Thoughts on God

Lalaith's post is shorter, so hopefully my answer can follow suit. However, there is a lot here that deserves mention. In fact, as was pointed out to me by my husband, I've been skipping over a lot of things already. So, for anyone reading, please understand that just because I don't counter something, that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm in agreement, nor does it mean that I'm not. I just can't go over everything here. These are deep topics.

Moving right along. The question "who is God" is both complex and simple. God is that He is. It's the answer He gave us and it's really the only one that can actually answer the question. It's somewhat like asking "what is color?" For someone who has always been blind, they can't understand color. There is no color. They can't understand blue or red; they are words that have no real meaning. So someone who does not know God can understand things about Him, but they cannot know Him.

To be sure, no human - because we are finite beings - can fully understand God. Adam and Eve did not fully understand God and they were perfect. How much less can we, who are so tainted with sin, hope to understand Him? This is one of the major blessings of Heaven. We will be able to understand God more, and, in understanding Him, we will enjoy Him more.

Lalaith is completely right that people tend to make their god what they want it to be. There are a thousand thousand gods. There are gods who hate homosexuals BECAUSE of their homosexuality (rather than because they denied His deity); and there are gods that love all people no matter what they've done. It is true that people have a tendency to compose a god of what they perceive to be perfection. Even Christians do this. If they perceive that it would be unjust of God to save people without them having a choice in the matter, then they would be Arminians. (I wonder how many of them would find it unjust for me to pull a drowning child out of a river even if the child didn't want to come though. Food for thought.)

Something that is misunderstood terribly is the love, mercy, and grace which dominate the Old Testament as well as the New, as well as the love, mercy, and grace that are prevalent in the doctrines of predestination (which by the by are also known as "the doctrines of grace"). The will in unsaved people is not free to do good. Our wills are bound in slavery to sin, because sin is in our nature now. Given a choice, we will ALWAYS choose to do wrong - even if the action is right, the motivation for it is not because our minds are on ourselves, not God. This is abundantly clear from the book of Romans, especially chapters six, seven, and eight.

Regeneration is when God takes us, who are spiritually dead corpses, and brings us to life again. This is somewhat akin, at least in imagery only backwards, to when Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil. Before that time, they had only known good. Then they ate and they knew evil. We were dead in our sins, only knowing evil; then God raised us to life and now we can know good.

Predestination is not harsh or strict, nor in the least bit at odds with God's love and mercy. On the contrary, predestination - God's choosing us - is one of the highlights of His love and mercy. If Christ had died, but God did not raise us from our spiritual death, there would not be one who would call Jesus "Lord." The "harshness" of predestination is the idea that God chose SOME, and not others. In the case of this, allow me to draw a parallel.

Say you are a married person rich beyond imagination. You have a family; you are perfectly content. You own an orphanage for 300 homeless children and you are tirelessly providing them with food and shelter and clothes. If you adopt eight of them, are you being unjust to the other 292? Are you being unloving? Are you lacking in mercy? Not one of them deserved your love; not one of them had anything to offer you; not one of them could earn anything. AND, to add to all of their unworthiness, you've already given them of your wealth and goodness.

No, not only is it perfectly just for God not to adopt them all; He's already shown His goodness and love and mercy in providing rain and seasons and food to all those who are not His children. God sends HIS rain on the just and the unjust. God provides HIS animals for food to feed those who hate Him. God owns all the world and allows us to inhabit it. God is not unjust for limiting how much love He pours out upon each person. He's already given them so much more goodness than they could ever deserve.