Joan of Bark

Since, after saddling us with disease and natural disaster, God clearly can't be bothered loving us, I'll go with loving each other.

Cantley

Yes, I have photographs and phone-taps.

Cantley

Who's waiting? He created the ground rules; we evolved when we evolved.
What did he do with his time? You know very well time didn't exist until the big bang!

Cantley

Does God want us to suffer? What if the answer is yes?
I'm not sure that God particularly wants us to be happy. He wants us to love and be loved. There is a difference.

Cantley

As I said, love not expressed is meaningless. So God expressed his love through creating a universe in which loving beings will evolve. We are his creation grown to a point where we are aware of him, and can love/be loved.

Joan of Bark

If God wanted us to love, he wouldn't have saddled us with diseases and disasters. A loving God would not invent sudden infant death syndrome. A loving God would not have given us smallpox, polio, and malaria; floods, tornadoes and earthquakes. If wars are a manifestation of a lack of love, then what was the Black Death? A god who not only permits suffering, but invents it, is not loving. Period.

Helpmabob

Hi Joan - If (and try and humour me here if necessary) we assume that there is an eternal life with no suffering on offer, then any suffering in this life approximates to zero: I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. [Phillipians 3:10,11]

As Paul says, Christ is our route to an eternal paradise without suffering. And Christ it was who, filled with love, suffered first for us.

JPD

Then what possible use could this life have as a demonstration of your God's powers? All that we know is several spanners short of a toolbox.

beyondtimeandspace

Arguing from the stance that God DID create the universe, I offer the following:

Because God is a perfect and infinite being, all things by necessity come out of God, since there is nothing that is not already a part of the infinite. Let this first be established.

God is also a conscious, personal being. It seems that there is a general desire attached to conscious, personal beings to express themselves, often in works of art, or creativity. In fact, it is this creativity that we refer to when we talk about self-expression. I assert the same of God. That all creative acts of God are acts of self-expression.

If all things are expressions of aspects of God's self, then how could it be that God would hate anything He creates (given that God is an all-good being (as opposed to omnibenevolent)). Thus, it would not be entirely false to say that God created out of love, as well as God created for His own self-glory. Not necessarily that WE should glorify Him, but that by the mere fact of our existence, God is glorified, since, as creations, we are God's self-expressions.

Of course, this raises a few issues, such as "what about sin?" and "as self-expressions, are we extensions of God?" I will answer the latter question first, since it is somewhat easier, more simplistic (at least I will only address it in a simplistic manner, though it can be explained in a much more complex way, much more thorough) to answer.

We are not extensions of God any more than a painting is an extension of the painter. One could refer to metaphysical definitions of Form and Matter when considering this, as well as making distinctions between the perfect and imperfect, the complete and the incomplete, the infinite and the finite, etc.

As for sin, this is somewhat more difficult to answer. St. Augustine argues that a sin (an evil action) is nothing other than a lesser good. This is because, metaphysically speaking, all existing things are good, and all actions are good, but may have evil effects, and so we refer to actions as evil precisely for this effect. It's a complex issue, but suffice it to say, when free will is involved, our actions may not be reflections of God. Why? Because God is a perfect being. If our actions are not perfect (in consideration of our natures), then it doesn't really reflect God (thus, a "lesser" good, or incomplete... etc.). Anyway, one may not necessarily deduce that God must be an evil, wicked being based upon our actions.

So, yeah, that's my 2cents. God created as a manner of self-expression, which entails love, and His own glory, among other things.

jakejonesiv

There are two gods, the lower god created the material world in ignorance. That is why it is so screwed up. The higher god, the Father sent Jesus on a resue misssion to the material world.

That is the short version of the myth of orthodox Christianity's earliest opponents.

Jake Jones IV