-) 7) As I have said many times, HE would not do this if the decision was not final in our heart, mind and soul since it would coerce our thinking and force some to go against their own desires. The fact it is reported as done supports the contention that all decisions were finished.