scm_redrum

welllll... God didn't create us for the sole purpose of having intelligent life on a speck of dust in the universe...His creation is a part of His perfect plan.. we r here cuz He LOVES us. even before we existed...it's kind like...the love that parents have for their children before they're even born...except much greater than that...and yes, He loves EVERY one of us...now, u mite ask, if He loves us SO much, then y do ppl go to hell?? well... it's called free will... what kind of love would a forced love be? He can't jus be like.."ok, everyone believe in me and love me as ur father," and have everyone go to heaven with the a snap of His fingers. we have the option to believe or not to believe, we have the option to love Him or not. that's what makes it real. because we have the choice not to. and about Christ comming to die for us...it IS a big deal because God sent His SON to die for us. any parent in their rite mind will tell u that this is a bigger sacrifice than giving up their own lives. God became MAN. and He was tempted like the rest of us, but He conquered tempation, and then he conquered death so that we could live. He died a humiliating, painful death that a criminal deserves. not to mention the torture he went through first. who r we to say that this isn't enough? u mite say "sure, God created the universe, so of course He can rise from the dead, He can do whatever He wants." But He didn't have to die for us,suffer for us, or "prove" Himself to us, but He did because he loved us. God became one of us. the best that we could ever do is like dirty rags compared to God's glory. we have to keep in mind that we as humans have many shortcomings and r blind over a lot of things. and we won't ever understand a LOT of things until we get to heaven. i won't get into that but yea.. a lotta ppl try to figure Christianity out with their own minds, pulling out different logics that they learned from this world, but we can't do that. we gotta think about faith, love, joy, sacrifice, and all that good i n v i s i b l e stuff haha. and also, u gotta think of God as more than jus a "creator" and "omnipotent" and all that. He's our friend and father. He understands and cares and is just and...yea... u get the point =) so yea...this is too short to answer a lotta questions and to explain everything... but gettin a tad long for xanga dont u think? well...i don't even have anywhere close to all the answers in the first place..but...i hope this helped at least a little..i hope it wasn't too long to discourage ppl from reading it at all..cuz i do that somtimes too haha

diana

Welcome to the board, murder-spelled-backwards.

This forum is restricted to arguments for the existence of God. Your post does not strike me as an argument so much as a statement of personal belief. As such, it belongs ~~Elsewhere~~.

You're welcome to participate in this forum. But first, you might consider reviewing the standard arguments for and against the existence of a god in the Infidels library.

d

hezekiah jones

we have the option to believe or not to believe, we have the option to love Him or not. that's what makes it real.

Hayden

Of course, he could have simply forgiven us for our ancestor's sin of eating his fruit, and not have had to go through the whole becoming man, being tempted, dying and rising thing.

That's not quite as good a story though, is it?

HR

Ronin

There is no plan that would justify the tragic suffering I witness ~ I don't even have to know 'everthing' to come up with that bit of wisdom.

Upside: There is no such God.

Downside: There are people who believe otherwise.

happyboy

yes, he loves us SO MUCH that he'll damn us to hell for not believing in him. what a loving God......

a very annoyed happyboy

diana

...a couple of words of advice:

We are interested in what you have to say, but many people will not bother struggling through a huge chunk of prose that has no paragraph breaks AND is written in the difficult-to-read internet shorthand that suggests you either can't spell, can't type, or perhaps just think it's cool. If you take the time to spell things out and divide your prose into definite ideas (paragraphs), you'll get a lot more readers.

d

Arvel Joffi

Welcome to the board, redrum! Your friend is an idiot, redrum!

Shadownought

Quote:

we gotta think about faith, love, joy, sacrifice, and all that good i n v i s i b l e stuff haha

Why must we have faith in the existence of an unobservable entity in order to comprehend our own emotions?

Stephen T-B

Your friend’s statement is incoherent and brings nothing new to belief system which is incoherent because it attributes vengeance to a “loving and perfect being.”
If it were loving it would not be vengeful; if it were perfect its creation would have been perfect. The only reason it might not be perfect would be the consequence of a deliberate act, and if it were a deliberate act then it contains an element of spite
Your friend might consider an alternative conjecture:
Supposing there were an entity in an extra-Universe dimension which is Pure Love, and requires love in order to express its love.
Suppose it set the parameters of a universe which, at some point, would give rise to a sensate creature with a spiritual dimension and the ability to love in the abstract.
All it requires from this creature is love, so that its own love might flow into it.
Why, then, should this being of pure love need to provide punishment for those creatures which fail to love it? The price of their withholding their love would be the loss of the love which would otherwise fill their souls.
Suppose a badly distorted inkling of this truth had made its way into our culture, and been embellished with fantasies which almost completely obscured it? Fantasies about Creation and original Sin and hell and Satan and miracles and a virgin birth and a “God-Made-Man” and a resurrection.
Dilute the message of love, and Christianity is nothing but a heap of dogmas, rituals, mumbo-jumbo and a pile of people arguing about the date of Easter and similar garbage.
Undiluted, the message of love would have brought nothing but benefit to mankind.