Re: Women at Casinos
 

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This inner knowledge that we all have, since Adam, it is supressed (Romans 1:18), so it's not like every human being thinks that the Bible is true and sees that moral system as absolute, and just wants to disobey. We are blinded by our own selfish desires, and we create our own system of morality, albeit unwittingly. Your system has led you to say, "I always thought that the only real sin is when someone does something that he knows, somewhere deep down, is wrong." It led me to think the same growing up. It's only when we say, "Fine, I give up, I do owe my life to my Creator" that our eyes will be opened to see the truth of God's word, God's desire for our lives. It's a step of faith to acknowledge our Creator God, but once we do, that is when God begins to reveal Himself more and more to us, and we begin to agree more and more with the Bible and understand how it is true.


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Eh, so we almost agreed, but then you reverted back into doctrine that I can't really argue with. So you are basically saying that humans are created with an intrinsic knowledge of right and wrong, but that only through knowledge of jesus and the bible can we actually see this in ourselves? This of course also brings up the oft-stated problem with christianity. If a baby is abandoned on a dessert island and raised by wild animals, this child has no chance for salvation, because there is no one there to teach him about jesus and hand him a bible?

To continue with your chair analogy. So the creator now makes himself a chair who's only purpose is to serve him (the creator) as something to sit on. However, instead of making the chair simply comfortable by design, he makes it not quite right - perhaps the back leans too far back for his tastes. Now he writes a book declaring his preference for chair back angles, gives this book to another group of chairs (but not directly to the one he just created), and decides that if this new chair doesn't adjust its back angle properly, he will punish it for all eternity.

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Hi Goober,

Thanks for the reply. There were several responses the last couple of days and this is the one I put aside to respond to, but I couldn't get to it until now.

I'm going to quote you and respond, since it seems to be the quickest and most thorough way to go about answering your post.

"Eh, so we almost agreed, but then you reverted back into doctrine that I can't really argue with."

I don't really think I reverted. Also, you can and are arguing with it, but keep in mind (if you are saying what I think you are saying), any belief at its base is circular.

"So you are basically saying that humans are created with an intrinsic knowledge of right and wrong, but that only through knowledge of jesus and the bible can we actually see this in ourselves?"

No, I'm saying we have the knowledge, and we know the knowledge, we just don't care. We suppress it (naturally) so that we can live for ourselves instead of God who created us. We can't see the truth because we don't want to see the truth. And we don't want to see the truth because we can't see the truth--this is our natural state. This is the reason for Christ's life and death; He has rescued us from our own circle of death so long as we believe in Him. So, at this point, you have the choice to believe in Christ, in which case God would reveal Himself to you, or you can choose to continue to believe in whatever else, in which case the Bible says you have chosen the created over the Creator (Romans 1).

Also, an important point, it's not knowledge that we ever see "in ourselves". It's not about us. It's not self-discovery, self-actualization, etc. It's about seeing the truth in Christ-in His perfect life on earth, His sacrificial death on the cross, His resurrection to the right hand of God where He rules today. It's not about us, and that's why it's unique as a belief system in the world-it can bear no humanism. This separates biblical Christianity from many sects such as Catholicism and many other so-called Christian denominations.

"This of course also brings up the oft-stated problem with christianity. If a baby is abandoned on a dessert island and raised by wild animals, this child has no chance for salvation, because there is no one there to teach him about jesus and hand him a bible?"

This is a problem for Christianity when Christianity neglects reading the Bible. Your theory of a baby in the woods is absent a sovereign God. The Bible teaches that God is absolutely sovereign, in control of everything in the world. He says, "Seek Me, and you will find Me." The simple answer to your posed problem is that if that baby in the woods sought who "God" is, or whatever kind of "soul-searching" you call it, God would save that baby either by bringing people along to share the gospel, by dropping a Bible out of the sky from an airplane, or whatever other means He chooses. The Bible says that if there were no people to speak of Him, "the stones would cry out" His name.

The reason people don't come to salvation isn't because of an incapable God, but because of an all too capable human ego.

"To continue with your chair analogy. So the creator now makes himself a chair who's only purpose is to serve him (the creator) as something to sit on."

This is not in keeping with my chair analogy. The chair had many purposes, all of which to glorify its creator.

"However, instead of making the chair simply comfortable by design, he makes it not quite right - perhaps the back leans too far back for his tastes."

Wrong, and this is important--the correct analogy would be that God made this wooden chair with something that no chair had ever been created with before-a free will-and although the chair was created without flaw, the chair decided that it wanted to go its own way, and in neglecting the creator's instructions, it corrupted itself, bending a leg and having its back go too far in one direction, weary from misuse. From that point on, when other designers fashioned "daughters" and "sons" of this chair, they only had the blueprints of the corrupted version of the chair, so every chair resulting from that first chair had the same flaws it had, and more.

"Now he writes a book declaring his preference for chair back angles, gives this book to another group of chairs (but not directly to the one he just created), and decides that if this new chair doesn't adjust its back angle properly, he will punish it for all eternity."

To continue with my new analogy above, from the moment that the original creator of the chair gave that chair free will, the creator made it known that his creation was flawless and simply had to do what it was made for, along with many other things it could do on its own, but could not do ONE particular thing--twist itself and try to go up a certain hill. Chair was not content with having all this freedom, but desired the one thing it could not have (because it had been promised that if it did the one thing denied to it, it would be like the creator), and so it ventured up that hill, twisting itself, contorting its back and bending its legs. From that point on, the creator declared punishment for this outright rebellion, and the world of chairs would feel the consequences for this act throughout time. As time passed, the creator remained active in directing the world, and over a period of 1,500 years a collective group of writings was inspired by God to direct mankind at a certain juncture of history--it wasn't a book that was just "thrown out there", nor was God passive and then all of a sudden active with a strange "book". He was active all along, and still is. The coming together of the Bible is overemphasized. The writings that compile the Bible were always inspired works of men of God to which believers adhered. It's just that one day, they were declared "official".

Obviously any analogy fails in accuracy, but you have crucial misjudgments that need to be reconciled if you are to understand the God of the Bible:

1. Any person who seeks God will find Him.
2. God created man without sin, but through man's free will, man chose to sin.
3. God has always been active in history relating to the world His will.
4. The Creator has all rights over His creation.

I'm sorry this wasn't the most complete response, but I'm a bit oozy from some medicine and have to rest [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].

M